Tom Warren, writing for The Verge: Last week, I turned on my PC, installed a Windows update, and rebooted to find Microsoft Edge automatically open with the Chrome tabs I was working on before the update. I don't use Microsoft Edge regularly, and I have Google Chrome set as my default browser. Bleary-eyed at 9AM, it took me a moment to realize that Microsoft Edge ha ... ⌘ Read more
Tom Warren, writing for The Verge: Last week, I turned on my PC, installed a Windows update, and rebooted to find Microsoft Edge automatically open with the Chrome tabs I was working on before the update. I don't use Microsoft Edge regularly, and I have Google Chrome set as my default browser. Bleary-eyed at 9AM, it took me a moment to realize that Microsoft Edge ha ... ⌘ Read more
Dan Goodin, reporting for ArsTechnica: ChatGPT is leaking private conversations that include login credentials and other personal details of unrelated users, screenshots submitted by an Ars reader on Monday indicated. Two of the seven screenshots the reader submitted stood out in particular. Both contained multiple pairs o ... ⌘ Read more
New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against Citibank on Tuesday, alleging the big bank failed to do enough to protect and reimburse victims of fraud. From a report: The lawsuit argues that New York customers lost millions of dollars -- in some cases their entire lifesavings -- to scammers and hacker ... ⌘ Read more
AmiMoJo writes: Apple has attacked proposals for the UK government to pre-approve new security features introduced by tech firms. Under the proposed amendments to existing laws, if the UK Home Office declined an update, it then could not be released in any other country, and the public would not be informed. The government is seeking to update the Investigatory Po ... ⌘ Read more
theodp writes: Visual Studio Magazine reports on new research on the effect of AI-powered GitHub Copilot on software development which sought to investigate the quality and maintainability of AI-assisted code compared to what would have been written by a human. Countering the positively-glowing findings of some other studies, the Cod ... ⌘ Read more
The U.S. government in recent months launched an operation to fight a pervasive Chinese hacking operation that successfully compromised thousands of internet-connected devices, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing two Western security officials and another person familiar with the matter. From the report: The Justice Department and Federal ... ⌘ Read more
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has proposed creating a new top-level domain (TLD) and never allowing it to be delegated in the global domain name system (DNS) root. From a report: The proposed TLD is .INTERNAL and, as the name implies, it's intended for internal use only. The idea is that .INTERNAL could take on the same role as the 192.168.x.x ... ⌘ Read more
New submitter betso.net shares a report: A German railway firm posted a vacancy for a Windows 3.11 Administrator just before the weekend. In addition to skills in wrangling Windows for Workgroups on the 30-year-old operating system, the recruiter would look upon a candidate more fondly for possessing MS-DOS experience. The admin would purporte ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: Peering into the jungle of microbes that live within us, researchers have stumbled across what seem to be an entire new class of virus-like objects. "It's insane," says University of North Carolina cell biologist Mark Peifer, who was not involved in the study, told Elizabeth ... ⌘ Read more
Embracer Group has canceled a Deus Ex game at its Eidos studio that's been in development since 2022. The company also announced that it's letting go of 97 game developers and support staff. "The global economic context, the challenges of our industry and the comprehensive restructuring announced by Embracer have finally impacted our studio," wrote ... ⌘ Read more
According to Neuralink founder Elon Musk, the first human received an implant from the brain-chip startup on Sunday and is recovering well. "Initial results show promising neuron spike detection," Musk added. Reuters reports: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had given the company clearance last year to conduct its first trial to test its implant on humans. The startup's PRIME St ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: Reeling from one of the most catastrophic recalls in decades, Philips Respironics said it will stop selling sleep apnea machines and other respiratory devices in the United States under a settlement with the federal government that will ... ⌘ Read more
In an announcement earlier today, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said single-use vapes will be banned in Britain, with certain flavors restricted and regulations put in place around their packaging and displays. The New York Times reports: Mr. Sunak said that the ban, which is part of legislation that still has to be approved by Parliament, was intended to halt "one of the most worrying trends at the moment," before it becom ... ⌘ Read more
Benj Edwards reports via Ars Technica: In a move that marks the end of an era, New Mexico State University (NMSU) recently announced the impending closure of its Hobbes OS/2 Archive on April 15, 2024. For over three decades, the archive has been a key resource for users of the IBM OS/2 operating system and its successors, which ... ⌘ Read more
