Two of the world's largest credit card networks, Visa and Mastercard, as well as the banks that issue cards with them, have agreed to settle a decadeslong antitrust case brought upon by merchants. From a report: The settlement is set to lower swipe fees merchants pay when customers make purchases using their Visa or Mastercard by ... ⌘ Read more
Two of the world's largest credit card networks, Visa and Mastercard, as well as the banks that issue cards with them, have agreed to settle a decadeslong antitrust case brought upon by merchants. From a report: The settlement is set to lower swipe fees merchants pay when customers make purchases using their Visa or Mastercard by ... ⌘ Read more
Britain's government has been urged to provide more support for the software industry with measures including tax incentives and talent visas. From a report: More than 120 industry leaders have called for government intervention to improve conditions for European software companies. Europe has long struggled to scale up homegrown tech companies as successfully as th ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: An environmental community group on Tuesday sued Stronghold Digital Mining claiming the company's bitcoin mine in northeastern Pennsylvania that burns waste coal and old tires for energy is polluting nearby communities with dangerous chemicals. The lawsuit by Save Carbon County f ... ⌘ Read more
Researchers say they have used AI to make brews even better. From a report: Prof Kevin Verstrepen, of KU Leuven university, who led the research, said AI could help tease apart the complex relationships involved in human aroma perception. "Beer -- like most food products -- contains hundreds of different aroma molecules that get picked up by our tongue and nose, and our brain ... ⌘ Read more
The chief of Emirates, one of Boeing's largest clients, has said the crisis-stricken US aircraft maker should ensure its new chief executive has engineering experience to restore safety standards (non-paywalled link). From a report: A day after Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun announced he would step down, Sir Tim Clark also said he backed ef ... ⌘ Read more
Georg Szalai reports via the Hollywood Reporter: The World Poker Tour (WPT) is betting on AI-powered dubbing tools under a partnership with Papercup, a London-based AI dubbing company, that will replace WPT's traditional localization methods in Latin America. Papercup will work with the World Poker Tour to translate 184 of the franchise's 44-m ... ⌘ Read more
Tom Warren reports via The Verge: Microsoft is starting to preview mouse and keyboard support for Xbox Cloud Gaming today. Xbox Insiders will be able to start playing with their mouse and keyboard in Edge, Chrome, or the Xbox app on Windows PCs, nearly two years after Microsoft announced it was preparing to add mouse and keyboard support ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: It's sanctions central at the US Treasury this week as a further 15 are slapped on organizations and individuals in Russia. The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated 13 organizations and two individuals -- all concerning financial services organizations, including cryptocu ... ⌘ Read more
Web-based design platform Canva has acquired the Affinity creative software suite for an undisclosed sum, though Bloomberg reports that it's valued at "several hundred million [British] pounds." The Verge reports that the acquisition helps the company "[position] itself as a challenger to Adobe's grip over the digital design ind ... ⌘ Read more
Adam Neumann has submitted a $500 million bid to acquire WeWork out of bankruptcy. According to CNBC, it "could go up to $900 million pending due diligence." From the report: Neumann's financing was not immediately clear, although people familiar with the matter told CNBC that Dan Loeb's Third Point was not involved in the offer. Neumann's counsel had previously said that Loeb's inves ... ⌘ Read more
Apple today announced that its 35th annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is set to take place June 10 through 14, 2024. It'll be an online event open to all developers at no cost. MacRumors reports: Apple will hold a WWDC 2024 keynote event on Monday, June 10 to show off iOS 18, iPadOS 18, tvOS 18, macOS 15, watchOS 11, and visionOS 2. The keynote event will be available on the ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, Florida became the first state to ban kids under 14 from social media without parental permission. It appears likely that the law -- considered one of the most restrictive in the US -- will face significant legal challenges, however, before taking effect on January 1. Under HB ... ⌘ Read more
People bought 43 million vinyl records last year, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). From a report: That's 6 million more than the number of CDs sold in 2023, marking the second time since 1987 that's happened and reflecting the steady 17-year-running growth of vinyl sales. Vinyl, which tends to be pricier than the newer format, ... ⌘ Read more
AmiMoJo writes: In a major surprise, all twenty episodes of the second season of the animated series 'Star Trek: Prodigy' have suddenly been made available in France thanks to broadcaster France Televisions. According to TrekCentral it seems France.TV, the online streaming service for the national public broadcaster, has released the entirety of the second seaso ... ⌘ Read more
Court filings unsealed last week allege Meta created an internal effort to spy on Snapchat in a secret initiative called "Project Ghostbusters." Gizmodo: Meta did so through Onavo, a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service the company offered between 2016 and 2019 that, ultimately, wasn't private at all. "Whenever someone asks a question about Snapchat, the answer i ... ⌘ Read more
Google is releasing an optimized version of its Chrome browser for Windows on Arm this week, the search giant has announced alongside chipmaker Qualcomm. From a report: The official release comes two months after an early version of the browser was spotted in Chrome's Canary channel. Qualcomm says the release "will roll out starting today."
