# I am the Watcher. I am your guide through this vast new twtiverse.
#
# Usage:
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/users View list of users and latest twt date.
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/twt View all twts.
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/mentions?uri=:uri View all mentions for uri.
# https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/conv/:hash View all twts for a conversation subject.
#
# Options:
# uri Filter to show a specific users twts.
# offset Start index for quey.
# limit Count of items to return (going back in time).
#
# twt range = 1 20930
# self = https://watcher.sour.is?uri=https://feeds.twtxt.net/slashdot/twtxt.txt&offset=17830
# next = https://watcher.sour.is?uri=https://feeds.twtxt.net/slashdot/twtxt.txt&offset=17930
# prev = https://watcher.sour.is?uri=https://feeds.twtxt.net/slashdot/twtxt.txt&offset=17730
GM Reverses All-In EV Strategy to Bring Back Plug-In Hybrids
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Drive:
General Motors was one of the first to foray into plug-in hybrids, but it abandoned them amid the hype for electric vehicles. Now that automakers are running up against the current limits of EV demand though, they're looking for other ways to curb fleet emissions. In GM's case, that way is an about-f ... ⌘ Read more
Scammer Poses As CFO in Deepfaked Meeting On Zoom, Steals $25 Million
Slashdot reader Press2ToContinue shared this report from WION:
: The Hong Kong branch of a multinational company has lost $25.6 million after a scammer used deepfake technology to pose as the firm's chief financial officer (CFO) in a video conference call and ordered money transfers, according to the police, in what is being highlighted a ... ⌘ Read more
Will Microsoft Bring the Linux 'Sudo' Command to Windows Server?**
An anonymous reader shared this report from BleepingComputer
Microsoft released the first Windows Server 2025 Insider preview build last week. However, soon after, a newer version was leaked online. As first reported by Windows Latest, the leaked version contains some new in-development features, including new settings for a Windows 'sudo' command. ... ⌘ Read more
Disneyland's New 'Pixar Place' Hotel is Like Visiting the Studio
The Orange County Register reports:
The new Pixar Place Hotel next door to Disneyland and Disney California Adventure is designed to look like you've walked onto the Pixar Animation Studios campus in Emeryville with concept drawings, character maquettes and final designs sprinkled throughout the hotel. "For those of you who are into the creative pr ... ⌘ Read more
Ask Slashdot: How Can I Stop Security Firms From Harvesting My Data?**
Slashdot reader Unpopular Opinions requests suggestions from the Slashdot community:
Lately a boom of companies decided to play their "nice guy" card, providing us with a trove of information about our own sites, DNS servers, email servers, pretty much anything about any online service you host.
Which is not anything new... Companies have ... ⌘ Read more
Will Silicon Valley's Next House Member Rewrite a Key Internet Law?**
An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from the San Francisco Chronicle's senior political writer:
The next House member representing Silicon Valley wants to change a key piece of federal law that shields internet companies like X, Facebook and Snapchat from lawsuits over content their users post. That protection is considered the l ... ⌘ Read more
152 Birds Named After People Will Be Renamed - But How?**
An anonymous reader shared this report from Slate:
Last November, the American Ornithological Society, or AOS, announced that it would change the common names of all American birds named after people. There are 152 such "eponymic" names (that is, birds that are named after a specific person, like Bicknell's Thrush) on the AOS' official checklist, and the group ... ⌘ Read more
Across America, Clean Energy Plants Are Being Banned Faster Than They're Being Built
An anonymous reader shared this report from USA Today:
A nationwide analysis by USA TODAY shows local governments are banning green energy faster than they're building it.
At least 15% of counties in the U.S. have effectively halted new utility-scale wind, solar, or both, USA TODAY found. These limits come t ... ⌘ Read more
'Linux Foundation Energy' Partners With US Government on Interoperability of America's EV Charging
The non-profit Linux Foundation Energy hopes to develop energy-sector solutions (including standards, specifications, and software) supporting rapid decarbonization by collaborating with industry stakeholders.
And now they're involved in a new partnership with America's Joint O ... ⌘ Read more
Craig Newmark Donates $10M to Help CUNY Journalism School Become Tuition-Free
Craig Newmark posted an announcement last week on LinkedIn. "Okay, my deal is that I'm contributing another $10 million so that the City University of New York journalism grad school can go tuition-free for half the student body next year...
