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Japan is overhauling how its ubiquitous 24-hour mini-police stations are operated nationwide as more crime fighting moves from the streets to the web. From a report: Called koban in Japanese, officers at these small police boxes handle a variety of tasks from responding to crime and patrolling neighborhoods to handling lost items. There are also chuzaisho outposts where police officers live full-time. The National Police Agency will update operational rules on Friday to allow some outposts to shut down at night if necessary. It will also allow greater flexibility on the use of mobile or temporary outposts, depending on local needs and staffing considerations. Prefectural police will decide on changes involving specific outposts. Japan's koban system dates back to 1874 and is believed to have started operating around the clock in the 1880s. There were 6,215 kobans and 5,923 live-in outposts across Japan as of April. They have inspired countries like Singapore and Brazil to set up similar outposts focused on community policing. The change comes amid shifting crime patterns. Roughly 700,000 crime cases were reported in 2023, down more than 70% from the post-World War II peak in 2002. Street crime, like purse-snatching and car break-ins, were down around 80% to 240,000 cases. Instead, online and phone-based crimes, like impersonation scams and romance scams, are on the rise.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple unveiled a multitrack recording feature for Voice Memos at its recent iPhone event, exclusive to the iPhone 16 Pro. The feature allows users to layer vocals over guitar tracks without headphones, utilizing advanced microphone technology and machine learning algorithms to reduce ambient noise. Engadget argues the feature's exclusivity to the new $1,000+ model is unnecessary, given modern smartphones' processing power far exceeds that of early digital audio workstations. They contend that basic multitrack recording functionality could be implemented on older iPhone models. Apple's decision to limit this feature contradicts its inclusion of GarageBand on all iPhones and the availability of Audio Mix on base iPhone 16 models, which offers similar noise reduction capabilities. The story adds: Why is this particular feature walled behind the iPhone 16 Pro? It's a simple multitrack recording function. From the ad, it looks like the app can't even layer more than two tracks at a time. This can't exactly be taxing that A18 Pro chip, especially when the phone can also handle 4K/120 FPS video recording in Dolby Vision.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple asked a court Friday to dismiss its three-year-old hacking lawsuit against spyware pioneer NSO Group, arguing that it might never be able to get the most critical files about NSO's Pegasus surveillance tool and that its own disclosures could aid NSO and its increasing number of rivals. From a report: A redacted version of the filing in San Francisco federal court cited a July article in the Guardian, which reported that Israeli officials had taken files from NSO's headquarters. The newspaper said the officials asked an Israeli court to keep the action secret even from those involved in an earlier, still pending hacking suit against NSO filed by Meta's WhatsApp. Israeli ministry of justice communications that were hacked showed that officials were concerned about sensitive information reaching Americans, the newspaper said. "While Apple takes no position on the truth or falsity of the Guardian Story described above, its existence presents cause for concern about the potential for Apple to obtain the discovery it needs," the iPhone maker wrote in its filing Friday. Israeli officials have not disputed the authenticity of the documents but have denied interfering in the U.S. litigation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Annapurna Interactive's entire gaming staff has resigned from the company following a leadership dispute, according to a Bloomberg report. From a report: The report, which IGN can confirm based on conversations with our own sources, states that Annapurna Interactive president Nathan Gary had recently been in negotiations with Annapurna founder and billionaire Megan Ellison to spin the gaming segment off as its own company. However, Ellison eventually pulled out of negotiations, at which point Gary resigned. Almost 30 other individuals, including division co-heads Deborah Mars and Nathan Vella, as well as the entire remaining staff of Annapurna Interactive, joined him. "All 25 members of the Annapurna Interactive team collectively resigned," Gary and the resigned staff said in a joint statement to Bloomberg. "This was one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make and we did not take this action lightly." While negotiations were still ongoing, Annapurna Interactive re-hired former Epic Games executive Hector Sanchez as its president of interactive and new media, and Paul Doyle as its head of strategy. IGN understands that Sanchez was expected to head up Annapurna's gaming efforts in Gary's absence once his part of the company was spun-off. With Gary now having resigned, Sanchez has taken the lead. Annapurna has earned success and awards for games including Cocoon, Stray, Neon White, The Artful Escape, and Sayonara Wild Hearts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

United Airlines said that it will outfit its entire fleet with Starlink internet service, aiming to keep fliers loyal by offering zippier, more reliable browsing and downloads that the carrier expects will mirror what travelers are used to on the ground. From a report: United's deal is a bet that Starlink's technology can propel it above rival carriers in offering fast, free Wi-Fi. The airline is in the midst of a broader effort to burnish its premium and business travel bona fides, which has included retrofitting planes with lots of power outlets and seat back screens. The airline said it would begin testing the Starlink service early next year, with the first passenger flights likely equipped later in 2025. United said Starlink's service will be more reliable, particularly over oceans and other remote areas -- a key advantage for the airline's network of long-haul international flights that cross the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It will allow passengers to access live TV and streaming, and to use several devices at once.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cybersecurity giant Fortinet has confirmed it suffered a data breach after a threat actor claimed to steal 440GB of files from the company's Microsoft Sharepoint server. From a report: Fortinet is one of the largest cybersecurity companies in the world, selling secure networking products like firewalls, routers, and VPN devices. The company also offers SIEM, network management, and EDR/XDR solutions, as well as consulting services. Early this morning, a threat actor posted to a hacking forum that they had stolen 440GB of data from Fortinet's Azure Sharepoint instance. The threat actor then shared credentials to an alleged S3 bucket where the stolen data is stored for other threat actors to download. The threat actor, known as "Fortibitch," claims to have tried to extort Fortinet into paying a ransom, likely to prevent the publishing of data, but the company refused to pay. In response to our questions about incident, Fortinet confirmed that customer data was stolen from a "third-party cloud-based shared file drive."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Can AI kill the enterprise software app industry that's led by companies such as Salesforce and Workday? The Information: That's the trillion-dollar question at the heart of recent comments from the CEO of Klarna, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, who's made a name for himself -- and drawn some skepticism too -- as a chief cheerleader of OpenAI's software. In the latest example from a couple of weeks ago, Siemiatkowski told investors in his buy now, pay later firm that it's shutting down a lot of the enterprise software apps it uses, including some run by the above-mentioned CRM and HR firms, because it can replicate them with AI. SeekingAlpha picked up those comments, which went viral in recent days. The idea behind the comments is the following: Conversational AI can understand natural-language commands and be ordered to write software code, so companies can cheaply and quickly build customized apps that do most of the things that traditional enterprise apps can do, especially if most of what those apps do is manage corporate data. Siemiatkowski expanded on the comments in a Wednesday X post, saying he wasn't looking to primarily save money on software license fees "even though that is nice upside."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The tax agency again delays a vital software upgrade, at the cost of billions. WSJ's Editorial Board: Taxpayers endure drudgery to file on time each year, but the tax collectors seem less concerned with deadlines. A new Internal Revenue Service database, more than a decade in the making, will be delayed another year. And its cost is billions of dollars and climbing. The IRS told the press this week that it won't replace its Individual Master File until the 2026 tax year, at the earliest. That falls short of Commissioner Danny Werfel's goal of launching a new system in time for 2025 taxes, and the delay could mean another year of grief for countless taxpayers. The file is the digital silo in which more than 154 million tax files are held, and keeping it up-to-date helps to enable speedy, accurate refunds. The code that powers the database was written in the 1960s by IBM engineers at the same time their colleagues worked on the Apollo program. The system runs on a nearly extinct computer language known as Cobol, and though it retains its basic functionality, maintaining it requires bespoke service. By 2018 the IRS had only 17 remaining developers considered to be experts on the system. The agency has sought and failed to overhaul or replace the database since the 1980s. It spent $4 billion over 14 years to devise upgrades, but it canceled that effort in 2000 "without receiving expected benefits," according to the Government Accountability Office. The costs continue to mount. IRS spending on operating and maintaining its IT systems has risen 35% in the past four years, to $2.7 billion last year from $2 billion in 2019. These costs will "likely continue to increase until a majority of legacy systems are decommissioned," according to a report last month by the agency's inspector general. Each year major upgrades are pushed back adds a larger sum to the final tab. The IRS usually pleads poverty as an excuse for failing to stay up-to-date. Yet Congress gave the agency billions of extra dollars through the Inflation Reduction Act to fund a speedy database overhaul. Since 2022 it has spent $1.3 billion beyond its ordinary budget to modernize its business systems. Taxpayers will have to wait at least another year to see if that investment has paid off.