With the increasing adoption of e-bikes and drones for efficient, eco-friendly delivery services, New York is proposing the Department of Sustainable Delivery to regulate these services, focusing on safety, data sharing, and operational permits to ease congested lanes. Fast Company reports: The first step of the ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Europe's aviation safety body is working with the airline industry to counter a danger posed by interference with GPS signals -- now seen as a growing threat to the safety of air travel. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the International Air Transport Associa ... ⌘ Read more
David Pierce reports via The Verge: A few minutes ago, I opened the new Arc Search app and typed, "What happened in the Chiefs game?" That game, the AFC Championship, had just wrapped up. Normally, I'd Google it, click on a few links, and read about the game that way. But in Arc Search, I typed the query and ... ⌘ Read more
Japan is aiming to phase out floppy disks and CD-ROMs, which until now were forms of physical media required for submitting some official documents to the government. Engadget reports: Back in 2022, Minister of Digital Affairs Taro Kono urged various branches of the government to stop requiring businesses to sub ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Mercedes-Benz accidentally exposed a trove of internal data after leaving a private key online that gave "unrestricted access" to the company's source code, according to the security research firm that discovered it. Shubham Mittal, co-founder and chief technology officer of RedHunt Labs, alerted Te ... ⌘ Read more
Andrew Joseph, writing for STAT News: There was something odd about these Alzheimer's cases. Part of it was the patients' presentations: Some didn't have the classic symptoms of the condition. But it was also that the patients were in their 40s and 50s, even their 30s, f ... ⌘ Read more
IBM delivered a companywide ultimatum to managers who are still working remotely: move near an office or leave the company. From a report: All US managers must immediately report to an office or client location at least three days a week "regardless of current work location status," according to a memo sent on Jan. 16 viewed by Bloomberg. Badge-in data will be used to "asse ... ⌘ Read more
Regulators put limits on Boeing 737 MAX production; grounded MAX 9 jets have resumed flying after required inspections. From a report: Bolts needed to secure part of an Alaska Airlines jet that blew off in midair appear to have been missing when the plane left Boeing's factory. Boeing and other industry officials i ... ⌘ Read more
UnknowingFool writes: Jurors on Friday, January 26, 2024 ruled in favor of celebrity tattoo artist Kat Von D (real name Katherine von Drachenberg) in a copyright lawsuit regarding a photo of Miles Davis in that her use of the photo was not copyright infringement. The photographer of the photo, Jeffrey Sedlik, sued Von D in February 2021 ... ⌘ Read more
T-Mobile has tweaked its terms of service for its home broadband users to add a new clause: If you are a heavy internet user that passes 1.2TB of data in a monthly billing cycle, you may have your speeds slowed in "times of congestion" or when there is a lot of pressure on the network. CNET: As spotted by ... ⌘ Read more
Spying used to be all about secrets. Increasingly, it's about what's hiding in plain sight [non-paywalled link] . From a report: A staggering amount of data, from Facebook posts and YouTube clips to location pings from mobile phones and car apps, sits in the open internet, available to anyone who looks. US intelligence agencies have struggled for years to tap ... ⌘ Read more
Blackstone is betting big on AI, plowing billions into data centers after its $10 billion takeover of QTS last year. The private equity giant is bankrolling the development of massive computing bunkers on hundreds of acres in Phoenix and other key markets to meet exploding demand from tech titans like Microsoft. With AI taking hold ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has introduced more protections to Designer, an AI text-to-image generation tool that people were using to make nonconsensual sexual images of celebrities. Microsoft made the changes after 404 Media reported that the AI-generated nude images of Taylor Swift that went viral last week came from 4chan and a Telegr ... ⌘ Read more
China has approved more than 40 AI models for public use in the first six months since authorities began the approval process, as the country strives to catch up to the U.S. in AI development, according to Chinese media. Reuters: Chinese regulators granted approvals to a total of 14 large language models (LLM) for public use last week, Chinese stat ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon Prime Video has been a free perk for those who subscribe to the ecommerce giant's free shipping service, but if you're a US Prime subscriber, things change from today. We first learned of the planned change back in September of last year, with the implementation date announced in an email to customers in De ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: The estate of George Carlin has filed a federal lawsuit against the comedy podcast Dudesy for an hour-long comedy special sold as an AI-generated impression of the late comedian. But a representative for one of the podcast hosts behind the special now admits that it was actually written by a human. In the laws ... ⌘ Read more
Amazon will not move forward with a planned acquisition of vacuum-maker iRobot, the two said Monday, citing "no path to regulatory approval" as the deal-breaker. Amazon announced its plan to acquire iRobot for $1.7 billion in August 2022.
