Mainframes Find New Life in AI Era

Mainframe computers, stalwarts of high-speed data processing, are finding new relevance in the age of AI. Banks, insurers, and airlines continue to rely on these industrial-strength machines for mission-critical operations, with some now exploring AI applications directly on the hardware, WSJ reported in a feature story. IBM, commanding over 96% of the mainframe market, reported 6% growth in its mainframe business last quarter. The company's latest zSystem can process up to 30,000 transactions per second and hold 40 terabytes of data. WSJ adds: Globally, the mainframe market was valued at $3.05 billion in 2023, but new mainframe sales are expected to decline through 2028, IDC said. Of existing mainframes, however, 54% of enterprise leaders in a 2023 Forrester survey said they would increase their usage over the next two years.

Mainframes do have limitations. They are constrained by the computing power within their boxes, unlike the cloud, which can scale up by drawing on computing power distributed across many locations and servers. They are also unwieldy -- with years of old code tacked on -- and don't integrate well with new applications. That makes them costly to manage and difficult to use as a platform for developing new applications.

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Mac and Windows Users Infected By Software Updates Delivered Over Hacked ISP

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hackers delivered malware to Windows and Mac users by compromising their Internet service provider and then tampering with software updates delivered over unsecure connections, researchers said. The attack, researchers from security firm Volexity said, worked by hacking routers or similar types of device infrastructure of an unnamed ISP. The attackers then used their control of the devices to poison domain name system responses for legitimate hostnames providing updates for at least six different apps written for Windows or macOS. The apps affected were the 5KPlayer, Quick Heal, Rainmeter, Partition Wizard, and those from Corel and Sogou.

Because the update mechanisms didn't use TLS or cryptographic signatures to authenticate the connections or downloaded software, the threat actors were able to use their control of the ISP infrastructure to successfully perform machine-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks that directed targeted users to hostile servers rather than the ones operated by the affected software makers. These redirections worked even when users employed non-encrypted public DNS services such as Google's 8.8.8.8 or Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 rather than the authoritative DNS server provided by the ISP. "That is the fun/scary part -- this was not the hack of the ISPs DNS servers," Volexity CEO Steven Adair wrote in an online interview. "This was a compromise of network infrastructure for Internet traffic. The DNS queries, for example, would go to Google's DNS servers destined for 8.8.8.8. The traffic was being intercepted to respond to the DNS queries with the IP address of the attacker's servers."

In other words, the DNS responses returned by any DNS server would be changed once it reached the infrastructure of the hacked ISP. The only way an end user could have thwarted the attack was to use DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS to ensure lookup results haven't been tampered with or to avoid all use of apps that deliver unsigned updates over unencrypted connections. As an example, the 5KPlayer app uses an unsecure HTTP connection rather than an encrypted HTTPS one to check if an update is available and, if so, to download a configuration file named Youtube.config. StormBamboo, the name used in the industry to track the hacking group responsible, used DNS poisoning to deliver a malicious version of the Youtube.config file from a malicious server. This file, in turn, downloaded a next-stage payload that was disguised as a PNG image. In fact, it was an executable file that installed malware tracked under the names MACMA for macOS devices or POCOSTICK for Windows devices. As for the hacked ISP, the security firm said "it's not a huge one or one you'd likely know."

"In our case the incident is contained but we see other servers that are actively serving malicious updates but we do not know where they are being served from. We suspect there are other active attacks around the world we do not have purview into. This could be from an ISP compromise or a localized compromise to an organization such as on their firewall."

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OpenAI Co-Founder John Schulman Is Joining Anthropic

OpenAI co-founder John Schulman announced Monday that he is leaving to join rival AI startup Anthropic. CNBC reports: The move comes less than three months after OpenAI disbanded a superalignment team that focused on trying to ensure that people can control AI systems that exceed human capability at many tasks. Schulman had been a co-leader of OpenAI's post-training team that refined AI models for the ChatGPT chatbot and a programming interface for third-party developers, according to a biography on his website. In June, OpenAI said Schulman, as head of alignment science, would join a safety and security committee that would provide advice to the board. Schulman has only worked at OpenAI since receiving a Ph.D. in computer science in 2016 from the University of California, Berkeley.

"This choice stems from my desire to deepen my focus on AI alignment, and to start a new chapter of my career where I can return to hands-on technical work," Schulman wrote in the social media post. He said he wasn't leaving because of a lack of support for new work on the topic at OpenAI. "On the contrary, company leaders have been very committed to investing in this area," he said. The leaders of the superalignment team, Jan Leike and company co-founder Ilya Sutskever, both left this year. Leike joined Anthropic, while Sutskever said he was helping to start a new company, Safe Superintelligence Inc. "Very excited to be working together again!" Leike wrote in reply to Schulman's message.

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Gamification Gets Drivers To Put Down Their Phones, Study Finds

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Distracted driving isn't only a result of drivers using their phones when they should be paying attention. But it is a significant cause of the problem, accounting for at least 13 percent of distracted driving deaths and rising to 1 in 5 for young drivers. Now, a study conducted with customers of the Progressive insurance company has tested different strategies to get those drivers to put their phones down in the car, and it found two that significantly reduced handheld use, with the effect persisting after the end of the study. The study recruited 1,653 customers already enrolled in its Progressive Snapshot program, which involves the use of a smartphone app that detects phone use while driving. Before the start of the trial, the participants all averaged more than 6.4 minutes per hour of handheld use while driving -- Progressive says its safest customers have handheld usage of less than 1 minute per hour while driving. [...] Paying drivers on top of competitive gamification was the most effective way to get them to put down their phones. This group reduced its handheld usage by 27.6 percent, or 89 seconds/hour, compared to the control. That reduction was maintained at the same level throughout the post-intervention period for this arm.

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iPhone Driver's License Support Coming Soon To California

iPhone and Apple Watch users in California will soon be able to add their digital ID and driver's license to the Wallet app, as revealed by new landing pages on the state DMV website. This feature follows a slow rollout since its announcement, with only five states currently supporting it. MacRumors reports: "Now you can add your California driver's license or state ID to Apple Wallet on iPhone and Apple Watch so you can present it easily and securely in person and in app," reads the landing page, which contains broken links and placeholder images, and is still missing a proper website security certificate. The webpages were discovered on Sunday by Jimmy Obomsawin, after someone added a link to the landing pages in an Apple Wallet Wikipedia entry last Wednesday.

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Silicon Valley Parents Are Sending Kindergarten Kids To AI-Focused Summer Camps

Silicon Valley's fascination with AI has led to parents enrolling children as young as five in AI-focused summer camps. "It's common for kids on summer break to attend space, science or soccer camp, or even go to coding school," writes Priya Anand via the San Francisco Standard. "But the growing effort to teach kindergarteners who can barely spell their names lessons in 'Advanced AI Robot Design & AR Coding' shows how far the frenzy has extended." From the report: Parents who previously would opt for coding camps are increasingly interested in AI-specific programming, according to Eliza Du, CEO of Integem, which makes holographic augmented reality technology in addition to managing dozens of tech-focused kids camps across the country. "The tech industry understands the value of AI," she said. "Every year it's increasing." Some Bay Area parents are so eager to get their kids in on AI's ground floor that they try to sneak toddlers into advanced courses. "Sometimes they'll bring a 4-year-old, and I'm like, you're not supposed to be here," Du said.

Du said Integem studied Common Core education standards to ensure its programming was suitable for those as young as 5. She tries to make sure parents understand there's only so much kids can learn across a week or two of camp. "Either they set expectations too high or too low," Du said of the parents. As an example, she recounted a confounding comment in a feedback survey from the parent of a 5-year-old. "After one week, the parent said, "My child did not learn much. My cousin is a Google engineer, and he said he's not ready to be an intern at Google yet.' What do I say to that review?" Du said, bemused. "That expectation is not realistic." Even less tech-savvy parents are getting in on the hype. Du tells of a mom who called the company to get her 12-year-old enrolled in "AL" summer camp. "She misread it," Du said, explaining that the parent had confused the "I" in AI with a lowercase "L."

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Yelp's Lack of Transparency Around API Charges Angers Developers

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: On July 19, Yelp informed select indie developers that they would have to switch to paid accounts, due to high API usage. Developers were given four days to make the change, in a move that echoes recent communication bungles by Reddit and Twitter. When the developers replied to the July 19 email, Yelp sent a deck of pricing tiers with base pricing starting from $229 per month for a limit of 1,000 API calls per day. Developers were concerned that other, more affordable options weren't mentioned in the deck. Yelp said the pricing is equivalent and simply presented in different ways. The method of communication and lack of transparency has angered developers, some of whom shuttered their services, even after Yelp gave them a 90-day leeway and apologized. While the company has issued an apology email to developers and extended their free usage by 90 days, it may not be enough to keep these frustrated developers from moving to new platforms.

