1.3 Million Android-Based TV Boxes Backdoored; Researchers Still Don't Know How

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers still don't know the cause of a recently discovered malware infection affecting almost 1.3 million streaming devices running an open source version of Android in almost 200 countries. Security firm Doctor Web reported Thursday that malware named Android.Vo1d has backdoored the Android-based boxes by putting malicious components in their system storage area, where they can be updated with additional malware at any time by command-and-control servers. Google representatives said the infected devices are running operating systems based on the Android Open Source Project, a version overseen by Google but distinct from Android TV, a proprietary version restricted to licensed device makers.

Although Doctor Web has a thorough understanding of Vo1d and the exceptional reach it has achieved, company researchers say they have yet to determine the attack vector that has led to the infections. "At the moment, the source of the TV boxes' backdoor infection remains unknown," Thursday's post stated. "One possible infection vector could be an attack by an intermediate malware that exploits operating system vulnerabilities to gain root privileges. Another possible vector could be the use of unofficial firmware versions with built-in root access." The following device models infected by Vo1d are: [R4, TV BOX, KJ-SMART4KVIP].

One possible cause of the infections is that the devices are running outdated versions that are vulnerable to exploits that remotely execute malicious code on them. Versions 7.1, 10.1, and 12.1, for example, were released in 2016, 2019, and 2022, respectively. What's more, Doctor Web said it's not unusual for budget device manufacturers to install older OS versions in streaming boxes and make them appear more attractive by passing them off as more up-to-date models. Further, while only licensed device makers are permitted to modify Google's AndroidTV, any device maker is free to make changes to open source versions. That leaves open the possibility that the devices were infected in the supply chain and were already compromised by the time they were purchased by the end user. "These off-brand devices discovered to be infected were not Play Protect certified Android devices," Google said in a statement. "If a device isn't Play Protect certified, Google doesn't have a record of security and compatibility test results. Play Protect certified Android devices undergo extensive testing to ensure quality and user safety."

Users can confirm if their device runs Android TV OS via this link and following the steps here.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/2117242/13-million-android-based-tv-boxes-backdoored-researchers-still-dont-know-how?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
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iFixit Launches FixHub Portable USB-C Soldering System To Encourage Repair Projects

iFixit has created its own USB-C soldering iron and portable power station called FixHub, "designed to allow all types of users to handle soldering work wherever they may be," reports MacRumors. From the report: The Portable Power Station serves as the command and power center for FixHub, including a 55-watt-hour battery to support over eight hours of continuous soldering on a single charge. The power supply delivers up to 100 watts to a pair of USB-C ports, allowing it to run two soldering irons simultaneously, and the fact that it's simply a USB-C power output device means you can also use it to power or recharge an array of devices like phones.

The solidly built power station includes a handy display to show the status of your soldering iron, along with a convenient dial for adjusting the power being delivered to the iron, supporting temperatures up to 400C (750F). A flip-up bracket raises the front of the power station a bit to make the display easier to see while in use, while attachment points on the left and right side allow you to clip on the soldering iron's cap for convenient access as a stand. A USB-C port on the rear of the power station allows for up to 45 watts of input to recharge the station, and iFixit says it is safe to leave continuously connected to power so it's ready whenever you need it. [...]

iFixit is of course known for more than just hardware, and it has hundreds of free soldering guides on its website, ranging from the basics of soldering to specific repair projects. It also wouldn't be an iFixit product without repairability being front of mind, so the FixHub system is designed to allow for easy repairs and iFixit will be releasing a number of guides to help users replace batteries, repair parts, and more. Supplementing the FixHub is an optional Portable Soldering Toolkit, which provides an extensive set of tools and consumables to get you going on soldering projects. The USB Smart Soldering Iron and Portable Soldering Station are priced at $79.95 and $249.95, respectively.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/214200/ifixit-launches-fixhub-portable-usb-c-soldering-system-to-encourage-repair-projects?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/214200/ifixit-launches-fixhub-portable-usb-c-soldering-system-to-encourage-repair-projects?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


PC Giants Predict Delayed but Massive Upgrade Wave

Dell and HP executives have acknowledged a delay in the anticipated commercial PC refresh cycle. Michael Dell, speaking at the Citi 2024 Global TMT conference, stated that the refresh cycle "has been delayed for sure." The Register adds: Without offering any reasons for postponement -- and not being pressed for one by the analyst interviewing him -- the billionaire reckoned the size of the refresh is "going to be even bigger" because of it. "So first of all we have a certain date with Windows 10 end-of-life and we're almost within a one year window of that, and as you get in that one-year window, the enterprise IT people start screwing around and saying, 'Oh, we better do something about this'," said Dell.