iRobot said separately that it will lay off about 350 jobs, or 31% of ... ⌘ Read more
The Los Angeles Times reports that after more than 10 years of planning, "Barring weather delays, the space shuttle Endeavour will undergo its final, historic lift starting Monday night, a maneuver no other retired orbiter has undergone..."
First, a pair of cranes will hoist the shuttle ... ⌘ Read more
"Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope observed the smallest exoplanet where water vapor has been detected in the atmosphere," writes SciTechDaily.
"At only approximately twice Earth's diameter, the planet GJ 9827d could be an example of potential planets with water-rich atmospheres elsewhere in our galaxy."
"This would be the first time that we can ... ⌘ Read more
Around three hours after its moon lander had touched down, Japan's space agency "decided to switch SLIM off with 12% power remaining to allow for a possible resumption when the sun's angle changed," reports Agence France-Presse.
Today there was good news:
Japan's Moon lander has resumed operations, the country's space agency sa ... ⌘ Read more
"Someday in the not too distant future, it might no longer be possible to drive a brand-new car faster than 80 mph in California," writes Car and Driver:
That's because state senator Scott Wiener earlier this week proposed a new bill that aims to prevent certain new vehicles from going more than 10 mph over the speed limit. In California, ... ⌘ Read more
Halo — the TV series — launches its second season on February 8th. But today a trailer premiered during halftime of the pre-Super Bowl football playoff.
Gizmodo reports:
Even though the Covenant are the other side of Halo's ongoing conflict, the first season of Paramount+'s TV series largely represented them through a human proxy named Makee. With the upcoming second ... ⌘ Read more
The tech site IT Brew looks at an open-source tool that "uses AI to offer efficiency-minded suggestions to Python coders."
Known as "Scalene," the profiler — a kind of debugger for performance issues — has been downloaded more than 900,000 times on GitHub. "It's awesome in general, and amazing for an academic pro ... ⌘ Read more
In Denver, Colorado, a pastor had a message for his congregation, reports CNN.
"After months of prayers and cues from God, he was going to start selling cryptocurrency, he announced in a YouTube video last April."
The Signature and Silvergate banks had collapsed weeks earlier, signaling the need to ... ⌘ Read more
The Wall Street Journal reports that "a motley crew of AM radio advocates," including conservative talk show hosts and federal emergency officials, are lobbying Congress to stop carmakers from dropping AM radio from new vehicles:
Lawmakers say most car companies are noncommittal about the future of AM tuners in vehicles, so they wan ... ⌘ Read more
Remember that cheery corporate video Internet Brands tried announcing their new (non-negotiable) hybrid return-to-office policy (with the festive song "Iko Iko" playing in the background)? They've now pulled the video from Vimeo.
Could that signal a larger shift in attitudes about working from home? The Washington Post reports:
Now, new research ... ⌘ Read more
Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike shared this investigation by Time magazine's senior economics correspondent which argues that America's residential solar industry "is floundering."
In late 2023 alone, more than 100 residential solar dealers and installers in the U.S. declared bankruptcy, according to Roth Capital Partners — six time ... ⌘ Read more
The Guardian reports that "Hundreds of thousands of EU citizens were wrongly fined for driving in London's Ulez clean air zone, according to European governments..."
The Guardian can reveal Transport for London (TfL) has been accused by five EU countries of illegally obtaining the names and addresses of their citizens in order to issue t ... ⌘ Read more
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: IBM mainframes were the original onsite private cloud," begins retired software engineer Billy Newport in Is Cloud the New Mainframe? And while there were many things to like about the mainframe (including "crazy high availability numbers which today's cloud vendors can only dream of"), cost was not one of them. "As the application usage grows," Newport explains, "the bill grows and th ... ⌘ Read more
"Oracle's plans to evolve Java in 2024 involve OpenJDK projects," writes InfoWorld, citing a recent video by Oracle Java developer relations representative Nicolai Parlog. (Though many improvements may not be usable until 2025 or later...)