The release will ... ⌘ Read more
Dell reduced its workforcereduced its workforce as part of a broader initiative to cut costs that included limiting external hiring and employee reorganizations, it said in a filing on Monday. From a report: As of Feb. 2, 2024, it had nearly 120,000 employees, down from about 126,000 a year earlier. The layoffs come after sluggish demand for its personal computers for nearly t ... ⌘ Read more
Portugal's data regulator has ordered Sam Altman's iris-scanning project Worldcoin to stop collecting biometric data for 90 days, it said on Tuesday, in the latest regulatory blow to a venture that has raised privacy concerns in multiple countries. From a report: Worldcoin encourages people to have their faces scanned by its "orb" devices, in exchange for a di ... ⌘ Read more
The Register: Cloudflare has revealed a little about how it maintains the millions of boxes it operates around the world -- including the concept of an "error budget" that enacts "empathy embedded in automation." In a Tuesday post titled "Autonomous hardware diagnostics and recovery at scale," the internet-taming biz ex ... ⌘ Read more
Telegram is offering a new way to earn a premium subscription free of charge: all you have to do is volunteer your phone number to relay one-time passwords (OTP) to other users. This, in fact, sounds like an awful idea -- particularly for a messaging service based around privacy. From a report: X user @AssembleDebug spotted details about ... ⌘ Read more
Electricity demand from UK data centers will jump sixfold over the next 10 years as a boom in AI requires increased computing power, according to the head of National Grid. From a report: That will ramp up pressure on the country's electricity network, which must move vast quantities of renewable energy from as far away as Scottish wind farms to data ce ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Reddit will need to spend heavily on content moderation as it may face greater scrutiny as a public company, analysts said, threatening its longstanding policy of relying on an army of volunteers to maintain order on its platform. The newly listed company warned in its initial public ... ⌘ Read more
Tom Warren reports via The Verge: Microsoft is naming Pavan Davuluri as its new Windows and Surface chief today. After Panos Panay's surprise departure to Amazon last year, Microsoft split up the Windows and Surface groups under two different leaders. Davuluri took over the Surface silicon and devices work, with Mikhail Parakhin leading a new team focused on Windows and web experienc ... ⌘ Read more
The BBC says it has stopped using AI to promote Doctor Who after receiving complaints from viewers. Deadline reports: The BBC's marketing teams used the tech "as part of a small trial" to help draft some text for two promotional emails and mobile notifications, according to its complaints website, which was intended to highlight ... ⌘ Read more
BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu operating system, has announced a significant extension to the support lifecycle of its long-term support (LTS) releases. The new paid Legacy Support add-on for Ubuntu Pro subscribers will now provide security maintenance and support for an impressive 12 years, extending th ... ⌘ Read more
Tobias Mann reports via The Register: The land surrounding a nuclear power plant might not sound like prime real estate, but as more bit barns seek to trim costs, it's poised to become a rather hot commodity. All datacenters are energy-hungry but with more watt-greedy AI workloads on the horizon, nuclear power has fresh appeal, especially ... ⌘ Read more
A top executive from the crypto exchange Binance has escaped custody in Nigeria after being arrested for allegedly destabilizing the country's national currency. The Associated Press reports: Nadeem Anjarwalla, the regional manager for Binance in Africa, "fled Nigeria using a smuggled passport," the office of Nigeria's National Security Adviser said in a statement, cal ... ⌘ Read more
Earlier today, the U.S. and U.K. accused hackers linked to the Chinese state of being behind "malicious" cyber campaigns targeting political figures. The U.K. government also blamed China for a 2021 cyberattack that compromised the personal information of millions of U.K. voters. In response, PBS reports that the U.S. and British government announced sanctions ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge, written by Nilay Patel: Today, I'm talking to Jay Graber, the CEO of Bluesky Social, which is a decentralized competitor to Twitter, er, X. Bluesky actually started inside of what was then known as Twitter — it was a project from then-CEO Jack Dorsey, who spent his days wandering the earth and saying things like Twitter should be a protocol ... ⌘ Read more
A SWAT team in St. Louis County mistakenly raided the home of Brittany Shamily and her family, based on the inaccurate tracking of stolen AirPods by the "FindMy" app. The family is suing for damages stemming from embarrassment, unreasonable use of force, loss of liberty, and other factors. The Riverfront Time ... ⌘ Read more
