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AmiMoJo writes: Huawei Technologies is building a massive semiconductor equipment research and development center in Shanghai as the Chinese tech titan continues to beef up its chip supply chain to counter a U.S. crackdown. The centre's mission includes building lithography machines, vital equipment for producing cutting-edge chips. To staff the new center, Huawei is offering salary packages worth up to twice as much as local chipmakers, industry executives and sources briefed on the matter told Nikkei Asia. The company has already hired numerous engineers who have worked with top global chip tool builders like Applied Materials, Lam Research, KLA and ASML, they said, adding that chip industry veterans with more than 15 years of experience at leading chipmakers like TSMC, Intel and Micron are also among recent and potential hires. The report says Huawei is investing about 12 billion yuan ($1.66 billion) for this R&D chip plant, making it one of Shanghai's top projects for 2024. Working for the company is no easy task, says one chip engineering: "Working with them is brutal. It's not 996 -- meaning working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. ... It will literally be 007 -- from midnight to midnight, seven days a week. No days off at all. The contract will be for three years, [but] the majority of people can't survive till renewal."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google says it will start removing links to California news websites in a "short term test for a small percentage of California users." The move is in response to the pending California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), which would require Google to pay a fee for linking Californians to news articles. "If passed, CJPA may result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers," Jaffer Zaidi, Google VP of global news partnerships, wrote in a blog post announcing the decision. "The testing process involves removing links to California news websites, potentially covered by CJPA, to measure the impact of the legislation on our product experience." Zaidi adds that Google will also pause "further investments in the California news ecosystem," referring to initiatives like Google News Showcase, product and licensing programs for news organizations, and the Google News Initiative. A study (PDF) conducted in 2023 estimates that Google would owe U.S. publishers around $10 to 12 billion annually if the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, a national bill, is passed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's push to replace foreign technology is now focused on cutting American chip makers out of the country's telecoms systems. From a report: Officials earlier this year directed the nation's largest telecom carriers to phase out foreign processors that are core to their networks by 2027, a move that would hit American chip giants Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, people familiar with the matter said. The deadline given by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology aims to accelerate efforts by Beijing to halt the use of such core chips in its telecom infrastructure. The regulator ordered state-owned mobile operators to inspect their networks for the prevalence of non-Chinese semiconductors and draft timelines to replace them, the people said. In the past, efforts to get the industry to wean itself off foreign semiconductors have been hindered by the lack of good domestically made chips. Chinese telecom carriers' procurements show they are switching more to domestic alternatives, a move made possible in part because local chips' quality has improved and their performance has become more stable, the people said. Such an effort will hit Intel and AMD the hardest, they said. The two chip makers have in recent years provided the bulk of the core processors used in networking equipment in China and the world.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tom's Hardware: Intel is discontinuing its boxed overclockable Core i5, i7, and i9 Raptor Lake CPUs. Every K-series chip in the lineup will be discontinued on May 24th, 2024, after which vendors will no longer be able to purchase them. Intel's product change document states that the last product discontinuance order date and non-cancelable/non-returnable cut-off points will start on May 24th, 2024, and final shipments will end on June 28th, 2024. We don't expect 13th Gen K-series CPU supply to evaporate instantly but expect availability to gradually dissipate, along with price increases as vendors move to sell off all remaining overclockable Raptor Lake CPU inventory. That said, most 12th-Gen Alder Lake CPUs are still priced very competitively, even to this day, so we could potentially see the same behavior with these discontinued Raptor Lake CPUs (until stock inevitably runs out).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenTable's restaurant pages still feature a lot of reviews left by anonymous diners at the moment, but that will not be the case starting next month. From a report: The online restaurant reservation service is changing its policy around reviews so that they're not as anonymous -- and it's even applying the new rule retroactively. As BleepingComputer reports, it told users in an email that starting on May 22, it "will begin displaying diner first names and profile photos on all diner reviews." Further, "this update will also apply to past reviews." "We've heard from you, our diners, that trust and transparency are important when looking at reviews," the company also said in its letter, insinuating that it's changing the way reviews work based on user feedback. As BleepingComputer says, it'll be easy to match a bad review with customer reservation records based on the user's first name and when the post was made. While that's not nearly as bad as Glassdoor publishing people's names alongside their employer reviews without consent, it could still be very uncomfortable for people who wanted to talk about bad experiences without the fear of not being welcomed back into a particular establishment.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Adobe has begun to procure videos to build its AI text-to-video generator, trying to catch up to competitors after OpenAI demonstrated a similar technology. From a report: The software company is offering its network of photographers and artists $120 to submit videos of people engaged in everyday actions such as walking or expressing emotions including joy and anger, according to documents seen by Bloomberg. The goal is to source assets for artificial intelligence training, the company wrote. Over the past year, Adobe has focused on adding generative AI features to its portfolio of software for creative professionals, including Photoshop and Illustrator. [...] Adobe is requesting more than 100 short clips of people engaged in actions and showing emotions as well as simple anatomy shots of feet, hands or eyes. The company also wants video of people "interacting with objects" such as smartphones or fitness equipment. It cautions against providing copyrighted material, nudity or other "offensive content." Pay for the submission works out, on average, to about $2.62 per minute of submitted video, although it could be as much as about $7.25 per minute.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Recent headlines have made clear: If AI is doing an impressively good job at a human task, there's a good chance that the task is actually being done by a human. When George Carlin's estate sued the creators of a podcast who said they used AI to create a standup routine in the late comedian's style, the podcasters claimed that the script had actually been generated by a human named Chad. (The two sides recently settled the suit.) A company making AI-powered voice interfaces for fast-food drive-thrus can only complete 30% of jobs without the help of a human reviewing its work. Amazon is dropping its automated "Just Walk Out" checkout systems from new stores -- a system that relied on far more human verification than it was hoping for. We've seen this before -- though it may already be lost to Silicon Valley's pathologically short memory. Back in 2015, AI chatbots were the hot thing. Tech giants and startups alike pitched them as always-available, always-chipper, always-reliable assistants. One startup, x.ai, advertised an AI assistant who could read your emails and schedule your meetings. Another, GoButler, offered to book your flights or order your fries through a delivery app. Facebook also tested a do-anything concierge service called M, which could answer seemingly any question, do almost any task, and draw you pictures on demand. But for all of those services, the "AI assistant" was often just a person. Back in 2016, I wrote a story about this and interviewed workers whose job it was to be the human hiding behind the bot, making sure the bot never made a mistake or spoke nonsense.