\\- For Project Babylon, Parlog cited plans for code reflection, expanding the reflection API, and allowing transformation of Java code inside a method. The goal is to al ... ⌘ Read more
"Indonesia has been clearing tens of thousands of acres of densely vegetated peatland for farming, releasing massive amounts of carbon that had been sequestered below for centuries," reports the Washington Post, "and destroying one of the Earth's most effective means of storing greenhouse ... ⌘ Read more
"A photo of Japan's robotic moon lander shows that though the spacecraft did make the quarter-million-mile journey to the lunar surface, it landed upside down..." reports Mashable.
Because of the lander's now-apparent inverted position, its solar panels weren't oriented correctly to generate power, according to the space agency. The team elected to conserve power by sh ... ⌘ Read more
Slashdot reader Bruce66423 shared this report from the BBC:
A Spanish court has cleared a British man of public disorder, after he joked to friends about blowing up a flight from London Gatwick to Menorca.
Aditya Verma admitted he told friends in July 2022: "On my way to blow up the plane. I'm a member of the Taliban." But he s ... ⌘ Read more
"As important as its historically underhanded business dealings were for its success, Microsoft didn't have to cheat to win," argues a new article in the Register.
"The Unix companies were doing a great job of killing themselves off."
You see, while there were many attempts to create software development standards for Unix, they were too general to do mu ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shared this report from the The New York Times:
Over his 54 years as a financial analyst, Richard X. Bove perfected the art of grabbing attention... American Banker once called him "the country's most quotable bank analyst." Last week, a few hours after completing a spot o ... ⌘ Read more
UPI reports:
New research published Friday offers hope that the sediment samples picked up by the Mars rover Perseverance could reveal traces of life — if it ever existed on the Red Planet.
The rover already has confirmed an ancient lake on Mars. The new research published in Science Advances shows the Jezero Crater, where Perseverance verified lake sediments, is theorized to have been filled wit ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from CNBC:
The S&P 500 is trading at a record and the Nasdaq is at its highest in two years. Alphabet shares reached a new pinnacle on Thursday, as did Meta and Microsoft, which ran past $3 trillion in market cap.
Don't tell that to the bosses.
While Wall Street cheers on Silicon Valley ... ⌘ Read more
"According to one study, homeowners are three times more likely than renters to own an electric vehicle," writes the Washington Post. But others still have options:
Drivers who park on the street have found novel ways to charge their vehicles, using extension cords running over the sidewalk or even into the branches of a nearby tree... [S]ome municipalities explicitly ... ⌘ Read more
In the last 90 seconds of a recent Disney Parks video, there's a demonstration of a new technology called a HoloTile floor. Disney research fellow/R&D "imagineerer" Lanny Smoot specifies that "we don't know yet where it will be used" — though noting multiple people could walk in place during a shared virtual real ... ⌘ Read more
"Exercising for 25 minutes a week, or less than four minutes a day, could help to bulk up our brains," reports the Washington Post, "and improve our ability to think as we grow older."
A new study, which involved scanning the brains of more than 10,000 healthy men and women from ages 18 to 97, found that tho ... ⌘ Read more
"Companies that once serviced the boom in cryptocurrency mining are pivoting to take advantage of the latest data gold rush," reports the Guardian.
Canadian company Hive Blockchain changed its name in July to Hive Digital Technologies and announced it was pivoting to AI. "Hive has been a pioneering force in the cryptocurrency mining ... ⌘ Read more
"Parched conditions have crippled a waterway that handles $270 billion a year in global trade," reports Bloomberg. "And there are no easy solutions.
"The Panama Canal Authority is weighing potential fixes that include an artificial lake to pump water into the canal and cloud seeding to boost rainfall, but both options would take years to implement ... ⌘ Read more
"Security experts expect many more companies to disclose that they've been hacked by Russian intelligence agents who stole emails from executives," reports the Washington Post, "following disclosures by Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise in the past week."