Enrique Lores, CEO at rival PC maker HP, who spoke at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology conference this week, agreed enterprises are also about to invest in new lines. "First of all there is a large and aging installed base on PCs. Many of these PCs were bought during COVID and now we are four [or] five years after they were bought and they will have to be replaced. "We also see an opportunity driven by the Windows 11 refresh that is only starting now... this is what is behind some of the strength that we see on the commercial side. Microsoftâ¦ will start discontinuing their support for the previous versions, and this always ties the replacement and upgrade," he said, adding "this is going to be driving demand in the coming quarters."

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/190258/pc-giants-predict-delayed-but-massive-upgrade-wave?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/190258/pc-giants-predict-delayed-but-massive-upgrade-wave?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


OpenAI Acknowledges New Models Increase Risk of Misuse To Create Bioweapons

OpenAI's latest models have "meaningfully" increased the risk that AI will be misused to create biological weapons [non-paywalled link], the company has acknowledged. From a report: The San Francisco-based company announced its new models, known as o1, on Thursday, touting their new abilities to reason, solve hard maths problems and answer scientific research questions. OpenAI's system card, a tool to explain how the AI operates, said the new models had a "medium risk" for issues related to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons -- the highest risk that OpenAI has ever given for its models. The company said it meant that the technology has "meaningfully improved" the ability of experts to create bioweapons. AI software with more advanced capabilities, such as the ability to perform step-by-step reasoning, pose an increased risk of misuse in the hands of bad actors, according to experts.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/1842216/openai-acknowledges-new-models-increase-risk-of-misuse-to-create-bioweapons?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/1842216/openai-acknowledges-new-models-increase-risk-of-misuse-to-create-bioweapons?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Japan Rethinks 24/7 Police Boxes With Rise of Cybercrime

Japan is overhauling how its ubiquitous 24-hour mini-police stations are operated nationwide as more crime fighting moves from the streets to the web. From a report: Called koban in Japanese, officers at these small police boxes handle a variety of tasks from responding to crime and patrolling neighborhoods to handling lost items. There are also chuzaisho outposts where police officers live full-time. The National Police Agency will update operational rules on Friday to allow some outposts to shut down at night if necessary. It will also allow greater flexibility on the use of mobile or temporary outposts, depending on local needs and staffing considerations.

Prefectural police will decide on changes involving specific outposts. Japan's koban system dates back to 1874 and is believed to have started operating around the clock in the 1880s. There were 6,215 kobans and 5,923 live-in outposts across Japan as of April. They have inspired countries like Singapore and Brazil to set up similar outposts focused on community policing. The change comes amid shifting crime patterns. Roughly 700,000 crime cases were reported in 2023, down more than 70% from the post-World War II peak in 2002. Street crime, like purse-snatching and car break-ins, were down around 80% to 240,000 cases. Instead, online and phone-based crimes, like impersonation scams and romance scams, are on the rise.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/1824246/japan-rethinks-247-police-boxes-with-rise-of-cybercrime?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/1824246/japan-rethinks-247-police-boxes-with-rise-of-cybercrime?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


'I Don't Get Why Apple's Multitrack Voice Memos Require an iPhone 16 Pro'

Apple unveiled a multitrack recording feature for Voice Memos at its recent iPhone event, exclusive to the iPhone 16 Pro. The feature allows users to layer vocals over guitar tracks without headphones, utilizing advanced microphone technology and machine learning algorithms to reduce ambient noise.

