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A wave of fraudulent copyright takedowns on YouTube has exposed vulnerabilities in the platform's content moderation system, enabling anonymous users to threaten creators' channels through false legal claims, The Verge is reporting. Several gaming content creators, including a channel with 1.5 million subscribers, received takedown notices from someone impersonating Nintendo's legal team. Though YouTube acknowledged the false claims, the company declined to explain how it verifies takedown requests or detail measures to prevent abuse of its copyright system.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Vacancies at open-air shopping centres in the US have dropped to historically low levels [non-paywalled source], defying forecasts of a retail apocalypse caused by the rise of ecommerce. From a report: Landlords of complexes anchored by big-box chains, discount merchants and supermarkets have gained power to raise rents as leases expire. New construction has been stymied by higher interest rates and soaring building costs. Scarcity in the market had disproved long-standing beliefs about retail real estate, said Brandon Isner, head of retail research at Newmark, a commercial property broker. "They would say, 'Retail is overbuilt. Retail is struggling. Ecommerce is going to take over brick-and-mortar retail.' And really none of that has ended up to be true," Isner said. Retailers plan to expand further in the years ahead, led by discount chains favoured by inflation-weary consumers seeking deals. Off-price clothing and decor chains Burlington Stores, Ross Stores and TJX, parent of the Marshalls and TJ Maxx store chains, have together added 339 US stores in the past year. Walmart intends to add 150 US locations over the next five years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From December 28th, a large percentage of the gadgets bought inside the EU are required to charge via USB-C. From a report: The goal for Directive 2022/2380, known colloquially as the common charging solution, is to reduce e-waste and solve market fragmentation. You may recall Apple and the EU butting heads over this a few years ago. The requirement for USB-C is just the surface of this directive though. It also includes regulations on fast charging, unbundling charging bricks from retail devices, and the introduction of improved labelling -- and it has the potential to make life for gadget enthusiasts in the EU a whole lot simpler. If it works, of course.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI plans to overhaul its corporate structure by converting its for-profit business into a Delaware public benefit corporation, seeking to raise capital from investors who want conventional equity stakes. The Microsoft-backed AI startup will scrap its unusual hybrid model where a nonprofit controls a capped-profit entity. The restructuring aims to help OpenAI compete with tech giants pouring hundreds of billions into AI development, it said. Under the plan, OpenAI's nonprofit wing will receive shares in the new public benefit corporation at a valuation set by outside advisers. The nonprofit will pursue charitable work in healthcare and education while the corporation runs OpenAI's main operations. The startup, which launched ChatGPT in 2022 and claims 300 million weekly users, said its current structure hampers fundraising at the scale needed to advance artificial general intelligence development. The restructured business will maintain OpenAI's mission of ensuring AI benefits humanity as its legal mandate.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facial recognition technology is poised to replace traditional passports globally, marking the biggest shift in travel documentation since World War 1. Airports across Finland, Canada, Netherlands, UAE, UK, Italy, US, and India are testing passport-free systems, with Singapore already implementing the technology for its residents and departing visitors. The systems typically store passport data digitally on smartphones, using face recognition cameras at airports to match travelers against stored photos. Singapore officials report over 1.5 million people have used their system, while Finnish trials showed identity checks taking just eight seconds.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Major video game studios' pursuit of ultra-realistic graphics has led to diminishing returns and industry-wide layoffs, as younger players gravitate toward simpler, more social games, New York Times is reporting. Sony's Insomniac Games spent $300 million developing Marvel's Spider-Man 2, triple the budget of its predecessor, before laying off staff amid Sony's 900-person reduction in February. The industry has cut more than 20,000 jobs in the past two years. Meanwhile, games with basic graphics like Minecraft, Roblox and Fortnite continue to dominate, particularly among younger players. Genshin Impact, a mobile game by Hoyoverse, generates approximately $2 billion annually through frequent content updates rather than cutting-edge visuals. The shift has forced studios to reevaluate their strategies. Warner Bros. Discovery lost $200 million on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, while Sony shuttered its Concord studio shortly after launch. Some industry figures see AI as a potential solution to reduce graphics development costs, the report adds, particularly in sports games.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japanese megabank MUFG Bank says that its internet banking service has been unstable, indicating that it may have been under a cyberattack. From a report: The glitch, which occurred from 2:47 p.m., originated from "massive influx of data," the main banking unit of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group said. There was no leakage of customer information, nor was any damage caused by computer viruses.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has released what appears to be one of the most powerful open-source language models to date, trained at a cost of just $5.5 million using restricted Nvidia H800 GPUs. The 671-billion-parameter DeepSeek V3, released this week under a permissive commercial license, outperformed both open and closed-source AI models in internal benchmarks, including Meta's Llama 3.1 and OpenAI's GPT-4 on coding tasks. The model was trained on 14.8 trillion tokens of data over two months. At 1.6 times the size of Meta's Llama 3.1, DeepSeek V3 requires substantial computing power to run at reasonable speeds. Andrej Karpathy, former OpenAI and Tesla executive, comments: For reference, this level of capability is supposed to require clusters of closer to 16K GPUs, the ones being brought up today are more around 100K GPUs. E.g. Llama 3 405B used 30.8M GPU-hours, while DeepSeek-V3 looks to be a stronger model at only 2.8M GPU-hours (~11X less compute). If the model also passes vibe checks (e.g. LLM arena rankings are ongoing, my few quick tests went well so far) it will be a highly impressive display of research and engineering under resource constraints. Does this mean you don't need large GPU clusters for frontier LLMs? No but you have to ensure that you're not wasteful with what you have, and this looks like a nice demonstration that there's still a lot to get through with both data and algorithms.