"Tuition-free means more seriously good journalism education for students from a ... ⌘ Read more
The Atlantic Warns of a Rising 'Authoritarian Technocracy'
In the behavior of tech companies, the Atlantic's executive editor warns us about "a clear and coherent ideology that is seldom called out for what it is: authoritarian technocracy. As the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley have matured, this ideology has only grown stronger, more self-righteous, more delusional, and — in the face of rising criticism — ... ⌘ Read more
The Fossil Fuel Industry Knew About Climate Change Since 1954
The Guardian reports:
The fossil fuel industry funded some of the world's most foundational climate science as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents have shown, including the early research of Charles Keeling, famous for the so-called "Keeling curve" that has charted the upward march of the Earth's carbon dioxide levels. A coalition of oil and car ... ⌘ Read more
How a Microsoft Update Broke VS Code Editor on Ubuntu
Microsoft's Visual Studio Code editor now includes a voice command that launches GitHub Copilot Chat just by saying "Hey Code."
But one Linux blog notes that the editor has suddenly stopped supporting Ubuntu 18.04 LTS — "a move causing issues for scores of developers."
VS Code 1.86 (aka the 'January 2024' update) saw Microsoft bump the minimum build requirements fo ... ⌘ Read more
Is AI Hastening the Demise of Quora?**
Quora "used to be a thriving community that worked to answer our most specific questions," writes Slate. "But users are fleeing," while the site hosts "a never-ending avalanche of meaningless, repetitive sludge, filled with bizarre, nonsensical, straight-up hateful, and A.I.-generated entries..."
The site has faced moderation issues, spam, trolls, and bots re-posting questions from Reddit (plus compet ... ⌘ Read more
Japan's Moon Lander Snaps Final Photo, Goes Dormant Before 354-Hour Lunar Night
"Japan's first moon mission has likely come to an end after a surprising late-game comeback," reports Mashable, "with the spacecraft taking one last photo of its surroundings before the deep-freeze of night... showing ominous shadows cast upon a slope of the Shioli crater, its landing site on the near side of the mo ... ⌘ Read more
James Cameron Loves Apple's Vision Pro. But Will It Be Addictive?**
James Cameron tells Vanity Fair's Nick Bilton that his experience with Apple's Vision Pro "was religious. I was skeptical at first. I don't bow down before the great god of Apple, but I was really, really blown away... I think it's not evolutionary; it's revolutionary. And I'm speaking as someone who has worked in VR for 18 years."
He explained ... ⌘ Read more
How CS Students Go From Code.org Into Its Founders' Mentorship/Angel Investment Fund, 'Neo'
The VC fund Neo "identifies awesome young engineers, includes them in a community of tech veterans, and invests in companies they start or join,"
TechCrunch explained in 2018.
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes that Neo is also benefiting from the education non-profit Code.org:
Eleven years a ... ⌘ Read more
Threads is Now 'Booming', With 130 Million Active Users
The Verge reports that Threads is "booming," according to figures shared by Mark Zuckerberg on Meta's earnings call, with 130 million active users a month.
TechCrunch reports:
Threads is continuing to grow, having tripled its downloads month-over-month in December, which gave it a place in the top 10 most downloaded apps for the month across both the App Store and ... ⌘ Read more
Inert Nuclear Missile Found in US Man's Garage
The BBC reports:
Police in Washington state say an old rusted rocket found in a local man's garage is an inert nuclear missile.
On Wednesday, a military museum in Ohio called police in the city of Bellevue to report an offer of a rather unusual donation. The police then sent a bomb squad to the potential donor's home... In a press release, police say the device is "in fact a Dougla ... ⌘ Read more
Ask Slashdot: Can You Roll Your Own Home Router?**
"My goal is to have a firewall that I trust," writes Slashdot reader eggegick, "not a firewall that comes from the manufacture that might have back doors."
I'm looking for a cheap mini PC I can turn into a headless Linux-based wireless and Ethernet router. The setup would be a cable modem on the Comcast side, Ethernet out from the modem to the router and Ethernet, and WiFi out t ... ⌘ Read more
Over 2 Percent of the US's Electricity Generation Now Goes To Bitcoin
"In the last few years, the U.S. has seen a boom in cryptocurrency mining," writes Ars Technica. But they add that the U.S. government "is now trying to track exactly what that means for the consumption of electricity. Specifically, a crucial branch of the U.S. Department of Energy.
"While its analysis is preliminary, the Energy Inf ... ⌘ Read more
Firms Churning Out Fake Papers Are Now Bribing Journal Editors
Nicholas Wise is a fluid dynamics researcher who moonlights as a scientific fraud buster, reports Science magazine. And last June he "was digging around on shady Facebook groups when he came across something he had never seen before."
Wise was all too familiar with offers to sell or buy author slots and reviews on scientific papers — the signs of ... ⌘ Read more
Linus Torvalds Has 'Robust Exchanges' Over Filesystem Suggestion on Linux Kernel Mailing List
Linus Torvalds had "some robust exchanges" on the Linux kernel mailing list with a contributor from Google. The subject was inodes, notes the Register, "which as Red Hat puts it are each 'a unique identifier for a specific piece of metadata on a given filesystem.'"