"We apologize for last week's abbreviated transition that impacted a small percentage of developers and have extended access to these users," a company spokesperson told TechCrunch. "Yelp sunsetted free, commercial, unlimited use of the Yelp Fusion API in 2019 and has been in the process of migrating developers to a paid program over the last several years. The developer community is important to Yelp, and we've heard their feedback about the transition period from the free Yelp Fusion API to our paid program."

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Indonesia Bans Search Engine DuckDuckGo On Gambling, Pornography Concerns

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Indonesia said it has banned the privacy-oriented search engine DuckDuckGo, citing concerns that it could be used to access pornography and online gambling websites which are illegal in the country, the communications ministry said on Friday. Indonesia, with the world's biggest Muslim population, has strict rules that ban the sharing online of content deemed obscene. Social media platform Reddit and video-hosting platform Vimeo are blocked.

Usman Kansong, a communications ministry official, told Reuters that DuckDuckGo had been blocked "because of the many complaints made to us about the rampant online gambling and pornography content in its search results." The ministry did not say how DuckDuckGo differs from other search engines such as Alphabet's Google but on its website, DuckDuckGo said it offered several products intended to "help people protect their online privacy" including the search engine, which it said has been praised by privacy advocates.

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Design Flaw Has Microsoft Authenticator Overwriting MFA Accounts, Locking Users Out

snydeq writes: CSO Online's Evan Schuman reports on a design flaw in Microsoft Authenticator that causes it to often overwrite authentication accounts when a user adds a new one via QR scan. "But because of the way the resulting lockout happens, the user is not likely to realize the issue resides with Microsoft Authenticator. Instead, the company issuing the authentication is considered the culprit, resulting in wasted corporate helpdesk hours trying to fix an issue not of that company's making."

Schuman writes: "The core of the problem? Microsoft Authenticator will overwrite an account with the same username. Given the prominent use of email addresses for usernames, most users' apps share the same username. Google Authenticator and just about every other authenticator app add the name of the issuer -- such as a bank or a car company -- to avoid this issue. Microsoft only uses the username."

The flaw appears to have been in place since Authenticator was released in 2016. Users have complained about this issue in the past to no avail. In its two correspondences with Schuman, Microsoft first laid blame on users, then on issuers. Several IT experts confirmed the flaw, with one saying, "It's possible that this problem occurs more often than anyone realizes because [users] don't realize what the cause is. If you haven't picked an authentication app, why would you pick Microsoft?"

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Elon Musk Revives Lawsuit Against OpenAI and Sam Altman

Elon Musk has reignited his legal battle against OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, by filing a new lawsuit in a California federal court. The suit, which revives a six-year-old dispute, accuses OpenAI founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman of breaching the company's founding principles by prioritizing commercial interests over public benefit.

Musk's complaint alleges that OpenAI's multibillion-dollar partnership with Microsoft contradicts the original mission to develop AI responsibly for humanity's benefit. The lawsuit describes the alleged betrayal in dramatic terms, claiming "perfidy and deceit... of Shakespearean proportions." OpenAI has not yet commented on the new filing. In response to Musk's previous lawsuit, which was withdrawn seven weeks ago, the company stated its commitment to building safe artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity.

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Schwab, Fidelity Traders Report Outages During Stock Meltdown

Charles Schwab and other retail brokerage users reported outages as a global stocks selloff surged when trading in the US market opened on Monday. From a report: More than 14,000 users reported an outage at Schwab at 9:50 a.m. in New York, according to the website Downdetector. The outage comes at a time when global financial markets are experiencing a significant downturn as a widespread sell-off intensified following Friday's disappointing US employment data, which heightened concerns about a potential recession in the world's largest economy. The turbulence was particularly pronounced in Asian markets, with Japanese stocks leading the decline, while cryptocurrencies, oil prices, and European equities also suffered losses. The volatility spread to the US, where stocks plummeted at the opening bell, and the yield curve briefly inverted as investors increased their bets on imminent Federal Reserve interest rate cuts.

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Digital Tax Talks In G20 Spotlight As US Tariff Threat Looms

Negotiations on a global tax deal have extended beyond the June 30 deadline, with countries now looking to the G20 finance leaders meeting for progress. "The stakes in the negotiations are high," reports Reuters. "A failure to reach agreement on final terms could prompt several countries to reinstate their taxes on U.S. tech giants and risk punitive duties on billions of dollars in exports to the U.S." Some countries, like Canada, have already implemented their own digital services tax. Reuters reports: The so-called "Pillar 1" arrangement, part of a 2021 global two-part tax deal, aims to replace unilateral digital services taxes (DSTs) on U.S. tech giants including Alphabet's Google, Amazon.com and Apple through a new mechanism to share taxing rights on a broader, global group of companies. Standstill agreements under which Washington has suspended threatened trade retaliation against seven countries -- Austria, Britain, France, India, Italy, Spain and Turkey -- expired on June 30, but the U.S. has not taken steps to impose tariffs.

Discussions on the matter are continuing. An Italian government source said that European countries were seeking assurances that the U.S. tariffs on some $2 billion worth of annual imports from French Champagne to Italian handbags and optical lenses remained frozen while the talks continue, including at the G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro. A European Union document prepared for the G20 meeting lists finalizing the international tax deal as a "top priority." It said the G20 should urge countries and jurisdictions participating in the tax deal "to finalize discussions on all aspects of Pillar 1, with a view to signing the Multilateral Convention (MLC) by summer end and ratifying it as soon as possible." "Treasury continues to oppose all tax measures that discriminate against U.S. businesses," a U.S. Treasury spokesperson said in response to Canada's move. "We encourage all countries to finalize the work on the Pillar 1 agreement. We are in active discussions on next steps related to the existing DST joint statements."

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Hackers Shut Down Heating in Ukrainian City With Malware, Researchers Say

An anonymous reader shares a report: For two days in mid-January, some Ukrainians in the city of Lviv had to live without central heating and suffer freezing temperatures because of a cyberattack against a municipal energy company, security researchers and Ukrainian authorities have since concluded. On Tuesday, the cybersecurity company Dragos published a report with details about a new malware dubbed FrostyGoop, which the company says is designed to target industrial control systems -- in this particular case, specifically against a type of heating system controller. Dragos researchers wrote in their report that they first detected the malware in April. At that point, Dragos did not have more information on FrostyGoop apart from the malware sample, and believed it was only used for testing.

Later on, however, Ukrainian authorities warned Dragos that they had found evidence that the malware was actively used in a cyberattack in Lviv during the late evening of January 22 through January 23. "And that resulted in the loss of heating to over 600 apartment buildings for almost 48 hours," said Mark "Magpie" Graham, a researcher at Dragos, during a call with reporters briefed on the report prior to its release. Dragos researchers Graham, Kyle O'Meara, and Carolyn Ahlers wrote in the report that "remediation of the incident took almost two days, during which time the civilian population had to endure sub-zero temperatures." This is the third known outage linked to cyberattacks to hit Ukrainians in recent years.

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In Shock Move, California Forever Pulls Measure To Build Bay Area City

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGate: A group of tech billionaires and millionaires has pulled its ballot measure that aimed to build a utopian city in Solano County. Instead, the group will go back to the drawing board the old-fashioned way by submitting an application to the county. The surprise announcement was made Monday by California Forever, a group of investors planning a city of 400,000 people in an agricultural part of the Bay Area near Rio Vista. It recently received the requisite number of signatures to put its East Solano Plan on the November ballot; that measure, if passed, would have removed some zoning restrictions that prevent this type of development in the area.

California Forever will instead "submit an application for a General Plan & Zoning Amendment and proceed with the normal County process which includes preparation of a full Environmental Impact Report and the negotiation and execution of Development Agreement," Solano County Board of Supervisors Chair Mitch Mashburn said in a statement Monday. The news was celebrated by many in Solano County, where skepticism about the project ran deep. The group's secretive purchases of huge tracts of land first brought about national security fears, even from local politicians, who had no idea who was behind the project. When the plan to build a futuristic city was announced, California Forever faced widespread pushback, ranging from concerns about billionaire backers like Reid Hoffman and Laurene Powell Jobs to questions about the impacts on traffic, water usage and proximity to Travis Air Force Base. California Forever CEO Jan Sramek said in a statement: "We believe that with this process, we can build a shared vision that passes with a decisive majority and creates broad consensus for the future. We're excited about working with the Board of Supervisors, its land use subcommittee, and county staff to make this happen."