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission has launched a broad antitrust investigation into Microsoft's business practices, focusing on how the company bundles its Office products with cybersecurity and cloud computing services. The probe follows ProPublica reporting that revealed Microsoft offered free temporary upgrades of federal agencies' software licenses to include advanced cybersecurity features, leading to long-term contracts once the trial period ended. The strategy helped Microsoft expand its government business while displacing competitors in both cybersecurity and cloud computing markets. The investigation includes scrutiny of Microsoft's identity management product Entra ID, formerly Azure Active Directory. The FTC has issued a civil investigative demand compelling the company to turn over information. The probe represents one of FTC Chair Lina Khan's final moves before leadership changes under the Biden administration. Microsoft confirmed receiving the demand but called it "broad, wide ranging, and requests things that are out of the realm of possibility to even be logical."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes: In 2012, now-Microsoft President Brad Smith unveiled Microsoft's National Talent Strategy, a two-pronged strategy that called for tech visa restrictions to be loosened to allow tech companies to hire non-U.S. citizens to fill jobs until more American schoolchildren could be made tech-savvy enough to pass hiring standards. Shortly thereafter, tech-backed nonprofit Code.org emerged (led by Smith's next-door neighbor Hadi Partovi with Smith as a founding Board member) with a mission to ensure that U.S. schoolchildren started receiving 'rigorous' computer science education instruction. Around the same time, Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC launched (with support from Smith, Partovi, and other tech leaders) with a mission to reform tech visa policy to meet tech's need for talent. Fast forward to 2024, and Newsweek reports the debate over tech immigration policy has been revived, spurred by the recent appointment of Sriram Krishnan as senior policy adviser for AI at the Trump White House. Comments by far-right political activist Laura Loomer on Twitter about Krishnan's call for loosening Green Card restrictions were met with rebuttals from prominent tech leaders who are also serving as members of the Trump transition team. Entrepreneur David Sacks, who Trump has tapped as his cryptocurrency and AI czar, took to social media to clarify that Krishnan advocates for removing country caps on green cards, not eliminating caps entirely, aiming to create a more merit-based system. However, the NY Times reported that Sacks discussed a much broader visa reform proposal with Trump during a June podcast ("What I will do is," Trump told Sacks, "you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country"). Elon Musk, the recently appointed co-head of Trump's new Dept. of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had Sacks' and Krishnan's backs (not unexpected -- both were close Musk advisors on his Twitter purchase), tweeting out "Makes sense" to his 209 million followers, lamenting that "the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low," reposting claims crediting immigrants for 36% of the innovation in the U.S., and taking USCIS to task for failing to immediately recognize his own genius with an Exceptional Ability Green Card (for his long-defunct Zip2 startup). Vivek Ramaswamy, who Trump has tapped to co-lead DOGE with Musk, agreed and fanned the Twitter flames with a pinned Tweet of his own explaining, "The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born -- first-generation engineers over "native" Americans isn't because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy -- wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture." (Colorado Governor Jared Polis also took to Twitter to agree with Musk and Ramaswamy on the need to import 'elite engineers'). And Code.org CEO Partovi joined the Twitter fray, echoing the old we-need-H1B-visas-to-make-US-schoolchildren-CS-savvy argument of Microsoft's 2012 National Talent Strategy. "Did you know 2/3 of H1B visas are for computer scientists?" Partovi wrote in reply to Musk, Loomer, and Sachs. "The H1B program raises $500M/year (from its corporate sponsors) and all that money is funneled into programs at Labor and NSF without focus to grow local CS talent. Let's fund CS education." The NYT also cited Zuckerberg's earlier efforts to influence immigration policy with FWD.us (which also counted Sacks and Musk as early supporters), taking note of Zuck's recent visit to Mar-a-Lago and Meta's $1 million donation to Trump's upcoming inauguration. So, who is to be believed? Musk, who attributes any tech visa qualms to "a 'fixed pie' fallacy that is at the heart of much wrong-headed economic thinking" and argues that "there is essentially infinite potential for job and company creation ['We should let anyone in the country who is hardworking and honest and will be a contributor to the United States,' Musk has said]"? Or economists who have found that immigration and globalization is not quite the rising-tide-that-raises-all-boats it's been cracked up to be?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is warning that Windows 11 installations using USB or CD media created with October or November 2024 security updates may be unable to receive future security patches. The bug affects version 24H2 installations made between October 8 and November 12, but does not impact systems updated through Windows Update or the Microsoft Update Catalog. Microsoft advised users to rebuild installation media using December 2024 patches while it works on a permanent fix for the issue, which primarily affects business and education environments.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. biotech startup Loyal plans to launch a lifespan-extending drug for dogs in early 2025, potentially offering insights into human longevity. The San Francisco-based company has secured $125 million in funding for LOY-002, a beef-flavored daily pill designed to extend canine lifespans by at least one year. The drug works by targeting age-related metabolic changes and insulin regulation, according to Loyal CEO Celine Halioua. Simultaneously, the Dog Aging Project is studying rapamycin, an immunosuppressant drug, which preliminary research suggests could add three years to dogs' lives. Researchers believe these canine studies could accelerate human longevity research, though experts note the lack of standardized aging biomarkers remains a significant hurdle for human trials.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's $3,499 Vision Pro headset has failed to gain widespread adoption despite advanced technology, with consumers preferring discreet wearables like smartwatches. The Verge: Nearly a year from launch, though, Apple hasn't done enough to demonstrate why the Vision Pro should be a potential showcase of the future of computing. It's taking a long time to put together its immersive content library, and while those are great demonstrations of what's possible, the videos have been short and isolating. There aren't many great games, either. Yes, Apple keeps adding cool new software features. The wide and ultra widescreen settings for using a Mac display seem exceptionally useful. But those are pretty specific options for pretty specific use cases. There still isn't an immediate, obvious reason to buy a Vision Pro the way there usually is with the company's newest iPhones and Macs. If I bought a Vision Pro today, I wouldn't know what to do with it besides give myself a bigger Mac screen or watch movies, and I don't think either of those are worth the exorbitant price.