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft executives have been thinking lately about the end of the world. In a white paper published late last year, Brad Smith, the company's vice chair and president, and Melanie Nakagawa, its chief sustainability officer, described a "planetary crisis" that AI could help solve. Imagine an AI-assisted tool that helps reduce food waste, to name one example from the document, or some future technology that could "expedite decarbonization" by using AI to invent new designs for green tech. But as Microsoft attempts to buoy its reputation as an AI leader in climate innovation, the company is also selling its AI to fossil-fuel companies. Hundreds of pages of internal documents I've obtained, plus interviews I've conducted over the past year with 15 current and former employees and executives, show that the tech giant hassought to market the technology to companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron as a powerful tool for finding and developing new oil and gas reserves and maximizing their production -- all while publicly committing to dramatically reduce emissions. Although tech companies have long done business with the fossil-fuel industry, Microsoft's case is notable. It demonstrates how the AI boom contributes to one of the most pressing issues facing our planet today -- despite the fact that the technology is often lauded for its supposed potential to improve our world, as when Sam Altman testified to Congress that it could address issues such as "climate change and curing cancer." These deals also show how Microsoft can use the vagaries of AI to talk out of both sides of its mouth, courting the fossil-fuel industry while asserting its environmental bona fides. (Many of the documents I viewed have been submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a whistleblower complaint alleging that the company has omitted from public disclosures "the serious climate and environmental harms caused by the technology it provides to the fossil fuel industry," arguing that the information is of material and financial importance to investors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from InsideEVs: General Motors is joining forces with EVgo, one of the biggest electric vehicle charging operators in the United States, to build 400 ultra-fast DC chargers nationwide to support the growing number of battery-powered cars hitting U.S. roads. To be clear, these are individual stalls, not charging stations. However, the two companies describe the new locations as "flagship destinations" which will feature 350-kilowatt DC chargers, ample lighting, canopies, pull-through spots and security cameras. Most locations will feature up to 20 ultra-fast charging stalls, but some will have even more -- good news for those crowded holiday road trips. GM and EVgo said the fancy new stations would be located near shopping areas offering dining, coffee shops and other amenities. We don't know exactly where the new stations will be built, but EVgo mentioned that the "flagship destinations" will be deployed coast to coast, including in metropolitan areas in states like Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New York and Texas. The stalls will be co-branded EVgo and GM Energy -- the automaker's charging and energy management division. The first new "flagship station" is expected to open next year. The new stalls will make use of EVgo's prefabrication approach which can reduce the total cost of a new station by 15% and the deployment time by 50%. Similar to Tesla's prefabricated Supercharger stalls, EVgo's ready-made structures come with stalls and accompanying equipment already mounted on a metal base plate which is transported from the factory to the charging site.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A U.S. District Court judge on Thursday allowed New York-based startup Kalshi to legally offer betting on the outcome of the November Congressional elections (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), despite opposition from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which plans to appeal the decision due to concerns about potential market manipulation and public trust in the electoral process. Within minutes of the ruling, people began placing bets on Kalshi's website. It's currently the only legal opportunity for Americans to bet on U.S. elections under government regulation. Fortune reports: A startup company on Thursday began taking what amounts to bets on the outcome of the November Congressional elections after a judge refused to block them from doing so. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Jia Cobb in Washington permitted the only legally sanctioned bets on U.S. elections by an American jurisdiction. It enabled, at least temporarily, New York-based Kalshi to offer prediction contracts -- essentially yes-or-no bets -- on which party will win control of the Senate and the House in November. The company and its lawyer did not respond to requests for comment, but within 90 minutes of the judge's ruling, the bets were being advertised on the company's web site. Earlier in the day, the website had said they were "coming soon." It was not clear how long such betting might last; the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which last year prohibited the company from offering them, said it would appeal the ruling as quickly as possible. Contrasting his client with foreign companies who take bets from American customers on U.S. elections without U.S. government approval, Roth said Kalshi is trying to do things the right way, under government regulation. "It invested significantly in these markets," he said during Thursday's hearing. "They spent millions of dollars. It would be perverse if all that investment went up in smoke." But Raagnee Beri, an attorney for the commission, said allowing such bets could invite malicious activities designed to influence the outcome of elections and undermine already fragile public confidence in the voting process. "These contracts would give market participants a $100 million incentive to influence the market on the election," she said. "There is a very severe public interest threat." She used the analogy of someone who has taken an investment position in corn commodities. "Somebody puts out misinformation about a drought, that a drought is coming," she said. "That could move the market on the price of corn. The same thing could happen here. The commission is not required to suffer the flood before building a dam."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is testing a "desktop windowing" feature for Android tablets that "will let you resize apps freely and arrange them on your screen at will," reports The Verge. It's currently available as a developer preview. From the report: Currently, apps on Android tablets open in full-screen by default. When the new mode is enabled, each app will appear in a window with controls that allow you to reposition, maximize, or close the app. You'll also see a taskbar at the bottom of your screen with your running apps. [...] Once the feature is rolled out to everyone, you can turn it on by pressing and holding the window handle at the top of an app's screen. If you have a keyboard attached, you can also use the shortcut meta key (Windows, Command, or Search) + Ctrl + Down to activate desktop mode. (You can exit the mode by closing all your active apps or by dragging a window and dragging it to the top of your screen.) Google notes that apps locked to portrait orientation are still resizable, which might make things look a bit weird if certain apps aren't optimized. However, Google plans to address this in a future update by scaling the UI of non-resizable apps while maintaining their aspect ratio.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mobile phone location data has linked site visits by US securities watchdogs to the headquarters of companies with measurable drops in their share prices -- even when no enforcement action is taken. From a report: When insiders sold shares right around a non-public visit by staff from the Securities and Exchange Commission, they avoided average losses of 4.9 per cent in the three months after the visit, according to a study led by researchers at four Midwestern universities. By matching commercially available data with share price moves, the study offers a window into the secretive world of securities enforcement beyond publicly announced cases. It also raises questions about the rules around insider trading. "Maybe we should be thinking about what the rules are when the SEC shows up," said Marcus Painter, assistant professor of finance at Saint Louis University and one of the authors. The research used geolocation data to identify mobile phones that spent significant amounts of time at the SEC's various offices around the country. They then tracked those phones to corporate headquarters around the world in the 12-month period right before Covid-19 lockdowns led to extensive working from home.