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Verizon Hit By Prepaid Subscriber Exodus After Internet Subsidy Ends

Verizon reported a significant loss of wireless subscribers in the second quarter, with its consumer business shedding 624,000 prepaid customers, largely due to the expiration of the federal Affordable Connectivity Program in May.

The telecom giant attributed over half of these losses to the end of the COVID-era internet subsidy that had previously supported 23 million low-income households across the United States. Despite the subscriber exodus, Verizon managed to add 148,000 net monthly bill-paying wireless phone subscribers during the period.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/07/22/1759227/verizon-hit-by-prepaid-subscriber-exodus-after-internet-subsidy-ends?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
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US Prepares Jamming Devices Targeting Russia, China Satellites

In April the U.S. Space Force began testing "a new ground-based satellite jamming weapon to help keep U.S. military personnel safe from potential 'space-enabled' attacks" (according to a report from Space.com). The weapon was "designed to deny, degrade, or disrupt communications with satellites overhead, typically through overloading specific portions of the electromagnetic spectrum with interference," according to the article, with the miitary describing it as a small form-factor system "designed to be fielded in large numbers at low-cost and operated remotely" and "provide counterspace electronic warfare capability to all of the new Space Force components globally."

And now, Bloomberg reports that the U.S. is about to deploy them:
The devices aren't meant to protect U.S. satellites from Chinese or Russian jamming but "to responsibly counter adversary satellite communications capabilities that enable attacks," the Space Force said in a statement to Bloomberg News. The Pentagon strives — on the rare occasions when it discusses such space capabilities — to distinguish its emerging satellite-jamming technology as purely defensive and narrowly focused. That's as opposed to a nuclear weapon the U.S. says Russia is developing that could create high-altitude electromagnetic pulses that would take out satellites and disrupt entire communications networks.

The first 11 of 24 Remote Modular Terminal jammers will be deployed in several months, and all of them could be in place by Dec. 31 at undisclosed locations, according to the Space Force statement... The new terminals augment a much larger jamming weapon called the Counter Communications System that's already deployed and a mid-sized one called Meadowlands "by providing the ability to have a proliferated, remotely controlled and relatively relocatable capability," the Space Force said. The Meadowlands system has encountered technical challenges that have delayed its delivery until at least October, about two years later than planned.
China has "hundreds and hundreds of satellites on orbit designed to find, fix, track, target and yes, potentially engage, US and allied forces across the Indo-Pacific," General Stephen Whiting, head of US Space Command, said Wednesday at the annual Aspen Security Forum. "So we've got to understand that and know what it means for our forces."
Bloomberg also got this comment from the chief director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation (which produces reports on counterspace weapons). The new U.S. Space Force jamming weapons are "reversible, temporary, non-escalatory and allow for plausible deniability in terms of who the instigator is."

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/07/22/0049216/us-prepares-jamming-devices-targeting-russia-china-satellites?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

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Renewables Growth Rate Insufficient To Reach 2030 Target, Says IRENA

The world risks missing a goal to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 as the current growth rate is inadequate, a report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) showed on Thursday. From a report: A U.N. climate change conference in Dubai last year set a goal of tripling renewable energy capacity worldwide by 2030 to more than 11 terawatts (TW). Countries have to submit new or updated climate target commitments every five years after 2020 so next year they have to include revised ambitions for 2030. About 473 gigawatts (GW) of capacity was added last year, representing a 14% increase from the year before and the largest annual growth since 2000, IRENA said in a report. To meet the target, the world will have to add renewables capacity at a minimum 16.4% rate annually to 2030. However, if last year's 14% increase rate continues, the 11 TW target will be 1.5 TW short. Further reading: World Will Miss Target of Tripling Renewable Electricity Generation By 2030, IEA Says.

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Australian Bank Spots Scams via How Users Hold Their Phones

National Australia Bank seems to think that monitoring the angle customers hold their phones will offer extra protection against scammers. "Speaking during the Australian Banking Association Conference in Melbourne Wednesday (June 26), CEO Andrew Irvine said the lender introduced more 'friction' to payments processes and new predictive protection tools to spot scammers," reports PYMNTS.com, citing a (paywalled) Bloomberg report. From the report: "We've added tooling that looks at biometrics and the way you actually interact with your devices and how you think about keystrokes," said Irvine, per the report. "If these things are different to how you've used your phone in the past, our intelligence will kick in." Irvine, who called fraudsters the "scourge of our times," also noted that Australia is one of the few countries where bank fraud has declined, the report said.

Still, he said that as scammers have embraced new technology like artificial intelligence, banks have had to shift from making payments fast and simple to adding more steps to protect against fraudulent transactions, per the report. "These threat actors go where the money is," Irvine said, according to the report. "You want to be the best alarm system in the street and right now Australia's leading the way."

https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/24/06/26/2043229/australian-bank-spots-scams-via-how-users-hold-their-phones?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/24/06/26/2043229/australian-bank-spots-scams-via-how-users-hold-their-phones?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Researcher Finds Side-Channel Vulnerability in Post-Quantum Key Encapsulation Mechanism

Slashdot reader storagedude shared this report from The Cyber Express:

 A security researcher discovered an exploitable timing leak in the Kyber key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) that's in the process of being adopted by NIST as a post-quantum cryptographic standard. Antoon Purnal of PQShield detailed his findings in a blog post and on social media, and noted that the problem has been fixed with the help of the Kyber team. The issue was found in the reference implementation of the Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM) that's in the process of being adopted as a NIST post-quantum key encapsulation standard. "A key part of implementation security is resistance against side-channel attacks, which exploit the physical side-effects of cryptographic computations to infer sensitive information," Purnal wrote.

To secure against side-channel attacks, cryptographic algorithms must be implemented in a way so that "no attacker-observable effect of their execution depends on the secrets they process," he wrote. In the ML-KEM reference implementation, "we're concerned with a particular side channel that's observable in almost all cryptographic deployment scenarios: time." The vulnerability can occur when a compiler optimizes the code, in the process silently undoing "measures taken by the skilled implementer." In Purnal's analysis, the Clang compiler was found to emit a vulnerable secret-dependent branch in the poly_frommsg function of the ML-KEM reference code needed in both key encapsulation and decapsulation, corresponding to the expand_secure implementation.

While the reference implementation was patched, "It's important to note that this does not rule out the possibility that other libraries, which are based on the reference implementation but do not use the poly_frommsg function verbatim, may be vulnerable — either now or in the future," Purnal wrote.

Purnal also published a proof-of-concept demo on GitHub. "On an Intel Core i7-13700H, it takes between 5-10 minutes to leak the entire ML-KEM 512 secret key using end-to-end decapsulation timing measurements."

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/06/09/1831244/researcher-finds-side-channel-vulnerability-in-post-quantum-key-encapsulation-mechanism?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/06/09/1831244/researcher-finds-side-channel-vulnerability-in-post-quantum-key-encapsulation-mechanism?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Pegasus Spyware Used on Hundreds of People, Says Poland's Prosecutor General

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:

Poland's prosecutor general told the parliament on Wednesday that powerful Pegasus spyware was used against hundreds of people during the former government in Poland, among them elected officials. Adam Bodnar told lawmakers that he found the scale of the surveillance "shocking and depressing...."

The data showed that Pegasus was used in the cases of 578 people from 2017 to 2022, and that it was used by three separate government agencies: the Central Anticorruption Bureau, the Military Counterintelligence Service and the Internal Security Agency. The data show that it was used against six people in 2017; 100 in 2018; 140 in 2019; 161 in 2020; 162 in 2021; and then nine in 2022, when it stopped....

Bodnar said that the software generated "enormous knowledge" about the "private and professional lives" of those put under surveillance. He also stressed that the Polish state doesn't have full control over the data that is gathered because the system operates on the basis of a license that was granted by an Israeli company.

"Pegasus gives its operators complete access to a mobile device, allowing them to extract passwords, photos, messages, contacts and browsing history and activate the microphone and camera for real-time eavesdropping."

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/04/27/2124238/pegasus-spyware-used-on-hundreds-of-people-says-polands-prosecutor-general?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/04/27/2124238/pegasus-spyware-used-on-hundreds-of-people-says-polands-prosecutor-general?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Microsoft Does Not Want You To Use iPerf3 To Measure Network Performance on Windows

An anonymous reader shares a report: iPerf is a fairly popular cross-platform tool that is used by many to measure network performance and diagnose any potential issues in this area. The open-source utility is maintained by an organization called Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and officially supports Linux, Unix, and Windows. However, Microsoft has now published a detailed blog post explaining why you should not use the latest version, iPerf3, on Windows installations.