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is negotiating major changes to the company's $14 billion partnership with Microsoft. The companies have defined artificial general intelligence (AGI) as systems generating $100 billion in profits [non-paywalled source] -- the point at which OpenAI could end certain Microsoft agreements, The Information reports. According to their contract, AGI means AI that surpasses humans at "most economically valuable work." The talks focus on Microsoft's equity stake, cloud exclusivity, and 20% revenue share as OpenAI aims to convert from nonprofit to for-profit status. The AI developer projects $4 billion in 2024 revenue.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Data center construction is driving an unprecedented influx of electricians to central Washington state, where abundant hydropower and tax incentives have attracted major tech companies building AI infrastructure, New York Times is reporting. Microsoft alone projects needing 2,300 electricians in coming years for facilities across three counties along the Columbia River. Union electricians earning up to $2,800 weekly after taxes are transforming agricultural communities like Quincy, where data centers now account for 75% of local tax revenue. While the construction boom has funded community improvements including a new high school, rising housing costs and limited long-term employment opportunities raise concerns about sustainable economic benefits for longtime residents.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has integrated its AI assistant Copilot into Microsoft 365 subscriptions in Australia and Southeast Asia, simultaneously raising prices for all users. The move forces customers to pay for AI features regardless of interest, prompting complaints about intrusive pop-ups and price hikes, WSJ reports. From the report: Some users said on social media that Copilot pop-ups reminded them of Clippy, Microsoft's widely derided Office helper from the late 1990s, that would frequently offer unsolicited help. [...] The change demonstrates the lengths to which Microsoft is going to try to profit from its huge investments in AI. Copilot, which is built with technology from OpenAI, is a key part of Chief Executive Satya Nadella's plan to keep expanding Microsoft's software business for consumer and corporate customers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: James Bond has dodged more than 4,000 bullets. He has jumped from an airplane, skied off a cliff and escaped castration by laser beam. Now, 007 is in a new kind of peril. Nearly three years after Amazon acquired the right to release Bond movies through its $6.5 billion purchase of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio, the relationship between the family that oversees the franchise and the ecommerce giant has all but collapsed, WSJ reports.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Airports are facing a growing nuisance as travelers increasingly watch videos and take calls on speakerphone without headphones, creating tension among passengers at gates and lounges. Flight attendants at American Airlines, Alaska Air, and Delta have begun addressing the issue through announcements and website notices, though enforcement remains challenging, WSJ reports. Passengers report confrontations rarely end well, with offenders often dismissive or hostile when asked to use headphones. The story adds: The headphones-optional attitude isn't limited to air travel. Podcasts and sports games blare in open-plan offices. You can catch snippets of conversations on the sidewalk, some phones held aloft for video calls. Transit authorities in big cities have struggled to get passengers to keep their music to themselves on subways and commuter trains. Witnesses say offenders span the generational and socioeconomic spectrum, from grandparents on speakerphone to toddlers on iPads and from first class to coach. Air travel already overloads the senses with a cacophony of boarding announcements, beeping vehicles and crying babies. U.S. airlines generally don't allow voice and video calls in the air. But by takeoff, the damage has been done.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The bald eagle is now officially the national bird of the US, after President Joe Biden signed a law on Christmas Eve bestowing the honour upon the white-headed and yellow-beaked bird of prey. BBC News: The bird has been a national emblem in the US for years, appearing on the Great Seal of the US -- used on US documents -- since 1782. But it had not been officially designated to be the national bird until Congress passed the bill last week, sending it to Biden's desk to be signed. "For nearly 250 years, we called the bald eagle the national bird when it wasn't," said Jack Davis, co-chair of the National Bird Initiative for the National Eagle Center, in a statement. "But now the title is official, and no bird is more deserving." Not everyone has always agreed about the national status of the bald eagle. Founding Father Benjamin Franklin objected to the creature being chosen to represent the country, calling it a "bird of bad moral character."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan Airlines said it was hit by a cyberattack Thursday, causing delays to more than 20 domestic flights but the carrier said there was no impact on flight safety. From a report: JAL said the problem started Thursday morning when the company's network connecting internal and external systems began malfunctioning. The airline said the cyberattack had delayed 24 domestic flights for more than 30 minutes, and the impact could expand later in the day.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Three more EU member states -- including the most populous, Germany -- have joined the list of countries with "ultra-low" fertility rates [non-paywalled source], highlighting the extent of the region's demographic challenges. Financial Times: Official statistics show Germany's birth rate fell to 1.35 children per woman in 2023, below the UN's "ultra-low" threshold of 1.4 -- characterising a scenario where falling birth rates become tough to reverse. Estonia and Austria also passed under the 1.4 threshold, joining the nine EU countries -- including Spain, Greece and Italy -- that in 2022 had fertility rates below 1.4 children per woman. The fall in birth rates partially reflects the "postponement of parenthood until the 30s," which involves a "higher likelihood that you will not have as many children as you would like because of the biological clock," said Willem Adema, senior economist at the OECD.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has no plans to develop its own search engine despite potential restrictions on its lucrative revenue-sharing deal with Google, citing billions in required investment and rapidly evolving AI technology as key deterrents, according to a court filing [PDF]. In a declaration filed with the U.S. District Court in Washington, Apple Senior Vice President Eddy Cue said creating a search engine would require diverting significant capital and employees, while recent AI developments make such an investment "economically risky." Apple received approximately $20 billion from Google in 2022 under a deal that makes Google the default search engine on Safari browsers. This arrangement is now under scrutiny in the U.S. government's antitrust case against Google. Cue said Apple lacks the specialized professionals and infrastructure needed for search advertising, which would be essential for a viable search engine. While Apple operates niche advertising like the App Store, search advertising is "outside of Apple's core expertise," he said. Building a search advertising business would also need to be balanced against Apple's privacy commitments, according to his declaration.