Microsoft said late Thursday that it had found more victims and ... ⌘ Read more
In a change that reflects AI's growing influence -- and potentially disruptive power -- in Hollywood, Netflix added generative AI to the list of potential risk factors on its annual report filed with the SEC. From a report: In Netflix's 10-K report filed Friday, it added this new section to the long section of risk ... ⌘ Read more
Bank of America is cracking down on employees who aren't following its return-to-office mandate, sending "letters of education" warnings of disciplinary action to employees who have been staying home. The Guardian: Some employees at the bank received letters that said they had failed to meet the company's "workplace excellence guidel ... ⌘ Read more
Fossil Group has decided to call it quits on smartwatches. The company announced Friday that it would leave the smartwatch business and redirect resources to its less-smart goods instead. From a report: The company has been one of the most prolific makers of Wear OS smartwatches over the years, and its absence will leave a large gap in the market. "As the smartwatch landscape has evolved significantly over the past ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: The creator of an audio deepfake of US President Joe Biden urging people not to vote in this week's New Hampshire primary has been suspended by ElevenLabs, according to a person familiar with the matter. ElevenLabs' technology was used to make the deepfake audio, according to Pindrop Security, a voice-fraud detection company that an ... ⌘ Read more
Cargo theft from freight trains in the Los Angeles area has surged, with detectives estimating over 90 containers being opened daily and that theft on their freight trains in the Union Pacific area was up some 160 percent from the previous year. Nationally, cargo theft neared $1 billion in losses last year. Companies decline comment but California's governor publicly questio ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple is widely expected to unveil major new artificial intelligence features with iOS 18 in June. Code found by 9to5Mac in the first beta of iOS 17.4 shows that Apple is continuing to work on a new version of Siri powered by large language model technology, with a little help from other sources. In fact, Apple appears to be using ... ⌘ Read more
Apple's new rules in the European Union mean browsers like Firefox can finally use their own engines on iOS. Although this may seem like a welcome change, Mozilla spokesperson Damiano DeMonte tells The Verge it's "extremely disappointed" with the way things turned out. From a report: "We are still reviewing the technica ... ⌘ Read more
California lawmakers are drawing up multiple plans to require watermarks on content created by AI to curb the abuses within the emerging technology, which has affected sectors from political races to the stock market. From a report: At least five lawmakers have promised or are considering different proposals that would require AI companies to impl ... ⌘ Read more
Global regulators, aviation security specialists and manufacturers failed to reach an agreement on a quick technical fix to the problem of GPS spoofing near war zones, instead calling for better training of pilots to deal with the issue, Reuters reports, citing sources briefed on the talks. From the report: Airlines have been urging qu ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm can relate to Americans' anxiety over electric vehicles. The former governor of Michigan and longtime EV owner (who currently drives a Ford Mach-E) says she has experienced her own challenges with public charging on road trips. She has heard from drivers who are reluctant t ... ⌘ Read more
Apple faces strong action if changes to its App Store do not meet incoming European Union regulations, the bloc's industry chief said on Friday. Reuters: In a move designed to comply with the EU's incoming Digital Markets Act (DMA), the company will soon allow software developers to distribute their apps to Apple devices vi ... ⌘ Read more
prisoninmate shares a 9to5linux report: Flathub is currently one of the most popular app stores for Linux serving 1.6 billion downloads of over 2,400 apps in the Flatpak format, of which more than 850 apps have been verified by their original authors. And now, Flathub proudly announced today that it surpassed 1 million active u ... ⌘ Read more
Astronomers have discovered a mysterious group of giant elderly stars at the heart of the Milky Way that are emitting solar system-sized clouds of dust and gas. The stars, which have been named "old smokers," sat quietly for many years, fading almost to invisibility, before suddenly puffing out vast clouds of smoke. The discovery was made during the monitoring of al ... ⌘ Read more
Nintendo plans to launch a new 8-inch LCD-equipped Switch game console this year, well-regarded analyst firm Omdia said Friday [unpaywalled-link]. Bloomberg: The new device from the Kyoto-based games maker will be responsible for a doubling in shipments of so-called amusement displays in 2024, Hayase said in Tokyo on Friday. His research fo ... ⌘ Read more
In response to new EU regulations, Apple on Thursday outlined plans to allow iOS developers to distribute apps outside the App Store starting in March, though developers must still submit apps for Apple's re ... ⌘ Read more