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Earlier this year, we got a look at something unusual: the results of an internal investigation conducted by Harvard Business School that concluded one of its star faculty members had committed research misconduct. Normally, these reports are kept confidential, leaving questions regarding the methods and extent of data manipulations. But in this case, the report became public because the researcher had filed a lawsuit that alleged defamation on the part of the team of data detectives that had first identified potential cases of fabricated data, as well as Harvard Business School itself. Now, the court has ruled (PDF) on motions to dismiss the case. While the suit against Harvard will go on, the court has ruled that evidence-backed conclusions regarding fabricated data cannot constitute defamation -- which is probably a very good thing for science. The researchers who had been sued, Uri Simonsohn, Leif Nelson, and Joe Simmons, run a blog called Data Colada where, among other things, they note cases of suspicious-looking data in the behavioral sciences. As we detailed in our earlier coverage, they published a series of blog posts describing an apparent case of fabricated data in four different papers published by the high-profile researcher Francesca Gino, a professor at Harvard Business School. The researchers also submitted the evidence to Harvard, which ran its own investigation that included interviewing the researchers involved and examining many of the original data files behind the paper. In the end, Harvard determined that research misconduct had been committed, placed Gino on administrative leave and considered revoking her tenure. Harvard contacted the journals where the papers were published to inform them that the underlying data was unreliable. Gino then filed suit alleging that Harvard had breached their contract with her, defamed her, and interfered with her relationship with the publisher of her books. She also added defamation accusations against the Data Colada team. Both Harvard and the Data Colada collective filed a motion to have all the actions dismissed, which brings us to this new decision. Harvard got a mixed outcome. This appears to largely be the result that the Harvard Business School adopted a new and temporary policy for addressing research misconduct when the accusations against Gino came in. This, according to the court, leaves questions regarding whether the university had breached its contract with her. However, most of the rest of the suit was dismissed. The judge ruled that the university informing Gino's colleagues that Gino had been placed on administrative leave does not constitute defamation. Nor do the notices requesting retractions sent to the journals where the papers were published. "I find the Retraction Notices amount 'only to a statement of [Harvard Business School]'s evolving, subjective view or interpretation of its investigation into inaccuracies in certain [data] contained in the articles,' rather than defamation," the judge decided. More critically, the researchers had every allegation against them thrown out. Here, the fact that the accusations involved evidence-based conclusions, and were presented with typical scientific caution, ended up protecting the researchers. The court cites precedent to note that "[s]cientific controversies must be settled by the methods of science rather than by the methods of litigation" and concludes that the material sent to Harvard "constitutes the Data Colada Defendants' subjective interpretation of the facts available to them." Since it had already been determined that Gino was a public figure due to her high-profile academic career, this does not rise to the standard of defamation. And, while the Data Colada team was pretty definitive in determining that data manipulation had taken place, its members were cautious about acknowledging that the evidence they had did not clearly indicate Gino was the one who had performed the manipulation. Finally, it was striking that the researchers had protected themselves by providing links to the data sources they'd used to draw their conclusions. The decision cites a precedent that indicates "by providing hyperlinks to the relevant information, the articles enable readers to review the underlying information for themselves and reach their own conclusions."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a statement today, the White House said it has received commitments from several AI companies to curb the creation and distribution of deepfake porn, also known as image-based sexual abuse material. Engadget reports: The participating businesses have laid out the steps they are taking to prevent their platforms from being used to generate non-consensual intimate images (NCII) of adults and child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Specifically, Adobe, Anthropic, Cohere, Common Crawl, Microsoft and OpenAI said they'll be: "responsibly sourcing their datasets and safeguarding them from image-based sexual abuse." All of the aforementioned except Common Crawl also agreed they'd be: "incorporating feedback loops and iterative stress-testing strategies in their development processes, to guard against AI models outputting image-based sexual abuse" and "removing nude images from AI training datasets" when appropriate. [...] The notable absences from today's White House release are Apple, Amazon, Google and Meta.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks revealed at a Goldman Sachs conference that the company has been using AI in game development, including for "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Magic: The Gathering," and plans to integrate AI further into gameplay, despite previously banning AI-generated content. "Inside of development, we've already been using AI," Cocks said. "It's mostly machine-learning-based AI or proprietary AI as opposed to a ChatGPT approach. We will deploy it significantly and liberally internally as both a knowledge worker aid and as a development aid." Futurism reports: While the logistical aspects of the technology seem fairly par for the course in the world of out-of-touch CEOs over-relying on it, Cocks then suggested that it will become a part of D&D gameplay. "I'm probably more excited though about the playful elements of AI," he said. "I play with probably 30 or 40 people regularly. There's not a single person who doesn't use AI somehow for either campaign development or character development or story ideas. That's a clear signal that we need to be embracing it." After paying lip service to using AI "responsibly" and "paying creators for their work," Cocks then doubled down on his point. "The themes around using AI to enable user-generated content, using AI to streamline new player introduction, using AI for emergent storytelling -- I think you're going to see that not just our hardcore brands like D&D but also multiple of our brands," the Hasbro CEO said. Further reading: Magic: The Gathering Community Fears Generative AI Will Replace Talented ArtistsRead more of this story at Slashdot.

AMD has introduced Variable Graphics Memory (VGM) for its AI 300 "Strix Point" laptops, allowing users to convert up to 75% of their system memory into dedicated VRAM via the AMD Adrenalin app, enhancing gaming performance for titles requiring more VRAM. The Verge reports: You might be wondering: does that extra video memory actually make a difference? Well, it depends on the game. Some games, like Alan Wake II, require as many as 6GB of VRAM and will throw errors at launch if you're short -- Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, and Lenovo Legion Go buyers have been tweaking their VRAM settings for some time to take games to the threshold of playability. But in early testing with the Asus Zenbook S 16, a Strix Point laptop that's already shipped with this feature, my colleague Joanna Nelius saw that turning it on isn't a silver bullet for every game. With 8GB of VRAM, the laptop played Control notably faster (65fps vs. 54fps), but some titles had smaller boosts, no boost, or even slight frame rate decreases.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Employees' negative daily emotions and lack of well-being can ultimately hurt worker engagement -- and the economy, according to a new report released this week. Gallup, in its "State of the Global Workplace," estimates that low employee engagement costs the global economy $8.9 trillion, or 9% of global GDP. The report includes findings from its latest annual World Poll, which surveyed 128,278 employees in more than 140 countries last year. That poll found that roughly 20% of workers globally reported feeling lonely, angry or sad on a daily basis. And 41% on average say they feel stress. Those most likely to say they feel lonely were younger workers (22%), employees who worked remotely full-time (25%) and those who felt most disengaged on the job (31%). While work isn't always the cause of a person's negative daily emotions, employers should still be concerned. That's because work can either improve or worsen employees' well-being. On the one hand, the Gallup report noted, "when employees find their work and work relationships meaningful, employment is associated with high levels of daily enjoyment and low levels of all negative daily emotions. Notably, half of employees who are engaged at work are thriving in life overall." On the other, researchers found that being disengaged at work can negatively affect a person's wellbeing as much as -- or more than -- not having a job at all. "Employees who dislike their jobs tend to have high levels of daily stress and worry, as well as elevated levels of all other negative emotions," they wrote. "On many wellbeing items (stress, anger, worry, loneliness), being actively disengaged at work is equivalent to or worse than being unemployed." The poll found that last year only 23% of employees were engaged at work, unchanged from the year prior. Gallup defines an engaged employee as someone "highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace. They are psychological 'owners,' drive performance and innovation, and move the organization forward." But those who said they were not engaged rose by 3 percentage points to 62%. These are employees characterized as "psychologically unattached to their work and company. Because their engagement needs are not being fully met, they are putting time but not energy or passion into their work."