An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google today is sharing more details about the fees that will accompany its plan to comply with Europe's new Digital Markets Act (DMA), the new regulation aimed at increasing competition across the app store ecosystem. While Google yesterday pointed to ways it already complie ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google today is sharing more details about the fees that will accompany its plan to comply with Europe's new Digital Markets Act (DMA), the new regulation aimed at increasing competition across the app store ecosystem. While Google yesterday pointed to ways it already complie ... ⌘ Read more
Trust in AI technology and the companies that develop it is dropping, in both the U.S. and around the world, according to new data from Edelman shared first with Axios. Axios reports: Globally, trust in AI companies has dropped to 53%, down from 61% five years ago. In the U.S., trust has dropped 15 percentage points (from 50% to 35%) over the same period. Trust in AI is low across ... ⌘ Read more
Waymo announced that it will begin shuttling employees around 43 square miles of Austin, Texas, including the Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin and Hyde Park neighborhoods, as well as downtown Austin. As TechCrunch notes, it's "a crucial step before the company opens the program up to the public." From the report: The step forward comes just a few days after Way ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Criminals have probably stolen nearly 30,000 Fidelity Investments Life Insurance customers' personal and financial information -- including bank account and routing numbers, credit card numbers and security or access codes -- after breaking into Infosys' IT systems i ... ⌘ Read more
JPMorgan helped some of its corporate customers slash manual work by almost 90% (alternative source) with its cashflow management tool that runs on AI, bringing the largest US bank one step closer to charging for this service. From a report: "We are going to keep investing into this solution because we see that we're starting to really crack this workflow," s ... ⌘ Read more
A washing-machine-sized satellite is to "name and shame" the worst methane polluters in the oil and gas industry. From a report: MethaneSat will provide the first near-comprehensive global view of leaks of the potent greenhouse gas from the oil and gas sector, and all of the data will be made public. It will provide high-resolution data over wide ... ⌘ Read more
41 state attorneys general penned a letter to Meta's top attorney on Wednesday saying complaints are skyrocketing across the United States about Facebook and Instagram user accounts being stolen, and declaring "immediate action" necessary to mitigate the rolling threat. Wired: The coalition of top law enforcement off ... ⌘ Read more
Epic Games, in a blog post: We recently announced that Apple approved our Epic Games Sweden AB developer account. We intended to use that account to bring the Epic Games Store and Fortnite to iOS devices in Europe thanks to the Digital Markets Act (DMA). To our surprise, Apple has terminated that account and now we cannot develop the Epic Games Store for iOS. This is a serious violation of t ... ⌘ Read more
During a recent Morgan Stanley conference, Warner Bros. Discovery gaming boss J.B. Perrette discussed some of the company's strategy for gaming going forward, and it includes more live-service, mobile, and free-to-play games. From a report: He said, "We're doubling down on games as an area where ... ⌘ Read more
Spain has moved to block Sam Altman's cryptocurrency project Worldcoin, the latest blow to a venture that has raised controversy in multiple countries by collecting customers' personal data using an eyeball-scanning "orb." From a report: The AEPD, Spain's data protection regulator, has demanded that Worldcoin immediately ceases col ... ⌘ Read more
Alternative iOS app stores won't work (for long) outside of the EU. From a report: With iOS 17.4, iPhone users in the EU can now access third-party app marketplaces -- pending availability which is expected any day -- but extended overseas travel could change that, according to Apple.