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Russian government has banned crypto mining in ten regions for a period of six years, according to reporting by the state-owned news agency Tass. Engadget adds: Russia has cited the industry's high power consumption rates as the primary reason behind the ban. Crypto is particularly power-hungry, as mining operations already account for nearly 2.5 percent of US energy use. This ban takes effect on January 1 and lasts until March 15, 2031. The country's Council of Ministers has also stated that additional bans may be required in other regions during periods of peak energy demand. It could also go the other way. The ban could be temporarily lifted or altered in certain regions if a government commission examines changes in energy demand and deems it necessary.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lost deliveries, shipping delays and theft on the front porch have become such growing problems that companies are making consumers pay for package protection. From a report: Tens of thousands of online retailers now offer the service for a few dollars per order. The fees go to young companies -- Route and Corso, to name two -- that promise to make customers whole without charging the merchant if a delivery doesn't arrive. Consumers are finding that retailers either ask them to pay for package protection or draw a harder line when it comes to replacing a missing item. Some retailers are making the fees mandatory, spreading the burden of package theft among all customers. To know whether you are paying the fee, review your order before you press purchase. Sometimes it is named after the company offering protection, and sometimes it is called shipping insurance or package protection. Skincare brand Topicals began using Corso two years ago after seeing 30% of its packages were regularly marked delivered but not received, according to customer insights manager Deja Jefferson. By requiring protection, which Topicals discloses on its shipping page, the company doesn't have to worry about convincing customers to opt in. "We actually don't get any complaints on it whatsoever," she said. Further reading: Porch Pirates Steal So Many Packages That Now You Can Get Insurance.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has published a year in review for its Edge browser and talked up AI-powered chats while lightly skipping over the software's stagnating market share. The company had some big numbers to share. There had been over 10 billion AI-powered chats with Copilot from inside the Edge browser window (although it did not disclose how many chats were customers asking how to install Chrome). Some 38 trillion characters had been auto-translated. Seven trillion megabytes of PC memory had been saved through the use of sleeping tabs. However, are those numbers actually as big as they seem? What Microsoft did not say is how little Edge has moved the needle on market share in 2024. Strangely, the company did not share raw usage information. Yet, a look at Statcounter's figures for browser desktop market share showed Edge with 11.9 percent of the market in December 2023 and reaching 12.87 percent by November 2024 -- an increase of less than 1 percent. The market leader, Google's Chrome browser, went from 65.23 percent to 66.33 percent in the same period. That's only slightly more than 1 percent, but it still maintains its dominance.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple may be worth one and a half Googles now, but the world's most valuable company needs its relationship with the world's largest search engine to keep clicking. From a report: Such was evident Monday when Apple filed papers seeking to participate in the penalty phase of the Justice Department's antitrust case against Google. The search giant lost that case in August and is now battling the government over what remedies are appropriate. The DOJ has a long wish list that includes breaking the company up, forcing Google to make key search and user data available to potential rivals, and stopping the payments Google makes to partners such as Apple. The payments to Apple alone now reportedly equate to about $20 billion annually, and make Google the default search engine on devices like the iPhone. Apple didn't confirm any specific amounts in its filing, but did say the company feels compelled to "protect its commercial interests." Analysts widely estimate that the payments from Google are nearly pure profit for Apple, given relatively little incremental cost to generate that revenue. For Apple, $20 billion is about 16% of the operating income reported for the company's fiscal year that ended in September.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Modern LED headlights are significantly brighter and more glaring than traditional halogen bulbs, creating dangerous driving conditions, lighting experts report. The newer lights produce an intense, concentrated beam that is bluer and more disorienting, particularly affecting older drivers. "Headlights are getting brighter, smaller and bluer. All three of those things increase a particular kind of glare. It's called discomfort glare," said Daniel Stern, chief editor of Driving Vision News.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Software development is entering an "autopilot era" with AI coding assistants, but the industry needs to prepare for full autonomy, argues former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor. Drawing parallels with self-driving cars, he suggests the role of software engineers will evolve from code authors to operators of code-generating machines. Taylor, a board member of OpenAI and who once rewrote Google Maps over a weekend, calls for new programming systems, languages, and verification methods to ensure AI-generated code remains robust and secure. From his post: In the Autonomous Era of software engineering, the role of a software engineer will likely transform from being the author of computer code to being the operator of a code generating machine. What is a computer programming system built natively for that workflow? If generating code is no longer a limiting factor, what types of programming languages should we build? If a computer is generating most code, how do we make it easy for a software engineer to verify it does what they intend? What is the role of programming language design (e.g., what Rust did for memory safety)? What is the role of formal verification? What is the role of tests, CI/CD, and development workflows? Today, a software engineer's primary desktop is their editor. What is the Mission Control for a software engineer in the era of autonomous development?