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Two astronauts, billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, completed the world's first private spacewalk outside a SpaceX capsule, testing new spacesuits and procedures in a risky mission that pushes the boundaries of commercial spaceflight. Reuters reports: The astronauts on the Polaris Dawn mission went one at a time, each spending about 10 minutes outside the gumdrop-shaped Crew Dragon capsule on a tether, as Elon Musk's company again succeeded in pushing the boundaries of commercial spaceflight. Jared Isaacman, a pilot and the founder of electronic payments company Shift4, exited first, followed by SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, while crewmates Scott Poteet and Anna Menon watched from inside. The whole process, unfolding about 450 miles (730 km) above Earth, lasted an hour and 46 minutes. The four astronauts have been orbiting Earth since Tuesday's launch from Florida. Isaacman is bankrolling the Polaris mission, as he did his Inspiration4 flight with SpaceX in 2021. Streamed live on SpaceX's website, the mission tested trailblazing equipment including slim spacesuits and a process to fully depressurize the Crew Dragon cabin - technology that Musk hopes to advance for ambitious future private missions to Mars. "Back at home we all have a lot of work to do. But from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world," Isaacman said after emerging from the spacecraft, silhouetted with the half-lit planet glittering below. It was one of the riskiest missions yet for SpaceX, the only private company that has proven to be capable of routinely sending people to and from Earth's orbit. "Today's success represents a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry and @NASA's long-term goal to build a vibrant U.S. space economy," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. You can watch a livestream recording of the Polaris Dawn Mission here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The FDA on Thursday approved the first hearing aid software for Apple's latest AirPods Pro earbuds. According to Apple, the feature will be pushed to eligible devices through a software update in the coming weeks. The Washington Post reports: The move, which comes two years after the FDA first approved over-the-counter hearing aids, could help more Americans with hearing loss start getting help, the FDA said in a statement. The feature works by amplifying some sounds, such as voices, while minimizing others, such as ambient noise. Users can take a hearing test in the Apple Health app, and their AirPods will adjust sound level automatically based on the results. The feature is only available on the AirPods Pro 2, which cost $249. The FDA says it tested Apple's hearing aid feature in a clinical study with 118 subjects who believed they had mild or moderate hearing loss. The study found that people who set up their AirPods using Apple's hearing test noticed similar benefits as people who had a professional set up the earbuds. Over-the-counter hearing aids are best for people with mild to moderate hearing loss, audiologists say, many of whom don't seek treatment. [...] However, consumer earbuds aren't a good solution for people with severe hearing loss, experts maintain, and most over-the-counter hearing devices will still require a trip to the audiologist for some fine tuning.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: One of the things enterprise storage and destruction company Iron Mountain does is handle the archiving of the media industry's vaults. What it has been seeing lately should be a wake-up call: roughly one-fifth of the hard disk drives dating to the 1990s it was sent are entirely unreadable. Music industry publication Mix spoke with the people in charge of backing up the entertainment industry. The resulting tale is part explainer on how music is so complicated to archive now, part warning about everyone's data stored on spinning disks. "In our line of work, if we discover an inherent problem with a format, it makes sense to let everybody know," Robert Koszela, global director for studio growth and strategic initiatives at Iron Mountain, told Mix. "It may sound like a sales pitch, but it's not; it's a call for action." Hard drives gained popularity over spooled magnetic tape as digital audio workstations, mixing and editing software, and the perceived downsides of tape, including deterioration from substrate separation and fire. But hard drives present their own archival problems. Standard hard drives were also not designed for long-term archival use. You can almost never decouple the magnetic disks from the reading hardware inside, so that if either fails, the whole drive dies. There are also general computer storage issues, including the separation of samples and finished tracks, or proprietary file formats requiring archival versions of software. Still, Iron Mountain tells Mix that "If the disk platters spin and aren't damaged," it can access the content. But "if it spins" is becoming a big question mark. Musicians and studios now digging into their archives to remaster tracks often find that drives, even when stored at industry-standard temperature and humidity, have failed in some way, with no partial recovery option available. "It's so sad to see a project come into the studio, a hard drive in a brand-new case with the wrapper and the tags from wherever they bought it still in there," Koszela says. "Next to it is a case with the safety drive in it. Everything's in order. And both of them are bricks." "Optical media rots, magnetic media rots and loses magnetic charge, bearings seize, flash storage loses charge, etc.," writes Hacker News user abracadaniel in a discussion post about the article. "Entropy wins, sometimes much faster than you'd expect."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft announced plans to modify Windows, enabling security vendors like CrowdStrike to operate outside the operating system's kernel. The move follows the July incident where a faulty CrowdStrike update caused widespread system failures. From a report: Microsoft says it has now "discussed the requirements and key challenges in creating a new platform which can meet the needs of security vendors" with partners like CrowdStrike, Broadcom, Sophos, and Trend Micro. [...] While Microsoft isn't directly saying it's going to close off access to the Windows kernel, it's clearly at the early stages of designing a security platform that can eventually move CrowdStrike and others out of the kernel. Microsoft last tried to close off access to the Windows kernel in Windows Vista in 2006, but it was met with pushback from cybersecurity vendors and regulators.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some executives are embracing old technology like dumbphones and fax machines, seeking digital detox and prioritizing focus. They see these vintage tools as power moves, allowing them to control their time and avoid constant distractions, WSJ writes in a story. These bosses believe old tech enhances leadership, enabling them to be present and productive.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI has launched a new AI model, named "o1", designed for improved reasoning and problem-solving skills. o1, part of a new series of models and available in ChatGPT and the API, can tackle complex tasks in science, coding, and math more effectively than their predecessors. Notably, o1 models have shown promising results in standardized tests and coding competitions. While o1 models represent a significant advancement in AI capabilities, they currently lack features like web browsing and file uploading. The Verge adds: But it's also more expensive and slower to use than GPT-4o. OpenAI is calling this release of o1 a "preview" to emphasize how nascent it is. ChatGPT Plus and Team users get access to both o1-preview and o1-mini starting today, while Enterprise and Edu users will get access early next week. OpenAI says it plans to bring o1-mini access to all the free users of ChatGPT but hasn't set a release date yet. Developer access to o1 is really expensive: In the API, o1-preview is $15 per 1 million input tokens, or chunks of text parsed by the model, and $60 per 1 million output tokens. For comparison, GPT-4o costs $5 per 1 million input tokens and $15 per 1 million output tokens. The training behind o1 is fundamentally different from its predecessors, OpenAI's research lead, Jerry Tworek, tells me, though the company is being vague about the exact details. He says o1 "has been trained using a completely new optimization algorithm and a new training dataset specifically tailored for it."