[](http://t ... ⌘ Read more
Carriers have gotten stricter about how many items you can take on board, no matter how small they are. From a report: Fanny packs. Cross-body bags. Shopping bags. Pillows and blankets. The Southwest Airlines gate agent rattled off so many items that counted toward the two carry-on bag limit on my flight to Baltimore, I thought it might be a playful jab at Spirit and Frontier and their rigid carry-on p ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: On a late night in December, Shane Jones, an AI engineer at Microsoft, felt sickened by the images popping up on his computer. Jones was noodling with Copilot Designer, the AI image generator that Microsoft debuted in March 2023, powered by OpenAI's technolo ... ⌘ Read more
A new report warns that a boom in computer chip manufacturing in the US could fuel demand for dirty energy, despite companies' environmental claims. The solution for manufacturers, surprisingly, might be to act more like other big tech companies chasing climate goals. From a report: New semiconductor factories being built in the US ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Krebs on Security: There are indications that U.S. healthcare giant Change Healthcare has made a $22 million extortion payment to the infamous BlackCat ransomware group (a.k.a. "ALPHV") as the company struggles to bring services back online amid a cyberattack that has disr ... ⌘ Read more
Michelle Lewis reports via Electrek: One of the US's largest nuclear power plants will directly power cloud service provider Amazon Web Services' new data center. Power provider Talen Energy sold its data center campus, Cumulus Data Assets, to Amazon Web Services for $650 million. Amazon will develop an up to 960-megawatt (MW) data center at the Salem Township ... ⌘ Read more
Andrew Jones reports via SpaceNews: The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) plans to launch four-meter and five-meter-diameter reusable rockets for the first time in 2025 and 2026 respectively, Wang Wei, a deputy to the National People's Congress, told China News Service March 4. The reports do not clearly identify the two rockets. CASC is k ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The average toddler is missing out on hearing more than 1,000 words spoken by an adult each day due to screen time, setting back their language skills, a first-of-its kind study has found. The research, published on Tuesday in the Journal of ... ⌘ Read more
In a first-of-its-kind prosecution, a California man was arrested and charged Monday with allegedly smuggling potent, greenhouse gases from Mexico. From a report: Michael Hart, a 58-year-old man from San Diego, pleaded not guilty to smuggling hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs -- commonly used in air conditioning and refrigeration -- and selling them for profit, in a federal cour ... ⌘ Read more
Longtime Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a report from The Intercept: With the new version of Signal, you will no longer broadcast your phone number to everyone you send messages to by default, though you can choose to if you want. Your phone number will still be displayed to contacts who already have it stored in their phones. Going forward, however, when you start ... ⌘ Read more
Warner Bros. Discovery said a password crackdown for its Max streaming service is coming later this year, joining competitors Netflix and Disney. TheWrap reports: JB Perrette, WBD's CEO and president of global streaming and games, said the initiative would launch later this year with a broader rollout in 2025. "We think, relative to the scale of our business, it's a meaningful opportu ... ⌘ Read more
According to the latest data from StatCounter, Linux's market share has reached 4.03% -- surging by an additional 1% in the last eight months. What's the reason behind this recent growth? "That's a good question," writes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols. "While Windows is the king of the hill with 72.13% and MacOS comes in a distant second at 15.46%, it's clear that Linux is ... ⌘ Read more
Richard Speed reports via The Register: Copilot in Windows is set to get even more assertive after Microsoft added a function that makes the AI assistant's window pop up after a user's cursor hovers over the icon in the task bar. [...] Windows Insiders on the Beta Channel â" with the option to get the latest updates turned on â" will soon find themselves o ... ⌘ Read more
Jess Weatherbed reports via The Verge: Apple's iOS 17.4 update is now available, introducing new emoji and a cryptographic security protocol for iMessage, alongside some major changes to the App Store and contactless payments for the iPhone platform in Europe. Apple is making several of these changes to comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), a law that aims to make t ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Oregon has joined the small but growing list of states that have passed right-to-repair legislation. Oregon's bill stands out for a provision that would prevent companies from requiring that official parts be unlocked with encrypted software checks before they will f ... ⌘ Read more
The loss of Arctic sea ice has long been a graphic measure of human-caused climate change, with wrenching images of suffering polar bears illustrating a worsening planetary crisis. Now, new research has found that Arctic Ocean sea ice is shrinking even faster than previously thought -- and that the Arctic may start to see its first " ... ⌘ Read more
The SAT, a college admissions exam that for nearly a century was completed using paper and pencil, is now officially all-digital. From a report: This week, students in the U.S. will begin taking the new SAT on their own devices -- including a tablet or a laptop -- or on school devices. The test is also one hour shorter (down from three hours), has shorter readi ... ⌘ Read more
Amazon's cloud services division is halting fees it has long charged customers that switch to a rival provider -- following in the steps of Google, which recently announced it was ending the practice. From a report: Amazon Web Services will no longer charge customers who want to extract all of their data from the company's servers and move them to anot ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft is ending support for its Android subsystem in Windows 11 next year. From a report: The software giant first announced it was bringing Android apps to Windows 11 with Amazon's Appstore nearly three years ago, but this Windows Subsystem for Android will now be deprecated starting March 5th, 2025. "Microsoft is ending support for the Wi ... ⌘ Read more
Google announced updates to its search ranking systems aimed at promoting high-quality content and demoting manipulative or low-effort material, including content generated by AI solely to summarize other sources. The company also stated it is improving its ability to detect and combat tactics used to deceive its ranking algorithms.