Inodes have been the subj ... ⌘ Read more
Could We Fight Global Warming With A Giant Umbrella in Outer Space?**
The New York Times reports on a potential fix for global warming being proiposed by "a small but growing number of astronomers and physicists... the equivalent of a giant beach umbrella, floating in outer space. "
The idea is to create a huge sunshade and send it to a far away point between the Earth and the sun to block a small but crucial ... ⌘ Read more
Police Departments Are Turning To AI To Sift Through Unreviewed Body-Cam Footage
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: Over the last decade, police departments across the U.S. have spent millions of dollars equipping their officers with body-worn cameras that record what happens as they go about their work. Everything from traffic stops to welfare checks to responses to active sho ... ⌘ Read more
Mathematicians Finally Solved Feynman's 'Reverse Sprinkler' Problem
Jennifer Ouellette reports via Ars Technica: A typical lawn sprinkler features various nozzles arranged at angles on a rotating wheel; when water is pumped in, they release jets that cause the wheel to rotate. But what would happen if the water were sucked into the sprinkler instead? In which direction would the wheel turn then, or would it ... ⌘ Read more
IEA Lowers Renewables Forecast For Clean Hydrogen
Although hydrogen-dedicated renewable energy capacity is expected to increase by 45 GW between 2022 and 2028, the estimates are 35% lower than what the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasted a year ago. Reuters reports: There is growing political momentum for low-emission hydrogen but actual implementation has been held up by uncertain demand outlooks, a lack of cla ... ⌘ Read more
EPA Proposes 'Forever Chemicals' Be Considered Hazardous Substances
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing that nine PFAS, also known as "forever chemicals," be categorized as hazardous to human health. The EPA signed a proposal Wednesday that would deem the chemicals "hazardous constituents" under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. For the agen ... ⌘ Read more
Fans Preserve and Emulate Sega's Extremely Rare '80s 'AI Computer'
Kyle Orland reports via Ars Technica: Even massive Sega fans would be forgiven for not being too familiar with the Sega AI Computer. After all, the usually obsessive documentation over at Sega Retro includes only the barest stub of an information page for the quixotic, education-focused 1986 hardware. Thankfully, the folks at the self-described ... ⌘ Read more
Japan To Introduce Six-Month Residency Visa For 'Digital Nomads'
In an effort to boost tourism and innovation, Japan will launch a new visa program for digital nomads, allowing remote workers to work in the country for up to six months while enjoying sightseeing trips. Tech Times reports: Starting from the end of March, Japan will introduce a unique visa status aimed at IT engineers and remote workers employed by ove ... ⌘ Read more
Apple Says EU Represents 7% of Global App Store Revenue
Ivan Mehta reports via TechCrunch: Nearly a week after Apple announced big changes to the App Store because of the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) rules, the company said that the market represents 7% of its global App Store revenues. The company's chief financial officer Luca Maestri said that the monetary impact of these changes will depend on choices ... ⌘ Read more
YouTube, Discord, and Lord of the Rings Led Police To a Teen Accused of a US Swatting Spree
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A California teenager prosecutors say is responsible for hundreds of swatting attacks around the United States was exposed after law enforcement pieced together a digital trail left on some of the internet's largest platforms, according to court rec ... ⌘ Read more
Amazon Confirms Fire TV Is Dropping Android
According to a job listing spotted by AFTVNews, Amazon makes it clear that the company plans to ditch Android for its own "VegaOS" operating system. "The new platform is said to rely on React Native and would require new apps to be built," reports 9to5Google. From the report: As spotted by AFTVNews, a job listing from Amazon was looking for a "Fire TV Experience Software Development Engi ... ⌘ Read more
Three People Indicted In $400 Million FTX Crypto Hack Conspiracy
When FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, the defunct cryptocurrency exchange suffered a hack that resulted in more than $380 million in crypto stolen from FTX's virtual wallets. It turns out that FTX was hit with a SIM-swapping scam orchestrated by ringleader Robert Powell. Powell, along with Carter Rohn and Emily Hernandez, have been indict ... ⌘ Read more
Meta's $200 Billion Surge Is Biggest In Stock-Market History
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Meta is poised to become Wall Street's top comeback kid. It was only a couple of years back the Facebook owner suffered the single biggest market value destruction in stock-market history. But the company has come a long way since then, on Thursday it dazzled shareholders with yet another impressive quart ... ⌘ Read more
Mentions of Job Cuts in Earnings Calls Hit Pandemic-Time Peak
Layoffs are being mentioned on US earnings calls at the highest rate since the pandemic -- and as Meta Platforms shows, such cost cutting can pay off for investors. Bloomberg: Efforts by the Facebook parent to slash costs and refocus its business upended the lives of thousands of workers, but has since helped propel its stock 340% from a 2022 low. With ... ⌘ Read more
Apple Says It'll Show Its GenAI Efforts 'Later This Year'
Apple has tossed another crumb to investors wondering when the world will get to see some 'Made in Cupertino' GenAI: Expect Apple to reveal what it's been working on in this buzzy slice of AI "later this year," per CEO Tim Cook. TechCrunch: During an earnings call yesterday, Apple's chief exec emphasized its ongoing investment in AI, alongside other -- as he put ... ⌘ Read more
Craig Wright Claims He's Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Can He Prove It in Court?**
Satoshi Nakamoto is the founding father of cryptocurrency -- and a mystery. In October 2008, Nakamoto gave Bitcoin to the world. Then they disappeared. To this day, nobody knows who Nakamoto is. Amongst the speculation, one man stepped forward: Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who has, since 2016, mai ... ⌘ Read more
Apple's Vision Pro Goes on Sale
Apple's Vision Pro virtual reality headset officially launched in the U.S. on Friday. Customers who preordered the headset will begin to receive it or pick it up at Apple Store locations. CNBC adds: Apple CEO Tim Cook appeared at the company's flagship Fifth Avenue store in New York City on Friday morning to celebrate the headset's release. Speaking to CNBC's Jim Cramer at the event about the Vision Pro's high ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Deploys 'Harmful Design' Tricks To Push Edge, Say Mozilla Researchers
Mozilla claims in a new 74-page research report that Microsoft "repeatedly uses harmful design" and "dark patterns" to push users toward Microsoft Edge and away from rival browsers like Mozilla's Firefox or Google's Chrome browser. PCMag: "Microsoft uses the harmful preselection, visual interference, trick wording, and di ... ⌘ Read more
Google Search's Cache Links Are Officially Being Retired
Google has removed links to page caches from its search results page, the company's search liaison Danny Sullivan has confirmed. From a report: "It was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn't depend on a page loading," Sullivan wrote on X. "These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it."
The cache featu ... ⌘ Read more
Joe Rogan Gets New Spotify Deal Worth Up To $250 Million
Spotify has reached a new deal with star podcaster Joe Rogan that will allow his hit show to be distributed broadly. From a report: Rogan's fresh deal, estimated to be worth as much as $250 million over its multiyear term, involves an upfront minimum guarantee, plus a revenue sharing agreement based on ad sales. Under the new licensing agreement, Spotify will sel ... ⌘ Read more
Panasonic Sells Off Its VR Subsidiary
Shiftall, the Japan-based VR hardware creator, is no longer owned by Panasonic, as the company has been effectively sold off to the Tokyo-based company CREEK & RIVER. From a report: As first noted by tech analyst and YouTuber Brad Lynch, Panasonic today announced it has transferred all shares of Shiftall to the Tokyo-based company CREEK & RIVER Co., Ltd., which specializes in outsourcing, consulting ... ⌘ Read more
For the First Time NASA Has Asked Industry About Private Missions To Mars
NASA is starting to take its first steps toward opening a commercial pathway to Mars. From a report: This week, the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory issued a new solicitation to the industry titled "Exploring Mars Together: Commercial Services Studies." This is a request for proposals from the US space industry to tel ... ⌘ Read more
Pig-Butchering Scam Kits Are for Sale in Underground Markets
Cybercriminals are selling ready-made "pig-butchering" scam kits on the dark web to conduct "DeFi savings" cryptocurrency fraud, according to Sophos. The kits expedite scamming worldwide. In these scams, criminals build online relationships then persuade victims to invest in fake crypto schemes, manipulating them to drain digital wallets. The bundled kits ... ⌘ Read more
Cloudflare Hacked By Suspected State-Sponsored Threat Actor
wiredmikey writes: Web security and CDN giant Cloudflare said it was hacked by a threat actor using stolen credentials to access internal systems, code repositories, along with an AWS environment, as well as Atlassian Jira and Confluence. The goal of the attack, Cloudflare says, was to obtain information on the company's infrastructure, likely to gain a deep ... ⌘ Read more
Intel Delays $20 Billion Ohio Project, Citing Slow Chip Market
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Intel is delaying the construction timeline for its $20 billion chipmaking project in Ohio amid market challenges and the slow rollout of U.S. grant money, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Its initial timeline had chip-making starting next year. Construction on the manufacturing facilities now i ... ⌘ Read more
Mark Zuckerberg Explains Why Meta Open-Sources Its AI
Mark Zuckerberg explaining why Meta open-sources its AI on an earnings call Thursday: I know that some people have questions about how we benefit from open sourcing, the results of our research and large amounts of compute. So I thought it might be useful to lay out the strategic benefits here. The short version is that open sourcing improves our models. And because t ... ⌘ Read more
Ex-CIA Software Engineer Sentenced To 40 Years For Giving Secrets To WikiLeaks
Joshua Schulte, a former CIA software engineer, was sentenced to 40 years in prison on Thursday for carrying out the largest theft of classified information in the agency's history and possessing child pornography. The Guardian reports: The 40-year sentence by US district judge Jesse Furman was for "crimes of espionage, ... ⌘ Read more
Should You Flush With Toilet Lid Up Or Down? Study Says It Doesn't Matter
doc1623 shares a report from Ars Technica: Scientists at the University of Arizona decided to investigate whether closing the toilet lid before flushing reduces cross-contamination of bathroom surfaces by airborne bacterial and viral particles via "toilet plumes." The bad news is that putting a lid on it doesn't result in any s ... ⌘ Read more
A Shape-Shifting Plastic With a Flexible Future
New submitter Smonster shares a report from the New York Times: With restrictions on space and weight, what would you bring if you were going to Mars? An ideal option might be a single material that can shift shapes into any object you imagine. In the morning, you could mold that material into utensils for eating. When breakfast is done, you could transform your fork and knife ... ⌘ Read more
Avatar VFX Workers Vote To Unionize
Visual effects artists working on James Cameron's Avatar movies have voted to unionize in a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election. From the Hollywood Reporter: Of an eligible 88 workers at Walt Disney Studios subsidiary TCF US Productions 27, Inc. who assist with productions for Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment, 57 voted to join the union and 19 voted against, while two ballots were ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Says Palworld Is the Biggest Ever Third-Party Game Pass Launch
Palworld, a viral "Pokemon with guns" game, has become Microsoft's biggest third-party launch on Game Pass. According to developer Pocketpair, the game sold 12 million copies on Steam and seven million on Xbox since its January 19 launch. A million of the copies were sold in its first eight hours. Engadget reports: In addition to ... ⌘ Read more
Apple Vision Pro To Launch With Over 600 Apps and Games
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The pace is picking up for the Apple Vison Pro apps ahead of the spatial computing device's Friday launch as developers ready their apps for the new platform. While just last week, only 150-plus apps had been specifically designed for the Vision Pro so far, according to a third-party analysis of the App Store, ... ⌘ Read more
YouTube Says It Has More Than 100 Million Premium and Music Subscribers
YouTube has announced it has surpassed 100 million YouTube Music and YouTube Premium subscribers globally. Variety reports: The 100 million figure includes uses who are on free trials, according to YouTube. The company didn't break down how many are on YouTube Music versus YouTube Premium, the subscription service for ad-free viewing ... ⌘ Read more
Snap Is Recalling and Refunding Every Drone It Ever Sold
Snap is recalling all 71,000 of its Pixy flying selfie camera drones because their batteries pose a fire hazard. The Verge reports: Snap and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission say you should "immediately stop using the Pixy Flying Camera, remove the battery and stop charging it" now that there have been four reports of the battery bulging, one fire, and o ... ⌘ Read more
FCC To Declare AI-Generated Voices In Robocalls Illegal Under Existing Law
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission plans to vote on making the use of AI-generated voices in robocalls illegal. The FCC said that AI-generated voices in robocalls have "escalated during the last few years" and have "the potential to confuse consumers with misinformation by i ... ⌘ Read more
Google Maps is Getting 'Supercharged' With Generative AI
Google is bringing generative AI to Google Maps, promising to help users find cool places through the use of large language models (LLM). From a report: The feature will answer queries for restaurant or shopping recommendations, for example, using its LLM to "analyze Maps' detailed information about more than 250 million places and trusted insights from our commun ... ⌘ Read more
Biden To Offer $1.5 Billion Loan To Restart Michigan Nuclear Power Plant
The Biden administration is poised to lend $1.5 billion for what what would be the first restart of a shuttered US nuclear reactor, the latest sign of strengthening federal government support for the atomic industry. Bloomberg: The funding, which is set to get conditional backing from the US Energy Department, will be offered as soo ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Seeks Rust Developers To Rewrite Core C# Code
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft's adoption of Rust continues apace if a posting on the IT titan's careers website is anything to go by. Although headcount at Microsoft might currently be down -- by two percent compared to the previous year -- recruitment persists at the Windows giant. In this case, the company is forming a team of Rustaceans to tackl ... ⌘ Read more
Bard Generates Photos Now, Finally
Google's Bard chatbot is adding AI image generation, catching up on a feature that rival ChatGPT Plus has had for months. From a report: Users can prompt Bard to generate photos using Google's Imagen 2 text-to-image model. Bard, now powered by Google's Gemini Pro large language model, was always going to have image generation. It was assumed the more powerful Gemini Ultra model would power it; however, tha ... ⌘ Read more
Okta To Lay Off 7% of Staff Because 'Reality is That Costs Are Still Too High'
Identity management company Okta said on Thursday in a message to employees that it would lay off 400 employees, about 7% of the company's headcount. From a report: CEO Todd McKinnon said in his message that the "reality is that costs are still too high." Okta is only the latest tech company to trim headcount in the openi ... ⌘ Read more
Apple Declares Last MacBook Pro With an Optical Drive Obsolete
Apple has discontinued support for the mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro, the last model to include an optical drive. Products are considered obsolete when Apple ceased distribution over 7 years ago, making service and parts unavailable. The laptop was removed from Apple's lineup in 2016 but remained compatible with macOS until Big Sur in 2020. While opt ... ⌘ Read more
Biogen Dumps Dubious Alzheimer's Drug After Profit-Killing FDA Scandal
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Biotechnology company Biogen is abandoning Aduhelm, its questionable Alzheimer's drug that has floundered on the market since its scandal-plagued regulatory approval in 2021 and brow-raising pricing. On Wednesday, the company announced it had terminated its license for Aduhelm ( ... ⌘ Read more
Hulu Is Cracking Down On Password Sharing, Just Like Disney Plus and Netflix
Hulu updated its Terms of Service to explicitly ban password sharing outside of "your primary personal residence." Subscribers will need to comply by March 14th, 2024. Here's the new ToS section in full: m. Account Sharing. Unless otherwise permitted by your Service Tier, you may not share your subscription outside of your ... ⌘ Read more
SpaceX's Starship To Launch 'Starlab' Private Space Station In Late 2020s
SpaceX's Starship rocket has been selected by Starlab to launch its private space station into orbit. "SpaceX's history of success and reliability led our team to select Starship to orbit Starlab," Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager Space, said in a statement. "SpaceX is the unmatched leader for high-cadence launches, and we are ... ⌘ Read more
Fiber Optics Bring You Internet. Now They're Also Listening To Trains
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Stretching thousands upon thousands of miles under your feet, a web of fibrous ears is listening. Whether you walk over buried fiber optics or drive a car across them, above-ground activity creates a characteristic vibration that ever-so-slightly disturbs the way light travels through the ca ... ⌘ Read more
Investors Threw 50% Less Money At Quantum Last Year
Dan Robinson reports via The Register: Quantum companies received 50 percent less venture cap funding last year as investors switched to generative AI or shied away from risky bets on Silicon Valley startups. Progress in quantum computing is being made, but practical applications of the technology are still likely years away. Investment in quantum technology reached a high ... ⌘ Read more
FBI Director Warns Chinese Hackers Aim To 'Wreak Havoc' On US Critical Infrastructure
"China's hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities, if or when China decides the time has come to strike," said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a prepared testimony before the House Select Committee on the C ... ⌘ Read more
Key Rugged Phone Manufacturer Shuts Down
Jess Weatherbed reports via The Verge: Bullitt Group, the UK-based smartphone manufacturer behind the rugged handsets of Cat, Land Rover, and Motorola, has seemingly shut down. On Monday, Mobile World Live spotted several Bullitt Group employees on LinkedIn saying that the company folded on January 26th after a "critical planned restructuring" failed. The Telegraph reported earlier this mo ... ⌘ Read more
Mistral Confirms New Open Source AI Model Nearing GPT-4 Performance
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: The past few days have been a wild ride for the growing open source AI community -- even by its fast-moving and freewheeling standards. Here's the quick chronology: on or about January 28, a user with the handle "Miqu Dev" posted a set of files on HuggingFace, the leading open source AI ... ⌘ Read more
FTX Scraps Plans To Revive Exchange, Will Repay Billions To Customers
A lawyer for FTX said the defunct crypto exchange has abandoned its plans to relaunch, instead opting to liquidate all assets and return funds to customers. The Guardian reports: The exchange, founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, has been negotiating for months with potential bidders and investors, but none were willing to put in enough money to reb ... ⌘ Read more
'Cory Doctorow Has a Plan To Wipe Away the Enshittification of Tech'
In an interview with The Register, author and activist Cory Doctorow offers potential solutions to stop "enshittification," an age-old phenomenon that has become endemic in the tech industry. It's when a platform that was once highly regarded and user-friendly gradually deteriorates in quality, becoming less appealing and more monetized ove ... ⌘ Read more
Comcast Reluctantly Agrees To Stop Its Misleading '10G Network' Claims
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast has reluctantly agreed to discontinue its "Xfinity 10G Network" brand name after losing an appeal of a ruling that found the marketing term was misleading. It will keep using the term 10G in other ways, however. Verizon and T-Mobile both challenged Comcast's advertising of 10 ... ⌘ Read more