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Google executive told colleagues the goal for the company's then-nascent online advertising business in 2009 was to "crush" rival advertising networks, according to evidence prosecutors presented at the tech titan's antitrust trial on Wednesday. From a report: The statements underscored the U.S. Department of Justice's claim that Google has sought to monopolize markets for publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks, and tried to dominate the market for ad exchanges which sit in the middle. On the third day of the trial, prosecutors began to introduce evidence of how Google employees thought about the company's products at the time when the government alleges it set out to dominate the ad tech market. "We'll be able to crush the other networks and that's our goal," David Rosenblatt, Google's former president of display advertising, said of the company's strategy in late 2008 or early 2009, according to notes shown in court. Google denies the allegations, saying it faces fierce competition from rival digital advertising companies. Rosenblatt came to Google in 2008 when it acquired his former ad tech company, DoubleClick, and left the following year. The notes of his talk showed him discussing the advantages of owning technology on both sides and the middle of the market. "We're both Goldman and NYSE," he said, he said, according to the notes, referring to one of the world's biggest stock exchanges at the time and one of its biggest market makers. "Google has created what's comparable to the NYSE or London Stock Exchange; in other words, we'll do to display what Google did to search," Rosenblatt said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Unity is canceling the Runtime Fee and reverting back to its existing seat-based subscription model, albeit with a price increase for Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise users. From a report: The engine maker introduced the controversial levy around a year ago. Initially, the Runtime Fee sought to charge developers a per install tariff once projects had passed certain milestones. It was a decision that left many users reeling, resulting in a colossal backlash that ultimately forced the company to rework-but not ditch-the policy. The fallout, however, was enormous. A number of high-profile creators lambasted Unity and threatened to ditch the engine over what they felt was a huge betrayal of trust. Unity's inability to quickly resolve the issue and communicate effectively with customers only added fuel to that fire. Two weeks after the debacle, Unity CEO and president John Riccitiello departed the company. Unity Create boss Marc Whitten eventually followed suit. Unity is now attempting to course correct under the leadership of new CEO Matthew Bromberg, who hopes canceling the Runtime can reestablish a partnership "built on trust."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mobile video game phenomenon Flappy Bird is set to return 10 years after its creator pulled it offline. From a report: In 2014, Vietnam-based developer Dong Nguyen shocked the gaming world when he pulled viral hit Flappy Bird from the App Store and the Google Play Store at a time when it was making tens of thousands of dollars a day. He went on to say: "I can call Flappy Bird a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it." Now, Flappy Bird is set to return, with an expanded version aiming for launch by the end of October across multiple platforms including web browsers, and an iOS and Android version planned for release in 2025. But this new Flappy Bird isn't from Nguyen, it's from 'The Flappy Bird Foundation,' which is described as "a new team of passionate fans committed to sharing the game with the world."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's once-booming venture capital industry is experiencing a severe downturn, with the number of new startups plummeting from 51,302 in 2018 to just 1,202 in 2023, according to data provider IT Juzi. This decline is starkly evident in science parks and innovation hubs across the country, where vacant offices and abandoned equipment have become commonplace, according to a stunning FT story. Industry insiders attribute the crisis to a combination of factors, including China's economic slowdown, heightened US-China tensions, and President Xi Jinping's policies targeting the tech sector. The government's anti-corruption drive and increased scrutiny of successful entrepreneurs have further dampened the private sector's enthusiasm. The funding landscape has shifted dramatically, with state-backed funds now dominating the market. This has led to more conservative investment strategies, favoring lower-risk sectors like advanced manufacturing over traditionally popular areas such as biotech and consumer technology. Founders face increasingly stringent terms, including personal liability for investments and asset checks. Many established VC firms are downsizing operations and exploring overseas opportunities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is laying off a further 650 staff from its gaming business, according to a memo sent by Xbox chief Phil Spencer to staff today, September 12. From a report: In the memo, Spencer said the roles affect mostly corporate and support functions, and were made "to organize our business for long term success." He clarified that no games, devices or experiences are being canceled and no studios are being closed as part of these cuts. These latest layoffs mean Microsoft has let go of 2,550 staff from its gaming business since acquiring Activision Blizzard for $69 billion in 2023. In his memo, below, Spencer makes it clear that the cuts are related to the acquisition.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft has updated a key cryptographic library with two new encryption algorithms designed to withstand attacks from quantum computers. The updates were made last week to SymCrypt, a core cryptographic code library for handing cryptographic functions in Windows and Linux. The library, started in 2006, provides operations and algorithms developers can use to safely implement secure encryption, decryption, signing, verification, hashing, and key exchange in the apps they create. The library supports federal certification requirements for cryptographic modules used in some governmental environments. Despite the name, SymCrypt supports both symmetric and asymmetric algorithms. It's the main cryptographic library Microsoft uses in products and services including Azure, Microsoft 365, all supported versions of Windows, Azure Stack HCI, and Azure Linux. The library provides cryptographic security used in email security, cloud storage, web browsing, remote access, and device management. Microsoft documented the update in a post on Monday. The updates are the first steps in implementing a massive overhaul of encryption protocols that incorporate a new set of algorithms that aren't vulnerable to attacks from quantum computers. [...] The first new algorithm Microsoft added to SymCrypt is called ML-KEM. Previously known as CRYSTALS-Kyber, ML-KEM is one of three post-quantum standards formalized last month by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The KEM in the new name is short for key encapsulation. KEMs can be used by two parties to negotiate a shared secret over a public channel. Shared secrets generated by a KEM can then be used with symmetric-key cryptographic operations, which aren't vulnerable to Shor's algorithm when the keys are of a sufficient size. [...] The other algorithm added to SymCrypt is the NIST-recommended XMSS. Short for eXtended Merkle Signature Scheme, it's based on "stateful hash-based signature schemes." These algorithms are useful in very specific contexts such as firmware signing, but are not suitable for more general uses. Monday's post said Microsoft will add additional post-quantum algorithms to SymCrypt in the coming months. They are ML-DSA, a lattice-based digital signature scheme, previously called Dilithium, and SLH-DSA, a stateless hash-based signature scheme previously called SPHINCS+. Both became NIST standards last month and are formally referred to as FIPS 204 and FIPS 205. In Monday's post, Microsoft Principal Product Manager Lead Aabha Thipsay wrote: "PQC algorithms offer a promising solution for the future of cryptography, but they also come with some trade-offs. For example, these typically require larger key sizes, longer computation times, and more bandwidth than classical algorithms. Therefore, implementing PQC in real-world applications requires careful optimization and integration with existing systems and standards."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

fjo3 shares a report from NASA: Engineers working on NASA's Voyager 1 probe have successfully mitigated an issue with the spacecraft's thrusters, which keep the distant explorer pointed at Earth so that it can receive commands, send engineering data, and provide the unique science data it is gathering. After 47 years, a fuel tube inside the thrusters has become clogged with silicon dioxide, a byproduct that appears with age from a rubber diaphragm in the spacecraft's fuel tank. The clogging reduces how efficiently the thrusters can generate force. After weeks of careful planning, the team switched the spacecraft to a different set of thrusters. [...] Switching to different thrusters would have been a relatively simple operation for the mission in 1980 or even 2002. But the spacecraft's age has introduced new challenges, primarily related to power supply and temperature. The mission has turned off all non-essential onboard systems, including some heaters, on both spacecraft to conserve their gradually shrinking electrical power supply, which is generated by decaying plutonium. While those steps have worked to reduce power, they have also led to the spacecraft growing colder, an effect compounded by the loss of other non-essential systems that produced heat. Consequently, the attitude propulsion thruster branches have grown cold, and turning them on in that state could damage them, making the thrusters unusable. The team determined that the best option would be to warm the thrusters before the switch by turning on what had been deemed non-essential heaters. However, as with so many challenges the Voyager team has faced, this presented a puzzle: The spacecraft's power supply is so low that turning on non-essential heaters would require the mission to turn off something else to provide the heaters adequate electricity, and everything that's currently operating is considered essential. Studying the issue, they ruled out turning off one of the still-operating science instruments for a limited time because there's a risk that the instrument would not come back online. After additional study and planning, the engineering team determined they could safely turn off one of the spacecraft's main heaters for up to an hour, freeing up enough power to turn on the thruster heaters. It worked. On Aug. 27, they confirmed that the needed thruster branch was back in action, helping point Voyager 1 toward Earth.