[ without permission ... ⌘ Read more
The U.S. government announced Tuesday sanctions against the founder of the notorious spyware company Intellexa and one of his business partners. From a report: This is the first time the U.S. government has targeted specific people, in addition to companies, with sanctions related to the misuse of commercial spyware. And it signifie ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft has filed a motion seeking to dismiss key parts of a lawsuit The New York Times filed against the company and Open AI, accusing them of copyright infringement. From a report: If you'll recall, The Times sued both companies for using its published articles to train their GPT large language models (LLMs) without permission ... ⌘ Read more
Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are all experiencing issues. From a report: The three Meta-owned platforms aren't working for many users, with the widespread outage seeming to start around 10AM ET. Some users are experiencing issues logging in to their Meta Quest headsets, too. Facebook is logging users out of their accounts, leaving them unable to get back in. Meanwhile, over on Instagr ... ⌘ Read more
Bitcoin surged to a record as demand from new US exchange-traded funds and a looming reduction in the token's supply growth fuel a breathtaking rebound in the original cryptocurrency. From a report: The largest digital asset rose as much as 2.5% to $69,191.95 as of 10:10 a.m. Tuesday in New York. Bitcoin has climbed about 62% so far in 2024, outperforming global stocks and spreading optimism across the d ... ⌘ Read more
Hackers backed by the North Korean government gained a major win when Microsoft left a Windows zero-day unpatched for six months after learning it was under active exploitation. From a report: Even after Microsoft patched the vulnerability last month, the company made no mention that the North Korean threat group Lazarus had been us ... ⌘ Read more
The Federal Communications Commission is considering a proposal to bar landlords from charging tenants in bulk for cable, internet, and satellite services, offering them more choice in the kinds of services they need. From a report: The agency is circulating a proposed rule to ban the practice of "bulk billing," the Whit ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Hagerty: Euro NCAP, the automotive safety industry body for Europe, is introducing new guidance for 2026 which means that five important tasks in every car will have to be performed by actual buttons instead of by accessing a screen. Indicators, hazard warning lights, windscreen wipers, horn, and SOS features will have to be ... ⌘ Read more
Piracy was traditionally seen as something that predominantly young males were interested in. This is a largely outdated representation of reality, as girls and women began to catch up a long time ago. In some countries, including Indonesia, more women pirate music, movies, and TV-shows than their male counterparts. TorrentFreak reports: [N]ew findings published ... ⌘ Read more
In an update on CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday, Blue Origin said it was aiming to send an uncrewed lander to the surface of the moon in the next 12 to 16 months. A crewed version is expected to follow. GeekWire reports: "We're expecting to land on the moon between 12 and 16 months from today," [said John ... ⌘ [Read more](https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/03/05/0130213/blue-origin-targets-2025-for-cargo-landers-inaugural-moon-trip-with-humans-to-follow?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: New research suggests there's less oxygen on the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa than thought -- and that could affect what if any life might be lurking in Europa's underground ocean. Even with little or no oxygen, microbes might still be bustling around ... ⌘ Read more
Wayne Williams reports via TechRadar: Qualcomm has unveiled its AI Hub, an all-inclusive library of pre-optimized AI models ready for use on devices running on Snapdragon and Qualcomm platforms. These models support a wide range of applications including natural language processing, computer vision, and anomaly detection, and are design ... ⌘ Read more
"Linux gained from 3% to 4% in 8 months," writes longtime Slashdot reader bobdevine. Linuxiac reports: According to the latest data from StatCounter, a leading web traffic analysis tool, Linux's market share has reached 4.03%. At first glance, the number might seem modest, but it represents a significant leap. Let's break it down. It took Linux 30 years to secure a 3% share of desktop operating system ... ⌘ Read more