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The annual defense policy bill signed by President Joe Biden Monday evening allocates $3 billion to help telecom firms remove and replace insecure equipment in response to recent incursions by Chinese-linked hackers. From a report: The fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act outlines Pentagon policy and military budget priorities for the year and also includes non-defense measures added as Congress wrapped up its work in December. The $895 billion spending blueprint passed the Senate and House with broad bipartisan support. The $3 billion would go to a Federal Communications Commission program, commonly called "rip and replace," to get rid of Chinese networking equipment due to national security concerns. The effort was created in 2020 to junk equipment made by telecom giant Huawei. It had an initial investment of $1.9 billion, roughly $3 billion shy of what experts said was needed to cauterize the potential vulnerability. Calls to replenish the fund have increased recently in the wake of two hacking campaigns by China, dubbed Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon, that saw hackers insert malicious code in U.S. infrastructure and break into at least eight telecom firms. The bill also includes a watered down requirement for the Defense Department to tap an independent third-party to study the feasibility of creating a U.S. Cyber Force, along with an "evaluation of alternative organizational models for the cyber forces" of the military branches.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

They gave it the old college try, but America's elite universities are facing money problems partly of their own creation. From a report: It might not seem that way compared with the broader world of U.S. higher education. Ivy League institutions and a handful in a similar orbit like Stanford, Duke and the University of Chicago aren't just blessed to have international cachet and their pick of excellent students and professors -- they also have the most money and the richest alumni. By contrast, public and especially smaller private colleges and universities are cutting staff and programs. Many are closing outright. A school like Harvard, now well into its fourth century, will almost certainly survive for a fifth one. But there are financial problems below the surface that could emerge if the bull market stumbles and especially if some proposed Trump administration policies are enacted. Harvard's $53.2 billion endowment is so huge that the difference between a good and a so-so investment performance translates to sums that would dwarf most colleges' entire nest eggs. Former Harvard President and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers estimated this year that if Harvard had been able to just keep up with other Ivies and "large endowment schools" in the past several years, it would have $20 billion more. For perspective, he says that just $1 billion could fund 100 professorships or permanently cover tuition for 100 students. But even Harvard's peer group isn't doing as well as it could. Veteran investment consultant Richard Ennis wrote this month that high costs and "outdated perceptions of superiority" have stymied Ivy League endowment returns, which could have been worth 20% more since the 2008 financial crisis if invested in a classic stock and bond mix.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Boston Globe: Every weekday morning at 8:30, Preston Thorpe makes himself a cup of instant coffee and opens his laptop to find the coding tasks awaiting his seven-person team at Unlocked Labs. Like many remote workers, Thorpe, the nonprofit's principal engineer, works out in the middle of the day and often stays at his computer late into the night. But outside Thorpe's window, there's a soaring chain-link fence topped with coiled barbed wire. And at noon and 4 p.m. every day, a prison guard peers into his room to make sure he's where he's supposed to be at the Mountain View Correctional Facility in Charleston, Maine, where he's serving his 12th year for two drug-related convictions in New Hampshire, including intent to distribute synthetic opioids. Remote work has spread far and wide since the pandemic spurred a work-from-home revolution of sorts, but perhaps no place more unexpectedly than behind prison walls. Thorpe is one of more than 40 people incarcerated in Maine's state prison system who have landed internships and jobs with outside companies over the past two years -- some of whom work full time from their cells and earn more than the correctional officers who guard them. A handful of other states have also started allowing remote work in recent years, but none have gone as far as Maine, according to the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison, the nonprofit leading the effort. Unlike incarcerated residents with jobs in the kitchen or woodshop who earn just a few hundred dollars a month, remote workers make fair-market wages, allowing them to pay victim restitution fees and legal costs, provide child support, and contribute to Social Security and other retirement funds. Like inmates in work-release programs who have jobs out in the community, 10 percent of remote workers' wages go to the state to offset the cost of room and board. All Maine DOC residents get re-entry support for housing and job searches before they're released, and remote workers leave with even more: up-to-date resumes, a nest egg -- and the hope that they're less likely to need food or housing assistance, or resort to crime to get by.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new study reveals that the widely accepted "sophomore slump" phenomenon -- where a band's second album is perceived as significantly worse than the first -- exists primarily in professional critics' reviews, not fan ratings. Researchers suggest this bias stems from social conformity among critics, while fans provide more consistent and reliable evaluations across albums. "If every music critic has heard of a sophomore slump and everyone knows it happens, they might be convinced to over-apply it in their reviews," said Gregory Webster, Ph.D., the R. David Thomas Endowed Professor of Psychology at the University of Florida and co-author of the new study. "We suspect it's a kind of social conformity, which we see in a lot of social groups." Phys.Org reports: Webster and his co-author, University of Hannover Professor of Educational Science Lysann Zander, Ph.D., analyzed thousands of albums rated by professional critics and amateur fans. Both critics and fans said that bands' albums generally got worse over time. But critics were exceptionally harsh with the second album, which was an outlier in this downward trajectory. "It's only critics that show substantial evidence of a sophomore slump bias, whereby they are giving artists' second albums unusually low reviews compared to their first and third albums," Webster said. "Fans show no evidence of a sophomore slump bias." Webster and Zander expected that fan ratings would reflect a broader consensus about a band's true performance. Fans aren't pressured by the same social norms as professional critics. And with ratings from thousands of fans, the researchers could average across a large group to find more reliable ratings.