OpenAI Says GPT-4 Poses Little Risk of Helping Create Bioweapons
OpenAI's most powerful AI software, GPT-4, poses "at most" a slight risk of helping people create biological threats, according to early tests the company carried out to better understand and prevent potential "catastrophic" harms from its technology. From a report: In October, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on AI that directed the Depa ... ⌘ Read more
Ivanti Patches Two Zero-Days Under Attack, But Finds Another
Ivanti warned on Wednesday that hackers are exploiting another previously undisclosed zero-day vulnerability affecting its widely used corporate VPN appliance. From a report: Since early December, ââChinese state-backed hackers have been exploiting Ivanti Connect Secure's flaws -- tracked as CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887 -- to break into customer networ ... ⌘ Read more
California And Big Oil Are Splitting After Century-Long Affair
It is the end of an era for Big Oil in California, as the most populous U.S. state divorces itself from fossil fuels in its fight against climate change. From a report: California's oil output a century ago amounted to it being the fourth-largest crude producer in the U.S., and spawned hundreds of oil drillers, including some of the largest still in ... ⌘ Read more
Cruise Faces Long Road Back To City Streets in Wake of Safety Review
General Motors' Cruise self-driving car unit faces a trip that could last the better part of this year to convince regulators and a wary public that its robotaxis are fit to share the road with human drivers, industry officials said. From a report: After releasing a withering safety report last week that Cruise commissioned, GM said on Tu ... ⌘ Read more
Binance Code and Internal Passwords Exposed on GitHub for Months
A highly sensitive cache of code, infrastructure diagrams, internal passwords, and other technical information belonging to cryptocurrency giant Binance has been sitting on a publicly accessible GitHub repository for months, 404 Media has learned. From a report: Binance only managed to have GitHub remove the data under a copyright takedown reques ... ⌘ Read more
Add Bacteria To the List of Things That Can Run Doom
An anonymous reader shares a report: In a somewhat groundbreaking yet bizarre scientific feat, MIT biotechnology PhD student researcher Lauren "Ren" Ramlan has coaxed a simulation of the humble E. coli bacteria into a rudimentary screen capable of displaying the iconic video game. However, before you get too excited about playing games in a petri dish, there's a catch ... ⌘ Read more
23andMe's Fall From $6 Billion To Nearly $0**
The once-hot DNA-testing company is struggling to profit. From a report: Five years ago, 23andMe was one of the hottest startups in the world. Millions of people were spitting into its test tubes to learn about their ancestry. Oprah had named its kit one of her favorite things; Lizzo dressed up as one for Halloween; Eddie Murphy name-checked the company on "Saturday Night Live." 23andMe went pub ... ⌘ Read more
Google One is About To Hit 100 Million Subscribers
During Alphabet's Q4 2023 earnings call, Sundar Pichai announced that Google One is about to cross 100 million subscribers. From a report: The CEO said Google One is "doing incredibly well with strong user growth." Pichai highlighted how it "provides expanded storage, unlocks exclusive features in Google products, and allows [the company] to build a strong relationship ... ⌘ Read more
PayPal To Cut About 2,500 Jobs as Rivals Snag Market Share
PayPal will reduce its workforce by about 9 per cent this year as chief executive Alex Chriss, who took over in September, grapples with rising competition, profit pressures and a raft of analyst downgrades. From a report: In a letter to staff on Tuesday, Mr Chriss said the decision was made to "right-size" the company through both direct cuts and the elimination ... ⌘ Read more
ByteDance CEO Urges Staff To Resist Mediocrity After Missing Initial AI Wave
ByteDance's chief urged his staff to resist mediocrity after the company missed the initial wave of generative AI development, becoming the latest Chinese corporate leader to warn employees against falling behind in a fast-changing environment. From a report: In a company-wide meeting on Tuesday, co-founder and Chief Executive O ... ⌘ Read more
OpenAI's ChatGPT Breaches Privacy Rules, Says Italian Watchdog
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Italy's data protection authority has told OpenAI that its artificial intelligence chatbot application ChatGPT breaches data protection rules, the watchdog said on Monday, as it presses ahead with an investigation started last year. The authority, known as Garante, is one of the European Union's most pro ... ⌘ Read more
Starlink's Laser System Is Beaming 42 Million GB of Data Per Day
SpaceX revealed that it's delivering over 42 petabytes of data for customers per day, according to engineer Travis Brashears. "We're passing over terabits per second [of data] every day across 9,000 lasers," Brashears said today at SPIE Photonics West, an event in San Francisco focused on the latest advancements in optics and light. "We actually s ... ⌘ Read more
Dell Terminates Distribution Deal With VMware After Broadcom Acquisition