According to the San Francisco police department, police have made the first arrest in relation to several recent vehicle arsons, including the crowd attack of a Waymo robotaxi last month in Chinatown. The San Francisco Standard reports: Police say officers arrested a man meeting the description of a person suspected of lighting several vehicles on fi ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Jack Teixeira, the National Guard airman who leaked confidential military documents on Discord, agreed Monday to plead guilty, promising to cooperate with officials attempting to trace the full extent of government secrets leaked. Under the plea deal, Teixeira will serve a much- ... ⌘ Read more
Longtime Slashdot reader jmv writes: After more than two years of work, Opus 1.5 is out. It brings many new features that can improve quality and the general audio experience through machine learning, while maintaining fully-compatibility with previous releases. See this release page demonstrating all the new features, including:
Significant improvement to packet loss robustnes ... ⌘ Read more
ZipK writes: Cord Cutters New reports that Roku has rolled out new terms of service that require users to accept individual arbitration. To gain acceptance, Roku devices pop up a dialog box that can only be dismissed if you accept the new terms or turn off your Roku and stop using it. As expected, much discussion has ensued in the Roku c ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Liliputing: Yuzu is a free and open source emulator that makes it possible to run Nintendo Switch games on Windows, Linux, and Android devices. First released in 2018, the software has been under constant development since then (the Android port was released less than a year ago). ... ⌘ Read more
A group of radio enthusiasts known as the "radio squirrels" are keeping the legacy of Morse code alive at KPH Maritime Radio, the last operational Morse code radio station in North America. Located in Point Reyes National Seashore, north of San Francisco, the station transmits maritime news and weather reports every Saturday, using vintage equipment dating back to World War II, reads a fast-paced story on T ... ⌘ Read more
Gartner: By 2026, traditional search engine volume will drop 25%, with search marketing losing market share to AI chatbots and other virtual agents, according to Gartner. "Organic and paid search are vital channels for tech marketers seeking to reach awareness and dema ... ⌘ Read more
Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence startup, unveiled its Claude 3 series of AI models today, designed to meet the diverse needs of enterprise customers with a balance of intelligence, speed, and cost efficiency. The lineup includes three models: Opus, Sonnet, and the upcoming ... ⌘ Read more
Apple has announced the launch of its new MacBook Air laptops powered by the company's latest M3 chip, offering up to 60% faster performance compared to the previous generation (M1-powered MacBook Air). The new 13-inch and 15-inch models feature a thin and light design, up to 18 hours of battery life, and a Liquid Retina display. The M3 chip, built using 3-nanometer technolog ... ⌘ Read more
JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines announced on Monday that they would walk away from their planned $3.8 billion merger after federal antitrust regulators successfully challenged the deal in court. JetBlue said it would pay Spirit $69 million to exit the deal. From a report: A federal judge in Boston blocked the proposed merger on Jan. 16, siding with the Justice Department in determining tha ... ⌘ Read more
JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines announced on Monday that they would walk away from their planned $3.8 billion merger after federal antitrust regulators successfully challenged the deal in court. JetBlue said it would pay Spirit $69 million to exit the deal. From a report: A federal judge in Boston blocked the proposed merger on Jan. 16, siding with the Justice Department in determining tha ... ⌘ Read more
The EU Commission on Monday fined Apple about $2 billion for stifling competition from rival music streaming services. In a blog post, Spotify writes:
Apple's rules muzzled Spotify and other music streaming services from sharing with our users directly in our app about various benefits -- ... ⌘ Read more
"It never occurred to me that having no visual imagery was unusual..." writes a science journalist at the Guardian.
"It's not that I forget what I look like, but I am sometimes a little surprised, and don't feel connected to my outward appearance as a matter of identity."
There's been a surge of research on how aphantasia affects our lives... [F]or some it affects image ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: India has waded into global AI debate by issuing an advisory that requires "significant" tech firms to get government permission before launching new models. India's Ministry of Electronics and IT issued the advisory to firms on Friday. The advisory -- not published on public domain but a copy of w ... ⌘ Read more
A homeless man "was taken into custody on suspicion of grand theft auto," reports the Los Angeles Times, "after police said he tried to steal a Waymo self-driving car in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday night."