The FTX bankruptcy estate has raised $884 million by selling the majority of its Anthropic shares to two dozen institutional investors. "The sale of the Anthropic shares is a big win for the FTX estate, which pledged in January to pay back the defunct exchange's customers 100% of the value of their holdings at the time ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Tennessee made history on Thursday, becoming the first U.S. state to sign off on legislation to protect musicians from unauthorized artificial intelligence impersonation. "Tennessee (sic) is the music capital of the world, & we're leading the nation with historic protections for ... ⌘ Read more
Stability AI founder and chief executive Emad Mostaque has stepped down from the top role and the unicorn startup's board, the buzzy firm said. From a report: Stability AI, which has been backed by investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Coatue Management, doesn't have an immediate permanent repla ... ⌘ Read more
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just signed into law HB 3 [PDF], a bill that will give parents of teens under 16 more control over their kids' access to social media and require age verification for many websites. From a report: The bill requires social media platforms to prevent kids under ... ⌘ Read more
China has introduced new guidelines that will mean US microprocessors from Intel and AMD are phased out of government PCs and servers [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; non-paywalled source], as Beijing ramps up a campaign to replace foreign technology with homegrown solutions. From a report: The stricter government procurement guidance also seek ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: The number of landline users has plummeted with the rise of cellphones, and the 19th-century technology's days appear to be numbered. Providers like AT&T are looking to exit the business by transitioning customers to cellphones or home telephone service over broadband connections. But for many of the millions of people still clinging to their copper-based landline telephones, newer alternat ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: About 6,000 older Bitcoin mining machines in the US will soon be idled and sent to a warehouse in Colorado Springs where they'll be refreshed and resold to buyers overseas looking to profit from mining in lower-cost environs. Wholesaler SunnySide Digital operates the 35,000 square-foot facility taking in the equip ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Nvidia earned its $2.2 trillion market cap by producing AI chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from startups to Microsoft, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet. Almost as important to its hardware is the company's nearly 20 years' worth of computer code, which ... ⌘ Read more
Atlas VPN informed customers on Monday that it will discontinue its services on April 24, citing technological demands, market competition, and escalating costs as key factors in the decision. The company will transfer its paid subscribers to its sister company, NordVPN, for the remainder of their subscription period to ensure uninterrupted VPN services. ... ⌘ Read more
Apple has been hit with a flurry of new consumer lawsuits accusing the iPhone maker of monopolizing the smartphone market, piggybacking on a sweeping antitrust case lodged by the U.S. Justice Department and 15 states last week. From a report: At least three proposed class actions have been filed since Friday in California and New Jersey federal c ... ⌘ Read more
The U.K. government has blamed China for a 2021 cyberattack that compromised the personal information of millions of U.K. voters. From a report: In a statement to lawmakers in Parliament on Monday, U.K. deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden attributed the 2021 data breach at the Electoral Commission to hackers working for the Chinese government. Dowden told lawmakers that the U.K ... ⌘ Read more
FrankOVD shares a report: Here's a paragraph from the DOJ's antitrust lawsuit against Apple in full: "In addition to degrading the quality of third-party messaging apps, Apple affirmatively undermines the quality of rival smartphones. For example, if an iPhone user messages a non-iPhone user in Apple Messages -- the default messagi ... ⌘ Read more
Dave Plummer, a former Microsoft developer, has shared the story behind the Format drive dialog box in Windows, which has remained unchanged for nearly three decades. According to Plummer, the dialog box was created as a temporary solution during the porting of code from Windows 95 to Windows NT, due to differences between the two oper ... ⌘ Read more
Boeing announced a major leadership overhaul Monday, with CEO Dave Calhoun set to step down at the end of 2024 amid mounting pressure from airlines and regulators over quality and manufacturing issues. Chairman Larry Kellner will also resign and depart the board at Boeing's annual meeting in ... ⌘ Read more
Boeing announced a major leadership overhaul Monday, with CEO Dave Calhoun set to step down at the end of 2024 amid mounting pressure from airlines and regulators over quality and manufacturing issues. Chairman Larry Kellner will also resign and depart the board at Boeing's annual meeting in May, the company said. He will be replaced as chair by ... ⌘ Read more
In a state where housing is expensive to build, to rent, or to buy — and not especially energy efficient — can a big blue robot make a difference?