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple on Friday lost a bid to throw out a mass lawsuit valued at just under $1 billion, brought in London on behalf of more than 1,500 app developers over its App Store fees. Reuters: The case, worth up to 785 million pounds ($979 million) and one of several faced by the U.S. tech giant in the United Kingdom, alleges Apple charged third-party developers unfair commissions of up to 30% on purchases of apps or other content. Sean Ennis, a competition law professor and economist, is spearheading the case which was filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) last year. His lawyers say Apple has abused its dominant position in the market for the distribution of apps on iPhones and other Apple devices and are seeking damages for UK-based developers. Apple, however, says 85% of developers on its App Store do not pay any commission at all.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Discord has shut down the Discord servers for the Nintendo Switch emulators Suyu and Sudachi and has completely disabled their lead developers' accounts. The Verge: Both Suyu and Sudachi began as forks of Yuzu, the emulator that Nintendo sued out of existence on March 4th. "Discord responds to and complies with all legal and valid Digital Millennium Copyright Act requests. In this instance, there was also a court ordered injunction for the takedown of these materials, and we took action in a manner consistent with the court order," reads part of a statement from Discord director of product communications Kellyn Slone to The Verge. The developers of Suyu and Sudachi only received vague messages about how they were sharing content that allegedly violates intellectual property rights, according to images shared with The Verge. Meanwhile, Discord tells us that it's following its normal process for DMCA takedown requests -- but it's not at all clear there was a valid DMCA takedown request or that those communities were actually violating IP rights, and it's quite possible Discord isn't following its own policy by kicking them out. Remember, Nintendo got Yuzu to settle rather than proving its case in court, and the settlement did not give Nintendo the rights to Yuzu's freely copyable GPL v3 code. Developers of Yuzu's forks also claimed they were changing the code further, among other practices, in an effort to avoid pissing Nintendo off. And that code wasn't hosted on Discord in any case.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Datacenter power issues in Ireland may be coming to a head amid reports from customers that Amazon is restricting resources users can spin up in that nation, even directing them to other AWS regions across Europe instead. From a report: Energy consumed by datacenters is a growing concern, especially in places such as Ireland where there are clusters of facilities around Dublin that already account for a significant share of the country's energy supply. This may be leading to restrictions on how much infrastructure can be used, given the power requirements. AWS users have informed The Register that there are sometimes limits on the resources that they can access in its Ireland bit barn, home to Amazon's eu-west-1 region, especially with power-hungry instances that make use of GPUs to accelerate workloads such as AI. "You cannot spin up GPU nodes in AWS Dublin as those locations are maxed out power-wise. There is reserved capacity for EC2 just in case," one source told us. "If you have a problem with that, AWS Europe will point you at spare capacity in Sweden and other parts of the EU." We asked AWS about these issues, but when it finally responded the company was somewhat evasive. "Ireland remains core to our global infrastructure strategy, and we will continue to work with customers to understand their needs, and help them to scale and grow their business," a spokesperson told us. Ireland's power grid operator, EirGrid, was likewise less than direct when we asked if they were limiting the amount of power datacenters could consume.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The story of warehouse robotics is a story of attempting to keep up with Amazon. It's been more than a decade since the online giant revolutionized its delivery services through its Kiva Systems acquisition. As Walmart works to remain competitive, it's taking a more piecemeal approach to automation, through partnerships with a range of different robotics firms. On Thursday, the mega-retailer announced a partnership with Fox Robotics, which brings 19 of the Austin-based startup's robotic forklifts to its distribution centers. Today's news follows a 16-month pilot, which found Walmart trialing the technology in Distribution Center 6020. That Florida distribution center is the first of what the company calls its "high-tech DC." These are warehouses where it trials automation and various other technologies, before rolling them out to its wider channel of distribution and fulfillment centers. DC 6020 is the place where Walmart began trials with Symbotic's package sortation and retrieval technologies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Epic Games, the maker of the popular "Fortnite" video game, has urged a U.S. judge to compel Google to open up its Play Store to more competition following a jury verdict that found the tech giant had abused its power over Android app distribution. In a court filing on Thursday [PDF], Epic proposed requiring Google to allow the distribution of competing third-party app stores on its platform for six years and limiting its ability to restrict preloading of competing app stores on devices. The move follows a December antitrust trial in which a jury found Google guilty of impeding developers' ability to distribute apps outside the Play Store and maintaining an overly tight grip on in-app transaction payments.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

HP "sought to take advantage of customers' sunk costs," printer owners claimed this week in a class action lawsuit against the hardware giant. The Register: Lawyers representing the aggrieved were responding in an Illinois court to an earlier HP motion to dismiss a January lawsuit. Among other things, the plaintiffs' filing stated that the printer buyers "never entered into any contractual agreement to buy only HP-branded ink prior to receiving the firmware updates." They allege HP broke several anti-competitive statutes, which they claim: "bar tying schemes, and certain uses of software to accomplish that without permission, that would monopolize an aftermarket for replacement ink cartridges, when these results are achieved in a way that 'take[s] advantage of customers' sunk costs.'" In the case, which began in January, the plaintiffs are arguing that HP issued a firmware update between late 2022 and early 2023 that they allege disabled their printers if they installed a replacement cartridge that was not HP-branded. They are asking for damages that include the cost of now-useless third-party cartridges and an injunction to disable the part of the firmware updates that prevent the use of third-party ink.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sinij shares a report: Members of Parliament in Canada are expected to vote for up to 15 hours in a row Thursday and Friday on more than 200 Conservative amendments to the government's sustainable jobs bill. The amendments are what's left of nearly 20,000 changes the Conservatives proposed to Bill C-50 last fall at a House of Commons committee. Liberals now contend the Conservatives came up with the amendments using artificial intelligence in order to gum up the government's agenda. The Conservatives deny that accusation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you're -- apparently, one of the few people -- using the VPN service that comes with Google One, we've got bad news for you. In an email you're going to receive from Google if you haven't gotten it yet, it revealed that it's phasing out the perk sometime later this year. The company rolled out Google One's VPN feature back in 2020, but you could only access it then if you're paying for a plan with at least 2TB of storage, which costs at least $10 a month. Last year, the company expanded its availability across all One plans, including the basic $2-per-month option, making it more affordable than before.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kyle Wiggers reports via TechCrunch: OpenAI announced today that premium ChatGPT users -- customers paying for ChatGPT Plus, Team or Enterprise -- can now leveraged an updated and enhanced version of GPT-4 Turbo, one of the models that powers the conversational ChatGPT experience. This new model ("gpt-4-turbo-2024-04-09") brings with it improvements in writing, math, logical reasoning and coding, OpenAI claims, as well as a more up-to-date knowledge base. It was trained on publicly available data up to December 2023, in contrast to the previous edition of GPT-4 Turbo available in ChatGPT, which had an April 2023 cut-off. "When writing with ChatGPT [with the new GPT-4 Turbo], responses will be more direct, less verbose and use more conversational language," OpenAI writes in a post on X.