The man entered and tried to operate a Waymo vehicle that had stopped to let out a passenger at the corner of 1st and Main at 10:30 p.m., Los Angeles ... ⌘ Read more
The Washington Post shares some surprising news from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, a 44-year-old nonprofit which works on government energy policies and produces its own research and analysis.
The group "has rated the pollution from vehicles for decades," according to the article — but "says the winning car this year is the ... ⌘ Read more
"Apple faces a proposed class action lawsuit alleging the company holds an illegal monopoly over digital storage for its customers," reports the Hill:
The suit, filed Friday, claims "surgical" restraints prevent customers from effectively using any service except its iCloud storage system. iCloud is the only service that can ... ⌘ Read more
"Reddit users have been reacting with deep gloom to the firm saying it plans to sell shares to the public..." the BBC recently reported:
The company has said its plans are "exciting" and will offer the business opportunities for growth. However many users worry the move will fundamentally change the website... "When the most important customers shift from [users] to shareholders, the product ... ⌘ Read more
In 1970 an Oregon man discovered a body with "clear signs of foul play".
NPR reports that "The identity of the young woman remained a mystery — until Thursday."
State authorities identified the woman as Sandra Young, a teenager from Portland who went missing between 1968 and 1969. Her identity was ... ⌘ Read more
Taiwan doesn't have parking meters, writes long-time Slashdot reader Badlands, "but rather roving armies of maids on electric scooters that cruise their area with their smartphone and take a pic of your license plate and timestamp it, leaving a receipt under your windshield wipers."
But now one city will try "smart parking" services — ... ⌘ Read more
"NASA said Friday it is shutting down a $2 billion satellite refueling project," reports UPI, "after criticizing the project's contractor for poor performance."
The agency in a statement said it will discontinue the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing 1 project after nearly a decade of work due to "continued te ... ⌘ Read more
Long-time Slashdot reader Greymane shared this article from Wired:
[I]n a demonstration of the risks of connected, autonomous AI ecosystems, a group of researchers has created one of what they claim are the first generative AI worms — which can spread from one system to another, potentially stealing data or deploying malware in the proc ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft built two datacenters west of Phoenix, with plans for seven more (serving, among other companies, OpenAI). "Microsoft has been adding data centers at a stupendous rate, spending more than $10 billion on cloud-computing capacity in every quarter of late," writes the Atlantic. "One semiconductor analyst called this "the largest infrastructure buildout that humanity has ever seen."
But is t ... ⌘ Read more
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: CACM [Communications of the ACM] Is Now Open Access," proclaims the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in its tear-down-this-CACM-paywall announcement. "More than six decades of CACM's renowned research articles, seminal papers, technical reports, commentaries, real-world practice, and news articles are now open to everyone, regard ... ⌘ Read more
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes Tom's Hardware: A Geekbench 6 result features what is likely the first-ever look at the single-core performance of the Taishan V120, developed by Huawei's HiSilicon subsidiary (via @Olrak29\\_ on X). The single-core score indicates that Taishan V120 cores are roughly on par with AMD's Zen 3 cores from late 2020, which could me ... ⌘ Read more_
This week Linux Foundation Charities launched "a groundbreaking open source software solution for real-time fraud prevention" named Tazama — "with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation."
They're calling it "the first-ever open source platform dedicated to enhancing fraud man ... ⌘ Read more
"These days in San Francisco, every major business closure triggers a rush to assign blame," argues the San Francisco Standard:
When Macy's announced this week that it would shutter its flagship store in Union Square, it unleashed a wave of mourning and recriminations... Mayor London Breed and other local pols like state Sen. Scott Wiener tried to allay fears that Macy's was leaving ... ⌘ Read more
Rust's official survey team released results from their 8th annual survey "focused on gathering insights and feedback from Rust users".
In terms of operating systems used by Rustaceans, the situation is very similar to the results from 2022, with Linux being the most popular choice of Rust users [69.7%], followed by macOS [33.5%] ... ⌘ Read more
It completed the most precise landing ever on the moon — albeit upside-down. And then it faced a "lunar night" lasting about two weeks where temperatures drop to -270 degrees Fahrenheit, reports the Times of India.