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI is in talks to raise $6.5 billion from investors at a valuation of $150 billion, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the situation. From the report: The new valuation, a figure that doesn't include the money being raised, is significantly higher than the $86 billion valuation from the company's tender offer earlier this year, and cements its place as one of the most valuable startups in the world. At the same time, OpenAI is also in talks to raise $5 billion in debt from banks in the form of a revolving credit facility, said one of the people, all of whom asked not to be identified discussing private information. The funding round is slated to be led by Thrive Capital, Bloomberg previously reported. Thrive declined to comment on the latest valuation. Microsoft, the company's largest investor, is also set to participate, and Apple and Nvidia, have been in talks about investing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired, written by Guthrie Scrimgeour: It always seemed difficult for the newspaper where I used to work, The Garden Island on the rural Hawaiian island of Kauai, to hire reporters. If someone left, it could take months before we hired a replacement, if we ever did. So, last Thursday, I was happy to see that the paper appeared to have hired two new journalists -- even if they seemed a little off. In a spacious studio overlooking a tropical beach, James, a middle-aged Asian man who appears to be unable to blink, and Rose, a younger redhead who struggles to pronounce words like "Hanalei" and "TV," presented their first news broadcast, over pulsing music that reminds me of the Challengers score. There is something deeply off-putting about their performance: James' hands can't stop vibrating. Rose's mouth doesn't always line up with the words she's saying. When James asks Rose about the implications of a strike on local hotels, Rose just lists hotels where the strike is taking place. A story on apartment fires "serves as a reminder of the importance of fire safety measures," James says, without naming any of them. James and Rose are, you may have noticed, not human reporters. They are AI avatars crafted by an Israeli company named Caledo, which hopes to bring this tech to hundreds of local newspapers in the coming year. "Just watching someone read an article is boring," says Dina Shatner, who cofounded Caledo with her husband Moti in 2023. "But watching people talking about a subject -- this is engaging." The Caledo platform can analyze several prewritten news articles and turn them into a "live broadcast" featuring conversation between AI hosts like James and Rose, Shatner says. While other companies, like Channel 1 in Los Angeles, have begun using AI avatars to read out prewritten articles, this claims to be the first platform that lets the hosts riff with one another. The idea is that the tech can give small local newsrooms the opportunity to create live broadcasts that they otherwise couldn't. This can open up embedded advertising opportunities and draw in new customers, especially among younger people who are more likely to watch videos than read articles. Reception of the AI avatars has been poor, notes Scrimgeour. "This ain't that,a says one Instagram commenter. "Keep journalism local." Another just reads: "Nightmares." There's also concern around the jobs these avatars will take. "Caledo claims its AI won't take news jobs because it only does work that isn't being done otherwise," notes Scrimgeour, agreeing that his newspaper company never had a video broadcast while he worked there. "The question is, will local audiences buy into the new tech? Early returns suggest that Kauai viewers, at least, might have trouble accepting James and Rose as kama'aina (locals)..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new survey released on Tuesday found that Americans used over 100 trillion megabytes of wireless data last year -- a 36% increase from the previous year and the largest single-year increase in the history of wireless data consumption. Reuters reports: The increase -- 26 trillion MBs over 2022 -- comes as a growing number of 5G wireless devices are being used, said wireless industry association CTIA that represents major wireless carriers like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and technology firms. The total number of wireless connections rose to 558 million last year, up 6% over 2022, the survey found. Demand for spectrum use is soaring, driven in part by more wireless use in advancements including drones, self-driving vehicles, space missions and precision agriculture. The survey said the number of minutes Americans spent talking on the phone fell slightly from 2.5 trillion in 2022 to 2.4 trillion in 2023 and text messages were about the same at 2.1 trillion in 2023 over the prior year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mistral AI has launched Pixtral 12B, its first multimodal model with language and vision processing capabilities, positioning it to compete with AI leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic. You can download its source code from Hugging Face, GitHub, or via a torrent link. VentureBeat reports: While the official details of the new model, including the data it was trained upon, remain under wraps, the core idea appears that Pixtral 12B will allow users to analyze images while combining text prompts with them. So, ideally, one would be able to upload an image or provide a link to one and ask questions about the subjects in the file. The move is a first for Mistral, but it is important to note that multiple other models, including those from competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic, already have image-processing capabilities. When an X user asked [Sophia Yang, the head of developer relations at the company] what makes the Pixtral 12-billion parameter model unique, she said it will natively support an arbitrary number of images of arbitrary sizes. As shared by initial testers on X, the 24GB model's architecture appears to have 40 layers, 14,336 hidden dimension sizes and 32 attention heads for extensive computational processing. On the vision front, it has a dedicated vision encoder with 1024x1024 image resolution support and 24 hidden layers for advanced image processing. This, however, can change when the company makes it available via API.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bluesky, the decentralized social networking startup, has introduced support for videos up to 60 seconds long in its latest update, version 1.91. The Verge reports: The videos will autoplay by default, but Bluesky says you can turn this feature off in the settings menu. You can also add subtitles to your videos, as well as apply labels for things like adult content. There are some limitations to Bluesky's video feature, as the platform will only allow up to 25 video uploads (or 10GB of video) per day. To protect Bluesky from harmful content or spam, it will require users to verify their email addresses before posting a video. Bluesky may also take away someone's ability to post videos if they repeatedly violate its community guidelines. The platform will also run videos through Hive, an AI moderation solution, and Thorn, a nonprofit that fights child sexual abuse, to check for illegal content or media that needs a warning.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The home of the Golden State Warriors was packed on Tuesday evening this week, but it wasn't to watch Steph Curry. Thousands of fans gathered at the Chase Center in downtown San Francisco to watch one of Silicon Valley's biggest ballers, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, sit down for a conversation with the hosts of the Acquired podcast, David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert. Shortly after hopping onstage, Zuckerberg joked that he might need to schedule his next appearance in order to apologize for whatever he was about to say. After a beat, he added that he was just kidding and that, in fact, his days of apologizing are over. Zuckerberg has had something of a rebrand recently. He raises cattle in Hawaii now, has long bouncy curls and a gold chain, and commissions Roman-style statues of his wife. Onstage, the Facebook founder wore a boxy T-shirt he designed himself alongside fashion designer Mike Amiri that read "learning through suffering" in Greek letters. The tongue-in-cheek comment about apologizing was a reference to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who himself addressed a flub he'd made on the Acquired podcast earlier this year, via a pre-recorded video on a screen hanging over the crowd. Huang's original comment -- that he never would have started Nvidia if he knew what he did today -- was grossly taken out of context, he said. In the video, he clarified that he absolutely would start Nvidia again, and that his comment was more about the blissful ignorance of startup founders. While Zuckerberg's opening comment was just a friendly jab at Huang, it set the tone for Zuckerberg's new attitude toward life and business. The founder of Facebook has spent a lot of time apologizing for Facebook's content moderation issues. But when reflecting on the biggest mistakes of his career, Zuckerberg said his largest one was a "political miscalculation" that he described as a "20-year mistake." Specifically, he said, he'd taken too much ownership for problems allegedly out of Facebook's control. "Some of the things they were asserting that we were doing or were responsible for, I don't actually think we were," said Zuckerberg. "When it's a political problem there are people operating in good faith who are identifying a problem and want something to be fixed, and there are people who are just looking for someone to blame."