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Mac: Following moves of other tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft, Apple is reportedly set to open a new office space in a Miami suburb. This won't be the first corporate space for Apple in the city, but it will be larger than the existing office. Reported by Bloomberg, anonymous sources close to the matter say that Apple's new Miami office will be 45,000 square feet in the affluent Coral Gables suburb of Miami. It's not clear yet what part of Apple's business the new office will focus on but it will be larger than its existing small Miami office that handles Latin America and advertising operations. The specific property of the new Apple offices will be at The Plaza Coral Gables.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists from Oxford University Physics have developed a breakthrough in cloud-based quantum computing that could allow it to be harnessed by millions of individuals and companies. The findings have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Phys.Org reports: In the new study, the researchers use an approach dubbed "blind quantum computing," which connects two totally separate quantum computing entities -- potentially an individual at home or in an office accessing a cloud server -- in a completely secure way. Importantly, their new methods could be scaled up to large quantum computations. "Using blind quantum computing, clients can access remote quantum computers to process confidential data with secret algorithms and even verify the results are correct, without revealing any useful information. Realizing this concept is a big step forward in both quantum computing and keeping our information safe online," said study lead Dr. Peter Drmota, of Oxford University Physics. The researchers created a system comprising a fiber network link between a quantum computing server and a simple device detecting photons, or particles of light, at an independent computer remotely accessing its cloud services. This allows so-called blind quantum computing over a network. Every computation incurs a correction that must be applied to all that follow and needs real-time information to comply with the algorithm. The researchers used a unique combination of quantum memory and photons to achieve this. The results could ultimately lead to commercial development of devices to plug into laptops, to safeguard data when people are using quantum cloud computing services. "We have shown for the first time that quantum computing in the cloud can be accessed in a scalable, practical way which will also give people complete security and privacy of data, plus the ability to verify its authenticity," said Professor David Lucas, who co-heads the Oxford University Physics research team and is lead scientist at the UK Quantum Computing and Simulation Hub, led from Oxford University Physics.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China is rapidly advancing its space capabilities to challenge the United States' dominance in space, as evidenced by its significant increase in on-orbit intelligence and reconnaissance satellites and the development of sophisticated counterspace weapons. Space.com reports: "Frankly, China is moving at a breathtaking speed. Since 2018, China has more than tripled their on-orbit intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites," Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command, said here on Tuesday, during a talk at the 39th Space Symposium. "And with these systems, they've built a kill web over the Pacific Ocean to find, fix, track and, yes, target United States and allied military capabilities," he added. And that's not all. China has also "built a range of counterspace weapons, from reversible jamming all the way up to kinetic hit-to-kill direct-ascent and co-orbital ASATs," Whiting said. Indeed, China demonstrated direct-ascent ASAT, or anti-satellite, weapon technology back in January 2007, when it destroyed one of its defunct weather satellites with a missile. That test was widely decried as irresponsible, for it generated thousands of pieces of debris, many of which are still cluttering up Earth orbit. Such activities show that China is now treating space as a war-fighting domain, Whiting said. And so, he added, is Russia, which has also conducted ASAT tests recently, including a destructive one in November 2021. Russia has also been aggressively building out its orbital architecture; since 2018, the nation has more than doubled its total number of active satellites, according to Whiting. The U.S. government has taken notice of these trends. "We are at a pivotal moment in history," Troy Meink, principal deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office, which builds and operates the United States' fleet of spy satellites, said during a different talk on Tuesday here at the symposium. "For the first time in decades, U.S. leadership in space and space technology is being challenged," Meink added. "Our competitors are actively seeking ways to threaten our capabilities, and we see this every day." The U.S. must act if it wishes to beat back this challenge, Meink and Whiting stressed; it cannot rely on the inertia of past success to do the job. For example, Meink highlighted the need to innovate with the nation's reconnaissance satellites, to make them more numerous, more agile and more resilient. U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu also emphasized the importance of increasing resilience, a goal that she said could be achieved by diversifying the nation's space capabilities. "We must assess ways to incorporate radiation-hardened electronics, novel orbits, varied communication pathways, advancements in propulsion technologies and increased cooperation with our allies," Shyu said in another talk on Tuesday at the symposium.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said today it is investigating a breach at business intelligence company Sisense, whose products are designed to allow companies to view the status of multiple third-party online services in a single dashboard. CISA urged all Sisense customers to reset any credentials and secrets that may have been shared with the company, which is the same advice Sisense gave to its customers Wednesday evening. New York City based Sisense has more than 1,000 customers across a range of industry verticals, including financial services, telecommunications, healthcare and higher education. On April 10, Sisense Chief Information Security Officer Sangram Dash told customers the company had been made aware of reports that "certain Sisense company information may have been made available on what we have been advised is a restricted access server (not generally available on the internet.)" In its alert, CISA said it was working with private industry partners to respond to a recent compromise discovered by independent security researchers involving Sisense. Sisense declined to comment when asked about the veracity of information shared by two trusted sources with close knowledge of the breach investigation. Those sources said the breach appears to have started when the attackers somehow gained access to the company's code repository at Gitlab, and that in that repository was a token or credential that gave the bad guys access to Sisense's Amazon S3 buckets in the cloud. Both sources said the attackers used the S3 access to copy and exfiltrate several terabytes worth of Sisense customer data, which apparently included millions of access tokens, email account passwords, and even SSL certificates. The incident raises questions about whether Sisense was doing enough to protect sensitive data entrusted to it by customers, such as whether the massive volume of stolen customer data was ever encrypted while at rest in these Amazon cloud servers. It is clear, however, that unknown attackers now have all of the credentials that Sisense customers used in their dashboards. The breach also makes clear that Sisense is somewhat limited in the clean-up actions that it can take on behalf of customers, because access tokens are essentially text files on your computer that allow you to stay logged in for extended periods of time -- sometimes indefinitely. And depending on which service we're talking about, it may be possible for attackers to re-use those access tokens to authenticate as the victim without ever having to present valid credentials. Beyond that, it is largely up to Sisense customers to decide if and when they change passwords to the various third-party services that they've previously entrusted to Sisense. "If they are hosting customer data on a third-party system like Amazon, it better damn well be encrypted," said Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at University of California, Berkeley's International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) and lecturer at UC Davis. "If they are telling people to rest credentials, that means it was not encrypted. So mistake number one is leaving Amazon credentials in your Git archive. Mistake number two is using S3 without using encryption on top of it. The former is bad but forgivable, but the latter given their business is unforgivable."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amanda Hoover reports via Wired: Students have submitted more than 22 million papers that may have used generative AI in the past year, new data released by plagiarism detection company Turnitin shows. A year ago, Turnitin rolled out an AI writing detection tool that was trained on its trove of papers written by students as well as other AI-generated texts. Since then, more than 200 million papers have been reviewed by the detector, predominantly written by high school and college students. Turnitin found that 11 percent may contain AI-written language in 20 percent of its content, with 3 percent of the total papers reviewed getting flagged for having 80 percent or more AI writing. Turnitin says its detector has a false positive rate of less than 1 percent when analyzing full documents.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Harvard College is reinstating the requirement for standardized testing, reversing course on a pandemic-era policy that made them optional. It follows similar moves from elite universities like Yale, Dartmouth, and MIT. Axios reports: At Harvard, the mandate will be in place for students applying to begin school in fall 2025. Harvard had previously committed to a test-optional policy for applicants through the class of 2030, which would have started in fall 2026. Most students who applied since the pandemic began have submitted test scores despite the test-optional policy, the university said. Reviewing SAT/ACT scores as part of a student's application packet helps an admissions decision be holistic, the university said in a statement. "Standardized tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond," Hopi Hoekstra, a Harvard dean, said in the statement. "Indeed, when students have the option of not submitting their test scores, they may choose to withhold information that, when interpreted by the admissions committee in the context of the local norms of their school, could have potentially helped their application."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal jury in Illinois on Wednesday said Amazon Web Services owes tech company Kove $525 million for violating three patents relating to its data-storage technology. From the report: The jury determined (PDF) that AWS infringed three Kove patents covering technology that Kove said had become "essential" to the ability of Amazon's cloud-computing arm to "store and retrieve massive amounts of data." An Amazon spokesperson said the company disagrees with the verdict and intends to appeal. Kove's lead attorney Courtland Reichman called the verdict "a testament to the power of innovation and the importance of protecting IP (intellectual property) rights for start-up companies against tech giants." Kove also sued Google last year for infringing the same three patents in a separate Illinois lawsuit that is still ongoing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hardware sold for years by the likes of Intel and Lenovo contains a remotely exploitable vulnerability that will never be fixed. The cause: a supply chain snafu involving an open source software package and hardware from multiple manufacturers that directly or indirectly incorporated it into their products. Researchers from security firm Binarly have confirmed that the lapse has resulted in Intel, Lenovo, and Supermicro shipping server hardware that contains a vulnerability that can be exploited to reveal security-critical information. The researchers, however, went on to warn that any hardware that incorporates certain generations of baseboard management controllers made by Duluth, Georgia-based AMI or Taiwan-based AETN are also affected. BMCs are tiny computers soldered into the motherboard of servers that allow cloud centers, and sometimes their customers, to streamline the remote management of vast fleets of servers. They enable administrators to remotely reinstall OSes, install and uninstall apps, and control just about every other aspect of the system -- even when it's turned off. BMCs provide what's known in the industry as "lights-out" system management. AMI and AETN are two of several makers of BMCs. For years, BMCs from multiple manufacturers have incorporated vulnerable versions of open source software known as lighttpd. Lighttpd is a fast, lightweight web server that's compatible with various hardware and software platforms. It's used in all kinds of wares, including in embedded devices like BMCs, to allow remote administrators to control servers remotely with HTTP requests. [...] "All these years, [the lighttpd vulnerability] was present inside the firmware and nobody cared to update one of the third-party components used to build this firmware image," Binarly researchers wrote Thursday. "This is another perfect example of inconsistencies in the firmware supply chain. A very outdated third-party component present in the latest version of firmware, creating additional risk for end users. Are there more systems that use the vulnerable version of lighttpd across the industry?" The vulnerability makes it possible for hackers to identify memory addresses responsible for handling key functions. Operating systems take pains to randomize and conceal these locations so they can't be used in software exploits. By chaining an exploit for the lighttpd vulnerability with a separate vulnerability, hackers could defeat this standard protection, which is known as address space layout randomization. The chaining of two or more exploits has become a common feature of hacking attacks these days as software makers continue to add anti-exploitation protections to their code. Tracking the supply chain for multiple BMCs used in multiple server hardware is difficult. So far, Binarly has identified AMI's MegaRAC BMC as one of the vulnerable BMCs. The security firm has confirmed that the AMI BMC is contained in the Intel Server System M70KLP hardware. Information about BMCs from ATEN or hardware from Lenovo and Supermicro aren't available at the moment. The vulnerability is present in any hardware that uses lighttpd versions 1.4.35, 1.4.45, and 1.4.51. "A potential attacker can exploit this vulnerability in order to read memory of Lighttpd Web Server process," Binarly researchers wrote in an advisory. "This may lead to sensitive data exfiltration, such as memory addresses, which can be used to bypass security mechanisms such as ASLR." Advisories are available here, here, and here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes: From a Wednesday press release: "Code.org, in collaboration with The Piech Lab at Stanford University, launched today its AI Teaching Assistant, ushering in a new era of computer science instruction to support teachers in preparing students with the foundational skills necessary to work, live and thrive in an AI world. [...] Launching as a part of Code.org's leading Computer Science Discoveries (CSD) curriculum [for grades 6-10], the tool is designed to bolster teacher confidence in teaching computer science." EdWeek reports that in a limited pilot project involving twenty teachers nationwide, the AI computer science grading tool cut one middle school teacher's grading time in half. Code.org is now inviting an additional 300 teachers to give the tool a try. "Many teachers who lead computer science courses," EdWeek notes, "don't have a degree in the subject -- or even much training on how to teach it -- and might be the only educator in their school leading a computer science course." Stanford's Piech Lab is headed by assistant professor of CS Chris Piech, who also runs the wildly-successful free Code in Place MOOC (30,000+ learners and counting), which teaches fundamentals from Stanford's flagship introduction to Python course. Prior to coming up with the new AI teaching assistant, which automatically assesses Code.org students' JavaScript game code, Piech worked on a Stanford Research team that partnered with Code.org nearly a decade ago to create algorithms to generate hints for K-12 students trying to solve Code.org's Hour of Code block-based programming puzzles (2015 paper [PDF]). And several years ago, Piech's lab again teamed with Code.org on Play-to-Grade, which sought to "provide scalable automated grading on all types of coding assignments" by analyzing the game play of Code.org students' projects. Play-to-Grade, a 2022 paper (PDF) noted, was "supported in part by a Stanford Hoffman-Yee Human Centered AI grant" for AI tutors to help prepare students for the 21st century workforce. That project also aimed to develop a "Super Teaching Assistant" for Piech's Code in Place MOOC. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who was present for the presentation of the 'AI Tutors' work he and his wife funded, is a Code.org Diamond Supporter ($1+ million). In other AI grading news, Texas will use computers to grade written answers on this year's STAAR tests. The state will save more than $15 million by using technology similar to ChatGPT to give initial scores, reducing the number of human graders needed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The embargo has lifted for reviews of Humane's AI Pin and the general consensus appears to be that this device isn't ready to usher us into the all-but-inevitable AI future. Starting at $699 with a pricy $24-a-month subscription, the wearable device is designed to incorporate artificial intelligence into everyday scenarios, with the ability to make calls, translate languages, recommend nearby restaurants, and capture photos and videos. "The best description so far is that it's a combination of a wearable Siri button with a camera and built-in projector that beams onto your palm," writes Cherlynn Low via Engadget. While full of potential, the AI Pin creates more problems than it solves and many of the features you'd intuitively expect from it aren't supported at launch. Here's a roundup of some of the first reviews: Engadget: The Humane AI Pin is the solution to none of technology's problemsThe Verge: Humane AI Pin review: not even closeWired: Humane Ai Pin Review: Too Clunky, Too LimitedThe Washington Post: I've been living with a $699 AI Pin on my chest. You probably shouldn't. CNET: Humane AI Hands-On: My Life So Far With a Wearable AI PinRead more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amid a flurry of lawsuits over AI models' training data, US Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has introduced (PDF) a bill that would require AI companies to disclose exactly which copyrighted works are included in datasets training AI systems. The Generative AI Disclosure Act "would require a notice to be submitted to the Register of Copyrights prior to the release of a new generative AI system with regard to all copyrighted works used in building or altering the training dataset for that system," Schiff said in a press release. The bill is retroactive and would apply to all AI systems available today, as well as to all AI systems to come. It would take effect 180 days after it's enacted, requiring anyone who creates or alters a training set not only to list works referenced by the dataset, but also to provide a URL to the dataset within 30 days before the AI system is released to the public. That URL would presumably give creators a way to double-check if their materials have been used and seek any credit or compensation available before the AI tools are in use. All notices would be kept in a publicly available online database. Currently, creators who don't have access to training datasets rely on AI models' outputs to figure out if their copyrighted works may have been included in training various AI systems. The New York Times, for example, prompted ChatGPT to spit out excerpts of its articles, relying on a tactic to identify training data by asking ChatGPT to produce lines from specific articles, which OpenAI has curiously described as "hacking." Under Schiff's law, The New York Times would need to consult the database to ID all articles used to train ChatGPT or any other AI system. Any AI maker who violates the act would risk a "civil penalty in an amount not less than $5,000," the proposed bill said. Schiff described the act as championing "innovation while safeguarding the rights and contributions of creators, ensuring they are aware when their work contributes to AI training datasets." "This is about respecting creativity in the age of AI and marrying technological progress with fairness," Schiff said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Last week South Korea's SK Hynix announced it would partner with Purdue University on a $3.9 billion semiconductor complex here, the largest single corporate investment in state history. Now comes the hard part. SK Hynix must not only build the fabrication plant, or fab, which will package high-bandwidth memory chips used in artificial intelligence, and a connected research-and-development center. It also has to staff them. "We need several hundred engineers to operate our advanced-packaging manufacturing fab -- in physics, chemistry, material science, electronics engineering," Kwak Noh-Jung, chief executive of SK Hynix, said in an interview following last week's announcement. Staffing a fab is harder in the U.S. than in South Korea, where SK Hynix has contracts with local universities and its own in-house university. Nonetheless, Kwak said, "the final goal is very clear. We need to have very good engineers for our success in U.S." The U.S. is trying to do something unprecedented: reverse a shrinking share in a key manufacturing sector. Between 1990 and 2020, the U.S. share of world chip making shrank to 12% from 37%, while the combined share of Taiwan, South Korea and China grew to 58%. The federal CHIPS program has showered billions of dollars on Intel for fabs in several states, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.in Arizona and GlobalFoundries in New York and Vermont. SK Hynix hopes for support as well. Subsidies alone won't guarantee a sustainable industry. Fabs need customers, a supply chain and, above all, a skilled, specialized workforce. From 2000 to 2017, U.S. employment in semiconductor manufacturing shrank to 181,000 from 287,000. It has since recovered to about 200,000. Why did the U.S. share of semiconductor production shrink? As in other industries, the U.S. became an expensive place to manufacture. Susan Houseman of the Upjohn Institute, who has studied outsourcing, said this wasn't "primarily a story about offshoring." U.S. companies still lead in chip design: Nvidia in artificial intelligence, Qualcomm in communications and Apple in smartphones. Over time they mostly contracted out fabrication of their chips to foundries such as TSMC who benefited from generous domestic subsidies. The theory behind CHIPS is that, by matching Asia's subsidies, the U.S. can again be competitive in chip making. Nonetheless, there is a chicken-egg problem. Fabs need a ready supply of skilled workers. But without fabs, America's best and brightest have little incentive to pursue careers in the sector.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Android 15's first public beta is available to download now, provided you have a Pixel phone. From a report: It's the first consumer-facing release after two developer previews, and while we have a good idea of what to expect from Google's next mobile OS version, we'll certainly hear more at the company's annual developer conference soon enough. The blog post highlighting updates in today's release covers some pretty pedestrian stuff. Apps will scale edge to edge by default and will draw behind translucent system bars on the top and bottom of the screen, rather than around them. There's OS-level support for app archiving and unarchiving so third-party app stores can take advantage of this feature. Android 15 will also provide better support for Braille displays.MRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has started showing full screen warnings about the upcoming end of support date on Windows 10 PCs. From a report: Users on Reddit have reported seeing the prompt, which began appearing after this week's Patch Tuesday updates were installed, and encourages the user to learn more about how they can transition to Windows 11. Windows 10's end of support date is currently set for October 14, 2025. After that date, Windows 10 users will no longer receive critical security and bug fix updates, leaving any Windows 10 PC connected to the internet vulnerable to any newly discovered security exploits. The full screen prompt that is now appearing on some Windows 10 PCs thanks the user for their loyalty using Windows 10, and warns that this end of life (EOL) date is approaching. It also wastes no time advertising Windows 11, encouraging the user to learn more about how they can transition to a new Windows 11 PC. Notably, there's no button to tell the prompt to never show again.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple, aiming to boost sluggish computer sales, is preparing to overhaul its entire Mac line with a new family of in-house processors designed to highlight AI. Bloomberg News: The company, which released its first Macs with M3 chips five months ago, is already nearing production of the next generation -- the M4 processor -- according to people with knowledge of the matter. The new chip will come in at least three main varieties, and Apple is looking to update every Mac model with it, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven't been announced. The new Macs are underway at a critical time. After peaking in 2022, Mac sales fell 27% in the last fiscal year, which ended in September. In the holiday period, revenue from the computer line was flat. Apple attempted to breathe new life into the Mac business with an M3-focused launch event last October, but those chips didn't bring major performance improvements over the M2 from the prior year. Apple also is playing catch-up in AI, where it's seen as a laggard to Microsoft, Alphabet's Google and other tech peers. The new chips are part of a broader push to weave AI capabilities into all its products. Apple is aiming to release the updated computers beginning late this year and extending into early next year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Computational scientist and mathematician Avi Wigderson of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton has won the 2023 A.M. Turing Award. From a report: The prize, which is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to a computer scientist for their contributions to the field, comes with $1 million thanks to Google. It is named in honor of the British mathematician Alan Turing, who helped develop a theoretical foundation for understanding machine computation. Wigderson is being honored "for foundational contributions to the theory of computation, including reshaping our understanding of the role of randomness in computation and for his decades of intellectual leadership in theoretical computer science." He also won the prestigious Abel Prize in 2021 for his work in theoretical computer science -- the first person to be so doubly honored.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is finally making it easier for users to repair their iPhones with used parts. From a report: In an update on Thursday, the company announced that this fall, owners of "select" iPhone models will be able to repair their devices with used, genuine parts while retaining full functionality. When repairing a phone, Apple requires iPhone users to go through a process called parts pairing, which makes them match the serial number of their device to that of a new part sold by Apple. If a user replaced a part with an aftermarket or used component, the iPhone would display pesky notifications saying that Apple isn't able to verify the newly installed piece. In the case of Face ID and Touch ID sensors, the part might not work at all. This change should do away with these notifications for used parts, as Apple says "calibration for genuine Apple parts, new or used, will happen on device after the part is installed." It also means users and repair shops will no longer have to provide the serial number of the device they're fixing when ordering most parts from the Self Service Repair Store.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon on Thursday added Andrew Ng, the computer scientist who led AI projects at Alphabet's Google and China's Baidu, to its board amid rising competition among Big Techs to add users for their GenAI products. From a report: Amazon's cloud unit is facing pressure from Microsoft's early pact with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and integration of its technology into Azure, while Alexa voice assistant is in race with genAI chat tools from OpenAI and Google. The appointment, effective April 9, also follows job cuts across Amazon, which has seen enterprise cloud spending and e-commerce sales moderate due to macroeconomic factors such as inflation and high interest rates. "As we look toward 2024 (and beyond), we're not done lowering our cost to serve," CEO Andy Jassy said in a letter to shareholders on Thursday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused web search and browser company, announced on today the launch of its first subscription service, Privacy Pro. The service, priced at $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year, includes a browser-based tool that automatically scans data broker websites for users' personal information and requests its removal. The service also includes DuckDuckGo's first VPN and an identity-theft-restoration service. Available initially only in the U.S.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple sent threat notifications to iPhone users in 92 countries on Wednesday, warning them that may have been targeted by mercenary spyware attacks. From a report: The company said it sent the alerts to individuals in 92 nations at 12pm Pacific Time Wednesday. The notification, which TechCrunch has seen, did not disclose the attackers' identities or the countries where users received notifications. "Apple detected that you are being targeted by a mercenary spyware attack that is trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID -xxx-," it wrote in the warning to affected customers. "This attack is likely targeting you specifically because of who you are or what you do. Although it's never possible to achieve absolute certainty when detecting such attacks, Apple has high confidence in this warning -- please take it seriously," Apple added in the text.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Ministers are considering banning the sale of smartphones to children under the age of 16 after a number of polls have shown significant public support for such a curb. The government issued guidance on the use of mobile phones in English schools two months ago, but other curbs are said to have been considered to better protect children after a number of campaigns. [...] A March survey by Parentkind, of 2,496 parents of school-age children in England, found 58% of parents believe the government should ban smartphones for under-16s. It also found more than four in five parents said they felt smartphones were "harmful" to children and young people. Another survey by More in Common revealed 64% of people thought that a ban on selling smartphones to under-16s would be a good idea, compared with 20% who said it was a bad idea. The curb was even popular among 2019 Tory voters, according to the thinktank, which found 72% backed a ban, as did 61% of Labour voters. But the thought of another ban has left some Conservatives uneasy. One Tory government source described the idea as "out of touch," noting: "It's not the government's role to step in and microparent; we're meant to make parents more aware of the powers they have like restrictions on websites, apps and even the use of parental control apps." They said only in extreme cases could the government "parent better than actual parents and guardians."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rachel Treisman reports via NPR: Authorities in the Russian republic of Chechnya are banning music they consider either too fast or too slow, effectively criminalizing many genres. The Chechen Ministry of Culture announced the ban on its website last week, by the order of Culture Minister Musa Dadayev and with the agreement of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. "Musical, vocal and choreographic" works will be limited to a tempo of 80 to 116 beats per minute (BPM) to "conform to the Chechen mentality and sense of rhythm," said Dadayev, according to the Russian state-run news agency TASS. "Borrowing musical culture from other peoples is inadmissible," Dadayev said, per a translation by The Guardian. "We must bring to the people and to the future of our children the cultural heritage of the Chechen people. This includes the entire spectrum of moral and ethical standards of life for Chechens." Russian media report that artists have until June 1 to rewrite any music that doesn't conform to the new rule, though it's not clear how it will be enforced. [...] The government's crackdown on certain musical tempos would silence most modern music genres. Electronic styles of music like house, techno and dubstep all tend to have BPMs of over 116, says the audio tech company Izotope, while the average tempo of 2020's best-selling pop songs was 122 BPM, according to the BBC. The independent Russian news outlet Meduza said the tempo of the Russian national anthem would be considered too slow under the new limit, reports RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. But it would seem to permit hip-hop music, which generally has a BPM of 85 to 95. "Chechnya is a roughly 6,700-square-mile autonomous republic situated in the North Caucasus of southern Russia and home to some 1.5 million people, the vast majority of whom are Muslim," notes NPR. "The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has said Kadyrov's regime 'maintains hegemony through the imposition of a purported 'traditional' version of Islam, which falsely claims to defend local belief and culture, and combat violent extremism.'" "'In reality, Kadyrov has [co-opted] Chechen religion and culture to support his brutal regime, which violates the secular constitution of the Russian Federation and international standards of freedom of religion or belief,' it added."