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe made a historic approach on Christmas Eve, flying within 3.8 million miles of the Sun at a record-breaking speed of 430,000 mph. It marks humanity's closest encounter with a star. Live Science reports: Mission control cannot communicate with the probe during this rendezvous due to its vicinity to the sun, and will only know how the spacecraft fared in the early hours of Dec. 27 after a beacon signal confirms both the flyby's success and the overall state of the spacecraft. Images gathered during the flyby will beam home in early January, followed by scientific data later in the month when the probe swoops further away from the sun, Nour Rawafi, who is the project scientist for the mission, told reporters at the Annual Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) earlier this month. Parker launched in 2018 to help decode some of the biggest mysteries about our sun, such as why its outermost layer, the corona, heats up as it moves further from the sun's surface, and what processes accelerate charged particles to near-light speeds. In addition to revolutionizing our understanding about the sun, the probe also caught rare closeups of passing comets and studied the surface of Venus. On Christmas Eve, scientists expect the probe to have flown through plumes of plasma still attached to the sun, and hope it observed solar flares occurring simultaneously due to ramped-up turbulence on the sun's surface, which spark breathtaking auroras on Earth but also disrupt communication systems and other technology. "Right now, Parker Solar Probe has achieved what we designed the mission for," Nicola Fox, the associate administrator for NASA Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a NASA video released on Dec. 24. "It's just a total 'Yay! We did it' moment."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An AI system has outperformed human experts in distinguishing between American whiskey and Scotch, achieving 100% accuracy by identifying subtle differences in the chemical composition of the spirits. New Scientist reports: Andreas Grasskamp at the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV in Germany and his colleagues trained an AI molecular odor prediction algorithm called OWSum on descriptions of different whiskies. Then, in a study involving 16 samples -- nine types of Scotch whisky and seven types of American bourbon or whiskey -- they tasked OWSum with telling drinks from the two nations apart based on keyword descriptions of their flavors, such as flowery, fruity, woody or smoky. Using these alone, the AI could tell which country a drink came from with almost 94 per cent accuracy. Because the complex aroma of these spirits is determined by the absence or presence of many chemical compounds, the researchers also fed the AI a reference dataset of 390 molecules commonly found in whiskies. When they gave the AI data from gas chromatography -- mass spectrometry showing which molecules were present in the sample spirits, it boosted OWSum's ability to differentiate American from Scotch drams to 100 percent. Compounds such as menthol and citronellol were a dead giveaway for American whiskey, while the presence of methyl decanoate and heptanoic acid pointed to Scotch. The researchers also tested both OWSum and a neural network on their ability to predict the top five odor keywords based on the chemical contents of a whisky. On a score from 1 for perfect accuracy to 0 for consistent inaccuracy, OWSum achieved 0.72. The neural network achieved 0.78 and human whisky expert test participants achieved only 0.57. The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications Chemistry.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers at the University of Toronto have experimentally observed "negative time" in photon interactions with atoms, suggesting a measurable effect rather than an illusion. The researchers stress that these findings, posted on the preprint server arXiv, don't imply time travel. Phys.Org reports: The experiments, conducted in a cluttered basement laboratory bristling with wires and aluminum-wrapped devices, took over two years to optimize. The lasers used had to be carefully calibrated to avoid distorting the results. [...] The explanation lies in quantum mechanics, where particles like photons behave in fuzzy, probabilistic ways rather than following strict rules. Instead of adhering to a fixed timeline for absorption and re-emission, these interactions occur across a spectrum of possible durations -- some of which defy everyday intuition. Critically, the researchers say, this doesn't violate Einstein's theory of special relativity, which dictates that nothing can travel faster than light. These photons carried no information, sidestepping any cosmic speed limits. "We've made our choice about what we think is a fruitful way to describe the results," said Aephraim Steinberg, a University of Toronto professor specializing in experimental quantum physics, adding that while practical applications remain elusive, the findings open new avenues for exploring quantum phenomena. "I'll be honest, I don't currently have a path from what we've been looking at toward applications," he admitted. "We're going to keep thinking about it, but I don't want to get people's hopes up."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: Although Samsung Foundry is a major chip contract manufacturer, the South Korean government mulls creating a government-funded contract chipmaker tentatively called Korea Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, KSMC, reports The Korea Biz Wire. Industry experts and academics have proposed the initiative. The Semiconductor Industry Association's Ahn Ki-hyun called for a long-term government investment. Experts project that an investment of KRW 20 trillion ($13.9 billion) in KSMC could result in economic gains of KRW 300 trillion ($208.7 billion) by 2045. However, the big question is whether $13.9 billion is enough to establish a chipmaker. Another concern about publicly funded corporations like KSMC is whether they could develop advanced manufacturing technologies and land enough orders from clients to be profitable. It turns out that in addition to semiconductor makers, Korea needs more fabless software developers. The proposal was introduced during a seminar hosted by the National Academy of Engineering of Korea (NAEK). The plan aims to address structural weaknesses in the industry, such as an over-reliance on Samsung's advanced nodes under 10nm amid the lack of mature process technologies. Smaller system semiconductor firms struggle to thrive as Korea lacks manufacturing diversity, as seen in Taiwan, where companies like UMC and PSMC that focus on mature and specialty nodes complement TSMC's advanced process technologies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2024, North Korean state-sponsored hackers stole $1.34 billion in cryptocurrency across 47 attacks, marking a 102.88% increase from 2023 and accounting for 61% of global crypto theft. BleepingComputer reports: Although the total number of incidents in 2024 reached a record-breaking 303, the total losses figure isn't unprecedented, as 2022 remains the most damaging year with $3.7 billion. Chainalysis says most of the incidents this year occurred between January and July, during which 72% of the total amount for 2024 was stolen. The report highlights the DMM Bitcoin hack from May, where over $305 million was lost, and the WazirX cyberheist from July, which resulted in the loss of $235 million. As for what types of platforms suffered the most damage, DeFi platforms were followed by centralized services. Regarding the means, the analysts report that private key compromises accounted for 44% of the losses, while exploitation of security flaws corresponded to just 6.3% of stolen cryptocurrency. This is a sign that security audits have a significant effect on reducing exploitable flaws on the platforms. However, stricter security practices in the handling of private keys need to be implemented.