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Android Authority's Mishaal Rahman reports: There are many reasons why you may want to sideload apps on your Android phone, but there are also good reasons why developers would want to block sideloading. A sideloaded app won't contribute to the developer's Play Store metrics, for one, but it also prevents the developer from curating which devices can use their app. Improperly sideloaded apps can also crash due to missing assets or code, or they might be missing certain features because you installed the wrong version for your device. Whatever the reason may be, developers who want to stop you from sideloading their apps now have an easier way to do so thanks to the Play Integrity API. The Google Play Integrity API is an interface that helps developers "check that interactions and server requests are coming from [their] genuine app binary running on a genuine Android device." It looks for evidence that the app has been tampered with, that the app is running in an "untrustworthy" software environment, that the device has Google Play Protect enabled, and more. If you've heard of or dealt with SafetyNet Attestation before on a rooted phone, then you're probably already familiar with Play Integrity, even if not by that name. Play Integrity is the successor to SafetyNet Attestation, only it comes with even more features for developers. As is the case with SafetyNet Attestation, developers call the Play Integrity API at any point in their app, receive what's called an integrity verdict, and then decide what they want to do from there. Some apps call the Play Integrity API when they launch and block access entirely depending on what the verdict is, while others only call the API when you're about to perform a sensitive action, so they can warn you that you shouldn't proceed. The Play Integrity API makes it easy for apps to offload the determination of whether the device and its software environment are "genuine," and with the latest update to the API, apps can now easily determine whether the person who installed them is "genuine" as well. "As Google continues to bolster Play Integrity's detection mechanisms and add new features, it's going to become harder and harder for power users to justify rooting Android," concludes Rahman. "At the same time, regular users will be better protected from potentially risky and fraudulent interactions, so it's clear that Play Integrity will continue to be adopted by more and more apps."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Waymo's driverless cars have a much lower crash rate than human drivers, with fewer than one injury-causing crash per million miles driven, compared to an estimated 64 crashes by human drivers over the same distance. As Ars Technica's Timothy B. Lee notes, a significant portion of Waymo's most severe crashes involved human drivers rear-ending the Waymo vehicles. From the report: Twenty injuries might sound like a lot, but Waymo's driverless cars have traveled more than 22 million miles. So driverless Waymo taxis have been involved in fewer than one injury-causing crash for every million miles of driving -- a much better rate than a typical human driver. Last week Waymo released a new website to help the public put statistics like this in perspective. Waymo estimates that typical drivers in San Francisco and Phoenix -- Waymo's two biggest markets -- would have caused 64 crashes over those 22 million miles. So Waymo vehicles get into injury-causing crashes less than one-third as often, per mile, as human-driven vehicles. Waymo claims an even more dramatic improvement for crashes serious enough to trigger an airbag. Driverless Waymos have experienced just five crashes like that, and Waymo estimates that typical human drivers in Phoenix and San Francisco would have experienced 31 airbag crashes over 22 million miles. That implies driverless Waymos are one-sixth as likely as human drivers to experience this type of crash. The new data comes at a critical time for Waymo, which is rapidly scaling up its robotaxi service. A year ago, Waymo was providing 10,000 rides per week. Last month, Waymo announced it was providing 100,000 rides per week. We can expect more growth in the coming months. So it really matters whether Waymo is making our roads safer or more dangerous. And all the evidence so far suggests that it's making them safer. It's not just the small number of crashes Waymo vehicles experience -- it's also the nature of those crashes. Out of the 23 most serious Waymo crashes, 16 involved a human driver rear-ending a Waymo. Three others involved a human-driven car running a red light before hitting a Waymo. There were no serious crashes where a Waymo ran a red light, rear-ended another car, or engaged in other clear-cut misbehavior.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Rolling out starting today, Google Search results will now directly link to The Internet Archive to add historical context for the links in your results. [...] Google has partnered with The Internet Archive, a non-profit research library that, in part, stores and preserves massive portions of the web to be easily referenced later. This is done through the "Wayback Machine" which can show a website or specific page as it existed on a previous date. Through this new partnership, Google will link directly to The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine for pages that you find in Search. To access The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine links through Google Search you'll need to click the three-dots menu button that appears alongside all search results and then tap on "More about this page." This new feature is still actively rolling out, but Google was able to provide an image to show what the integration looks like. In a post regarding the announcement, The Internet Archive said that this partnership "underscores the importance of web archiving."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a column: The PS5 Pro's announcement yesterday wasn't a surprise. What was a surprise was the price: at $699.99, it debuts as Sony's most expensive console ever. It brought back memories of the PS3's controversial price tag, a console that when adjusted for inflation is the same $779 price point of a PS5 Pro with the additional disc drive. It's a very expensive PlayStation, and I fear it's a test of what's to come for next-gen console pricing. For years, console gamers have been used to purchasing hardware at a significantly reduced price compared to what you could build yourself in the PC gaming space. Yes, you can find components that match the PS5 or Xbox Series X on paper, but it's still difficult to hit the price points that consoles sell for, especially when they're discounted during promotions. Besides, the easy plug-and-play model, simplified UI, and hassle-free warranty process are all big benefits over having to build or find a good prebuilt PC and then deal with Windows and driver updates. Consoles sell in their millions because they're far more consumer-friendly than PCs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook has admitted that it scrapes the public photos, posts and other data of Australian adult users to train its AI models and provides no opt-out option, even though it allows people in the European Union to refuse consent. From a report: Meta's global privacy director Melinda Claybaugh was pressed at an inquiry as to whether the social media giant was hoovering up the data of all Australians in order to build its generative artificial intelligence tools, and initially rejected that claim. Labor senator Tony Sheldon asked whether Meta had used Australian posts from as far back as 2007 to feed its AI products, to which Ms Claybaugh responded "we have not done that". But that was quickly challenged by Greens senator David Shoebridge. Shoebridge: "The truth of the matter is that unless you have consciously set those posts to private since 2007, Meta has just decided that you will scrape all of the photos and all of the texts from every public post on Instagram or Facebook since 2007, unless there was a conscious decision to set them on private. That's the reality, isn't it?Claybaugh: "Correct." Ms Claybaugh added that accounts of people under 18 were not scraped, but when asked by Senator Sheldon whether public photos of his own children on his account would be scraped, Ms Claybaugh acknowledged they would.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google co-founder and ex-Alphabet president Sergey Brin said he's back working at Google "pretty much every day" because he hasn't seen anything as exciting as the recent progress in AI -- and doesn't want to miss out. "It's a big, fast-moving field," Brin said at All-In Summit of AI, adding that there is "tremendous value to humanity," before explaining why he doesn't think training more capable AI will require massively scaling up compute. "I've read some articles that extrapolate [compute] ... and I don't know if I'm quite a believer," he said, "partly because the algorithmic improvements that have come over the last few years maybe are actually even outpacing the increased compute that's being put into these models."