Microsoft has highlighted three key reasons to discourage the use of iPerf3 on Windows. The first is that ESnet does not support this version on Windows, and recommends iPerf2 instead. On its website, ESnet has emphasized that CentOS 7 Linux, FreeBSD 11, and macOS 10.12 are the only supported platforms. Another very important reason not to use iPerf3 on Windows is that it does not make native OS calls. Instead, it leverages Cygwin as an emulation layer, which obviously comes with a performance penalty. This alone means that iPerf3 on Windows isn't really an ideal candidate for benchmarking your network. While Microsoft has praised the maintainers who are trying to get iPerf3 to run on Windows via emulation, another flaw with this approach is that some advanced networking options simply aren't available on Windows or may behave in unexpected ways.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/04/19/1212256/microsoft-does-not-want-you-to-use-iperf3-to-measure-network-performance-on-windows?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/04/19/1212256/microsoft-does-not-want-you-to-use-iperf3-to-measure-network-performance-on-windows?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Amazon Adds AI Expert Andrew Ng To Board as GenAI Race Heats Up

Amazon on Thursday added Andrew Ng, the computer scientist who led AI projects at Alphabet's Google and China's Baidu, to its board amid rising competition among Big Techs to add users for their GenAI products. From a report: Amazon's cloud unit is facing pressure from Microsoft's early pact with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and integration of its technology into Azure, while Alexa voice assistant is in race with genAI chat tools from OpenAI and Google.

The appointment, effective April 9, also follows job cuts across Amazon, which has seen enterprise cloud spending and e-commerce sales moderate due to macroeconomic factors such as inflation and high interest rates. "As we look toward 2024 (and beyond), we're not done lowering our cost to serve," CEO Andy Jassy said in a letter to shareholders on Thursday.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/04/11/1516225/amazon-adds-ai-expert-andrew-ng-to-board-as-genai-race-heats-up?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/04/11/1516225/amazon-adds-ai-expert-andrew-ng-to-board-as-genai-race-heats-up?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


NASA To Create Time Standard For the Moon

artmancc writes: The White House has directed NASA and other federal agencies to get to work on a plan to implement precision timekeeping and dissemination on the moon and elsewhere in space. Reuters cited a memo from the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) that "instructed the space agency to work with other parts of the U.S. government to devise a plan by the end of 2026 for setting what it called a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC). The name of the proposed time standard is similar to the terrestrial time standard known as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

"OSTP chief Arati Prabhakar's memo said that for a person on the moon, an Earth-based clock would appear to lose on average 58.7 microseconds per Earth-day and come with other periodic variations that would further drift moon time from Earth time," Reuters reported. An unidentified OSTP official said the lunar time standard is needed for secure and synchronized communication between astronauts, satellites orbiting the moon, and Earth.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/04/03/0050232/nasa-to-create-time-standard-for-the-moon?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/04/03/0050232/nasa-to-create-time-standard-for-the-moon?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Watch the Moment 43 Unionized YouTube Contractors Were All Laid Off

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, who work for Google and Cognizant, unanimously voted to unionize under the Alphabet Workers Union-CWA in April 2023. Since then, the workers say that Google has refused to bargain with them. Thursday's layoff signifies continued tensions between Google and its workers, some of whom in 2021 formed a union...

Workers had about 20 minutes to gather their belongings and leave the premises before they were considered trespassing.

Video footage of the moment is embedded at the top of the article. "I was speechless, shocked," said the contractor who'd been speaking. He told the Washington Post "I didn't know what to do. But angered, that was the main feeling."

The council meeting was streaming live online and has since spread on social media. The contractors view the layoff as retaliation for unionizing, but Google and information technology subcontractor Cognizant said it was the normal end of a business contract.

The ability for layoffs to spread over social media highlights how the painful experience of a job loss is frequently being made public, from employees sharing recordings of Zoom meetings to posting about their unemployment. The increasing tension between YouTube's contractors and Google comes as massive layoffs continue to hit the tech industry — leaving workers uneasy and companies emboldened. Google already has had rounds of cuts the past two years.

Google has been in a long-running battle with many of its contractors as they seek the perks and high pay that full-time Google workers are accustomed to. The company has tens of thousands of contractors doing everything from food service to sales to writing code... Google maintains that Cognizant is responsible for the contractors' employment and working conditions, and therefore isn't responsible for bargaining with them. Cognizant said it is offering the workers seven weeks of paid time to explore other roles at the company and use its training resources.
Last year, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Cognizant and Google are joint employers of the contractors. In January, the NLRB sent a cease-and-desist letter to both employers for failing to bargain with the union. Since then the issue of joint employment, which would ultimately determine which company is responsible for bargaining, has landed in an appeals court and has yet to be ruled on.
"Workers say they don't have sick pay, receive minimal benefits and are paid as little as $19 an hour," according to the article, "forcing some to work multiple jobs to make ends meet."

Sam Regan, a data analyst contractor for YouTube Music, told the Washington Post that he was one of the last workers to leave the meeting where the layoffs were announced.

"Upon leaving, he heard one of the security guards call the non-emergency police line to report trespassers."

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/03/02/0638217/watch-the-moment-43-unionized-youtube-contractors-were-all-laid-off?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/03/02/0638217/watch-the-moment-43-unionized-youtube-contractors-were-all-laid-off?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Elon Musk Sues OpenAI and Sam Altman

Elon Musk has sued OpenAI, its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman and affiliated entities, alleging the ChatGPT makers have breached their original contractual agreements by pursuing profits instead of the non-profit's founding mission to develop AI that benefits humanity. TechCrunch: Musk, a co-founder and early backer of OpenAI, claims Altman and Brockman convinced him to help found and bankroll the startup in 2015 with promises it would be a non-profit focused on countering the competitive threat from Google. The founding agreement required OpenAI to make its technology "freely available" to the public, the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit, filed in a court in San Francisco late Thursday, says that OpenAI, the world's most valuable AI startup, has shifted to a for-profit model focused on commercializing its AGI research after partnering with Microsoft, the world's most valuable company that has invested about $13 billion into the startup. "In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft. Under its new board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity," the lawsuit adds. "This was a stark betrayal of the Founding Agreement."

https://slashdot.org/story/24/03/01/1218218/elon-musk-sues-openai-and-sam-altman?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/03/01/1218218/elon-musk-sues-openai-and-sam-altman?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


5,000-Pound Satellite Successfully 'Deorbited' Wednesday

On Wednesday afternoon "a European Space Agency satellite reentered Earth's atmosphere over the North Pacific Ocean..." reports CNN, "and there have been no reports of damage, according to the agency."

The agency's Space Debris Office, along with an international surveillance network, monitored and tracked the Earth-observing ERS-2 satellite throughout February to make predictions about the reentry, which occurred at 12:17 p.m. ET Wednesday. The ESA provided continuous live updates on its website. At around 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth's surface, the satellite broke apart due to atmospheric drag, and the majority of the fragments were expected to burn up in the atmosphere.

The agency said it was possible that some fragments could reach the planet's surface, but the pieces didn't contain any harmful substances and likely fell into the ocean... The ERS-2 satellite had an estimated mass of 5,057 pounds (2,294 kilograms) after depleting its fuel, according to the agency. "Uncontrolled Atmospheric reentry has long been a common method for disposing of space objects at the end of their mission," said Tim Flohrer, head of the agency's Space Debris Office, in a statement. "We see objects similar in size or larger to ERS-2 reentering the atmosphere multiple times each year."

The Earth-observing ERS-2 satellite first launched on April 21, 1995, and it was the most sophisticated satellite of its kind at the time to be developed and launched by Europe... In 2011, the agency decided to end the satellite's operations and deorbit it, rather than adding to the swirl of space junk orbiting the planet. The satellite executed 66 deorbiting maneuvers in July and August of 2011 before the mission officially concluded later that year on September 11. The maneuvers burned through the rest of the satellite's fuel and decreased its altitude, setting ERS-2's orbit on a trajectory to slowly spiral closer to Earth and reenter the atmosphere within 15 years.

The chances of an individual person being injured by space debris each year are less than 1 in 100 billion, about 1.5 million times lower than the risk of being killed in an accident at home, according to the agency.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/02/24/0615242/5000-pound-satellite-successfully-deorbited-wednesday?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/02/24/0615242/5000-pound-satellite-successfully-deorbited-wednesday?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Indian Government Moves To Ban ProtonMail After Bomb Threat

Following a hoax bomb threat sent via ProtonMail to schools in Chennai, India, police in the state of Tamil Nadu put in a request to block the encrypted email service in the region since they have been unable to identify the sender. According to Hindustan Times, that request was granted today. From the report: The decision to block Proton Mail was taken at a meeting of the 69A blocking committee on Wednesday afternoon. Under Section 69A of the IT Act, the designated officer, on approval by the IT Secretary and at the recommendation of the 69A blocking committee, can issue orders to any intermediary or a government agency to block any content for national security, public order and allied reasons. HT could not ascertain if a blocking order will be issued to Apple and Google to block the Proton Mail app. The final order to block the website has not yet been sent to the Department of Telecommunications but the MeitY has flagged the issue with the DoT.