The Boston Globe reports on Reframe Systems, one of the companies "trying robots to make construction more efficient" — in this case, "working alongside humans in an assembly line to build small houses in a f ... ⌘ Read more
The European Union has launched investigations into Apple, Meta and Google under its sweeping new digital-competition law, adding to the regulatory scrutiny large U.S. tech companies are facing worldwide. From a report: The suite of probes [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; official press release here] announced M ... ⌘ Read more
In 2019 Los Angeles film/TV producer Brian Morrison painted Blockbuster's logo onto an old newspaper box — and then filled it up with used DVDs. "The Free Blockbuster movement slowly gained traction," reports the New York Times — aided at times by social media — "and eventually more th ... ⌘ Read more
The Los Angeles Times checks in on America's largest dam-removal project, which they say is now "revealing a stark landscape that had been underwater for generations."
"A thick layer of muddy sediment covers the sloping ground, where workers have been scattering seeds and leaving meandering trails of footprints. In the cracked mud, seeds are sprouting and tiny gree ... ⌘ Read more
The Baffler says a new publishing house launched earlier this month "brings Silicon Valley-style startup disruption to the business of books."
Authors Equity has "a tiny core staff, offloading its labor to a network of freelancers," and like a handful of other publishers "is upending the way that authors get paid, eschewing adva ... ⌘ Read more
"It's a bad day for bugs," joked TechCrunch on Wednesday. "Earlier today, Sentry announced its AI Autofix feature for debugging production code..."
And then the same day, BleepingComputer reported that GitHub "introduced a new AI-powered feature capable of speeding up vulnerability fixes while coding."
This fe ... ⌘ Read more
"If you've ever jokingly wondered if your search or viewing history is going to 'put you on some kind of list,' your concern may be more than warranted," writes Mashable :
In now unsealed court documents reviewed by Forbes, Google was ordered to hand over the names, addresses, telephone numbers, and user activity of Youtube accounts and IP addresses that wat ... ⌘ Read more
Long-time Slashdot reader HanzoSpam shared an announcement from the University of California San Diego.
The school's researchers teamed with materials-science company Algenesis to show "that their plant-based polymers biodegrade — even at the microplastic level — in under seven months."
"We're trying to find replacements for materials that already exist, and make sure these replacements wil ... ⌘ Read more
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes:
Last month there was a special Google-funded edition of Highlights for Children, the 77-year-old magazine targetting children between the ages of 6 and 12. This edition was based on Google's "Be Internet Awesome" curriculum, and 1.25 million copies of the print magazine were distrib ... ⌘ Read more
Gizmodo reports that increased activity on the Moon "may affect the unique radio silence on the lunar far side, an ideal location for radio telescopes to pick up faint signals from the cosmic past."
This week, the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) held the first Moon Farside Protection Symposi ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shared this report from The Register:
Chinese spies exploited a couple of critical-severity bugs in F5 and ConnectWise equipment earlier this year to sell access to compromised U.S. defense organizations, UK government agencies, and hundreds of other entities, according to Mandiant.