Engadget argues the feature's exclusivity to the new $1,000+ model is unnecessary, given modern smartphones' processing power far exceeds that of early digital audio workstations. They contend that basic multitrack recording functionality could be implemented on older iPhone models. Apple's decision to limit this feature contradicts its inclusion of GarageBand on all iPhones and the availability of Audio Mix on base iPhone 16 models, which offers similar noise reduction capabilities. The story adds: Why is this particular feature walled behind the iPhone 16 Pro? It's a simple multitrack recording function. From the ad, it looks like the app can't even layer more than two tracks at a time. This can't exactly be taxing that A18 Pro chip, especially when the phone can also handle 4K/120 FPS video recording in Dolby Vision.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/1751253/i-dont-get-why-apples-multitrack-voice-memos-require-an-iphone-16-pro?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/1751253/i-dont-get-why-apples-multitrack-voice-memos-require-an-iphone-16-pro?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Apple Seeks To Drop Its Lawsuit Against Israeli Spyware Pioneer NSO

Apple asked a court Friday to dismiss its three-year-old hacking lawsuit against spyware pioneer NSO Group, arguing that it might never be able to get the most critical files about NSO's Pegasus surveillance tool and that its own disclosures could aid NSO and its increasing number of rivals. From a report: A redacted version of the filing in San Francisco federal court cited a July article in the Guardian, which reported that Israeli officials had taken files from NSO's headquarters. The newspaper said the officials asked an Israeli court to keep the action secret even from those involved in an earlier, still pending hacking suit against NSO filed by Meta's WhatsApp. Israeli ministry of justice communications that were hacked showed that officials were concerned about sensitive information reaching Americans, the newspaper said.

"While Apple takes no position on the truth or falsity of the Guardian Story described above, its existence presents cause for concern about the potential for Apple to obtain the discovery it needs," the iPhone maker wrote in its filing Friday. Israeli officials have not disputed the authenticity of the documents but have denied interfering in the U.S. litigation.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/1731255/apple-seeks-to-drop-its-lawsuit-against-israeli-spyware-pioneer-nso?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/1731255/apple-seeks-to-drop-its-lawsuit-against-israeli-spyware-pioneer-nso?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Fortinet Confirms Data Breach After Hacker Claims To Steal 440GB of Files

Cybersecurity giant Fortinet has confirmed it suffered a data breach after a threat actor claimed to steal 440GB of files from the company's Microsoft Sharepoint server. From a report: Fortinet is one of the largest cybersecurity companies in the world, selling secure networking products like firewalls, routers, and VPN devices. The company also offers SIEM, network management, and EDR/XDR solutions, as well as consulting services.

Early this morning, a threat actor posted to a hacking forum that they had stolen 440GB of data from Fortinet's Azure Sharepoint instance. The threat actor then shared credentials to an alleged S3 bucket where the stolen data is stored for other threat actors to download. The threat actor, known as "Fortibitch," claims to have tried to extort Fortinet into paying a ransom, likely to prevent the publishing of data, but the company refused to pay. In response to our questions about incident, Fortinet confirmed that customer data was stolen from a "third-party cloud-based shared file drive."

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/1539247/fortinet-confirms-data-breach-after-hacker-claims-to-steal-440gb-of-files?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/1539247/fortinet-confirms-data-breach-after-hacker-claims-to-steal-440gb-of-files?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


'The IRS Says There's Always Next Year'

The tax agency again delays a vital software upgrade, at the cost of billions. WSJ's Editorial Board: Taxpayers endure drudgery to file on time each year, but the tax collectors seem less concerned with deadlines. A new Internal Revenue Service database, more than a decade in the making, will be delayed another year. And its cost is billions of dollars and climbing. The IRS told the press this week that it won't replace its Individual Master File until the 2026 tax year, at the earliest. That falls short of Commissioner Danny Werfel's goal of launching a new system in time for 2025 taxes, and the delay could mean another year of grief for countless taxpayers. The file is the digital silo in which more than 154 million tax files are held, and keeping it up-to-date helps to enable speedy, accurate refunds.