During the meeting, the nodal officer representing the Tamil Nadu government submitted that a bomb threat was sent to multiple schools using ProtonMail, HT has learnt. The police attempted to trace the IP address of the sender but to no avail. They also tried to seek help from the Interpol but that did not materialise either, the nodal officer said. During the meeting, HT has learnt, MeitY representatives noted that getting information from Proton Mail, on other criminal matters, not necessarily linked to Section 69A related issues, is a recurrent problem.

Although Proton Mail is end-to-end encrypted, which means the content of the emails cannot be intercepted and can only be seen by the sender and recipient if both are using Proton Mail, its privacy policy states that due to the nature of the SMTP protocol, certain email metadata -- including sender and recipient email addresses, the IP address incoming messages originated from, attachment name, message subject, and message sent and received times -- is available with the company. "We condemn a potential block as a misguided measure that only serves to harm ordinary people. Blocking access to Proton is an ineffective and inappropriate response to the reported threats. It will not prevent cybercriminals from sending threats with another email service and will not be effective if the perpetrators are located outside of India," said ProtonMail in a statement.

"We are currently working to resolve this situation and are investigating how we can best work together with the Indian authorities to do so. We understand the urgency of the situation and are completely clear that our services are not to be used for illegal purposes. We routinely remove users who are found to be doing so and are willing to cooperate wherever possible within international cooperation agreements."

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/02/15/2210209/indian-government-moves-to-ban-protonmail-after-bomb-threat?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/02/15/2210209/indian-government-moves-to-ban-protonmail-after-bomb-threat?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


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 substantial reduction in contamination, according to their recent paper published in the American Journal of Infection Control. The good news: Adding a disinfectant to the toilet bowl before flushing and using disinfectant dispensers in the tank significantly reduce cross-contamination. [...]

The scientists conducted their experiment with E. coli (as a host bacteria) and coliphage MS2; the latter is not a human or animal pathogen but serves as a useful model. The public toilet used in the experiment was located in a stall in the restroom of an office building. That toilet was tankless, relying on water-line pressure for flushing, with no lid and a U-shaped seat with a gap in the front. The home toilet was a standard siphonic toilet with a tank and lid in a private residence; there was no gap on the center of the seat. Toilet bowls were seeded with MS2 and flushed. After one minute, samples were taken from various restroom surfaces: the top and bottom of toilet seats, the bowl rim, three locations on the floor, and the right and left walls. The team also conducted a similar experiment involving cleaning the bowls with toilet brushes, both with and without Lysol toilet bowl cleaner. All those samples were then tested for MS2 contamination.

The results: both the tops and bottoms of the lidless public toilet seats had more contamination compared to household seats, but otherwise, there was no statistical significance in the degree of contamination between lidless public toilets and household toilets with lids. And the surface contamination did indeed persist even after repeated flushes. The toilet seat was the worst offender with the greatest degree of contamination, which the authors suggest "reflects the airflow that occurs during toilet flushing, i.e., largely around the top and bottom of the toilet seat." That same airflow is likely a factor in spreading the contamination to restroom floors and walls. Perhaps the least surprising finding is that rigorous cleaning with a toilet bowl brush and Lysol reduced the contamination by 99.99 percent compared to cleaning with just a brush. Therefore, "The most effective strategy for reducing restroom cross-contamination associated with toilet flushing include the addition of a disinfectant to the toilet bowl before flushing and the use of disinfectant/detergent dispensers in the toilet tank," the authors concluded. They also recommend regularly disinfecting all restroom surfaces after flushing or cleaning with a toilet brush in health care facilities -- which often have a lot of immunocompromised people -- and if someone in your house has an active infection like norovirus. The findings have been published in the journal American Journal of Infection Control.

Slashdot reader doc1623 writes: "This headline brought me joy today, so I thought I would share (I could honestly care less about reading the article but joy is joy, I take it where I can find it.)"

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/02/02/0051251/should-you-flush-with-toilet-lid-up-or-down-study-says-it-doesnt-matter?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/02/02/0051251/should-you-flush-with-toilet-lid-up-or-down-study-says-it-doesnt-matter?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Is India Done With Crypto?

An anonymous reader shares a column: Apple delisting a dozen global crypto apps -- relied by big traders in India, in part due to its tax evasive properties -- from its Indian App Store seems the final nail in the coffin, capping a brutal two years. The pending removal across Google Play, internet providers and beyond caps a journey mired with shutdowns, pivots and relocations abroad for Indian crypto startups. The web3 dreams of local entrepreneurs now appear dashed against the rocky shores of regulatory resistance.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/01/11/0930256/is-india-done-with-crypto?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/01/11/0930256/is-india-done-with-crypto?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Driverless Cars Immune From Traffic Tickets In California Under Current Laws

According to NBC, law enforcement in California can't ticket driverless cars for traffic violations, thanks to a legal loophole requiring an actual driver in the car. NBC Bay Area reports: An internal memo from San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott, obtained by the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit, instructs officers that "no citation for a moving violation can be issued if the [autonomous vehicle] is being operated in a driverless mode." Scott added, "Technology evolves rapidly and, at times, faster than legislation or regulations can adapt to the changes."

While autonomous vehicles in California have received parking citations, the state's transportation laws appear to leave driverless vehicles immune from receiving any type of traffic ticket stemming from moving violations. "I think it sends a message that it's not a level playing field, that fairness is not the priority," said Michael Stephenson, the founder and senior attorney of Bay Area Bicycle Law, a law firm that specializes in representing cyclists in accident cases.

Stephenson said that driverless vehicles don't exactly fit into the state's current legal framework and that California needs new laws to appropriately govern the evolving technology. "We're perhaps trying to shove a square peg into a round hole," he said. "We are very much in the Wild West when it comes to driverless cars." The report notes that other states have rewritten traffic laws to allow ticketing of driverless cars. "Texas, which rivals California as another popular testing ground for autonomous vehicles, changed its transportation laws in 2017 to adapt to the emerging technology," reports NBC. "According to the Texas Transportation Code, the owner of a driverless car is 'considered the operator' and can be cited for breaking traffic laws 'regardless of whether the person is physically present in the vehicle.'"

"Arizona, another busy site for autonomous vehicles, took similar steps," adds NBC. "In revising its traffic laws, Arizona declared the owner of an autonomous vehicle 'may be issued a traffic citation or other applicable penalty if the vehicle fails to comply with traffic or motor vehicle laws.'"

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/01/02/2158249/driverless-cars-immune-from-traffic-tickets-in-california-under-current-laws?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/01/02/2158249/driverless-cars-immune-from-traffic-tickets-in-california-under-current-laws?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Tekken 8's 'Colorblind' Mode Is Causing Migraines, Vertigo, and Debate

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Modern fighting games have come quite a long way from their origins in providing accessibility options. Street Fighter 6 has audio cues that can convey distance, height, health, and other crucial data to visually impaired players. King of Fighters 15 allows for setting the contrast levels between player characters and background. Competitors like BrolyLegs and numerous hardware hackers have taken the seemingly inhospitable genre even further. Tekken 8, due later this month, seems to aim even higher, offering a number of color vision options in its settings. This includes an unofficially monikered "colorblind mode," with black-and-white and detail-diminished backgrounds and characters' flattened shapes filled in with either horizontal or vertical striped lines. But what started out as excitement in the fighting game and accessibility communities about this offering has shifted into warnings about the potential for migraines, vertigo, or even seizures.

You can see the mode in action in the Windows demo or in a YouTube video shared by Gatterall -- which, of course, you should not view if you believe yourself susceptible to issues with strobing images. Gatterall's enthusiasm for Tekken 8's take on colorblind accessibility ("Literally no game has done this") drew comment from Katsuhiro Harada, head of the Tekken games for developer and publisher Bandai Namco, on X (formerly Twitter). Harada stated that he had developed and tested "an accessibility version" of Tekken 7, which was never shipped or sold. Harada states that those "studies" made it into Tekken 8.