The Google-owned threat hunters said they assess, "with moderate confiden ... ⌘ Read more
In an interview Saturday, CNN first asked Steve Wozniak about Apple's "walled garden" approach — and whether there's any disconnect between Apple's stated interest in user security and privacy, and its own self-interest?
Wozniak responded, "I think there are things you can say on all sid ... ⌘ Read more
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Among the amazing features of the in-process analytical database DuckDB, writes software engineer Paul Gross in DuckDB as the New jq, is that it has many data importers included without requiring extra dependencies. This means it can natively read and parse JSON as a database tabl ... ⌘ Read more
"Hollywood is bracing for another actors strike, this time against the videogame industry," according to MarketWatch:
"We're currently in bargaining with all the major game studios, and the major sticking point is AI," SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said Thursday. "Actors at all levels are at risk of digital replication. We have strike authorization on that ... ⌘ Read more
"It was three years of my, life you?" a 93-year-old William Shatner tells the Guardian when asked about playing Captain Kirk on the original Star Trek series from 1967 to 1969:
It gladdens him to see how much joy the series has brought its many fans, but the richest rewards came in his ... ⌘ Read more
It was March 24, 1999 that The Matrix premiered, premembers the Wall Street Journal. "To rewatch The Matrix is to be reminded of how primitive our technology was just 25 years ago. We see computers with bulky screens, cellphones with keypads and a once-ubiquitous feature of our society known as 'pay phones,' central to the plot of the film."
But the ... ⌘ Read more
Indian Express calls it "the ultimate smartphone killer". (Coming soon, its laser-on-your-palm feature will display stock prices, sports scores, and flight statuses.)
Humane's Ai Pin can even translate what you say, repeating it out loud in another language (with 50 different languages supported). And it can read you summaries of wh ... ⌘ Read more
CNN looks back to when "dial-up internet (and its iconic dial tone) was 'still a thing..."
"File-sharing services like Napster and LimeWire were just beginning to take off... And in sweaty dorm rooms and sparse basements across the world, people brought their desktop monitors together to set up a local area network (LAN) and play multipl ... ⌘ Read more
There's actually "a global trend toward increased air safety," notes a Wall Street Journal columnist.
And even in the case of the two fatal Boeing crashes five years ago, he stresses that they were "were two different crashes," with the second happening only "after Boeing and ... ⌘ Read more
Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov and others spoke at the Game Developers Conference about Tetris Reversed, reports VentureBeat — and told the story of "a lost prototype of a Tetris game that was never published."
But little did Pajitnov know that an engineer in charge of the game, Vedra ... ⌘ Read more
Slashdot reader christoban writes:
In what may be an issue for Sun-obscuring strategies to combat global warming, it turns out that during solar eclipses, low level cumulus clouds rapidly disappear, reducing by a factor of 4, researchers have found.
The news comes from the science magazine Eos (published by the nonprofit organization of atmos ... ⌘ Read more
BleepingComputer reports on "a new denial-of-service attack dubbed 'Loop DoS' targeting application layer protocols."
According to their article, the attack "can pair network services into an indefinite communication loop that creates large volumes of traffic."
Devised by researchers at the CISPA Helmholtz-Center for Information Security, the attack uses ... ⌘ Read more
America's Justice Department "is considering whether to allow Julian Assange to plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information," reports the Wall Street Journal, citing "people familiar with the matter."
Though Assange faces trial for publishing thousands of confidential U.S. documents in 2010, this development opens up "the possibility of a deal that ... ⌘ Read more
"My favorite kind of science fiction involves stories rooted in real science..." writes NPR's reviewer. "[T]here is something special about seeing characters wrestle with concepts closer to our current understanding of how the universe works."
The Verge calls it an "impressive" and "leaner" story than the book, arguing "it's a goo ... ⌘ Read more
Slashdot reader sciencehabit shared this report from Science magazine:
Nurturing a growing fetus requires a series of profound physical, hormonal, and chemical changes that may rewire every major organ in the body and can cause serious health complications such as hypertension and preeclampsia. But does being pregnant actually ... ⌘ Read more
"On December 28 2023, bugreport 12604 was filed in the curl issue tracker," writes cURL lead developer Daniel Stenberg:
The title stated of the problem in this case was quite clear: flag -cacert behavior isn't consistent between macOS and Linux , and it was filed by Yuedong Wu.