In a regulatory filing today, Dell revealed that it has terminated its distribution deal for VMware products. The deal was made in November 2021 before VMware was acquired by Broadcom. The Register reports: That agreement was struck on the same day Dell and VMware parted ways -- back when Big Mike's Bespoke Computer Barn decided t ... ⌘ Read more
First Lab-Grown Eel Meat Revealed
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The first lab-grown freshwater eel meat has been produced, potentially solving a diner's dilemma. Rampant overfishing has caused eel populations to plummet and prices to soar, but the cultivated eel could provide the delicacy guilt-free. The eel meat was produced by Forsea Foods in Israel from embryonic cells of a freshwater eel. The company collabor ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft AI Engineer Says Company Thwarted Attempt To Expose DALL-E 3 Safety Problems
Todd Bishop reports via GeekWire: A Microsoft AI engineering leader says he discovered vulnerabilities in OpenAI's DALL-E 3 image generator in early December allowing users to bypass safety guardrails to create violent and explicit images, and that the company impeded his previous attempt to bring public att ... ⌘ Read more
YouTube TV's Now Lets You Customize Your Multiview Experiences
Google has confirmed to Cord Cutters News that you can now customize what games you can watch in your Multiview window. The keyword here is "games" because this feature is still limited to just sporting events at this time. From the report: One of YouTube TV's best features is the ability to offer the option to watch up to four sporting or news events ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft's Gaming Revenue Is Up 49 Percent In Q2, Mostly Thanks To the Activision Deal
For the first time, Microsoft's Q2 earnings report includes the impact of the company's $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition. "While Microsoft isn't breaking out specific numbers, it says that its overall gaming revenue increased by 49 percent, 44 points of which came from the 'net impact' of the Ac ... ⌘ Read more
German Police Secure $2 Billion In Bitcoin From Pirate Site Operators
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: With help from the FBI, German police managed to secure nearly 50,000 bitcoin (USD $2 billion) from the operators of the defunct movie streaming portal, Movie2k. [...] Movie2K was another pirate site that showed an early interest in bitcoin. In its heyday, the site was the dominant pi ... ⌘ Read more
UPS To Cut 12,000 Jobs, Invest In AI For Efficiency
sdinfoserv writes: UPS is cutting 12,000 jobs, or about 2.5% of its global workforce. The cuts mostly effect managers and contractors. Meanwhile, as the company wrestles with struggling profits and sales, workers are to return to the office five days a week and the company is "investing in artificial intelligence (AI) as it pushes to become more efficient," according to the BBC. ... ⌘ Read more
Apple Vision Pro Review Roundup
Apple has lifted the embargo on the first wave of non-curated reviews of its Vision Pro headset, and the results are somewhat surprising. The initial "high" experienced upon first impressions, where reviewers laud the headset's "incredibly impressive displays" and "near perfect" tracking capabilities, has waned. In real-world conditions outside of Apple's heavily-regulated demos, the Vision Pro appears to suff ... ⌘ Read more
Raspberry Pi Is Planning a London IPO, But Its CEO Expects 'No Change' In Focus
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The business arm of Raspberry Pi is preparing to make an initial public offering (IPO) in London. CEO Eben Upton tells Ars that should the IPO happen, it will let Raspberry Pi's not-for-profit side expand by "at least a factor of 2X." And while it's "an understa ... ⌘ Read more
Meta's Free Code Llama AI Programming Tool Closes the Gap With GPT-4
Meta's latest update to its code generation AI model, Code Llama 70B, is "the largest and best-performing model" yet. From a report: Code Llama tools launched in August and are free for both research and commercial use. According to a post on Meta's AI blog, Code Llama 70B can handle more queries than previous versions, which means develop ... ⌘ Read more
Starbucks is Launching Its Olive Oil-Infused Beverages Nationwide
Starbucks is taking its extra virgin olive oil-infused drinks -- which some customers previously complained of sending them straight to the bathroom ï-- nationwide beginning Tuesday. CNN: The lineup, called Oleato, launched in a few US cities last year before slowly expanding to more stores. Tuesday's launch across its US and Canada locations s ... ⌘ Read more
FEMA Will Pay States To Install Solar Panels and Heat Pumps
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced today that it'll start reimbursing local governments for installing solar panels and more efficient appliances after a disaster strikes. From a report: The move can help communities prepare for another calamity by equipping them with tools that just might keep the lights on when they would otherwise ... ⌘ Read more
Russia Hit With Widespread Internet Outage Across Country
Russia is facing a widespread internet outage that's affected users across the country, with access to websites on the local .ru domain down. From a report: The issue was linked to a technical problem with the .ru domain's global Domain Name System Security Extensions, or DNSSEC, which is used to secure data exchanged in internet protocol networks, Russia's Di ... ⌘ Read more