Not everybody in game accessibility circles was excited to see the new offerings, especially when it was shared directly with them by excited followers. Morgan Baker, game-accessibility lead at Electronic Arts, asked followers to "Please stop tagging me in the Tekken 8 'colorblind' stripe filters." The scenes had "already induced an aura migraine," Baker wrote, and she could not "afford to get another one right now." Accessibility consultant Ian Hamilton reposted a number of people citing migraines, nausea, or seizure concerns while also decrying the general nature of colorblind "filters" as an engineering-based approach to a broader design challenge. He added in the thread that shipping a game that contained a potentially seizure-inducing mode could result in people inadvertently discovering their susceptibility, similar to an infamous 1997 episode of the Pokemon TV series. Baker and Hamilton also noted problems with such videos automatically playing on sites like X/Twitter. "Patterns of lines moving on a screen creates a contiguous area of high-frequency flashing, like an invisible strobe," explained James Berg, accessibility project manager at Xbox Game Studios. "Human meat-motors aren't big fans of that." People typically start to notice "flicker fusion frequency" at around 40 frames per second, notes Ars.

Tekken's Harada responded by saying a "very few" number of people misunderstood what his team was trying to do with this mode. There are multiple options, not just one colorblind mode, Harada wrote, along with brightness adjustments for effects and other elements.

"These color vision options are a rare part of the fighting game genre, but they are still being researched and we intend to expand on them in the future," Harada wrote. Developers "have been working with several research institutes and communities to develop this option," even before the unsold "accessibility version of Tekken 7," added Harada.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/01/02/2136204/tekken-8s-colorblind-mode-is-causing-migraines-vertigo-and-debate?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/01/02/2136204/tekken-8s-colorblind-mode-is-causing-migraines-vertigo-and-debate?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Tetris Has Finally Been Beaten After 34 Years

A 13-year-old has beaten the original NES Tetris, previously thought to be an impossible task, after 34 years. The Gamer reports: The assumption I always had was that Tetris goes on forever and ever until you finally run out of space. While that's mostly true, as the game has no story, levels, or any form of progress beyond high scores and increasing speed, you 'beat' the game by crashing it, AKA reaching the "True Killscreen". It's called the "True Killscreen" because, for decades, it was assumed that level 29 was the Killscreen.

For context, the longer you play Tetris, the faster the blocks fall, upping the ante as you're forced to think in split-second moments about where each piece should drop. The speed caps at level 29, making it near impossible to reach the sides. So, the community believed that was the 'end' of the game. It isn't. The end comes when you reach a level so high, Tetris simply crashes.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/01/02/1658246/tetris-has-finally-been-beaten-after-34-years?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/01/02/1658246/tetris-has-finally-been-beaten-after-34-years?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


New Spin on a Revolving Door: Pentagon Officials Turned Venture Capitalists

Retired officers and departing defense officials are flocking to investment firms that are pushing the government to provide more money to defense-technology startups. The New York Times: When Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and other top officials assembled for an event this month at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, they walked into a lesson in how the high-stakes world of Pentagon lobbying is being altered by the rise of defense technology startups. Inside, at this elite gathering near Los Angeles of senior leaders from government and the arms industry, was a rapidly growing group of participants: former Pentagon officials and military officers who have joined venture capital firms and are trying to use their connections in Washington to cash in on the potential to sell a new generation of weapons.

They represent a new path through the revolving door that has always connected the Defense Department and the military contracting business. Retiring generals and departing top Pentagon officials once migrated regularly to the big established weapons makers like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Now they are increasingly flocking to venture capital firms that have collectively pumped billions of dollars into Silicon Valley-style startups offering the Pentagon new war-fighting tools like autonomous killer drones, hypersonic jets and space surveillance equipment.

This new route to the private sector is one indicator of the ways in which the United States is trying to become more agile in harnessing technological advances to maintain military superiority over China and other rivals. But the close ties between venture capital firms and Defense Department decision makers have also put a new twist on long-running questions about industry access and influence at a time when the Pentagon is under pressure to rethink how it allocates its huge procurement budget.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/01/02/1542229/new-spin-on-a-revolving-door-pentagon-officials-turned-venture-capitalists?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/01/02/1542229/new-spin-on-a-revolving-door-pentagon-officials-turned-venture-capitalists?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


No New iPad Models from Apple in 2013, a First Since the iPad's Debut

Apple broke from its 12-year tradition of annual iPad updates, releasing no new models in 2023 - a first since the product line debuted in 2010 when it rapidly became the tablet market leader. The last launch was in October 2022, with the only 2023 iPad-related release being a USB-C Apple Pencil.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/01/02/0920230/no-new-ipad-models-from-apple-in-2013-a-first-since-the-ipads-debut?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/01/02/0920230/no-new-ipad-models-from-apple-in-2013-a-first-since-the-ipads-debut?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Expedia Wants To Use AI To Cut Google Out of Its Trip-Planning Business

Travel website Expedia wants to get people to start their travel search on its site with AI instead of using an external search engine. From a report: Expedia already uses AI for some customer service features and to help property owners describe their homes and hotels. The company hopes in the future that AI will help it recommend travel destinations to customers based on previous trips and bring more direct traffic to its site. It's a long-term plan to shift the balance of power on the web -- albeit one that's still in its earliest stages for the company.

Rajesh Naidu, chief architect and head of data management at Expedia, says the goal is to get users started on their trips in one place. Expedia hopes to produce recommendations trained with its library of flight and hotel information and informed by users' travel preferences. "By being able to train large language models on our data, this rich 70 petabytes' worth of data we've gathered over the years, we can eventually recommend places to go and stay and do and continue to refine and personalize that," Naidu tells The Verge in an interview. According to Naidu, when people plan trips, they often start by going to a search engine to look for a destination. Only then do they visit services like Expedia to start booking travel and accommodation. There's nothing inherently wrong with going to Google and typing "best vacation that isn't cold and not that far from New York," but Naidu believes there's value in streamlining the travel planning process even more.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/12/18/184209/expedia-wants-to-use-ai-to-cut-google-out-of-its-trip-planning-business?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/12/18/184209/expedia-wants-to-use-ai-to-cut-google-out-of-its-trip-planning-business?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Scientists Pinpoint Cause of Morning Sickness To Hormone Made By Fetus

Scientists have pinpointed the cause of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy, "finding that the severity of illness is influenced by how much of a hormone called GDF15 the growing fetus makes," reports Science Magazine. The findings have been published in the journal Nature. From the report: GDF15 is present in the blood of nonpregnant people and is known to be associated with nausea; it's also been tested as a weight loss aid because of its tendency to suppress appetite. Levels of the hormone rise sharply in early pregnancy and increase throughout gestation. Pregnant people with higher GDF15 concentrations have been documented as having a higher risk of vomiting and nausea. Some researchers suggest the hormone-caused aversion to some smells and tastes might encourage an expectant parent to avoid foods potentially dangerous to the fetus.

To find out more about GDF15 changes during pregnancy, University of Cambridge physician-scientist Stephen O'Rahilly and colleagues studied half a dozen pregnant people who were known from previous genetic screening to produce a slightly different version of the GDF15 protein from their fetuses. Researchers could take advantage of that difference to trace whether GDF15 in the parent's blood originated in the parental or fetal genome: Almost all of it came from the fetus, O'Rahilly says. The team also took a closer look at the link between GDF15 levels and pregnancy sickness. Consistent with previous research, questionnaires from more than 300 participants showed that people who reported vomiting and nausea had significantly higher levels of circulating GDF15 on average than people without these symptoms. The researchers also found elevated levels of GDF15 in an analysis of more than 50 women hospitalized with hyperemesis gravidarum.

Still, hormone levels alone couldn't explain the difference in sickness severity. "There was a big overlap" in GDF15 levels between the groups, O'Rahilly says. He and co-author Marlena Fejzo, a researcher at the University of Southern California, suspected that people's sensitivity to GDF15 might also play a role. (Fejzo began to study the condition after her own pregnancy loss following hyperemesis gravidarum.) To test the idea, the researchers studied 10 nonpregnant people with a rare genetic variant known to carry a heightened risk of hyperemesis gravidarum. These people had reduced GDF15 levels in their blood, hinting that naturally low levels of the hormone might predispose someone to sickness during pregnancy. The researchers found the opposite when they asked 20 pregnant people with beta thalassemia, a blood disorder associated with high GDF15 levels, about their pregnancy symptoms: Just 5% of this group reported nausea or vomiting. O'Rahilly's lab found a similar pattern in animal experiments.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/12/15/0011204/scientists-pinpoint-cause-of-morning-sickness-to-hormone-made-by-fetus?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/12/15/0011204/scientists-pinpoint-cause-of-morning-sickness-to-hormone-made-by-fetus?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Which AI Model Provides the 'Best' Answers?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For those looking for a more rigorous way of comparing various models, the folks over at the Large Model Systems Organization (LMSys) have set up Chatbot Arena, a platform for generating Elo-style rankings for LLMs based on a crowdsourced blind-testing website. Chatbot Arena users can enter any prompt they can think of into the site's form to see side-by-side responses from two randomly selected models. The identity of each model is initially hidden, and results are voided if the model reveals its identity in the response itself. The user then gets to pick which model provided what they judge to be the "better" result, with additional options for a "tie" or "both are bad." Only after providing a pairwise ranking does the user get to see which models they were judging, though a separate "side-by-side" section of the site lets users pick two specific models to compare (without the ability to contribute a vote on the result).