The National Security Agency buys certain logs related to Americans' domestic internet activities from commercial data brokers, according to an unclassified letter by the agency. The New York Times: The letter [PDF], addressed to a Democratic senator and obtained by The New York Times, offered few details about the nature of the data other than to st ... ⌘ Read more
George Carlin's estate is suing over the release of a comedy special that uses generative AI to mimic the deceased comedian's voice and style of humor. From a report: The lawsuit, filed in California federal court on Thursday, accuses the creators of the special of utilizing without consent or compensation George Carlin's entire body of work consist ... ⌘ Read more
cusco writes: After three years and 72 flights of its 5-flight mission the mission of the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars is finally over. Images show that Ingenuity suffered damage to one of its rotor blades and will not be able to take off again. NASA's press release, also shared by cusco: Ingenuity landed on Mars Feb. 18, 2021, attached to the belly of NASA's Perseverance rover and first lifted off the Mart ... ⌘ Read more
Netflix is on everything. It's on your phone, computer, and game console, going all the way back to the Nintendo Wii. Hell, you can get your Netflix fix on a Peloton. One place where Netflix won't be is Apple's upcoming Vision Pro VR headset. Why isn't Netflix planning an app for what is Apple's big $3 ... ⌘ Read more
OpenAI is always making slight adjustments to its models and pricing, and today brings just such an occasion. From a report: The company has released a handful of new models and dropped the price of API access -- this is primarily of interest to developers, but also serves as a bellwether for future consumer options. GPT-3.5 Turbo is the model most people ... ⌘ Read more
Cruise, the driverless car subsidiary of General Motors, said in a report on Thursday that an adversarial approach taken (non-paywalled link) by its top executives toward regulators had led to a cascade of events that ended with a nationwide suspension of Cruise's fleet. From a report: The roughly 100-page report was ... ⌘ Read more
The Federal Trade Commission launched an inquiry (non-paywalled link) on Thursday into the multibillion-dollar investments by Microsoft, Amazon and Google in the artificial intelligence start-ups OpenAI and Anthropic, broadening the regulator's efforts to corral the power the tech giants can have over A.I. The New York Times: These deals have allowed the big companies to form deep ... ⌘ Read more
PlayStation 5 system update blocks Cronus Zen controller adapter. The $100+ device promises controller compatibility but also enables gameplay "amplification." Sony crackdown follows concerns over GamePacks providing unfair advantages in Call of Duty and other online multiplayer titles. Cronus admits no timeframe for a ... ⌘ Read more
Starting today Apple is opening up its App Store to allow game streaming apps and services. From a report: This means that services like Xbox Cloud Streaming and GeForce Now, which previously were only accessible on iOS via a web browser, will be able to offer full-featured apps. "Developers can now submit a single app with the capability to stream all of the games offered in ... ⌘ Read more
The iPhone's app ecosystem is about to go through its biggest shake-up since the App Store launched in 2008. Today, Apple announced how it plans to change the rules for developers releasing iOS software in the European Union in response to the bloc's Digital Markets Act (DMA) coming into force in March. The big news is that third-party a ... ⌘ Read more
When is cancer not cancer? It's an unexpected question that has stirred the world of cancer treatment in recent years, most notably now with prostate cancer. WSJ: A growing number of doctors are advocating what might seem like an unusual position: That low-grade prostate cancers that grow very slowly or not at all shouldn't be called cancer or carcinoma. The reason, they sa ... ⌘ Read more
The 2023 Hugo Awards for science fiction hosted in China sparked controversy by excluding several authors without explanation, raising censorship concerns. Works removed included RF Kuang's bestseller "Babel," an episode of "The Sandman," and author Xiran Jay Zhao. The prestigious Hugo Awards are voted on by science fiction fans and marked the first time the annual World Sc ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft is laying off 1,900 workers -- or around 8% of Microsoft Gaming's 22,000 employees. The majority of layoffs are at Activision Blizzard, though cuts will impact Xbox and ZeniMax employees, too. The memo from Microsoft Gaming chief Phil Spencer: It's been a little over three months since the Activision, Blizzard, and King teams joined Microsoft. As we move fo ... ⌘ Read more
Illegal subscription services that steal films or TV shows bring in $2 billion a year in ads and subscriber fees (non-paywalled link). From a report: Ever since taking on Netflix at its own game, old Hollywood has struggled to turn a profit in streaming, with the likes of Disney+, Peacock and Paramount+ losing billions of dollars each year, sparking concerns on Wall Street that the se ... ⌘ Read more