But then, "Despite not being designed for the extreme temperatures, SLIM surprised scientists by comin ... ⌘ Read more
Some news from "Copyleft Currents", the blog of open-source/IP lawyer Heather Meeker:
On February 14, 2024, the Court of Appeal of Paris issued an order stating that Orange, a major French telecom provider, had infringed the copyight of Entr'Ouvert's Lasso software and violated the GPL.
They ordered Orange to pay €500,000 in compensatory damages and €150,000 for mo ... ⌘ Read more
America's Federal Aviation administration "will require a fix for a new 737 MAX design problem discovered by Boeing that, although it's a remote possibility, could theoretically disable the jet's engine anti-ice system," reports the Seattle Times:
A different flaw in the MAX's engine anti-ice system design drew scrutiny in January and force ... ⌘ Read more
Space.com writes that NASA's plan to return samples from Mars to the earth "is facing major challenges, according to a new report.
"Design, cost and scheduling are all significant obstacles, an audit report of NASA's Mars Sample Return (MSR) Program by the agency's Office of Inspector General (OIG) finds..."
It involves landing on Mars to collec ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft is "delighted to introduce some useful new features" for its "Copilot Preview for Windows 11," according to a recent blog post.
TechRepublic adds that "most features will be enabled by default... rolling out from today until April 2024."
Windows 11 users will be able to change system settings through prompts typed directly into Copilot in Win ... ⌘ Read more
Americans filing their taxes could face privacy threats, reports the Washington Post:
"We just need your OK on a couple of things," TurboTax says as you prepare your tax return.
Alarm bells should be ringing in your head at the innocuous tone.
This is where America's most popular tax-prep website asks you to sign away the ironclad privacy ... ⌘ Read more
You know how like-charged objects repel — and do so regardless of the sign of their electrical charge? Maybe not always, according to new research published in Nature.
"We demonstrate experimentally that the solvent plays a hitherto unforeseen but crucial role in interparticle interactions," they write. But more importantly, "interactio ... ⌘ Read more
"The Mandalorian & Grogu and Daisy Ridley's untitled Star Wars movie have received working titles ahead of their respective production starts," reports CBR:
According to The Cosmic Circus, The Mandalorian and Grogu will be filmed under the working title "Thunder Alley", while Ridley's Star Wars movie will be known as "New Jedi Order..." The Mandalorian & Grogu will be the fir ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from The Washington:
A YouTube contractor was addressing the Austin City Council on Thursday, calling on them to urge Google to negotiate with his union, when a colleague interrupted him with jaw-dropping news: His 43-person team of contractors had all been laid off...
The YouTube workers, w ... ⌘ Read more
In 2005 Gabe Rivera was a compiler software engineer at Intel — before starting the tech-news aggregator Techmeme. And last year his Threads profile added the words "This is a little self-serving, but I want all social networks to be as open as possible."
Friday Threads engineer Jesse Chen posted that it was Rivera's post when Threads launched asking for an API that "convinced us to go for it." And Techmeme just ... ⌘ Read more
"A ransomware gang once thought to have been crippled by law enforcement has snarled prescription processing for millions of Americans over the past week..." reports the Washington Post.
"The hackers stole data about patients, encrypted company files and demanded money to unlock them, prompting the company to shut down most of its ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Spotify, Epic Games, Deezer, Paddle, and several other developers and EU associations today sent a joint letter to the European Commission to complain about Apple's "proposed scheme for compliance" with the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The 34 companies and ... ⌘ Read more
An upcoming April release of Copilot for OneDrive will be able to find, summarize, and extract information from a wide range of files, including text documents, presentations, spreadsheets, HTML pages and PDF files. "Users can ask Copilot to tailor summaries to their liking, such as only including key points or highlights from a specific section," repor ... ⌘ Read more
The desert planet Arrakis in Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Dune is plausible, says Alexander Farnsworth, a climate modeler at the University of Bristol in England. According to Science News, the world would be a harsh place for humans to live, and they probably wouldn't have to worry about getting eaten by extraterrestrial helminths. From the ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Scientists and researchers are celebrating what they call a "dream" discovery after an exploratory drill confirmed a high concentration of helium buried deep in Minnesota's Iron Range. Thomas Abraham-James, CEO of Pulsar Helium, said the confirmed presence of helium could be ... ⌘ Read more
Since implementing a remote-first policy in 2021, Yelp says it's experienced a surge in job applications and a more satisfied workforce. Fortune reports: Last year, the total number of job applicants was 43% higher compared to 2021, according to Yelp's 2024 Remote Work Report released earlier this month ... ⌘ Read more
Emma Roth reports via The Verge: If you still haven't migrated your Oculus account to a Meta one, you might want to do that soon. In an email sent to users, the company says it will delete Oculus accounts on March 29th, 2024, preventing you from reactivating or retrieving your apps, in-app purchases, store credits, and more. You'll lose your ... ⌘ Read more
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved Alphabet's Waymo robotaxi service to operate in Los Angeles and some cities near San Francisco. Reuters reports: Waymo, which already operates in San Francisco and Phoenix, applied on Jan 19 to expand its driverless services, saying it would work with policymakers, first re ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: For 20 years, a loosely organized group of Wikipedia editors toiled away curating a collection of 15,000 articles on a single subject: the roads and highways of the United States. Despite minor disagreements, the US Roads Project mostly worked in harmony, but recently, a long-simmering debate ... ⌘ Read more
Paul Kunert writes in an exclusive report for The Register: IBM is asking staff who want to take voluntary redundancy to raise their hand as it embarks on a new round of global job cuts, though roles in Europe and within a handful of departments are expected to shoulder the brunt. The Resource Action, as Big Blue likes to euphemistically refer to layoffs, ... ⌘ Read more
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled today that police must now have a warrant or court order to obtain a person or organization's IP address. CBC News reports: The top court was asked to consider whether an IP address alone, without any of the personal information attached to it, was protected by an expectation of privacy under the Charter. In a ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A technology company that routes millions of SMS text messages across the world has secured an exposed database that was spilling one-time security codes that may have granted users' access to their Facebook, Google and TikTok accounts. The Asian technology and internet company YX Internationa ... ⌘ Read more
Stack Overflow has launched an API that will require all AI models trained on its coding question-and-answer content to attribute sources linking back to its posts. And it will cost money to use the site's content. From a report: "All products based on models that consume public Stack Overflow data are required to provide at ... ⌘ Read more
Rates of obesity in the U.S. and around the world have more than doubled over the past three decades, according to a new study in The Lancet. From a report: More than 1 billion people worldwide now have obesity, a sign of worsening nutrition that's also raising the risk of leading causes of death and disease such as high blood pressure, cancer and diabetes. The global rate of obesity more than doubled among wo ... ⌘ Read more
Energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide hit a record high in 2023, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report on Friday. The IEA analysis showed that it rose by 410 million tonnes, or 1.1%, in 2023 to 37.4 billion tonnes. From a report: "Far from falling rapidly -- as is required to meet the global climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement -- CO2 em ... ⌘ Read more
Startup wind-down services are seeing rapid growth as failed startups look for help shutting down. Pitchbook: On the phone with a founder who recently wound down his seed-stage software startup, I asked him what his plan was next. Having laid off all of his employees in autumn of last year, he was the last man standing: tasked with the thankless job of shutting down the company, ret ... ⌘ Read more
Nikon is working with NASA to make a mirrorless camera that astronauts will use during the agency's incoming Artemis III mission to document their return to the Moon. From a report: On Thursday, NASA announced that it had entered a Space Act agreement with Nikon to develop the Handheld Universal Lunar Camera (HULC), a camera system designed to capture ima ... ⌘ Read more
Russian space officials have acknowledged a continuing air leak from the Russian segment of the International Space Station, but said it poses no danger to its crew. From a report: The Roscosmos state corporation said that specialists were monitoring the leak and the crew "regularly conducts work to locate and fix possible spots of t ... ⌘ Read more
Apple is reversing its previous decision to remove support for Home Screen web apps in iOS 17.4 for EU users. Apple's statement: Previously, Apple announced plans to remove the Home Screen web apps capability in the EU as part of our efforts to comply with the DMA. The need to remove the capability was informed by the complex security and privacy ... ⌘ Read more