Since its public launch back in May, LMSys says it has gathered over 130,000 blind pairwise ratings across 45 different models (as of early December). Those numbers seem poised to increase quickly after a recent positive review from OpenAI's Andrej Karpathy that has already led to what LMSys describes as "a super stress test" for its servers. Chatbot Arena's thousands of pairwise ratings are crunched through a Bradley-Terry model, which uses random sampling to generate an Elo-style rating estimating which model is most likely to win in direct competition against any other. Interested parties can also dig into the raw data of tens of thousands of human prompt/response ratings for themselves or examine more detailed statistics, such as direct pairwise win rates between models and confidence interval ranges for those Elo estimates.

Chatbot Arena's latest public leaderboard update shows a few proprietary models easily beating out a wide range of open-source alternatives. OpenAI's ChatGPT-4 Turbo leads the pack by a wide margin, with only an older GPT-4 model ("0314," which was discontinued in June) coming anywhere close on the ratings scale. But even months-old, defunct versions of GPT-3.5 Turbo outrank the highest-rated open-source models available in Chatbot Arena's testbed. Anthropic's proprietary Claude models also feature highly in Chatbot Arena's top rankings. Oddly enough, though, the site's blind human testing tends to rank the older Claude-1 slightly higher than the subsequent releases of Claude-2.0 and Claude-2.1. Among the tested non-proprietary models, the Llama-based Tulu 2 and 01.ai's Yi get rankings that are comparable to some older GPT-3.5 implementations. Past that, there's a slow but steady decline until you get to models like Dolly and StableLM at the bottom of the pack (amid older versions of many models that have more recent, higher-ranking updates on Chatbot Arena's charts).

https://slashdot.org/story/23/12/13/2056215/which-ai-model-provides-the-best-answers?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/23/12/13/2056215/which-ai-model-provides-the-best-answers?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Internet Use Does Not Appear To Harm Mental Health, Oxford Study Finds

A study of more than 2 million people's internet use found no "smoking gun" for widespread harm to mental health from online activities such as browsing social media and gaming, despite widely claimed concerns that mobile apps can cause depression and anxiety. From a report: Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute, who said their study was the largest of its kind, said they found no evidence to support "popular ideas that certain groups are more at risk" from the technology. However, Andrew Przybylski, professor at the institute -- part of the University of Oxford -- said that the data necessary to establish a causal connection was "absent" without more co-operation from tech companies. If apps do harm mental health, only the companies that build them have the user data that could prove it, he said.

"The best data we have available suggests that there is not a global link between these factors," said Przybylski, who carried out the study with Matti Vuorre, a professor at Tilburg University. Because the "stakes are so high" if online activity really did lead to mental health problems, any regulation aimed at addressing it should be based on much more "conclusive" evidence, he added. "Global Well-Being and Mental Health in the Internet Age" was published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science on Tuesday. In their paper, Przybylski and Vuorre studied data on psychological wellbeing from 2.4 million people aged 15 to 89 in 168 countries between 2005 and 2022, which they contrasted with industry data about growth in internet subscriptions over that time, as well as tracking associations between mental health and internet adoption in 202 countries from 2000-19.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/11/28/1352248/internet-use-does-not-appear-to-harm-mental-health-oxford-study-finds?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/11/28/1352248/internet-use-does-not-appear-to-harm-mental-health-oxford-study-finds?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Evernote Pushes Users To Upgrade

After making steep cuts to personnel earlier this year, Evernote's Milan-based owner Bending Spoons is now experimenting with a new plan that would push more users to upgrade to paid versions of its service. From a report: The company confirmed to TechCrunch it's been running a small test that placed limits on the number of notes free users could create, but said the new plan is not yet finalized. TechCrunch was alerted to the test by an Evernote user who logged in to a pop-up message that informed them that unless they upgraded to a paid plan, they would now be limited to only 1 notebook and 50 notes. That change would dramatically limit the service for longtime Evernote users who have accumulated hundreds or thousands of notes over the years.

https://slashdot.org/story/23/11/28/062228/evernote-pushes-users-to-upgrade?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/23/11/28/062228/evernote-pushes-users-to-upgrade?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Nearly 500 OpenAI Employees Threaten To Quit Unless Board Resigns

OpenAI was in open revolt on Monday with 490 employees threatening to leave unless the board resigns and reinstates Sam Altman as CEO, along with cofounder and former president Greg Brockman. Altman was controversially fired by the board on Friday. From a report: "The process through which you terminated Sam Altman and removed Greg Brockman from the board has jeopardized all of this work and undermined our mission and company" the letter reads. "Your conduct has made it clear you did not have the competence to oversee OpenAI." Remarkably, the letter's signees include Ilya Sutskever, the company's chief scientist and a member of its board, who has been blamed for coordinating the boardroom coup against Altman in the first place.

Shortly before the letter was released, Sutskever posted on X: "I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company." The letter's release follows an extraordinary, head-spinning weekend in Silicon Valley. OpenAI's board removed Altman from his position on Friday, claiming "he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities."

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/11/20/1356203/nearly-500-openai-employees-threaten-to-quit-unless-board-resigns?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/11/20/1356203/nearly-500-openai-employees-threaten-to-quit-unless-board-resigns?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Can AI Be Used to Fine-Tune Linux Kernel Performance?

An anonymous reader shared this report from ZDNet:

At the Linux Plumbers Conference, the invite-only meeting for the top Linux kernel developers, ByteDance Linux Kernel Engineer Cong Wang, proposed that we use AI and machine learning to tune the Linux kernel for the maximum results for specific workloads... There are thousands of parameters. Even for a Linux expert, tuning them for optimal performance is a long, hard job. And, of course, different workloads require different tunings for different sets of Linux kernel parameters... What ByteDance is working on is a first attempt to automate the entire Linux kernel parameter tuning process with minimal engineering efforts.

Specifically, ByteDance is working on tuning Linux memory management. ByteDance has found that with machine learning algorithms, such as Bayesian optimization, automated tuning could even beat most Linux kernel engineers. Why? Well, the idea, as Wang wryly put it, "is not to put Linux kernel engineers out of business." No, the goal is "to liberate human engineers from tuning performance for each individual workload. While making better decisions with historical data, which humans often struggle with. And, last, but never least, find better solutions than those we come up with using our current trial and error, heuristic methods.

In short, ByteDance's system optimizes resource usage by making real-time adjustments to things like CPU frequency scaling and memory management.

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/11/20/0153201/can-ai-be-used-to-fine-tune-linux-kernel-performance?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/11/20/0153201/can-ai-be-used-to-fine-tune-linux-kernel-performance?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Text Adventures are Still Thrving in Interactive Fiction Competition - and On Threads

Today saw the end of IFComp.org's 29th annual text adventure competition (now administered by the charitable non-profit IF Technology Foundation). 74 new and original text adventures
 competed for a share of the $7,523 prize pool, with the winners announced in a special online ceremony on Twitch this afternoon.

After all the votes were tabulated, the winning game was Dr Ludwig and the Devil, a 90-minute epic in which an esteemed mad scientist tries to double-cross Beelzebub himself — along with "the world's least effective torch and pitchfork-wielding mob!" Coming in second was LAKE Adventure. (Its premise? That it's a 13-year-old's 1993 game being revisited by its author 28 years later — complete with some gloriously retro artwork.) And finishing third was The Little Match Girl 4 (described as "a touching epic time travel fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.)

But also this week, the owner of the web site 80sNostalgia.com has created a text adventure using nothing but inter-linked posts on Threads.
"Think you can get under The Bridge?" its first post challenges. "Test your gaming skills with this Threads exclusive text-based game!
"And then try to get your head around got much work it took to make it..."

https://games.slashdot.org/story/23/11/20/0039203/text-adventures-are-still-thrving-in-interactive-fiction-competition---and-on-threads?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/23/11/20/0039203/text-adventures-are-still-thrving-in-interactive-fiction-competition---and-on-threads?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


World's Largest Single-Site Solar Farm Goes Online

The world's largest single-site solar farm has gone online in the United Arab Emirates. Called the Al Dhafra solar farm, it features almost 4 million bifacial solar panels and will power nearly 200,000 homes -- all while eliminating 2.4 million tons of carbon emissions annually. Electrek reports: Now that Al Dhafra is online, the UAE's solar power production capacity has increased to 3.2 GW. In September, EWEC called for proposals to develop a 1.5 GW solar farm in Al Khazna near Abu Dhabi. UAE is aiming to triple its renewable energy capacity to 14 GW by 2030. The UAE is hosting COP28 in Dubai, which kicks off on November 30, so, understandably, its rulers would time the launch of the world's largest solar farm just ahead of that event -- it's simply good PR.