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: More than 140 Facebook content moderators have been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content including murders, suicides, child sexual abuse and terrorism. The moderators worked eight- to 10-hour days at a facility in Kenya for a company contracted by the social media firm and were found to have PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD), by Dr Ian Kanyanya, the head of mental health services at Kenyatta National hospital in Nairobi. The mass diagnoses have been made as part of lawsuit being brought against Facebook's parent company, Meta, and Samasource Kenya, an outsourcing company that carried out content moderation for Meta using workers from across Africa. The images and videos including necrophilia, bestiality and self-harm caused some moderators to faint, vomit, scream and run away from their desks, the filings allege. The case is shedding light on the human cost of the boom in social media use in recent years that has required more and more moderation, often in some of the poorest parts of the world, to protect users from the worst material that some people post. The lawsuit claims that at least 40 moderators experienced substance misuse, marital breakdowns, and disconnection from their families, while some feared being hunted by terrorist groups they monitored. Despite being paid eight times less than their U.S. counterparts, moderators worked under intense surveillance in harsh, warehouse-like conditions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) warns that while most adults recognize the importance of wiping personal data from old devices, nearly 30% don't know how, and a significant number of young people either don't care or find it too cumbersome. The Register reports: Clearing personal data off an old device is an important step before ditching it or handing it on to another user. However, almost three in ten (29 percent) of adults don't know how to remove the information, according to a survey of 2,170 members of the UK public. Seventy-one percent agreed that wiping a device was important, but almost a quarter (24 percent) reckoned it was too arduous. This means that the drawer of dusty devices is set to swell -- three-quarters of respondents reported hanging on to at least one old device, and a fifth did so because they were worried about their personal information. [...] More than one in five (21 percent) of young people in the survey didn't think it was important to wipe personal data, while 23 percent said they didn't care about what might happen to that data. Fourteen percent of people aged 18-34 said they wouldn't bother wiping their devices at all, compared to just 4 percent of people over 55. On the plus side, the majority (84 percent) of respondents said they would ensure data was erased before disposing of a device. Alternatively, some might not worry about it and stick it in that special drawer alongside all the cables that might be needed one day. The survey also found that more than a quarter (27 percent) of UK adults were planning to treat themselves to a new device over the festive season [...].Read more of this story at Slashdot.

El Salvador secured a $1.4 billion loan deal with the IMF after agreeing to scale back its bitcoin policies, making cryptocurrency acceptance voluntary for businesses and limiting public sector involvement. The deal aims to stabilize the country's economy, with bitcoin's recent rally boosting the value of El Salvador's holdings. The BBC reports: In 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to make bitcoin legal tender. This week, the cryptocurrency briefly hit a fresh record high of more than $108,000. "The potential risks of the Bitcoin project will be diminished significantly in line with Fund policies," the IMF announcement said. "Legal reforms will make acceptance of Bitcoin by the private sector voluntary. For the public sector, engagement in Bitcoin-related economic activities and transactions in and purchases of Bitcoin will be confined." Last Friday, El Salvdaor purchased more than 11 BTC worth $1.07 million and executed another 11 BTC purchase on Sunday, according to crypto data platform Arkham. El Salvador's President, Nayib Bukele, is ramping up buys "with an interim goal of acquiring 20,000 more Bitcoin," reports the Daily Hodl.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In a landmark ruling, the Court of Milan has ordered (PDF) Cloudflare to block pirate streaming services that offer Serie A football matches. The court found that Cloudflare's services are instrumental in facilitating access to live pirate streams, undermining Italy's 'Piracy Shield' legislation. The order, which applies in Italy, affects Cloudflare's CDN, DNS resolver, WARP and proxy services. It also includes a broad data disclosure section. [...] The Court of Milan's decision prohibits Cloudflare from resolving domain names and routing internet traffic to IP addresses of all services present on the "Piracy Shield" system. This also applies to future domains and aliases used by these pirate services. The order applies to Cloudflare's content delivery network (CDN), DNS services, and reverse proxy services. The order also mentions Cloudflare's free VPN among the targets, likely referring to the WARP service. If any of the targeted pirate streaming providers use Cloudflare's services to infringe on Serie A's copyrights, the company Cloudflare must stop providing CDN, authoritative DNS, and reverse proxy services to these customers. (Note: This is an Italian court order and Cloudflare previously used geotargeting to block sites only in Italy. It may respond similarly here, but terminating customer accounts only in Italy might be more complicated. ) Finally, the order further includes a data disclosure component, under which Cloudflare must identify customers who use Cloudflare's services to offer pirated streams. This should help Serie A to track down those responsible. The data disclosure section also covers information related to the 'VPN' and alternative public DNS services, where these relate to the IPTV platforms identified in the case. That covers traffic volume and connection logs, including IP-addresses and timestamps. In theory, that could also cover data on people who accessed these services using Cloudflare's VPN and DNS resolver. [...] The court ordered Cloudflare to cover the costs of the proceeding and if it doesn't implement the blocking requirements in time, an additional fine of 10,000 euros per day will apply.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The UK Post Office has appointed Paul Anastassi as interim CTO amid efforts to replace its controversial Horizon IT system, which led to hundreds of wrongful convictions of subpostmasters due to software errors since 1999. The appointment, the news of which an anonymous reader shared, comes as the Post Office grapples with its $1.25 billion over-budget New Branch IT project, which was recently paused after being deemed "unachievable" in a government report. The organization is reportedly considering purchasing the Horizon system from Fujitsu while combining it with in-house and commercial software solutions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mass game shutdowns and service terminations marked 2024 as a pivotal year for digital ownership concerns in the gaming industry. PC Gamer adds: The arguments have been around forever, but they've been made concrete by the simple fact that, over the last decade in particular, we've seen more and more games simply disappear. And we're not talking about obscure hobbyist projects, but seriously big budget titles that companies have spent millions developing, and hundreds of devs have spent years of their careers on. Sony's Concord shooter lasted only 11 days before closure, while Ubisoft's decade-old The Crew became unplayable in April, sparking the Stop Killing Games campaign. The movement, which has gathered over 400,000 signatures, aims to pressure EU regulators to ban publishers from rendering multiplayer games inoperable.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Over the past year, OpenAI has dropped not-so-subtle hints about its revived interest in robotics: investing in startups developing hardware and software for robots such as Figure and Physical Intelligence and rebooting its internal robotics software team, which it had disbanded four years ago. Now, OpenAI could be taking that interest to the next level. The company has recently considered developing a humanoid robot, according to two people with direct knowledge of the discussions. As a refresher, humanoid robots typically have two arms and two legs, distinguishing them from typical robots in a warehouse or factory that might have a single arm repeatedly performing the same task on an assembly line. Developers of humanoid robots think it will be easier for them to handle tasks in the physical world -- which is tailored to humans -- than it would be to change our physical environments to suit new robots.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The video game industry faced unprecedented turmoil in 2024, with layoffs reaching record levels and exceeding 2023's total of 10,000 jobs lost by 40%. Major studios including Microsoft's Arkane Austin and Sony's Firewalk were shuttered, while indie developers struggled to secure funding amid the downturn. Industry analyst Matthew Ball attributed the crisis -- in a conversation with Wired -- to multiple factors, including rising development costs, shifting consumer spending, and game pricing challenges. Commercial failures of high-profile releases like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League compounded the industry's struggles. The upheaval coincided with intensified online harassment campaigns targeting developers over diversity initiatives, echoing 2014's Gamergate movement. Despite critically acclaimed releases like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Balatro, the industry enters 2025 facing continued uncertainty around employment stability and the growing influence of AI.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has long avoided directly purchasing Nvidia's chips and is now developing its own AI server chip with Broadcom, aiming for production by 2026, The Information reported Tuesday, shedding broader light on why the two companies don't get along so well. The relationship deteriorated after a 2001 meeting where Steve Jobs accused Nvidia of copying technology from Pixar, which he then controlled. Relations worsened in 2008 when Nvidia's faulty graphics chips forced Apple to extend MacBook warranties without full compensation. Rather than buying Nvidia's dominant AI processors directly like its tech peers, the Information reports, Apple rents them through cloud providers while also using Google's custom chips for training large AI models. The company's new chip project, code-named Baltra, marks its most ambitious effort yet to reduce reliance on external AI processors, despite being one of the largest indirect users of Nvidia chips through cloud services.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ASUS computer owners have been reporting widespread alarm after a Christmas-themed banner suddenly appeared on their Windows 11 screens, accompanied by a suspicious "Christmas.exe" process in Task Manager. The promotional campaign, first reported by WindowsLatest, was delivered through ASUS' pre-installed Armoury Crate software. It displays a large wreath banner that covers one-third of users' screens. The unbranded holiday display, which can interrupt gaming sessions and occasionally crashes applications, has triggered security concerns among users who initially mistook it for malware.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Contractors working to improve Google's Gemini AI are comparing its answers against outputs produced by Anthropic's competitor model Claude, TechCrunch reported Tuesday, citing internal correspondence. From the report: Google would not say, when reached by TechCrunch for comment, if it had obtained permission for its use of Claude in testing against Gemini. As tech companies race to build better AI models, the performance of these models are often evaluated against competitors, typically by running their own models through industry benchmarks rather than having contractors painstakingly evaluate their competitors' AI responses. The contractors working on Gemini tasked with rating the accuracy of the model's outputs must score each response that they see according to multiple criteria, like truthfulness and verbosity. The contractors are given up to 30 minutes per prompt to determine whose answer is better, Gemini's or Claude's, according to the correspondence seen by TechCrunch.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Arizona's Maricopa County is set to become the nation's second-largest data center hub by 2028, as the state grapples with surging electricity demands and infrastructure challenges. The county has approved at least 20 new data center projects, trailing only Virginia's Loudoun County in scale. Arizona Public Service, the state's largest utility provider, projects data centers will account for 55% of its future electricity needs. The utility board recently approved an 8% rate hike to bolster power infrastructure but rejected a plan to electrify parts of the Navajo Nation, citing concerns over cost allocation to customers. The expansion comes as Arizona markets itself as an ideal location for data centers, offering tax incentives and relatively cheap power since 2013.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A consortium of investors has resurrected Lilium just days after the electric air taxi startup ceased operations and laid off about 1,000 employees. From a report: Mobile Uplift Corporation, a company set up by investors from Europe and North America, has agreed to acquire the operating assets of the startup's two subsidiaries, Lilium GmbH and Lilium eAircraft GmbH, per an announcement Tuesday. The parent company, Lilium N.V, will not receive any funds in accordance with German insolvency law. Terms of the deal, which are expected to close in January, were not disclosed. Consultancy giant KPMG handled the sale process for Lilium. Mobile Uplift Corporation said in the announcement it intends to rehire workers who were laid off immediately after opening of the proceedings and closing of the transaction. It isn't clear if all 1,000 workers will be rehired.Read more of this story at Slashdot.