A wide-spanning investigation by 404 Media reveals more details about a secretive spy tool that can tracks billions of phone profiles through the advertising industry called Patternz. From the report: Hundreds of thousands of ordinary apps, including popular ones such as 9gag, Kik, and a series of caller ID apps, are part of a global surveillance capability that starts with a ... ⌘ Read more
The Pokemon Company said Thursday it has not granted any permission to "another company," referring to viral new game Palworld-developer Pocketpair, to use Pokemon intellectual property or assets and "intends to investigate and take appropriate measures" against the fast-growing survival game operator. From a report: The statement is Pokemon Companyâ(TM)s first a ... ⌘ Read more
New York City declared Wednesday that it's the first city to issue an advisory officially designating social media as an environmental toxin. From a report: In response to the danger social media poses to the mental health of young people, the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene issued an advisory identifying unrestricted access to and use of soci ... ⌘ Read more
Dominic Gates, reporting for Seattle Times: The fuselage panel that blew off an Alaska Airlines jet earlier this month was removed for repair then reinstalled improperly by Boeing mechanics on the Renton final assembly line, a person familiar with the details of the work told The Seattle Times. If verified by the National Transportation ... ⌘ Read more
Apple's longest-running product is an increasingly small part of the company's business. And yet, it's never been more successful. Jason Snell, writing for The Verge: Twenty years ago, on the Mac's 20th anniversary, I asked Steve Jobs if the Mac would still be relevant to Apple in the age of the iPod. He scoffed at the prospect of the Mac not being important: "of course" it would be. Yet, 10 years later, Apple's revenue was increasingly do ... ⌘ Read more
Tony Isaac writes: The doomsday clock remains at 90 seconds to midnight, the same as last year. Interestingly, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists added 'AI' to the list of threats that they consider to be existential threats to humanity, but didn't move the hands of the clock as a result of adding that threat. My take is that they consider AI to be a very low-grade threat, but i ... ⌘ Read more
Nvidia is launching RTX Video HDR in its 551.23 Game Ready driver update, enabling RTX GPU owners to use AI to convert SDR videos to HDR in Microsoft Edge and Chrome. While subtle, it can add color detail to non-HDR YouTube videos when viewed on an HDR monitor. Like Nvidia's prior RTX Video Super Resolution for upscaling and sharpening web videos, the e ... ⌘ Read more
From its founding, OpenAI said its governing documents were available to the public. When WIRED requested copies after the company's boardroom drama, it declined to provide them. Wired: Wealthy tech entrepreneurs including Elon Musk launched OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab that they said would involve society and the publi ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, is seeking to retract six scientific studies and correct 31 others that were published by the institute's top researchers, including its CEO. The researchers are accused of manipulating data images with si ... ⌘ Read more
Abstract of a paper published on pre-print server arXiv: We show that content on the web is often translated into many languages, and the low quality of these multi-way translations indicates they were likely created using Machine Translation (MT). Multi-way parallel, machine generated content not only dominates the translations in lower resource languages; it also constitu ... ⌘ Read more
Amazon's Ring home doorbell unit says it will stop letting police departments request footage from users' video doorbells and surveillance cameras, retreating from a practice that was criticized by civil liberties groups and some elected officials. Bloomberg: Next week, the company will disable its Request For Assistance tool, the progr ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Since the emergence of Midjourney and other image generators, artists have been watching and wondering whether AI is a great opportunity or an existential threat. Now, after a list of 16,000 names emerged of artists whose work Midjourney had allegedly used to train its AI -- including Brid ... ⌘ Read more
A Boeing 757 plane operated by Delta Air Lines lost a nose wheel as it prepared to take off from Atlanta's main airport on Saturday, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. It was the latest troubling episode involving one of the manufacturer's aircraft. The New York Times: Delta Air Lines Flight 982 was preparing to take off from ... ⌘ Read more
In response to a new European law intended to limit Apple's control over iPhone apps, Apple plans to allow sideloading with restrictions. Users will be able to download apps outside the App Store for the first time, but Apple will review each app, collect fees from developers, and add other limits, WSJ reported Wednesday. The policies w ... ⌘ Read more