The friendly reporter showed how the curl version bundled with macOS behaves differe ... ⌘ Read more
"Microsoft confirmed that a memory leak introduced with the March 2024 Windows Server security updates is behind a widespread issue causing Windows domain controllers to crash," BleepingComputer reported Thursday.
Friday Microsoft wrote that the issue "was resolved in the out-of-band update KB50 ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Former president Donald Trump'sTruth Social, a shameless Twitter clone, is set to become a publicly traded company as soon as next week. Shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corp. voted on Friday to merge with Trump Media and Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social. The vote is a culmination of a years-long saga attempting to merge Trump Me ... ⌘ Read more
Jessica Lyons reports via The Register: Vulnerabilities in common Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) required in US commercial trucks could be present in over 14 million medium- and heavy-duty rigs, according to boffins at Colorado State University. In a paper presented at the 2024 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, associate professor Jeremy Daily and systems en ... ⌘ Read more
An AI tool named Mia, tested by the NHS, successfully detected signs of breast cancer in 11 women which had been missed by human doctors. The BBC reports: The tool, called Mia, was piloted alongside NHS clinicians and analyzed the mammograms of over 10,000 women. Most of them were cancer-free, but it successfully flagged all of t ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from InterestingEngineering: A concept that began as a doodle at a conference years ago is now becoming a reality. RocketStar Inc. has showcased (PDF) its advanced nuclear-based propulsion technology called the FireStar Drive. It is said to be the world's first electric device for spacecraft pr ... ⌘ Read more
"There is a new side channel attack against Apple 'M' series CPUs that does not appear to be fixable without a major performance hit," writes Slashdot reader EncryptedSoldier. SecurityWeek reports: A team of researchers representing several universities in the United States has disclosed the details of a new side-channel attack method that can be used to extract secret encrypti ... ⌘ Read more
Lindsay Clark reports via The Register: The UK Information Commissioner's Office has received a complaint detailing the mismanagement of personal data at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), the regulator that oversees worker registration. Employment as a nurse or midwife depends on enrollment with the NMC in the UK. According to whistleblower ev ... ⌘ Read more
Instagram has been limiting recommended political content by default without notifying users. Ars Technica reports: Instead, Instagram rolled out the change in February, announcing in a blog that the platform doesn't "want to proactively recommend political content from accounts you don't follow." That post confirmed that Meta "won't proacti ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: General Motors said Friday that it had stopped sharing details about how people drove its cars with two data brokers that created risk profiles for the insurance industry. The decision followed a New York Times report this month that G.M. had, for years, been sharing data about drivers' mi ... ⌘ Read more
The Dutch pirate site blocklist has expanded with two new targets, shadow libraries Anna's Archive and Library Genesis. The court order was obtained by local anti-piracy group BREIN, acting on behalf of major publishers. Interestingly, Z-Library isn't listed in the blocking order, despite explicit warnings previously issued by BREIN. TorrentFreak reports: Al ... ⌘ Read more
Boom Supersonic's first aircraft, the XB-1, completed its first flight today and met "all of its test objectives." From a report: This initial test only saw the aircraft 7,120 feet above sea level and fly at a top speed of 238 knots (274 mph) -- far from Mach 1, the speed of sound. The first flight of XB-1 took place at the Mojave Air & Space Port in California, in t ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: The nonprofit organization that supports the Firefox web browser said today it is winding down its new partnership with Onerep, an identity protection service recently bundled with Firefox that offers to remove users from hundreds of people-search sites. The move comes just d ... ⌘ Read more
DOJ, in the court filing (PDF): Many prominent, well-financed companies have tried and failed to successfully enter the relevant markets because of these entry barriers. Past failures include Amazon (which released its Fire mobile phone in 2014 but could not profitably sustain its business and exited the following year); Microsoft ... ⌘ Read more
An Internet service provider that admitted lying to the FCC about where it offers broadband will pay a $10,000 fine and implement a compliance plan to prevent future violations. ArsTechnica: Jefferson County Cable (JCC), a small ISP in Toronto, Ohio, admitted that it falsely claimed to offer fiber service in an area that it hadn't e ... ⌘ Read more