UAE is rightly being criticized for putting the CEO of its state oil company, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company -- the world's 12th-biggest oil company by production -- in charge of COP28. It's also being criticized for hosting COP28 yet having an all-of-the-above approach to energy. The UAE Energy Strategy 2050 targets an energy mix of 44% clean energy, 38% gas, 12% "clean coal" (yes, it really says that), and 6% nuclear. It says it will become carbon neutral by 2050, but how it will do that on 50% fossil fuels is anyone's guess.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/11/18/014238/worlds-largest-single-site-solar-farm-goes-online?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/11/18/014238/worlds-largest-single-site-solar-farm-goes-online?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Why US Women Now Live Almost 6 Years Longer Than Men

According to a new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, women in the U.S. are now projected to live about six years longer than U.S. men. TIME reports: [T]he 2021 data represent the largest gender-based life expectancy gap in the U.S. since 1996. The gulf began to widen before the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors note, but the trend accelerated from 2019 to 2021. Deaths from COVID-19 and unintentional injuries, a category that includes accidental drug overdoses, were the largest contributors to the widening of the gap, but differential rates of homicide, heart disease, and suicide deaths also played a role, according to the report. It's well-established that men die of these causes more frequently than women, and in recent years, they have been some of the most common causes of death overall. Heart disease, COVID-19, and unintentional injuries accounted for three of the top five in 2021.

The gender gap would have been even wider, the authors note, but for factors including increases in maternal mortality and decreases in cancer deaths among men. Overall, the data underscore the continued importance of limiting COVID-19's spread, and of finding better ways to improve national mental health and prevent drug overdoses and suicides -- fatalities sometimes labeled by experts as "deaths of despair."

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/11/18/0058220/why-us-women-now-live-almost-6-years-longer-than-men?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/11/18/0058220/why-us-women-now-live-almost-6-years-longer-than-men?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Online Atrocity Database Exposed Thousands of Vulnerable People In Congo

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: A joint project of Human Rights Watch and New York University to document human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been taken offline after exposing the identities of thousands of vulnerable people, including survivors of mass killings and sexual assaults. The Kivu Security Tracker is a "data-centric crisis map" of atrocities in eastern Congo that has been used by policymakers, academics, journalists, and activists to "better understand trends, causes of insecurity and serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law," according to the deactivated site. This includes massacres, murders, rapes, and violence against activists and medical personnel by state security forces and armed groups, the site said. But the KST's lax security protocols appear to have accidentally doxxed up to 8,000 people, including activists, sexual assault survivors, United Nations staff, Congolese government officials, local journalists, and victims of attacks, an Intercept analysis found. Hundreds of documents -- including 165 spreadsheets -- that were on a public server contained the names, locations, phone numbers, and organizational affiliations of those sources, as well as sensitive information about some 17,000 "security incidents," such as mass killings, torture, and attacks on peaceful protesters.

The data was available via KST's main website, and anyone with an internet connection could access it. The information appears to have been publicly available on the internet for more than four years. [...] The spreadsheets, along with the main KST website, were taken offline on October 28, after investigative journalist Robert Flummerfelt, one of the authors of this story, discovered the leak and informed Human Rights Watch and New York University's Center on International Cooperation. HRW subsequently assembled what one source close to the project described as a "crisis team." Last week, HRW and NYU's Congo Research Group, the entity within the Center on International Cooperation that maintains the KST website, issued a statement that announced the takedown and referred in vague terms to "a security vulnerability in its database," adding, "Our organizations are reviewing the security and privacy of our data and website, including how we gather and store information and our research methodology." The statement made no mention of publicly exposing the identities of sources who provided information on a confidential basis. [...] The Intercept has not found any instances of individuals affected by the security failures, but it's currently unknown if any of the thousands of people involved were harmed. "We deeply regret the security vulnerability in the KST database and share concerns about the wider security implications," Human Rights Watch's chief communications officer, Mei Fong, told The Intercept. Fong said in an email that the organization is "treating the data vulnerability in the KST database, and concerns around research methodology on the KST project, with the utmost seriousness." Fong added, "Human Rights Watch did not set up or manage the KST website. We are working with our partners to support an investigation to establish how many people -- other than the limited number we are so far aware of -- may have accessed the KST data, what risks this may pose to others, and next steps. The security and confidentiality of those affected is our primary concern."

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/11/17/2237246/online-atrocity-database-exposed-thousands-of-vulnerable-people-in-congo?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/11/17/2237246/online-atrocity-database-exposed-thousands-of-vulnerable-people-in-congo?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Meta's Head of Augmented Reality Software Stepping Down

According to Reuters, Meta's head of augmented reality software is stepping down from his role. From the report: VP of Engineering Don Box announced the end of his tenure at Meta internally this week, without elaborating on what he would do next, according to a source familiar with the matter. A Meta spokesperson confirmed Box would be leaving the company at the end of this week and said he was doing so for personal reasons. There would be no change in product roadmap as a result of his decision, she added.

The departure of Box, a veteran engineer with experience building major technology systems from their infancy, could be a setback to progress on the operating system, a key component of Meta's AR glasses project, the source told Reuters. Meta has been planning to deliver a first generation of its AR glasses by next year, although those are meant to be used only internally and by a select group of developers, the source said. It aims to ship its first AR glasses to consumers in 2027. The Meta spokesperson declined to address the roadmap or whether the OS that Box's team was building would be in the first generation AR glasses. [...]

Meta initially hired Box in 2021 to chart a path forward after the failure of its XROS project, which aimed to create a unified custom operating system for its virtual reality headsets, Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses and planned augmented reality glasses, the source said. Box broke up the 300-person XROS unit into dedicated teams for each device line early last year and personally took over the team focused on AR software, according to both the source and Box's LinkedIn profile. Prior to joining Meta, Box had worked at Microsoft since 2002. In his final role at Microsoft, he ran engineering for mixed reality, which involved developing software for the HoloLens2 headset and related AR/VR services. Box is known for having led the creation of the Xbox One operating system and later heading Microsoft's core operating system group, which works across all Windows products.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/11/17/2227213/metas-head-of-augmented-reality-software-stepping-down?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/11/17/2227213/metas-head-of-augmented-reality-software-stepping-down?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Google Delays Release of Gemini AI That Aims To Compete With OpenAI

Google's company-defining effort to catch up to ChatGPT creator OpenAI is turning out to be harder than expected. From a report: Google representatives earlier this year told some cloud customers and business partners they would get access to the company's new conversational AI, a large language model known as Gemini, by November. But the company recently told them not to expect it until the first quarter of next year, according to two people with direct knowledge. The delay comes at a bad time for Google, whose cloud sales growth has slowed while that of its bigger rival, Microsoft, has accelerated. Part of Microsoft's success has come from selling OpenAI's technology to its customers.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/11/17/1655257/google-delays-release-of-gemini-ai-that-aims-to-compete-with-openai?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/11/17/1655257/google-delays-release-of-gemini-ai-that-aims-to-compete-with-openai?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


EU Allows Use of Controversial Weedkiller Glyphosate for 10 More Years

After months of wrangling, the European Commission says it has decided to renew the license for the weedkiller compound glyphosate, approving its use in European Union countries for ten more years. From a report: Following the decision yesterday, the Commission released a statement saying that, on the basis of comprehensive safety assessments carried out by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), it would renew the licence, "subject to certain new conditions and restrictions." These include a ban on the use of the chemical to dry crops before harvest, and "the need for certain measures to protect non-target organisms." Governments can still restrict the use of glyphosate in their own countries if they consider the risks too high, particularly in regard to the need to protect biodiversity, the statement added.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, the world's most widely used herbicide. Over the years, a debate has developed about whether the chemical is safe to use on food crops, as well as its possible environmental impacts. Some studies point to a link between glyphosate and certain cancers; others suggest that the way in which it is used should not harm consumers. Glyphosate has been investigated extensively by food- and chemicals-safety agencies, but disagreements among researchers remain. The license allowing glyphosate's use in the EU was last renewed for five years in 2017. Ahead of the authorization's expiry in last December, the European Union temporarily extended it for another year to allow the EFSA to assess some 2,400 studies about the compound and to make a recommendation to governments.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/11/17/1729228/eu-allows-use-of-controversial-weedkiller-glyphosate-for-10-more-years?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/11/17/1729228/eu-allows-use-of-controversial-weedkiller-glyphosate-for-10-more-years?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed