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CNN reports: TikTok appears to be coming back online just hours after President-elect Donald Trump pledged Sunday that he would sign an executive order Monday that aims to restore the banned app. Around 12 hours after first shutting itself down, U.S. users began to have access to TikTok on a web browser and in the app, although the page still showed a warning about the shutdown. The brief outage was "the first time in history the U.S. government has outlawed a widely popular social media network," reports NPR. Apple and Google removed TikTok from their app stores. (And Apple also removed Lemon8). The incoming president announced his pending executive order "in a post on his Truth Social account," reports the Associated Press, "as millions of TikTok users in the U.S. awoke to discover they could no longer access the TikTok app or platform." But two Republican Senators said Sunday that the incoming president doesn't have the power to pause the TikTok ban. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Peter Ricketts of Nebraska posted on X.com that "Now that the law has taken effect, there's no legal basis for any kind of 'extension' of its effective date. For TikTok to come back online in the future, ByteDance must agree to a sale... severing all ties between TikTok and Communist China. Only then will Americans be protected from the grave threat posted to their privacy and security by a communist-controlled TikTok." The Associated Press reports that the incoming president offered this rationale for the reprieve in his Truth Social post. "Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations."The law gives the sitting president authority to grant a 90-day extension if a viable sale is underway. Although investors made a few offers, ByteDance previously said it would not sell. In his post on Sunday, Trump said he "would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture," but it was not immediately clear if he was referring to the government or an American company... "A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S.," a pop-up message informed users who opened the TikTok app and tried to scroll through videos on Saturday night. "Unfortunately that means you can't use TikTok for now." The service interruption TikTok instituted hours earlier caught most users by surprise. Experts had said the law as written did not require TikTok to take down its platform, only for app stores to remove it. Current users had been expected to continue to have access to videos until the app stopped working due to a lack of updates... "We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned," read the pop-up message... Apple said the apps would remain on the devices of people who already had them installed, but in-app purchases and new subscriptions no longer were possible and that operating updates to iPhones and iPads might affect the apps' performance. In the nine months since Congress passed the sale-or-ban law, no clear buyers emerged, and ByteDance publicly insisted it would not sell TikTok. But Trump said he hoped his administration could facilitate a deal to "save" the app. TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to attend Trump's inauguration with a prime seating location. Chew posted a video late Saturday thanking Trump for his commitment to work with the company to keep the app available in the U.S. and taking a "strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship...." On Saturday, artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI submitted a proposal to ByteDance to create a new entity that merges Perplexity with TikTok's U.S. business, according to a person familiar with the matter... The article adds that TikTok "does not operate in China, where ByteDance instead offers Douyin, the Chinese sibling of TikTok that follows Beijing's strict censorship rules." Sunday morning Republican House speaker Mike Johnson offered his understanding of Trump's planned executive order, according to Politico. Speaking on Meet the Press, Johnson said "the way we read that is that he's going to try to force along a true divestiture, changing of hands, the ownership. "It's not the platform that members of Congress are concerned about. It's the Chinese Communist Party and their manipulation of the algorithms." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader ArchieBunker for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The JavaScript runtime Node.js can execute TypeScript (Microsoft's JavaScript-derived language with static typing). But now it can do it even better, explains Marco Ippolito of the Node.js steering committee:In August 2024 Node.js introduced a new experimental feature, Type Stripping, aimed at addressing a longstanding challenge in the Node.js ecosystem: running TypeScript with no configuration. Enabled by default in Node.js v23.6.0, this feature is on its way to becoming stable. TypeScript has reached incredible levels of popularity and has been the most requested feature in all the latest Node.js surveys. Unlike other alternatives such as CoffeeScript or Flow, which never gained similar traction, TypeScript has become a cornerstone of modern development. While it has been supported in Node.js for some time through loaders, they relied heavily on configuration and user libraries. This reliance led to inconsistencies between different loaders, making them difficult to use interchangeably. The developer experience suffered due to these inconsistencies and the extra setup required... The goal is to make development faster and simpler, eliminating the overhead of configuration while maintaining the flexibility that developers expect... TypeScript is not just a language, it also relies on a toolchain to implement its features. The primary tool for this purpose is tsc, the TypeScript compiler CLI... Type checking is tightly coupled to the implementation of tsc, as there is no formal specification for how the language's type system should behave. This lack of a specification means that the behavior of tsc is effectively the definition of TypeScript's type system. tsc does not follow semantic versioning, so even minor updates can introduce changes to type checking that may break existing code. Transpilation, on the other hand, is a more stable process. It involves converting TypeScript code into JavaScript by removing types, transforming certain syntax constructs, and optionally "downleveling" the JavaScript to allow modern syntax to execute on older JavaScript engines. Unlike type checking, transpilation is less likely to change in breaking ways across versions of tsc. The likelihood of breaking changes is further reduced when we only consider the minimum transpilation needed to make the TypeScript code executable - and exclude downleveling of new JavaScript features not yet available in the JavaScript engine but available in TypeScript... Node.js, before enabling it by default, introduced --experimental-strip-types. This mode allows running TypeScript files by simply stripping inline types without performing type checking or any other code transformation. This minimal technique is known as Type Stripping. By excluding type checking and traditional transpilation, the more unstable aspects of TypeScript, Node.js reduces the risk of instability and mostly sidesteps the need to track minor TypeScript updates. Moreover, this solution does not require any configuration in order to execute code... Node.js eliminates the need for source maps by replacing the removed syntax with blank spaces, ensuring that the original locations of the code and structure remain intact. It is transparent - the code that runs is the code the author wrote, minus the types... "As this experimental feature evolves, the Node.js team will continue collaborating with the TypeScript team and the community to refine its behavior and reduce friction. You can check the roadmap for practical next steps..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2022 Google released a tool to easily scan for vulnerabilities in dependencies named OSV-Scanner. "Together with the open source community, we've continued to build this tool, adding remediation features," according to Google's security blog, "as well as expanding ecosystem support to 11 programming languages and 20 package manager formats... Users looking for an out-of-the-box vulnerability scanning CLI tool should check out OSV-Scanner, which already provides comprehensive language package scanning capabilities..." Thursday they also announced an extensible library for "software composition analysis" scanning (as well as file-system scanning) named OSV-SCALIBR (Open Source Vulnerability - Software Composition Analysis LIBRary). The new library "combines Google's internal vulnerability management expertise into one scanning library with significant new capabilities such as: Software composition analysis for installed packages, standalone binaries, as well as source code OSes package scanning on Linux (COS, Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL, and much more), Windows, and Mac Artifact and lockfile scanning in major language ecosystems (Go, Java, Javascript, Python, Ruby, and much more) Vulnerability scanning tools such as weak credential detectors for Linux, Windows, and Mac Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) generation in SPDX and CycloneDX, the two most popular document formats Optimization for on-host scanning of resource constrained environments where performance and low resource consumption is critical"OSV-SCALIBR is now the primary software composition analysis engine used within Google for live hosts, code repos, and containers. It's been used and tested extensively across many different products and internal tools to help generate SBOMs, find vulnerabilities, and help protect our users' data at Google scale. We offer OSV-SCALIBR primarily as an open source Go library today, and we're working on adding its new capabilities into OSV-Scanner as the primary CLI interface."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fortune reports 18% of workers have engaged in "career catfishing" - getting a job offer, but then refusing to show up on the first day of work. And when someone posted Fortune's article to Reddit's antiwork subreddit, it drew 2,100 upvotes -- and another 84 comments. ("I love doing this...! This feels really great to do after a company has jerked you around, and basically said that several other people were in line ahead of you... after five interviews.") But Fortune reports there's other sources of frustration:At the moment, Gen Z is contending with an onerous battle to land an entry-level, full-time role. The class of 2025 is set to apply to more jobs than the graduating class prior, already submitting 24% more applications on average this past summer than seniors did last year. Furthermore, the class of 2024 applied to 64% more jobs than the cohort before them, according to job platform Handshake. To make matters all the more bleak, the number of job listings has dwindled from 2023 levels, generating deeper frenzy and more intense competition for the roles listed. That adds up to a hiring managers' market and senior executives are playing hardball; only 12% of mid-level executives think entry-level workers are prepared to join the workforce, per a report from technology education provider General Assembly. About one in four say they wouldn't hire today's entry-level employees. Yet, that's not really the point of entry-level roles, points out Jourdan Hathaway, General Assembly's chief business officer. By definition, it's a position that requires investment in a young adult, she explained. "The entry-level employee pipeline is broken," Hathaway wrote in a statement. "Companies must rethink how they source, train, and onboard employees." The especially competitive hiring landscape could be forcing Gen Zers to accept the first gig they can get because the job market is so dire - only to later regret it and not show up the first day. The article also acknowledges that "employers themselves have a role in the two-way communication - or lack thereof - between hire and hirer."Almost 80% of hiring managers admitted they've stopped responding to candidates during the application process, according to a survey of 625 hiring managers from Resume Genius. Gen Zers say that their ghosting is in reaction to the company's behavior. More than a third of applicants who have purposefully dropped the ball say it was because a recruiter was rude to them or misled them about a position, according to Monster... In part, it's likely AI that's fueling said ghosting. AI has become more integrated into the hiring process, becoming a screener that rejects resumes without ever reaching a human person's eyes. That phenomenon possibly fuels both sides' tendency to be non-responsive...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNN has the latest on "a startling discovery made public in July that metallic rocks were apparently producing oxygen on the Pacific Ocean's seabed, where no light can penetrate. "Initial research suggested potato-size nodules rich in metals, predominantly found 4,000 meters (13,100 feet) below the surface in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, released an electrical charge, splitting seawater into oxygen and hydrogen through electrolysis." The unprecedented natural phenomenon challenges the idea that oxygen can only be made from sunlight via photosynthesis. Andrew Sweetman, a professor at the UK's Scottish Association for Marine Science who was behind the find, is embarking on a three-year project to investigate the production of "dark" oxygen further... Uncovering dark oxygen revealed just how little is known about the deep ocean, and the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, or CCZ, in particular. The region is being explored for the deep-sea mining of rare metals contained in the rock nodules. The latter are formed over millions of years, and the metals play a key role in new and green technologies... Understanding the phenomenon better could also help space scientists find life beyond Earth, [Sweetman] added... Officials at NASA are interested in the research on dark oxygen production because it could inform scientific understanding of how life might be sustained on other planets without direct sunlight, Sweetman said. The space agency wants to run experiments to understand the amount of energy required to potentially produce oxygen at higher pressures that occur on Enceladus and Europa, the icy moons of Saturn and Jupiter, respectively, he added. Those moons are among the targets for investigating the possibility of life. Deep-sea mining companies are aiming to mine the cobalt, nickel, copper, lithium and manganese contained in the nodules for use in solar panels, electric car batteries and other green technology. Some companies have taken issue with Sweetman's research. Critics say deep-sea mining could irrevocably damage the pristine underwater environment and that it could disrupt the way carbon is stored in the ocean, contributing to the climate crisis. CNN's article also notes Massachusetts microbiologist Emil Ruff, who found unexpected oxygen far below the Canadian prairie in water isolated from the atmosphere for more than 40,000 years. "Nature keeps surprising us," he said. "There are so many things that people have said, 'Oh, this is impossible,' and then later it turns out it's not."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The universe is expanding faster than predicted by theoretical models," writes Phys.org, "and faster than can be explained by our current understanding of physics." There's now been new confirmation of this (published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters) by a team led by Dan Scolnic, an associate professor of physics at Duke University. And this means the so-called Hubble tension "now turns into a crisis," said Dan Scolnic, who led the research team... This is saying, to some respect, that our model of cosmology might be broken."Measuring the universe requires a cosmic ladder, which is a succession of methods used to measure the distances to celestial objects, with each method, or "rung," relying on the previous for calibration. The ladder used by Scolnic was created by a separate team using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which is observing more than 100,000 galaxies every night from its vantage point at the Kitt Peak National Observatory. Scolnic recognized that this ladder could be anchored closer to Earth with a more precise distance to the Coma Cluster, one of the galaxy clusters nearest to us. "The DESI collaboration did the really hard part, their ladder was missing the first rung," said Scolnic. "I knew how to get it, and I knew that that would give us one of the most precise measurements of the Hubble constant we could get, so when their paper came out, I dropped absolutely everything and worked on this non-stop." To get a precise distance to the Coma cluster, Scolnic and his collaborators used the light curves from 12 Type Ia supernovae within the cluster. Just like candles lighting a dark path, Type Ia supernovae have a predictable luminosity that correlates to their distance, making them reliable objects for distance calculations. The team arrived at a distance of about 320 million light-years, nearly in the center of the range of distances reported across 40 years of previous studies - a reassuring sign of its accuracy. "This measurement isn't biased by how we think the Hubble tension story will end," said Scolnic. "This cluster is in our backyard, it has been measured long before anyone knew how important it was going to be." The results? "It matches the universe's expansion rate as other teams have recently measured it," writes Phys.org, "but not as our current understanding of physics predicts it. The longstanding question is: is the flaw in the measurements or in the models? Scolnic's team's new results add tremendous support to the emerging picture that the root of the Hubble tension lies in the models..." And the article closes with this quote from Scolnic:"Ultimately, even though we're swapping out so many of the pieces, we all still get a very similar number. So, for me, this is as good of a confirmation as it's ever gotten. We're at a point where we're pressing really hard against the models we've been using for two and a half decades, and we're seeing that things aren't matching up," said Scolnic. "This may be reshaping how we think about the universe, and it's exciting! There are still surprises left in cosmology, and who knows what discoveries will come next?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jersey is an island in the English channel, "a self-governing British Crown Dependency near the coast of northwest France," according to Wikipedia - population: 103,267. But now some residents of Jersey "have been recommended bloodletting to reduce high concentrations of 'forever chemicals' in their blood," reports the Guardian, "after tests showed some islanders have levels that can lead to health problems."Private drinking water supplies in Jersey were polluted by the use of firefighting foams containing PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) at the island's airport, which were manufactured by the U.S. multinational 3M. .. Bloodletting draws blood from a vein in measured amounts. It is safe and the body replenishes the blood naturally, but it must be repeated until clean... In response to the blood results, the government established an independent PFAS scientific advisory panel to advise public policy. The panel's first report recommended that the government should look at offering bloodletting to affected residents. "Studies show that bloodletting is an effective way to lower levels of PFAS in blood," said Ian Cousins, one of the panel members, though he added that there were no guarantees the process would prevent or cure diseases associated with the chemicals. The therapy costs about 100,000 upfront and then as much as 200,000 a year to treat 50 people. The panel is also considering the benefit of the drug cholestyramine, which a study has shown reduces PFAS in blood more quickly and cheaply, albeit with possible side effects. The government says it plans to launch a clinical service by early 2025. Contamination persisted on the island for decades. "We know they started to use 3M's firefighting foam in the 1960s and then ramped up in the 1990s in weekly fire training exercises, after which foam started to appear in nearby streams," said Jeremy Snowdon, a former Jersey airport engineer who drank contaminated water for years. He has measured elevated levels of PFAS in his own blood and has high cholesterol. The article includes this quote from one of the 88 residents of the polluted area found to have high levels of PFAS after blood testing. "I just want this out of my body. I don't want to end up with bladder cancer."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese social-networking site RedNote became the #1 most-downloaded app in America, reports the Associated Press, with some new users considering it a way to protest America's possible TikTok ban. So what happened next?They were met with surprise, curiosity and in-jokes on Xiaohongshu - literally, "Little Red Book" - whose users saw English-language posts take over feeds almost overnight. Americans introduced themselves with hashtag TikTok refugees, ask me anything attitude and posting photos of their pets to pay their hosts' "cat tax." Parents swapped stories about raising kids and Swifties from both countries, of course, quickly found each other. It's a rare moment of direct contact between two online worlds that are usually kept apart by language, corporate boundaries, and China's strict system of online censorship that blocks access to nearly all international media and social media services... Xiaohongshu's 300 million monthly active users are overwhelmingly Chinese - so much so that parts of its interface have no English-language version... [Press reports suggest about a million of TikTok's 170 million users tried switching to RedNote this week...] On the platform, two versions of the TikTok refugee hashtag have over 24 million posts, with related posts appearing at the top of many users' feeds. A large number of American users say they've received a warm welcome from the community, with #TikTokrefugee. "Welcome the global villagers" remains the top one trending topic on Xiaohongshu, with 8.9 million views on Thursday. Users from both countries are comparing notes on grocery prices, rent, health insurance, medical bills and the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Parents talk about what the kids learn in school in two countries. Some have already joined book clubs and are building up a community. American users asked how Chinese see the LGBTQ community and got warned that it was among sensitive topics, Chinese users taught Americans what are sensitive topics and key words to avoid censorship on the app. Chinese students pulled out their English homework, looking for help. Chinese state media, which have long dismissed U.S. allegations against TikTok, have welcomed the protest against the ban. People's Daily [the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party], said in an op-ed about TikTok refugees on Thursday that says the TikTok refugees found a "new home," and "openness, communication, and mutual learning are the unchanging themes of mankind and the heartfelt desires of people from all countries." Making the most of the moment is Jianlu Bi, who is apparently a senior content producer for Beijing's state-run China Global Television Network, which Wikipedia describes as "under the control of the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party". Friday Jianlu Bi crafted an article claiming "surprising" and "stark contrasts" were revealed:While the United States is often portrayed as a land of limitless opportunity, many American netizens have shared their struggles with high living costs, particularly in urban areas. One common theme is the exorbitant cost of healthcare. "I just got a simple bill for a routine checkup and it was over $500," shared one American user. "I can't imagine what a serious illness would cost! I feel like I'm constantly on the brink of financial ruin due to medical expenses." In contrast, Chinese netizens often express surprise at the affordability of many goods and services in their home country. For instance, the cost of housing, particularly in smaller cities, is often significantly lower in China compared to the United States.... This disparity is often attributed to factors such as government policies, economic development, and cultural differences... Traditional media narratives often present simplified and often biased portrayals of China and the United States. For example, the U.S. is often portrayed as a land of opportunity with limitless possibilities, while China is sometimes depicted as a country with limited freedoms. Xiaohongshu, on the other hand, provides a platform for ordinary people to share their authentic experiences and perspectives... A Chinese student studying in the U.S. shared, "I was surprised to learn that many of my classmates are working part-time jobs to cover their tuition and living expenses. This is very different from the image of affluent American students I had in my mind. It really opened my eyes to the realities of life for many young people in the U.S." "As social media continues to evolve, these platforms will undoubtedly play an increasingly important role in shaping global perceptions..." the article concludes. Article suggested by long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The ratio of vacant U.S. jobs to jobless workers "has fallen from a record of 2 in 2022 to 1.1 in November," reports the Wall Street Journal - which adds that "the balance of power between employers and employees has shifted as the labor market has gone from white-hot to merely solid." JP Morgan's five-days-a-week return-to-office mandate was only the beginning, with big companies like Amazon and Dell "tightening remote-work policies, shrinking travel budgets and cutting back on benefits... Companies are slashing perks such as college-tuition assistance and time off for a sick pet... "76% of [U.S.] job growth in the past year has been in healthcare and education, leisure and hospitality, and government. In fields such as finance, information, and professional and business services, job growth has been far weaker. While a shift in leverage to employers might have shown up in layoffs or wage cuts in the past, now it is more subtle, often in changes to working conditions. For example, knowing that some workers will quit rather than return to the office, some companies are ending remote work as a way of trimming payroll. "Quiet quitting" - workers who slacked off rather than quit - has been replaced by "quiet cutting" - employers who cut jobs without actually announcing job cuts... Michael Gibbs, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, said the new mandates might simply be a message to workers that times have changed. "Firms are trying to reset expectations," he said... [After refusing her employers return-to-office four-days-a-week mandate, Mayrian] Sanz, who now works as an independent business and leadership coach, said she applied for 25 to 30 jobs listed as remote but initially got no responses. When some hiring managers finally replied, they had a surprise: Jobs listed as remote would now be in-office. "They just say everything is shifting to going back to the office," she said. Among tech workers, the share receiving perks such as paid volunteer hours, college-tuition reimbursement, free financial advice and mental-health programs all declined by about 4 percentage points in 2024 from 2023, according to Dice, a technology job board. Average bonuses fell by more than $800, from $15,011 to $14,194. Meanwhile, Netflix has quietly backed off from its unlimited parental leave in a child's first year, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. A company spokesman said at that time that employees have the freedom and flexibility to determine what is best for them. The article notes that "The actual impact of return-to-office directives remains to be seen," with economists "skeptical" the directives make companies more productive and faster-growing:Many workers now being called in were already spending some time in their cubicles. Nicholas Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford University, said most of the benefits of collaboration can be achieved with just a few days in the office, while some tasks that require concentration are better done at home. Elsewhere the Wall Street Journal that looking for a job "is set to get less miserable this year," since roughly two-thirds of U.S. employers plan to add permanent roles within the next six months, "according to a new survey by staffing and consulting firm Robert Half." And Computerworld notes that the IT unemployment rate is now just 2% in the U.S. (according to official figures from the US Bureau of Labor statistics).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The BBC brings news from the Baltic Sea. After critical undersea cables were damaged or severed last year, "NATO has launched a new mission to increase the surveillance of ships..."Undersea infrastructure is essential not only for electricity supply but also because more than 95% of internet traffic is secured via undersea cables, [said NATO head Mark Rutte], adding that "1.3 million kilometres (800,000 miles) of cables guarantee an estimated 10 trillion-dollar worth of financial transactions every day". In a post on X, he said Nato would do "what it takes to ensure the safety and security of our critical infrastructure and all that we hold dear".... Estonia's Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said in December that damage to submarine infrastructure had become "so frequent" that it cast doubt on the idea the damage could be considered "accidental" or "merely poor seamanship". The article also has new details about a late-December cable-cutting by the Eagle S (which was then boarded by Finland's coast guard and steered into Finnish waters). "On Monday, Risto Lohi of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation told Reuters that the Eagle S was threatening to cut a second power cable and a gas pipe between Finland and Estonia at the time it was seized." And there's reports that the ship was loaded with spying equipment. NATO's new surveillance of the Baltic Sea will include "uncrewed surface vessels," according to defense-news web site TWZ.com:The uncrewed surface vessels [or USVs], also known as drone boats, will help establish an enhanced common operating picture to give participating nations a better sense of potential threats and speed up any response. It is the first time NATO will use USVs in this manner, said a top alliance commander... There will be at least 20 USVs assigned [a NATO spokesman told The War Zone Friday]... In the first phase of the experiment, the USVs will "have the capabilities under human control" while "later phases will include greater autonomy." The USVs will augment the dozen or so vessels as well as an unspecified number of crewed maritime patrol aircraft committed One highly-placed NATO official tells the site that within weeks "we will begin to use these ships to give a persistent, 24-7 surveillance of critical areas." Last week the U.K. government also announced "an advanced UK-led reaction system to track potential threats to undersea infrastructure and monitor the Russian shadow fleet." The system "harnesses AI to assess data from a range of sources, including the Automatic Identification System (AIS) ships use to broadcast their position, to calculate the risk posed by each vessel entering areas of interest."Harnessing the power of AI, this UK-led system is a major innovation which allows us the unprecedented ability to monitor large areas of the sea with a comparatively small number of resources, helping us stay secure at home and strong abroad.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new law is being considered by New York's state legislature, reports a local news outlet. "if passed, will require anyone buying a 3D printer to pass a background check. If you can't legally own a firearm, you won't be able to buy one of these printers..."It is illegal to print most gun parts in New York. Attorney Greg Rinckey believes the proposal is an overreach. "I think this is also gonna face some constitutional problems. I mean, it really comes down to a legal parsing of what are you printing and at what point is it technically a firearm?" [Ascent Fabrication owner Joe] Fairley thinks lawmakers should shift their focus on those partial gun kits that produce the metal firing components. Another possibility is to require printer manufacturers to install software that prevents gun parts from being printed. "They would need to agree on some algorithm to look at the part and say nope, that is a gun component, you're not allowed to print that part somehow," said Fairley. "But I feel like it would be extremely difficult to get to that point."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A county transit police detective fed a poor-quality image to an AI-powered facial recognition program, remembers the Washington Post, leading to the arrest of "Christopher Gatlin, a 29-year-old father of four who had no apparent ties to the crime scene nor a history of violent offenses." He was unable to post the $75,000 cash bond required, and "jailed for a crime he says he didn't commit, it would take Gatlin more than two years to clear his name."A Washington Post investigation into police use of facial recognition software found that law enforcement agencies across the nation are using the artificial intelligence tools in a way they were never intended to be used: as a shortcut to finding and arresting suspects without other evidence... The Post reviewed documents from 23 police departments where detailed records about facial recognition use are available and found that 15 departments spanning 12 states arrested suspects identified through AI matches without any independent evidence connecting them to the crime - in most cases contradicting their own internal policies requiring officers to corroborate all leads found through AI. Some law enforcement officers using the technology appeared to abandon traditional policing standards and treat software suggestions as facts, The Post found. One police report referred to an uncorroborated AI result as a "100% match." Another said police used the software to "immediately and unquestionably" identify a suspected thief. Gatlin is one of at least eight people wrongfully arrested in the United States after being identified through facial recognition... All of the cases were eventually dismissed. Police probably could have eliminated most of the people as suspects before their arrest through basic police work, such as checking alibis, comparing tattoos, or, in one case, following DNA and fingerprint evidence left at the scene. Some statistics from the article about the eight wrongfully-arrested people:In six cases police failed to check alibisIn two cases police ignored evidence that contradicted their theory In five cases police failed to collect key pieces of evidenceIn three cases police ignored suspects' physical characteristics In six cases police relied on problematic witness statementsThe article provides two examples of police departments forced to pay $300,000 settlements after wrongful arrests caused by AI mismatches. But "In interviews with The Post, all eight people known to have been wrongly arrested said the experience had left permanent scars: lost jobs, damaged relationships, missed payments on car and home loans. Some said they had to send their children to counseling to work through the trauma of watching their mother or father get arrested on the front lawn. "Most said they also developed a fear of police."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America's Federal Trade Commission has been "raising antitrust concerns" about them for years, reports NBC News. The latest? America's three largest drug middlemen "inflated the costs of numerous life-saving medications by billions of dollars over the past few years, the FTC said in a report Tuesday."The top pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) - CVS Health's Caremark Rx, Cigna's Express Scripts and UnitedHealth Group's OptumRx - generated roughly $7.3 billion through price hikes over about five years starting in 2017, the FTC said. The "excess" price hikes affected generic drugs used to treat heart disease, HIV and cancer, among other conditions, with some increases more than 1,000% of the national average costs of acquiring the medications, the commission said. The FTC also said these so-called Big Three health care companies - which it estimates administer 80% of all prescriptions in the U.S. - are inflating drug prices "at an alarming rate, which means there is an urgent need for policymakers to address it...." Some of the steepest drug markups were "hundreds and thousands of percent," according to Tuesday's report, which highlights just how profitable specialty drugs have become for the three leading PBMs. Cancer drugs alone made up nearly half of the $7.3 billion, the commission wrote, with multiple sclerosis medications accounting for another 25%. Dispensing highly marked-up specialty drugs was a massive income stream for the companies in 2021, the FTC found. Out of tens of thousands of drugs dispensed, the top 10 specialty generics alone made up nearly 11% of the companies' pharmacy-related operating income that year, the agency estimated. Across the 51 drugs the agency analyzed, the Big Three's price-markup revenue surged from $522 million in 2017 to $2.1 billion in 2021, the report said. "The FTC found that 22 percent of specialty drugs dispensed by PBM-affiliated pharmacies were marked up by more than 1,000 percent," reports The Hill, "while 41 percent were marked up between 100 and 1,000 percent. Among those drugs marked up by more than 1,000 percent, half of them were marked up by more than 2,000 percent." And the nonprofit site progressive news site Common Dreams shares some examples from the FTC's 60-page report:"For the pulmonary hypertension drug tadalafil (generic Adcirca), for example, pharmacies purchased the drug at an average of $27 in 2022, yet the Big Three PBMs marked up the drug by $2,079 and paid their affiliated pharmacies $2,106, on average, for a 30-day supply of the medication on commercial claims," the publication notes. That's a staggering average markup of 7,736%... The new analysis follows a July 2024 report that revealed Big Three PBM-affiliated pharmacies received 68% of the dispensing revenue generated by specialty drugs in 2023, a 14% increase from 2016... Responding to the FTC report, Emma Freer, senior policy analyst for healthcare at the American Economic Liberties Project - a corporate accountability and antitrust advocacy group - said in a statement Tuesday that "the FTC's second interim report lays bare the blatant profiteering by PBM giants, which are marking up lifesaving drugs like cancer, HIV, and multiple sclerosis treatments by thousands of percent and forcing patients to pay the price."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The next great space telescope will study distant galaxies and faraway planets from an orbital outpost about a million miles from Earth," writes the Washington Post. "But first it has to be put together, piece by piece, in a cavernous chamber at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland." One long-time NASA worker calls it "the largest clean room in the free world," and the Post notes everyone wears white gowns and surgical masks "to keep hardware from being contaminated by humans. No dust allowed. No stray hairs. One wall is entirely covered by HEPA filters."The place is known as the Clean Room, or sometimes the High Bay. It is 125 feet long, 100 feet wide, 90 feet high, with almost as much volume as the Capitol Rotunda. NASA boasts that in the Clean Room you could put nearly 30 tractor-trailers side by side on the floor and stack them 10 high... About two dozen workers clustered around towering pieces of hardware, some twice or three times the height of a typical person. When stacked and integrated, these components will form the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The assembly of the telescope ramped up this fall, with 600 workers aiming to get everything integrated and tested by late 2026. NASA has committed to launching the telescope no later than May 2027. The telescope will be roughly the size of the Hubble Space Telescope, but not quite as long (a "stubby Hubble," some call it). What the astronomy community and the general public will receive in exchange for the considerable taxpayer investment of nearly $4 billion is an instrument that can do what other telescopes can't. It will have a sprawling field of view, about 100 times that of the Hubble or Webb space telescopes. And it will be able to pivot quickly across the night sky to new targets and download tremendous amounts of data that will be instantly available to the researchers. A primary goal of the Roman is to understand "dark energy," the mysterious driver of the accelerating expansion of space. But it will also attempt to study the atmospheres of exoplanets - worlds orbiting distant stars... The main element, informally referred to as "the telescope" but officially called the "optical telescope assembly," showed up this fall. It was originally built as a spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. That's right: It was built to look down at Earth, rather than at the rest of the universe. The NRO decided more than a decade ago that it didn't need it, and gave it, along with another, identical spy satellite, to NASA. Roman's wide-angle view of deep space, its maneuverability and ability to download massive amounts of data makes it optimized as a dark energy telescope. And it will also study the effects of dark matter, which comprises about 25 percent of the universe but remains a ghostly presence.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Scientists have just resurrected 'ELIZA,' the world's first chatbot, from long-lost computer code," reports LiveScience, "and it still works extremely well." (Click in the vintage black-and-green rectangle for a blinking-cursor prompt...)Using dusty printouts from MIT archives, these "software archaeologists" discovered defunct code that had been lost for 60 years and brought it back to life. ELIZA was developed in the 1960s by MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum and named for Eliza Doolittle, the protagonist of the play "Pygmalion," who was taught how to speak like an aristocratic British woman. As a language model that the user could interact with, ELIZA had a significant impact on today's artificial intelligence (AI), the researchers wrote in a paper posted to the preprint database arXiv Sunday (Jan. 12). The "DOCTOR" script written for ELIZA was programmed to respond to questions as a psychotherapist would. For example, ELIZA would say, "Please tell me your problem." If the user input "Men are all alike," the program would respond, "In what way." Weizenbaum wrote ELIZA in a now-defunct programming language he invented, called Michigan Algorithm Decoder Symmetric List Processor (MAD-SLIP), but it was almost immediately copied into the language Lisp. With the advent of the early internet, the Lisp version of ELIZA went viral, and the original version became obsolete. Experts thought the original 420-line ELIZA code was lost until 2021, when study co-author Jeff Shrager, a cognitive scientist at Stanford University, and Myles Crowley, an MIT archivist, found it among Weizenbaum's papers. "I have a particular interest in how early AI pioneers thought," Shrager told Live Science in an email. "Having computer scientists' code is as close to having a record of their thoughts, and as ELIZA was - and remains, for better or for worse - a touchstone of early AI, I want to know what was in his mind...." Even though it was intended to be a research platform for human-computer communication, "ELIZA was such a novelty at the time that its 'chatbotness' overwhelmed its research purposes," Shrager said. I just remember that time 23 years ago when someone connected a Perl version of ELIZA to "an AOL Instant Messenger account that has a high rate of 'random' people trying to start conversations" to "put ELIZA in touch with the real world..." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader MattSparkes for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the New York Post:Generation Z's recent foray into the corporate world has been an eye-popping escapade plagued by their "annoying" workplace habits and helicopter parents accompanying them on interviews. Now, newcomers to the 9-to-5 grind are inflicting a fresh new level of hell onto the workforce with a trending act of defiance known as "career catfishing." That means "a successful candidate accepted a job and then never showed up," writes Fortune, citing a survey of 1,000 U.K. employees conducted by CV Genius. The New York Post notes researchers "found that a staggering 34% of 20-somethings skip Day 1 of work, sans communicating with their new employer, as a demonstration of autonomy."After drudging through the ever-exasperating job hunting process - which often includes submitting dozens of lengthy applications, suffering through endless rounds of interviews and anxiously awaiting updates from sluggish hiring managers - the Z's are apparently "catfishing" jobs to prove that they, rather than their prospective employers, have all the power. But the rebellious babes aren't the only ones pulling fast ones on new bosses. A surprising 24% of millennials, staffers ranging in age from 28 to 43, have taken a shine to career catfishing, too, per the findings. However, only 11% of Gen Xers, hirelings ages 44 to 59, and 7% of baby boomers, personnel over age 60, have joined in on the office treachery. Unlike their older colleagues, Gen Zs are apparently more concerned about prioritizing their personal needs and goals than kowtowing to the demands of corporate culture. Fortune agrees that "Gen Z applicants aren't alone in going no- and low-contact during the recruiting process. Some 74% of employers now admit that ghosting is a facet of the hiring landscape, according to a 2023 Indeed survey of thousands of job seekers and employers..."That being said, simply not showing up to work could prove unsustainable in the long run. Like many young workers before them, Gen Zers have garnered a poor reputation with employers. Hiring managers have labeled them as the most difficult generation to work with, according to a Resume Genius report. The report found employees also admitted to practicing "quiet vacationing" (taking time off without telling your boss) and "coffee badging" (grabbing coffee in the office before returning home)...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Bumble founder and executive chair Whitney Wolfe Herd, who stepped down as CEO at the beginning of 2024, is returning to the post in mid-March. Former Slack CEO Lidiane Jones, who succeeded Herd, has resigned for "personal reasons" and will remain in the role until Wolfe Herd takes over. "As I step into the role of CEO, I'm energized and fully committed to Bumble's success, our mission of creating meaningful, equitable relationships, and our opportunity ahead," Wolfe Herd says in a statement. "We have exciting innovation ahead for Bumble in this bold new chapter." Bumble's share price has dropped by half since the app introduced a redesign and feature in April that let men send the first message in response to prewritten questions. "Bumble gained popularity in part because it was set up for women to message their matches first," notes The Verge. "In Bumble's most recent earnings report, it said that the number of paying users had increased from 3.8 million to 4.3 million over the last year, however, average revenue per paying user dropped from $23.42 to $21.17, and its total revenue dropped slightly."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nintendo released Donkey Kong Country Returns HD earlier this week, with fans noticing that the original team members at Retro are not individually credited in the updated version. "Instead, the credits state that it was 'based on the work' of Retro Studios, while the team at Forever Entertainment gets its credits for working on the remaster," reports GameSpot. In a statement issued to Eurogamer, a Nintendo spokesperson said: "We believe in giving proper credit for anyone involved in making or contributing to a game's creation, and value the contributions that all staff make during the development process." From the report: That statement doesn't really address why the original team's names were excluded from the credits, and this has happened before. In 2023, the Retro Studios developers behind Metroid Prime were left out of the credits for Metroid Prime Remastered. Similarly, external translators voiced their frustrations last year because Nintendo didn't credit them for their work either. This story has been largely overshadowed by the reveal of Switch 2 earlier this week. It seems likely that the Donkey Kong Country franchise will be revisited on that system as well. However, it's not among the games rumored for Switch 2. In the meantime, the bizarre Donkey Kong Country animated TV series is still available to watch on Prime Video.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Smithsonian Magazine reports: A homeowner on Prince Edward Island in Canada has had a very unusual near-death experience: A meteorite landed exactly where he'd been standing roughly two minutes earlier. What's more, his home security camera caught the impact on video -- capturing a rare clip that might be the first known recording of both the visual and audio of a meteorite striking the planet. The shocking event took place in July 2024 and was announced in a statement by the University of Alberta on Monday. "It sounded like a loud, crashing, gunshot bang," the homeowner, Joe Velaidum, tells the Canadian Press' Lyndsay Armstrong. Velaidum wasn't home to hear the sound in person, however. Last summer, he and his partner Laura Kelly noticed strange, star-shaped, grey debris in front of their house after returning from a walk with their dogs. They checked their security camera footage, and that's when they saw and heard it: a small rock plummeting through the sky and smashing into their walkway. It landed so quickly that the space rock itself is only visible in two of the video's frames.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI has developed a language model designed for engineering proteins, capable of converting regular cells into stem cells. It marks the company's first venture into biological data and demonstrates AI's potential for unexpected scientific discoveries. An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he was "confident" his company knows how to build an AGI, adding that "superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own." The protein engineering project started a year ago when Retro Biosciences, a longevity research company based in San Francisco, approached OpenAI about working together. That link-up did not happen by chance. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, personally funded Retro with $180 million, as MIT Technology Review first reported in 2023. Retro has the goal of extending the normal human lifespan by 10 years. For that, it studies what are called Yamanaka factors. Those are a set of proteins that, when added to a human skin cell, will cause it to morph into a young-seeming stem cell, a type that can produce any other tissue in the body. [...] OpenAI's new model, called GPT-4b micro, was trained to suggest ways to re-engineer the protein factors to increase their function. According to OpenAI, researchers used the model's suggestions to change two of the Yamanaka factors to be more than 50 times as effective -- at least according to some preliminary measures. [...] The model does not work the same way as Google's AlphaFold, which predicts what shape proteins will take. Since the Yamanaka factors are unusually floppy and unstructured proteins, OpenAI said, they called for a different approach, which its large language models were suited to. The model was trained on examples of protein sequences from many species, as well as information on which proteins tend to interact with one another. While that's a lot of data, it's just a fraction of what OpenAI's flagship chatbots were trained on, making GPT-4b an example of a "small language model" that works with a focused data set. Once Retro scientists were given the model, they tried to steer it to suggest possible redesigns of the Yamanaka proteins. The prompting tactic used is similar to the "few-shot" method, in which a user queries a chatbot by providing a series of examples with answers, followed by an example for the bot to respond to. Although genetic engineers have ways to direct evolution of molecules in the lab, they can usually test only so many possibilities. And even a protein of typical length can be changed in nearly infinite ways (since they're built from hundreds of amino acids, and each acid comes in 20 possible varieties). OpenAI's model, however, often spits out suggestions in which a third of the amino acids in the proteins were changed. "We threw this model into the lab immediately and we got real-world results," says Retro's CEO, Joe Betts-Lacroix. He says the model's ideas were unusually good, leading to improvements over the original Yamanaka factors in a substantial fraction of cases.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sales of electric vehicles and hybrids reached 20% of new car sales in the U.S. last year, with Tesla maintaining dominance in the EV market despite a slight decline in market share. CNBC reports: Auto data firm Motor Intelligence reports more than 3.2 million "electrified" vehicles were sold last year, or 1.9 million hybrid vehicles, including plug-in models, and 1.3 million all-electric models. Traditional vehicles with gas or diesel internal combustion engines still made up the majority of sales, but declined to 79.8%, falling under 80% for the first time in modern automotive history, according to the data. Regarding sales of pure EVs, Tesla continued to dominate, but Cox Automotive estimated its annual sales fell and its market share dropped to about 49%, down from 55% in 2023. The Tesla Model Y and Model 3 were estimated to be the bestselling EVs in 2024. Following Tesla in EV sales was Hyundai Motor, including Kia, at 9.3% of EV market share; General Motors at 8.7%; and then Ford Motor at 7.5%, according to Motor Intelligence. BMW rounded out the top five at 4.1%. The EV market in the U.S. is highly competitive: Of the 68 mainstream EV models tracked by Cox's Kelley Blue Book, 24 models posted year-over-year sales increases; 17 models were all new to the market; and 27 decreased in volume.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The FDIC sued 17 former executives and directors of Silicon Valley Bank on Thursday, seeking to recover billions of dollars for alleged gross negligence and breaches of fiduciary duty," reports Reuters. The move comes almost two years after Silicon Valley Bank's March 2023 collapse, which shocked financial markets and ended up benefiting big players like JPMorgan Chase. From the report: In a complaint filed in San Francisco federal court, the FDIC, in its capacity the bank's receiver, said the defendants ignored fundamental standards of prudent banking and the bank's own risk policies in letting the bank take on excessive risks to boost short-term profit and its stock price. The FDIC faulted the bank's overreliance on unhedged, interest rate-sensitive long-term government bonds such as US Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, as rates looked set to -- and eventually did -- rise. It also objected to the payment of a "grossly imprudent" $294 million dividend to its parent that drained needed capital "at a time of financial distress and management weakness" in December 2022, less than three months before its demise. "SVB represents a case of egregious mismanagement of interest-rate and liquidity risks by the bank's former officers and directors," the complaint said. The defendants include former Chief Executive Gregory Becker, former Chief Financial Officer Daniel Beck, four other former executives and 11 former directors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google computer scientists have been using LLMs to streamline internal code migrations, achieving significant time savings of up to 89% in some cases. The findings appear in a pre-print paper titled "How is Google using AI for internal code migrations?" The Register reports: Their focus is on bespoke AI tools developed for specific product areas, such as Ads, Search, Workspace and YouTube, instead of generic AI tools that provide broadly applicable services like code completion, code review, and question answering. Google's code migrations involved: changing 32-bit IDs in the 500-plus-million-line codebase for Google Ads to 64-bit IDs; converting its old JUnit3 testing library to JUnit4; and replacing the Joda time library with Java's standard java.time package. The int32 to int64 migration, the Googlers explain, was not trivial as the IDs were often generically defined (int32_t in C++ or Integer in Java) and were not easily searchable. They existed in tens of thousands of code locations across thousands of files. Changes had to be tracked across multiple teams and changes to class interfaces had to be considered across multiple files. "The full effort, if done manually, was expected to require hundreds of software engineering years and complex crossteam coordination," the authors explain. For their LLM-based workflow, Google's software engineers implemented the following process. An engineer from Ads would identify an ID in need of migration using a combination of code search, Kythe, and custom scripts. Then an LLM-based migration toolkit, triggered by someone knowledgeable in the art, was run to generate verified changes containing code that passed unit tests. Those changes would be manually checked by the same engineer and potentially corrected. Thereafter, the code changes would be sent to multiple reviewers who are responsible for the portion of the codebase affected by the changes. The result was that 80 percent of the code modifications in the change lists (CLs) were purely the product of AI; the remainder were either human-authored or human-edited AI suggestions. "We discovered that in most cases, the human needed to revert at least some changes the model made that were either incorrect or not necessary," the authors observe. "Given the complexity and sensitive nature of the modified code, effort has to be spent in carefully rolling out each change to users." Based on this, Google undertook further work on LLM-driven verification to reduce the need for detailed review. Even with the need to double-check the LLM's work, the authors estimate that the time required to complete the migration was reduced by 50 percent. With LLM assistance, it took just three months to migrate 5,359 files and modify 149,000 lines of code to complete the JUnit3-JUnit4 transition. Approximately 87 percent of the code generated by AI ended up being committed with no changes. As for the Joda-Java time framework switch, the authors estimate a time saving of 89 percent compared to the projected manual change time, though no specifics were provided to support that assertion.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader tlhIngan writes: In what is perhaps the greatest irony ever, the operators of RedNote (known as Xiaohongshu) have decided to "wall off" US TikTok refugees fleeing to its service as the TikTok ban looms. The reason? The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants to prevent American influence from spreading to Chinese citizens. The ban is expected to be in place next week, while many believe that the influx of Americans to be temporary and just a reaction to the TikTok ban to move to another Chinese app. Many Chinese users are not happy with the influx as having "ruined" their ability to connect with "Chinese culture, Chinese values and Chinese news."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's OFAC has sanctioned Yin Kecheng and Sichuan Juxinhe Network Technology Co. for their roles in a recent Treasury breach and espionage operations targeting U.S. telecommunications. BleepingComputer reports: "Yin Kecheng has been a cyber actor for over a decade and is affiliated with the People's Republic of China Ministry of State Security (MSS)," reads the Treasury's announcement. "Yin Kecheng was associated with the recent compromise of the Department of the Treasury's Departmental Offices network," says the agency. OFAC also announced sanctions against Sichuan Juxinhe Network Technology Co., a Chinese cybersecurity firm believed to be directly involved with the Salt Typhoon state hacker group. Salt Typhoon was recently linked to several breaches on major U.S. telecommunications and internet service providers to spy on confidential communications of high-profile targets. "Sichuan Juxinhe Network Technology Co., LTD. (Sichuan Juxinhe) had direct involvement in the exploitation of these U.S. telecommunication and internet service provider companies," the U.S. Treasury explains, adding that "the MSS has maintained strong ties with multiple computer network exploitation companies, including Sichuan Juxinhe." [...] The sanctions imposed on Kecheng and the Chinese cybersecurity firm under Executive Order (E.O.) 13694 block all property and financial assets located in the United States or are in the possession of U.S. entities, including banks, businesses, and individuals. Additionally, U.S. entities are prohibited from conducting any transactions with the sanctioned entities without OFAC's explicit authorization. It's worth noting that these sanctions come after OFAC sanctioned Beijing-based cybersecurity company Integrity Tech for its involvement in cyberattacks attributed to the Chinese state-sponsored Flax Typhoon hacking group. U.S. Treasury's announcement reiterates that the U.S. Department of State offers, through its Rewards for Justice program, up to $10,000,000 for information leading to uncovering the identity of hackers who have targeted the U.S. government or critical infrastructure in the country.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: A Russian organization linked to the Kremlin's covert influence campaigns posted more than 8,000 political advertisements on Facebook despite European and American restrictions barring companies from doing business with the organization, according to three organizations that track disinformation online. The Russian group, the Social Design Agency, evaded lax enforcement by Facebook to place an estimated $338,000 worth of ads aimed at European users over a period of 15 months that ended in October, even though the platform itself highlighted the threat, the three organizations said in a report released on Friday. The Social Design Agency has faced punitive sanctions in the European Union since 2023 and in the United States since April for spreading propaganda and disinformation to unsuspecting users on social media. The ad campaigns on Facebook raise "critical questions about the platform's compliance" with American and European laws, the report said. [...] The Social Design Agency is a public relations company in Moscow that, according to American and European officials, operates a sophisticated influence operation known as Doppelganger. Since 2022, Doppelganger has created cartoon memes and online clones of real news sites, like Le Monde and The Washington Post, to spread propaganda and disinformation, often about the war in Ukraine. [...] The organizations documenting the campaign -- Check First, a Finnish research company, along with Reset.Tech in London and AI Forensics in Paris -- focused on efforts to sway Facebook users in France, Germany, Poland and Italy. Doppelganger has been also linked to influence operations in the United States, Israel and other countries, but those are not included in the report's findings. [...] The researchers estimated that the ads resulted in more than 123,000 clicks by users and netted Meta at least $338,000 in the European Union alone. The researchers acknowledged that the figures provide only one, incomplete example of the Russian agency's efforts. In addition to propagating Russia's views on Ukraine, the agency posted ads in response to major news events, including theHamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and a terrorist attack in a Moscow suburb last March that killed 145 people. The ads would often appear within 48 hours, trying to shape public perceptions of events. After the Oct. 7 attacks, the ads pushed false claims that Ukraine sold weapons to Hamas. The ads reached more than 237,000 accounts over two to three days, "underscoring the operation's capacity to weaponize current events in support of geopolitical narratives," the researcher's report said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader sfcat shares a report from the Associated Press: Hundreds of people were ordered to evacuate and part of Highway 1 in Northern California was closed when a major fire erupted Thursday afternoon at one of the world's largest battery storage plants. As the fire sent up towering flames and black smoke and showed no sign of easing by Thursday night, about 1,500 people were instructed to leave Moss Landing and the Elkhorn Slough area, The Mercury News reported. The Moss Landing Power Plant, located about 77 miles (about 124 kilometers) south of San Francisco, is owned by Texas-company Vistra Energy and contains tens of thousands of lithium batteries. The batteries are important for storing electricity from such renewable energy sources as solar energy, but if they go up in flames the blazes can be extremely difficult to put out. "There's no way to sugar coat it. This is a disaster, is what it is," Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church told KSBW-TV. But he said he did not expect the fire to spread beyond the concrete building it was enclosed in. According to reports, the fire originated in the 300-megawatt Phase I section of the 750-megawatt facility, located on the site of a retired PG&E natural gas plant. It's unclear what caused the fire, but officials said a full investigation will begin after it's out. Thankfully, everyone at the site was evacuated safely. Videos and images of the fire can be found here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft's $13 billion investment in OpenAI raises concerns that the tech giant could extend its dominance in cloud computing into the nascent AI market, the Federal Trade Commission said in a report released Friday. From a report: The commission said Microsoft's deal with OpenAI, as well as Amazon and Google's partnerships with AI company Anthropic, raise the risk that AI developers could be "fully acquired" by the tech giants in the future. "The FTC's report sheds light on how partnerships by big tech firms can create lock-in, deprive start-ups of key AI inputs, and reveal sensitive information that can undermine fair competition," FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement. The FTC has the power to open market studies to glean more information about industry trends. The findings can be used to inform future actions. It's unclear what the agency's new leadership under the Trump administration will do with the report.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: FBI leaders have warned that they believe hackers who broke into AT&T's system last year stole months of their agents' call and text logs, setting off a race within the bureau to protect the identities of confidential informants, a document reviewed by Bloomberg News shows. FBI officials told agents across the country that details about their use on the telecom carrier's network were believed to be among the billions of records stolen, according to the document and interviews with a current and a former law enforcement official. They asked not to be named to discuss sensitive information. Data from all FBI devices under the bureau's AT&T service for public safety agencies were presumed taken, the document shows. The cache of hacked AT&T records didn't reveal the substance of communications but, according to the document, could link investigators to their secret sources. The data was believed to include agents' mobile phone numbers and the numbers with which they called and texted, the document shows. Records for calls and texts that weren't on the AT&T network, such as through encrypted messaging apps, weren't part of the stolen data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony's PlayStation has canceled previously unannounced games at two of its top subsidiaries, the company said. From a report: The games, at Oregon-based Bend Studio and Texas-based Bluepoint Games, were both "live service" projects designed to draw recurring revenue from players. A company spokesperson confirmed the cancellations. In a statement, the spokesperson said the two games were canceled "following a recent review" and that PlayStation will continue making both online and single-player games. Neither studio will be shuttered. "Bend and Bluepoint are highly accomplished teams who are valued members of the PlayStation Studios family, and we are working closely with each studio to determine what are the next projects," the spokesperson said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft began mandatory rollouts of the Windows 11 2024 Update (24H2) for eligible devices running Home and Pro editions, the company announced on its Windows 11 issues page. The update, which Microsoft describes as a "full code swap," requires longer installation times, with users reporting processes exceeding an hour. While users can briefly postpone the installation, the company is now pushing updates to mainstream users not managed by IT departments. The 24H2 update introduces USB4's 80Gbps support, Bluetooth LE Audio for hearing aids, and enhanced Energy Saver controls.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

George Zhao, the chief executive of Chinese smartphone firm Honor, has resigned from his position due to personal reasons, the company said on Friday. CNBC: "The company and the Board of Directors sincerely appreciate Mr Zhao's outstanding contributions to the company during his tenure," Honor said in a statement. Jian Li, who's been at Honor for four years in various senior management positions, will succeed Zhao as CEO. In an internal memo posted by Chinese media and confirmed as accurate by an Honor spokesperson, Zhao said he was stepping down due to health reasons and planned to rest, recover and spend more time with his family. [...] Honor's market share in China has risen from 9.8% in 2020 to over 15% in 2024, according to Counterpoint Research. Outside of China, Honor's market share hit 2.3% in 2024, compared to under 1% in 2020.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google says it has begun requiring users to turn on JavaScript, the widely-used programming language to make web pages interactive, in order to use Google Search. From a report: In an email to TechCrunch, a company spokesperson claimed that the change is intended to "better protect" Google Search against malicious activity, such as bots and spam, and to improve the overall Google Search experience for users. The spokesperson noted that, without JavaScript, many Google Search features won't work properly, and that the quality of search results tends to be degraded.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft researchers who tested more than 100 of the company's AI products concluded that AI systems can never be made fully secure, according to a new pre-print paper. The 26-author study, which included Azure CTO Mark Russinovich, found that large language models amplify existing security risks and create new vulnerabilities. While defensive measures can increase the cost of attacks, the researchers warned that AI systems will remain vulnerable to threats ranging from gradient-based attacks to simpler techniques like interface manipulation for phishing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Compliance software firms are deploying AI to decode complex trader communications and detect potential financial crimes as Wall Street and London regulators intensify scrutiny of market manipulation. Companies like Behavox and Global Relay are developing AI tools that can interpret trader slang, emoji-laden messages and even coded language that traditional detection systems might miss, WSJ reports. The technology aims to replace older methods that relied on scanning for specific trigger words, which traders could easily evade. The story adds: Traders believed that "if somebody wanted to say something sketchy, they would just make up a funny word or, you know, spell it backward or something," [Donald] McElligott (VP of Global Relay) said. "Now, none of that"s going to work anymore."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canon is requiring users to pay a monthly subscription fee to fully use their cameras as webcams on computers. The company's new EOS Webcam Utility software restricts features like HD resolution, brightness adjustments and color correction unless users pay $4.99 monthly or $49.99 annually.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the federal law banning TikTok beginning Sunday unless it's sold by its China-based parent company, holding that the risk to national security posed by its ties to China overcomes concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the United States. A sale does not appear imminent and, although experts have said the app will not disappear from existing users' phones once the law takes effect on Jan. 19, new users won't be able to download it and updates won't be available. That will eventually render the app unworkable, the Justice Department has said in court filings.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tech news and research site SemiAccurate is reporting that an unidentified company is seeking to acquire Intel in its entirety. The publication -- citing a confidential email that it reviewed and a subsequent confirmation from a second source -- said the prospective buyer has not publicly disclosed its interest but has sufficient resources to purchase Intel at current valuations (about $85 billion).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists warn that the devastating fires that killed at least 24 people and destroyed more than 12,000 structures in Los Angeles represent a new type of urban firestorm, distinct from traditional wilderness blazes. In densely populated areas, buildings themselves become fuel, creating a chain reaction of destruction, researchers reported Friday in Nature. The fires were intensified by steep terrain, powerful winds and a climate pattern of extreme wet-to-dry conditions that created abundant fuel. Researchers say such urban fires are likely to become more frequent as populations expand into wildland areas and climate change accelerates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Indonesia plans to issue a regulation to set a minimum age for users of social media, a move aimed at protecting children, its communications minister has said. From a report: The plans follows Australia's decision to ban children under 16 from accessing social media, with fines for tech giants from Instagram and Facebook owner Meta to TikTok if they failed to prevent children accessing their platforms. Minister Meutya Hafid did not say what the minimum age would be in Indonesia. Her remarks, made late on Jan 13, came after she discussed the plan with President Prabowo Subianto.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The FTC announced Thursday that it's banned General Motors and its subsidiary OnStar from selling customer geolocation and driving behavior data for five years. The Verge reports: The settlement comes after a New York Times investigation found that GM had been collecting micro-details about its customers' driving habits, including acceleration, braking, and trip length -- and then selling it to insurance companies and third-party data brokers like LexisNexis and Verisk. Clueless vehicle owners were then left wondering why their insurance premiums were going up. FTC accused GM of using a "misleading enrollment process" to get vehicle owners to sign up for its OnStar connected vehicle service and Smart Driver feature. The automaker failed to disclose to customers that it was collecting their data, nor did GM seek out their consent to sell it to third parties. After the Times exposed the practice, GM said it was discontinuing its OnStar Smart Driver program. The settlement also requires GM to obtain consent from customers before collecting their driving behavior data, and allow them to request and delete their data if they choose.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to Axios, Google has told the EU it will not add fact checks to search results and YouTube videos or use them in ranking or removing content, despite the requirements of a new EU law. From the report: In a letter written to Renate Nikolay, the deputy director general under the content and technology arm at the European Commission, Google's global affairs president Kent Walker said the fact-checking integration required by the Commission's new Disinformation Code of Practice "simply isn't appropriate or effective for our services" and said Google won't commit to it. The code would require Google to incorporate fact-check results alongside Google's search results and YouTube videos. It would also force Google to build fact-checking into its ranking systems and algorithms. Walker said Google's current approach to content moderation works and pointed to successful content moderation during last year's "unprecedented cycle of global elections" as proof. He said a new feature added to YouTube last year that enables some users to add contextual notes to videos "has significant potential." (That program is similar to X's Community Notes feature, as well as new program announced by Meta last week.) The EU's Code of Practice on Disinformation, introduced in 2022, includes several voluntary commitments that tech firms and private companies, including fact-checking organizations, are expected to deliver on. The Code, originally created in 2018, predates the EU's new content moderation law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), which went into effect in 2022. The Commission has held private discussions over the past year with tech companies, urging them to convert the voluntary measures into an official code of conduct under the DSA. Walker said in his letter Thursday that Google had already told the Commission that it didn't plan to comply. Google will "pull out of all fact-checking commitments in the Code before it becomes a DSA Code of Conduct," he wrote. He said Google will continue to invest in improvements to its current content moderation practices, which focus on providing people with more information about their search results through features like Synth ID watermarking and AI disclosures on YouTube.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Megan Hellerer, a career coach and founder of Coaching for Underfulfilled Overachievers, offers an alternative to the relentless "hustle culture" and "destinational living" mindsets, which often emphasize long-term goals at the expense of present happiness. "There's another way and I call it directional living," writes Hellerer. "Here's the catch: I can't find fulfilment for you. The good news is that it's all up to you..." An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from the report published by The Guardian: Directional living is like the scientific method but for life. You begin with a hypothesis -- your best guess as to the direction of a loose "something bigger". You conduct tests and collect data through your experiences, refining your life hypothesis as you go. If you have a hypothesis that involves living on the beach, you may test that by renting a house on the coast for one month and collecting data on how right, or not, that is for you. The goal is not to permanently relocate but to find out whether you want to continue exploring that path. Success is in finding what's true, not in proving your original theory correct. I've found this idea speaks uniquely to UFOAs at this moment in time. [UFOA is a term Hellerer came up with that stands for "underfulfilled overachiever." This describes a constant striver who is living a great-on-paper life, yet feels disconnected from their work, life and self.] The closest thing I have to a personal motto is a quotation that's widely attributed to Carl Jung but that, as it turns out, he never actually said at all. "The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are." My greatest hope for you is that you get to live this privilege fully.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has partnered with Indian startup Varaha to purchase 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide removal credits by 2030, marking its largest deal in India and the largest involving biochar, a carbon removal solution made from biomass. TechCrunch reports: The offtake agreement credits will be delivered to Google by 2030 from Varaha's industrial biochar project in the western Indian state of Gujarat, the two firms said on Thursday. [...] Biochar is produced in two ways: artisanal and industrial. The artisanal method is community-driven, where farmers burn crop residue in conical flasks without using machines. In contrast, industrial biochar is made using large reactors that process 50-60 tons of biomass daily. Varaha's project will generate industrial biochar from an invasive plant species, Prosopis Juliflora, using its pyrolysis facility in Gujarat. The invasive species impacts plant biodiversity and has overtaken grasslands used for livestock. Varaha will harvest the plant and make efforts to restore native grasslands in the region, the company's co-founder and CEO Madhur Jain said in an interview. Once the biochar is produced, a third-party auditor will submit their report to Puro.Earth to generate credits. Although biochar is seen as a long-term carbon removal solution, its permanence can vary between 1,000 and 2,500 years depending on production and environmental factors. Jain told TechCrunch that Varaha tried using different feedstocks and different parameters within its reactors to find the best combination to achieve permanence close to 1,600 years. The startup has also built a digital monitoring, reporting and verification system, integrating remote sensing to monitor biomass availability. It even has a mobile app that captures geo-tagged, time-stamped images to geographically document activities, including biomass excavation and biochar's field application. With its first project, Varaha said it processed at least 40,000 tons of biomass and produced 10,000 tons of biochar last year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ars Technica's Jon Brodkin reports: AT&T has stopped offering its 5G home Internet service in New York instead of complying with a new state law that requires ISPs to offer $15 or $20 plans to people with low incomes. New York started enforcing its Affordable Broadband Act yesterday after a legal battle of nearly four years. [...] The law requires ISPs with over 20,000 customers in New York to offer $15 broadband plans with download speeds of at least 25Mbps, or $20-per-month service with 200Mbps speeds. The plans only have to be offered to households that meet income eligibility requirements, such as qualifying for the National School Lunch Program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or Medicaid. [...] Ending home Internet service in New York is relatively simple for AT&T because it is outside the 21-state wireline territory in which the telco offers fiber and DSL home Internet service. "AT&T Internet Air is currently available only in select areas and where AT&T Fiber is not available. New York is outside of our wireline service footprint, so we do not have other home Internet options available in the state," the company said. AT&T will continue offering its 4G and 5G mobile service in New York, as the state law only affects home Internet service. People with smartphones or other mobile devices connected to the AT&T wireless network should thus see no change. Existing New York-based users of AT&T Internet Air can only keep it for 45 days and won't be charged during that time, AT&T said. "During this transition, customers will be able to keep their existing AT&T Internet Air service for up to 45 days, at no charge, as they find other options for broadband. We will work closely with our customers throughout this transition," AT&T said. Residential users will be sent "a recovery kit with instructions on how to return their AIA equipment, while business customers can keep any device they purchased at no charge," AT&T said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Toyota Motor unit Hino Motors has agreed a $1.6 billion settlement with U.S. agencies and will plead guilty over excess diesel engine emissions in more than 105,000 U.S. vehicles, the company and U.S. government said on Wednesday. The Japanese truck and engine manufacturer was charged with fraud in U.S. District Court in Detroit for unlawfully selling 105,000 heavy-duty diesel engines in the United States from 2010 through 2022 that did not meet emissions standards. The settlement, which still must be approved by a U.S. judge, includes a criminal penalty of $521.76 million, $442.5 million in civil penalties to U.S. authorities and $236.5 million to California. A company-commissioned panel said in a report in 2022 Hino had falsified emissions data on some engines going back to at least 2003. Hino agreed to plead guilty to engaging in a multi-year criminal conspiracy and serve a five-year term of probation, during which it will be barred from importing any diesel engines it has manufactured into the U.S., and carry out a comprehensive compliance and ethics program, the Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency said. [...] The settlement includes a mitigation program, valued at $155 million, to offset excess air emissions from the violations by replacing marine and locomotive engines, and a recall program, valued at $144.2 million, to fix engines in 2017-2019 heavy-duty trucks The EPA said Hino admitted that between 2010 and 2019, it submitted false applications for engine certification approvals and altered emission test data, conducted tests improperly and fabricated data without conducting any underlying tests. Hino President Satoshi Ogiso said the company had improved its internal culture, oversight and compliance practices. "This resolution is a significant milestone toward resolving legacy issues that we have worked hard to ensure are no longer a part of Hino's operations or culture," he said in a statement. Toyota's Hino Motors isn't the only automaker to admit to selling vehicles with excess diesel emissions. Volkswagen had to pay billions in fines after it admitted in 2015 to cheating emissions tests by installing "defeat devices" and sophisticated software in nearly 11 million vehicles worldwide. Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), BMW, Opel/Vauxhall (General Motors), and Fiat Chrysler have been implicated in similar practices.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpaceX conducted its seventh test flight of the Starship rocket on Thursday with mixed results. The upper stage was lost nine minutes after launch, but the Super Heavy booster successfully landed back at the launch site, marking a second successful recovery. CNBC reports: SpaceX said in a post on X that the ship broke up during its ascent burn and that it would "continue to review data from today's flight test to better understand root cause." After the rocket lost communication, social media users posted photos and videos of what appeared to be fireballs in the sky near the Caribbean islands. Starship's launch trajectory takes it due east from Texas, which means the fireballs are likely debris from the rocket breaking apart and reentering the atmosphere. Starship launched from SpaceX's private "Starbase" facility near Brownsville, Texas, shortly after 5:30 p.m. ET. A few minutes later, the rocket's "Super Heavy" booster returned to land at the launch site, in SpaceX's second successful "catch" during a flight. It did not catch the booster on the last flight. There were no people on board the Starship flight. However, Elon Musk's company was flying 10 "Starlink simulators" in the rocket's payload bay and planned to attempt to deploy the satellite-like objects once in space. This would have been a key test of the rocket's capabilities, as SpaceX needs Starship to deploy its much larger and heavier upcoming generation of Starlink satellites. You can watch a recording of the launch here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A recent 200-page report published by Epyllion reveals that PC gaming has been outperforming consoles over the last decade, "breezing past console platforms and generating more content spending and revenue," reports Insider Gaming. From the report: One slide revealed that since 2011, PC's content spend has dominated 'living room' console revenue by more than 65%, and it has earned 225% more than 'combined console' spend. That's a total of $30 billion if you want to put a number on it. Those numbers exclude hardware and accessories. The report also showed that mobile gaming is leagues ahead of both PC and console platforms, representing the number one money maker in the games industry. This stat has been recorded despite an $18 billion increase in spending on console platforms in 2024 compared to 2011. That 75% increase is still trumped by content spend on PC platforms. But why is PC becoming increasingly popular and much more profitable? Epyllion suggested it boils down to a few core reasons: - PC platforms have a much larger library of games and 'near-full backwards compatibility'- On a PC, you can multi-task (stream, communicate, alt+tab, multiple monitors)- Lower entry price point than consoles- Higher top-end performance- Better for esports and competitive gaming- Able to play more early-access games- More annual game releases- Console 'exclusives' are now finding their way to PCRead more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Apple is temporarily pulling its newly introduced artificial intelligence feature that summarizes news notifications after it repeatedly sent users error-filled headlines, sparking backlash from a news organization and press freedom groups. The rare reversal from the iPhone maker on its heavily marketed Apple Intelligence feature comes after the technology produced misleading or altogether false summaries of news headlines that appear almost identical to regular push notifications. On Thursday, Apple deployed a beta software update to developers that disabled the AI feature for news and entertainment headlines, which it plans to later roll out to all users while it works to improve the AI feature. The company plans to re-enable the feature in a future update. As part of the update, the company said the Apple Intelligence summaries, which users must opt into, will more explicitly emphasize that the information has been produced by AI, signaling that it may sometimes produce inaccurate results.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David Lynch, a four-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker known for the 1984 sci-fi epic Dune and the Showtime drama Twin Peaks, has died. "In January 2025, Lynch evacuated his Los Angeles home due to the Southern California wildfires," writes longtime Slashdot reader Z00L00K. "According to Deadline, these events preceded a terminal decline in his health, and on January 16, 2025, Lynch's family announced that he had died at the age of 78." Deadline reports: Lynch had been diagnosed with emphysema. Sources told Deadline that he was forced to relocate from his house due to the Sunset Fire and then took a turn for the worse. In an interview with Sight & Sound magazine last year, Lynch revealed that due to Covid fears and his emphysema diagnosis, he could no longer could leave the house, which meant if he directed again, it would be remote. He then followed up the interview with a post on social that he "will never retire" despite his physical challenges.Read more of this story at Slashdot.