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice told Yahoo Finance it plans to go public within the next 18 months at a valuation of $5.3 billion. Since being spun out of defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corporation in 2021, the company has "placed its bets on building out the growing space economy, from developing rocket propulsion technology to a commercial space station with Blue Origin." From the report: Its ambitions have fueled the development of its cargo space plane, the Dream Chaser, set to have its inaugural mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in the second half of this year. Built to land on any commercial runway, the plane will lower the barrier to entry into low-earth orbit and open up business opportunities, Vice said. "Since the 1960s, every science experiment or human being that's come back to earth from space, even today, is still landing in a capsule in the ocean," he said. "We think changing and revolutionizing the way that we bring things back from space, both humans and cargo, and landing [the spacecraft] back at a commercial runway will completely accelerate the new space economy." "We believe that the next big breakthrough products in oncology, longevity, and industrialized components like glass will be produced in low Earth orbit," Vice said, noting that many of those opportunities are likely to come from the development of commercial space stations to replace the decades-old ISS. Sierra Space has partnered with Blue Origin to build out the Orbital Reef, a commercially owned and operated space station, though recent reports have hinted at tension between the corporate partners. "We're transitioning from decades of government-run space stations with just a handful of government-trained astronauts to the full commercialization of low Earth orbit," Vice said. "We think that's going to create, we believe, probably the most profound industrial revolution and grow that space economy well over a trillion dollars by 2040."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: It was billed as a glass-walled city of the future, an ambitious centerpiece of the economic plan backed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to transition Saudi Arabia away from oil dependency. Now, however, plans for the mirror-clad desert metropolis called the Line have been scaled down and the project, which was envisaged to stretch 105 miles (170km) is expected to reach just a mile and a half by 2030. Dreamed up as a linear city that would eventually be home to about 9 million people on a footprint of just 13 sq miles, the Line is part of a wider Neom project. Now at least one contractor has begun dismissing workers. The scaling down of Prince Mohammed's most grandiose project was reported by Bloomberg, which said it had seen documents relating to the project.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Zack Whittaker and Carly Page report via TechCrunch: Microsoft has resolved a security lapse that exposed internal company files and credentials to the open internet. Security researchers Can Yoleri, Murat Ozfidan and Egemen Kochisarli with SOCRadar, a cybersecurity company that helps organizations find security weaknesses, discovered an open and public storage server hosted on Microsoft's Azure cloud service that was storing internal information relating to Microsoft's Bing search engine. The Azure storage server housed code, scripts and configuration files containing passwords, keys and credentials used by the Microsoft employees for accessing other internal databases and systems. But the storage server itself was not protected with a password and could be accessed by anyone on the internet. Yoleri told TechCrunch that the exposed data could potentially help malicious actors identify or access other places where Microsoft stores its internal files. Identifying those storage locations "could result in more significant data leaks and possibly compromise the services in use," Yoleri said. The researchers notified Microsoft of the security lapse on February 6, and Microsoft secured the spilling files on March 5. It's not known for how long the cloud server was exposed to the internet, or if anyone other than SOCRadar discovered the exposed data inside.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Liam Proven reports via The Register: Bad news for those who want to play with OpenVMS in non-production use. Older versions are disappearing, and the terms are getting much more restrictive. The corporation behind the continued development of OpenVMS, VMS Software, Inc. -- or VSI to its friends, if it has any left after this -- has announced the latest Updates to the Community Program. The news does not look good: you can't get the Alpha and Itanium versions any more, only a limited x86-64 edition. OpenVMS is one of the granddaddies of big serious OSes. A direct descendant of the OSes that inspired DOS, CP/M, OS/2, and Windows, as well as the native OS of the hardware on which Unix first went 32-bit, VMS has been around for nearly half a century. For decades, its various owners have offered various flavors of "hobbyist program" under which you could get licenses to install and run it for free, as long as it wasn't in production use. Since Compaq acquired DEC, then HP acquired Compaq, its prospects looked checkered. HP officially killed it off in 2013, then in 2014 granted it a reprieve and sold it off instead. New owner VSI ported it to x86-64, releasing that new version 9.2 in 2022. Around this time last year, we covered VSI adding AMD support and opening a hobbyist program of its own. It seems from the latest announcement that it has been disappointed by the reception: "Despite our initial aspirations for robust community engagement, the reality has fallen short of our expectations. The level of participation in activities such as contributing open source software, creating wiki articles, and providing assistance on forums has not matched the scale of the program. As a result, we find ourselves at a crossroads, compelled to reassess and recalibrate our approach." Although HPE stopped offering hobbyist licenses for the original VAX versions of OpenVMS in 2020, VSI continued to maintain OpenVMS 8 (in other words, the Alpha and Itanium editions) while it worked on version 9 for x86-64. VSI even offered a Student Edition, which included a freeware Alpha emulator and a copy of OpenVMS 8.4 to run inside it. Those licenses run out in 2025, and they won't be renewed. If you have vintage DEC Alpha or HP Integrity boxes with Itanic chips, you won't be able to get a legal licensed copy of OpenVMS for them, or renew the license of any existing installations -- unless you pay, of course. There will still be a Community license edition, but from now on it's x86-64 only. Although OpenVMS 9 mainly targets hypervisors anyway, it does support bare-metal operations on a single model of HPE server, the ProLiant DL380 Gen10. If you have one of them to play with -- well, tough. Now Community users only get a VM image, supplied as a VMWare .vmdk file. It contains a ready-to-go "OpenVMS system disk with OpenVMS, compilers and development tools installed." Its license runs for a year, after which you will get a fresh copy. This means you won't be able to configure your own system and keep it alive -- you'll have to recreate it, from scratch, annually. The only alternative for those with older systems is to apply to be an OpenVMS Ambassador.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian, with the caption: "The UK is hyperventilating about stories of shoplifting; though standing outside a shop and watching as a guy calmly gets off his bike, parks it, walks in and walks out with a pack of beer and cycles off -- and then seeing staff members rushing out -- was striking. So now it's throwing technical solutions at the problem..." From the report: The government is investing more than 55 million pounds in expanding facial recognition systems -- including vans that will scan crowded high streets -- as part of a renewed crackdown on shoplifting. The scheme was announced alongside plans for tougher punishments for serial or abusive shoplifters in England and Wales, including being forced to wear a tag to ensure they do not revisit the scene of their crime, under a new standalone criminal offense of assaulting a retail worker. The new law, under which perpetrators could be sent to prison for up to six months and receive unlimited fines, will be introduced via an amendment to the criminal justice bill that is working its way through parliament. The change could happen as early as the summer. The government said it would invest 55.5 million pounds over the next four years. The plan includes 4 million pounds for mobile units that can be deployed on high streets using live facial recognition in crowded areas to identify people wanted by the police -- including repeat shoplifters. "This Orwellian tech has no place in Britain," said Silkie Carlo, director of civil liberties at campaign group Big Brother Watch. "Criminals should be brought to justice, but papering over the cracks of broken policing with Orwellian tech is not the solution. It is completely absurd to inflict mass surveillance on the general public under the premise of fighting theft while police are failing to even turn up to 40% of violent shoplifting incidents or to properly investigate many more serious crimes."