Search Engine Land: Google is now testing AI overviews in the main Google Search results, even if you have not opted into the Google Search Generative Experience labs feature. Google said this is an experience on a "subset of queries, on a small percentage of search traffic in the U.S.," a Google spokesperson told Search Eng ... ⌘ Read more
The U.S. Department of Transportation has announced it will conduct a review of the data practices of the country's ten largest airlines, amid concerns over potential misuse of customer information for upselling, overcharging, targeted advertising, and third-party data sales, as well as the security of systems handling sensitive data such as passport numbers. From a r ... ⌘ Read more
In the shadow of a massive monument glorifying nuclear power, over 30 nations from around the world pledged to use the controversial energy source to help achieve a climate-neutral globe while providing countries with an added sense of strategic security. Associated Press: The id ... ⌘ Read more
Switch emulator Suyu -- a fork of the Nintendo-targeted and now-defunct emulation project Yuzu -- has been taken down from GitLab following a DMCA request Thursday. But the emulation project's open source files remain available on a self-hosted git repo on the Suyu website, and recent compiled binaries remain available ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Thanks to the vaccination program that began in 1995, chickenpox is now relatively rare. Cases of the miserable, itchy condition have fallen more than 97 percent. But, while children have largely put the oatmeal baths and oven mitts behind them, doctors have apparently let their diagnostic skills get a little crus ... ⌘ Read more
The guardians of the world's official geological timescale have firmly rejected a proposal to declare an Anthropocene epoch, after an epic academic row. From a report: The proposal would have designated the period from 1952 as the Anthropocene to reflect the planet-changing impact of humanity. It would have ended the Holocene epoch, the 11,700 years of stable climate s ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: On Monday, the Biden administration announced that six new countries had joined an international coalition to fight the proliferation of commercial spyware, sold by companies such as NSO Group or Intellexa. Now, some investors have announced that they too are committed to fighting spyware. But at least one of thos ... ⌘ Read more
Food prices and overall inflation will rise as temperatures climb with climate change, a new study by an environmental scientist and the European Central Bank found. From a report: Looking at monthly price tags of food and other goods, temperatures and other climate factors in 121 nations since 1996, researchers calculate that "weather and climate shocks" will cause t ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Apple Thursday, accusing the company led by CEO Tim Cook of engaging in anti-competitive business practices. The allegations include claims that Apple prevents competitors from accessing certain iPhone features and that the ... ⌘ Read more
Apple has held preliminary talks with Baidu about using the Chinese company's generative AI technology in its devices in China, the latest example of the iPhone maker's efforts to widen its AI capabilities. From a report: The U.S. tech giant has been exploring using external partners to help accelerate its AI ambitions. It has held discussions with compani ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton just sued two more porn sites, xHamster and Chaturbate, alleging they aren't complying with age verification laws. As first reported by local news outlet KXAN, the Office of the Attorney General filed two civil lawsuits on Tuesday afternoon against Hammy Media, which owns xHamster, and Multi Media, which owns Chaturbate. ... ⌘ Read more
According to a United Nations report, humans are producing electronic waste almost five times faster than we're recycling it. "While e-waste recycling has benefits estimated to include $23 billion of monetized value from avoided greenhouse gas emissions and $28 billion of recovered materials like gold, copper, and iron, it also comes at a cost -- $10 bi ... ⌘ Read more
"Vernor Vinge, who three times won the Hugo for best novel, has died," writes Slashdot reader Felix Baum. Ars Technica reports: On Wednesday, author David Brin announced that Vernor Vinge, sci-fi author, former professor, and father of the technological singularity concept, died from Parkinson's disease at age 79 on March 20, 2024, in La Jolla, Cal ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: UnitedHealth Group said Monday that it's paid out more than $2 billion to help health-care providers who have been affected by the cyberattack on subsidiary Change Healthcare. "We continue to make significant progress in restoring the services impacted by this cyberattack," ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft today announced a preview release of Windows Notepad, with built-in spellchecking and an autocorrect feature. BleepingComputer reports: Microsoft says they are rolling out this preview to Insiders in the Windows 11 Canary and Dev channels, but it may take some time before it's available for everyone. "With this update, Notepad will now highlight mi ... ⌘ Read more