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A security researcher has exposed a critical vulnerability in the WHOIS system. Benjamin Harris, CEO of watchTowr, gained unprecedented access by registering an expired domain once used for .mobi's authoritative WHOIS server. His rogue server received millions of queries from thousands of systems, including government agencies, certificate authorities, and major tech companies. ArsTechnica adds: The humor aside, the rogue WHOIS server gave him powers he never should have had. One of the greatest was the ability to dictate the email address certificate authority GlobalSign used to determine if a party applying for a TLS certificate was the rightful owner of the domain name the certificate would apply to. Like the vast majority of its competitors, GlobalSign uses an automated process. An application for example.com, for instance, will prompt the certificate authority to send an email to the administrative email address listed in the authoritative WHOIS for that domain. If the party on the other end clicks a link, the certificate is automatically approved. When Harris generated a certificate signing request for microsoft.mobi, he promptly received an email from GlobalSign. The email gave him the option of receiving a verification link at whois@watchtowr.com. For ethical reasons, he stopped the experiment at this point. The vulnerability stems from outdated WHOIS client configurations, which underscores systemic weaknesses in internet infrastructure management.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia is banking on its software expertise and broad GPU ecosystem to stay ahead in the fiercely competitive AI chip market, CEO Jensen Huang said in an interview with Goldman Sachs Wednesday. Huang pointed to NVIDIA's large base of installed GPUs and their software compatibility as key strengths. Huang highlighted three key elements of Nvidia's competitive moat: a large installed base of GPUs across multiple platforms, the ability to enhance hardware with software like domain-specific libraries, and expertise in building rack-level systems. The CEO said Nvidia's chip design prowess, noting the company has developed seven different chips for its upcoming Blackwell platform. These comments come as Nvidia faces increasing competition from rivals. Addressing supply chain concerns, Huang said NVIDIA has sufficient in-house intellectual property to shift manufacturing if necessary without significant disruption. The company plans to begin shipping Blackwell-based products in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, with volume production ramping up in fiscal 2026, according to Huang. From the note that Goldman Sachs sent to its clients: 1) Accelerated Computing: Mr. Huang highlighted his long-held view that Moore's Law was no longer delivering the rate of innovation it had in the past and, as such, was driving computation inflation in Data Centers. Further, he noted that the densification and acceleration of the $1 trillion data center infrastructure installed base alone would drive growth over the next 10 years, as it would deliver material performance improvement and/or cost savings. 2) Customer ROI: Mr. Huang noted that we have hit the end of transistor scaling that enabled better utilization rates and cost reductions in the previous virtualization and cloud computing cycles. He explained that, while using a GPU to augment a CPU will drive an increase in cost in absolute terms (~2x) in the case of Spark (distributed processing system and analytics engine for big data), the net cost benefit could be as large as ~10x for an application like Spark given the speed up of ~20x. From a revenue generation perspective, Mr. Huang shared that hyperscale customers can generate $5 in rental revenue for every $1 spent on Nvidia's infrastructure, given sustained strength in the demand for accelerated computing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is adding some new features to Chrome that aim to help users organize and keep track of their browser tabs across both desktop and mobile devices. From a report: The search giant announced in a new blog post that tab groups -- which enable Android and desktop Chrome users to keep related pages together in custom-labeled groups -- will start rolling out to Chrome for iOS starting today. Once Chrome is updated, iPhone and iPad users can access the feature by opening the tab grid, long-pressing on a tab, and selecting "Add Tab to New Group." Custom names and colors can then be assigned to the created tab groups to help keep them organized and easily identifiable. Another feature that's rolling out across Android and desktop Chrome apps is the ability to sync those saved tab groups across multiple devices.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A giant unregulated currency is undermining America's fight against arms dealers, sanctions busters and scammers. Almost as much money flowed through its network last year as through Visa cards. And it has recently minted more profit than BlackRock, with a tiny fraction of the workforce. Its name: tether. The cryptocurrency has grown into an important cog in the global financial system, with as much as $190 billion changing hands daily. In essence, tether is a digital U.S. dollar -- though one privately controlled in the British Virgin Islands by a secretive crew of owners, with its activities largely hidden from governments. Known as a stablecoin for its 1:1 peg to the dollar, tether gained early use among crypto aficionados. But it has spread deep into the financial underworld, enabling a parallel economy that operates beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement. Wherever the U.S. government has restricted access to the dollar financial system -- Iran, Venezuela, Russia -- tether thrives as a sort of incognito dollar used to move money across borders. Russian oligarchs and weapons dealers shuttle tether abroad to buy property and pay suppliers for sanctioned goods. Venezuela's sanctioned state oil firm takes payment in tether for cargoes. Drug cartels, fraud rings and terrorist groups such as Hamas use it to launder income. Yet in dysfunctional economies such as Argentina and Turkey, beset by hyperinflation and a shortage of hard currency, tether is also a lifeline for people who use it for quotidian payments and as a way to protect their savings. Tether is arguably the first successful real-world product to emerge from the cryptocurrency revolution that began over a decade ago. It has made its owners immensely rich. Tether has $120 billion in assets, mostly risk-free U.S. Treasury bills, along with positions in bitcoin and gold. Last year it generated $6.2 billion in profit, outearning BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, by $700 million.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Television has ceased to be the main source of news in the UK for the first time since the 1960s as Britons turn increasingly to online news and social media apps, according to research by the media regulator. From a report: Ofcom said on Tuesday that viewing of TV news had continued to fall steeply, with online platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and TikTok and digital versions of broadcasters now slightly more widely used as a source of news.AIn its annual study of audience habits, the watchdog said 71 per cent of adults obtained news online, compared with 70 per cent via TV -- a finding it described as "marking a generational shift in the balance of news media." The reach of TV news has fallen from 75 per cent last year. More than four-fifths of people between the ages of 16 and 24 obtained their news from social media, Ofcom found. The report underlines the pressure on more traditional linear broadcasters such as the BBC, Sky and Channel 4 to accelerate moves to digital platforms, which include their own streaming sites as well as social media apps such as TikTok.ARead more of this story at Slashdot.

Ford is seeking a patent for technology that would allow it to tailor in-car advertising by listening to conversations among vehicle occupants, as well as by analyzing a car's historical location and other data, according to a patent application published late last month. The Record: "In one example, the controller may monitor user dialogue to detect when individuals are in a conversation," the patent application says. "The conversations can be parsed for keywords or phrases that may indicate where the occupants are traveling to." The tech -- labeled as "in-vehicle advertisement presentation" -- will determine where a car is located, how fast it is traveling, what type of road it is driving on and whether it is in traffic. It also will predict routes, speeds and destinations to customize ads to drivers, the application said. The system could pull data from "audio signals within the vehicle and/or historical user data, selecting a number of the advertisements to present to the user during the trip," the patent application said. By monitoring dialogue between vehicle occupants the ad controller system can determine when to deliver audio versus visual ads, providing ads to drivers as they travel "through a human-machine interface (HMI) of the vehicle," the application said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung Electronics, the world's top maker of smartphones, TVs and memory chips, is cutting up to 30% of its overseas staff at some divisions, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing sources with direct knowledge of the matter. From the report: South Korea-based Samsung has instructed subsidiaries worldwide to reduce sales and marketing staff by about 15% and the administrative staff by up to 30%, two of the sources said. The plan will be implemented by the end of this year and would impact jobs across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, one person said. [...] It is not clear how many people would be let go and which countries and business units would be most affected. In a statement, Samsung said workforce adjustments conducted at some overseas operations were routine, and aimed at improving efficiency. Samsung employed a total of 267,800 people as of the end of 2023, and more than half, or 147,000 employees, are based overseas, according to its latest sustainability report.Read more of this story at Slashdot.