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Starting today, home Internet and mobile broadband providers in the US are required to display consumer labels with information on prices, speeds, and data allowances. "Today's nationwide launch of the Broadband Consumer Labels means internet service providers are now required to display consumer-friendly labels at the point of sale," the Federal Communications Commission said (PDF). "Labels are required for all standalone home or fixed Internet service or mobile broadband plans. Providers must display the label -- not simply an icon or link to the label -- in close proximity to an associated plan's advertisement." The labels are required now for providers with at least 100,000 subscribers, while ISPs with fewer customers have until October 10, 2024, to comply. "If a provider is not displaying their labels or has posted inaccurate information about its fees or service plans, consumers can file a complaint with the FCC Consumer Complaint Center," an agency webpage says. The October 10 date will also bring an additional requirement that providers "make the labels machine-readable to enable third parties to more easily collect and aggregate data for the purpose of creating comparison-shopping tools for consumers," the FCC said. The FCC issued a consumer advisory telling broadband users what to look for in the labels. Labels should include the monthly price, state whether it is an introductory rate, the amount of time that an introductory rate applies, and the price after any introductory rate expires. The labels must include any additional monthly charges, one-time fees, early termination fees, and taxes. Speed information should include typical download speed, upload speed, and latency. For data caps, the labels should state how much data is included with the monthly price and how much consumers have to pay for additional usage. Labels should also include links to information on discounts and service bundles, network management practices, and privacy policies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starting May 15th, almost all Google Photos users will be able to access the AI photo editing features previously limited to Pixel owners and Google One subscribers. All you'll need is a device with at least a 64-bit chip, 4GB of RAM, and either iOS 15 or Android 8.0. The Verge reports: Magic Editor is Google's generative AI photo editing tool, and it debuted as one of the headline AI features on the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro. Those kinds of features typically remain exclusive to new Pixels for six months after launch, and right on time, Google's bringing it to previous Pixel phones. But it's not stopping there; any Google Photos user with an Android or iOS device that meets the minimum requirements will be able to use it without a Google One subscription -- you'll just be limited to 10 saved edits per month. Pixel owners and paid subscribers, however, will get unlimited use. Older features like Photo Unblur and Magic Eraser -- which used to be available only to Pixel owners and certain Google One subscribers -- will be free for all Photos users. Google has a full list of these features on its Photos community site, and it includes things like editing portrait mode blur and lighting effects (useful, but not the cutting-edge stuff, for better or worse). Other generative AI features that launched with the Pixel 8 series, like Best Take and Audio Magic Eraser, are remaining exclusive to those newest Pixels, at least for now.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Joe Biden said he is "considering" a request from Australia to drop the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The BBC reports: The country's parliament recently passed a measure -- backed by PM Anthony Albanese -- calling for the return of Mr Assange to his native Australia. The US wants to extradite the 52-year-old from the UK on criminal charges over the leaking of military records. Mr Assange denies the charges, saying the leaks were an act of journalism. The president was asked about Australia's request on Wednesday and said: "We're considering it." Mr Assange, 52, is fighting extradition in the UK courts. The extradition was put on hold in March after London's High Court said the United States must provide assurances he would not face the death penalty. The High Court is due to evaluate any responses from the US authorities at the end of May. The measure passed the Australian parliament in February. Mr Albanese told MPs: "People will have a range of views about Mr Assange's conduct... But regardless of where people stand, this thing cannot just go on and on and on indefinitely."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bill introduced in the US Congress on Tuesday intends to force AI companies to reveal the copyrighted material they use to make their generative AI models. From a report: The legislation adds to a growing number of attempts from lawmakers, news outlets and artists to establish how AI firms use creative works like songs, visual art, books and movies to train their software-and whether those companies are illegally building their tools off copyrighted content. The California Democratic congressman Adam Schiff introduced the bill, the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, which would require that AI companies submit any copyrighted works in their training datasets to the Register of Copyrights before releasing new generative AI systems, which create text, images, music or video in response to users' prompts. The bill would need companies to file such documents at least 30 days before publicly debuting their AI tools, or face a financial penalty. Such datasets encompass billions of lines of text and images or millions of hours of music and movies. "AI has the disruptive potential of changing our economy, our political system, and our day-to-day lives. We must balance the immense potential of AI with the crucial need for ethical guidelines and protections," Schiff said in a statement. Whether major AI companies worth billions have made illegal use of copyrighted works is increasingly the source of litigation and government investigation. Schiff's bill would not ban AI from training on copyrighted material, but would put a sizable onus on companies to list the massive swath of works that they use to build tools like ChatGPT -- data that is usually kept private.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Motion Picture Association is going off on piracy again. During CinemaCon in Las Vegas, MPA CEO Charles Rivkin announced that the organization plans on working with Congress to pass rules blocking websites with pirated content. The Verge: The MPA is a trade association representing Hollywood studios, including Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Disney (it's also behind the ratings board that gives you an R if you say curse words too often). It has long lobbied for anti-piracy laws, but it seems the battle is heating up again. In his speech on Tuesday, Rivkin highlights what a major problem piracy in the US has become, saying it costs "hundreds of thousands of jobs" and "more than one billion in theatrical ticket sales." It's true: piracy has gone up in recent years. A report from piracy data analytics company Muso revealed that video piracy websites around the globe received 141 billion visits in 2023, making for a 12 percent increase when compared to 2019. The US and India made up most of these visits. But at the same time, the price to subscribe to a streaming service is higher than ever, and so is the cost of a movie ticket. The solution to stopping piracy, at least in Rivkin's eyes, is to prevent users from accessing piracy websites altogether.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: More books were called to be banned in 2023 across US schools and libraries than any other year on record, according to a new report from the American Library Association (ALA). Building on a surge that started in 2021, some 4,240 unique book titles were challenged last year -- a 65% increase from 2022, and the highest figure documented in over 20 years of tracking. Although the number of affected titles has grown dramatically, as groups increasingly target multiple books at once, overall censorship demands dropped slightly, down 2% to 1,247. Literature concerning race and gender was particularly contested, with autobiographical graphic novel Gender Queer named the most challenged library book of the year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: It's getting to be a bit much. Auto insurance prices have surged over the last couple years. March consumer inflation out Wednesday shows them up 22% compared to last year. Since the end of 2019 -- just before Covid hit -- they're up 45%. Why? That's where things get complicated. In a prophylactic press release released Wednesday morning, an insurance industry trade group cited "greatly increased the cost of repairing and replacing cars" due to inflation. As anyone who has shopped for a new or used car over the last couple years can tell you, costs have gone up. That goes for the costs of replacing minor parts like bumpers or mirrors as well. Insurers lost a lot of money on those replacement costs in 2021 and 2022, and are now trying to make that money back by raising rates a lot.Then there's also the the objectively atrocious driving record of Americans. Even before the pandemic, Americans were awful drivers compared to other high income countries, with auto death rates the highest among peer nations. High accident rates are reflected in higher costs of insurance. And of course there's also the old-fashioned profit motive. Insurers are trying to make money and raising rates is the way to do it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.