The code that powers the database was written in the 1960s by IBM engineers at the same time their colleagues worked on the Apollo program. The system runs on a nearly extinct computer language known as Cobol, and though it retains its basic functionality, maintaining it requires bespoke service. By 2018 the IRS had only 17 remaining developers considered to be experts on the system. The agency has sought and failed to overhaul or replace the database since the 1980s. It spent $4 billion over 14 years to devise upgrades, but it canceled that effort in 2000 "without receiving expected benefits," according to the Government Accountability Office.

The costs continue to mount. IRS spending on operating and maintaining its IT systems has risen 35% in the past four years, to $2.7 billion last year from $2 billion in 2019. These costs will "likely continue to increase until a majority of legacy systems are decommissioned," according to a report last month by the agency's inspector general. Each year major upgrades are pushed back adds a larger sum to the final tab. The IRS usually pleads poverty as an excuse for failing to stay up-to-date. Yet Congress gave the agency billions of extra dollars through the Inflation Reduction Act to fund a speedy database overhaul. Since 2022 it has spent $1.3 billion beyond its ordinary budget to modernize its business systems. Taxpayers will have to wait at least another year to see if that investment has paid off.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/1427242/the-irs-says-theres-always-next-year?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/1427242/the-irs-says-theres-always-next-year?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Microsoft Pushes AI For Climate Solutions While Marketing To Oil Giants

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft executives have been thinking lately about the end of the world. In a white paper published late last year, Brad Smith, the company's vice chair and president, and Melanie Nakagawa, its chief sustainability officer, described a "planetary crisis" that AI could help solve. Imagine an AI-assisted tool that helps reduce food waste, to name one example from the document, or some future technology that could "expedite decarbonization" by using AI to invent new designs for green tech.

But as Microsoft attempts to buoy its reputation as an AI leader in climate innovation, the company is also selling its AI to fossil-fuel companies. Hundreds of pages of internal documents I've obtained, plus interviews I've conducted over the past year with 15 current and former employees and executives, show that the tech giant has
sought to market the technology to companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron as a powerful tool for finding and developing new oil and gas reserves and maximizing their production -- all while publicly committing to dramatically reduce emissions.

Although tech companies have long done business with the fossil-fuel industry, Microsoft's case is notable. It demonstrates how the AI boom contributes to one of the most pressing issues facing our planet today -- despite the fact that the technology is often lauded for its supposed potential to improve our world, as when Sam Altman testified to Congress that it could address issues such as "climate change and curing cancer." These deals also show how Microsoft can use the vagaries of AI to talk out of both sides of its mouth, courting the fossil-fuel industry while asserting its environmental bona fides. (Many of the documents I viewed have been submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a whistleblower complaint alleging that the company has omitted from public disclosures "the serious climate and environmental harms caused by the technology it provides to the fossil fuel industry," arguing that the information is of material and financial importance to investors.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/147230/microsoft-pushes-ai-for-climate-solutions-while-marketing-to-oil-giants?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/147230/microsoft-pushes-ai-for-climate-solutions-while-marketing-to-oil-giants?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


GM and EVgo To Build 400 Ultra-Fast EV Chargers Across the US

An anonymous reader quotes a report from InsideEVs: General Motors is joining forces with EVgo, one of the biggest electric vehicle charging operators in the United States, to build 400 ultra-fast DC chargers nationwide to support the growing number of battery-powered cars hitting U.S. roads. To be clear, these are individual stalls, not charging stations. However, the two companies describe the new locations as "flagship destinations" which will feature 350-kilowatt DC chargers, ample lighting, canopies, pull-through spots and security cameras. Most locations will feature up to 20 ultra-fast charging stalls, but some will have even more -- good news for those crowded holiday road trips. GM and EVgo said the fancy new stations would be located near shopping areas offering dining, coffee shops and other amenities.

We don't know exactly where the new stations will be built, but EVgo mentioned that the "flagship destinations" will be deployed coast to coast, including in metropolitan areas in states like Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New York and Texas. The stalls will be co-branded EVgo and GM Energy -- the automaker's charging and energy management division. The first new "flagship station" is expected to open next year. The new stalls will make use of EVgo's prefabrication approach which can reduce the total cost of a new station by 15% and the deployment time by 50%. Similar to Tesla's prefabricated Supercharger stalls, EVgo's ready-made structures come with stalls and accompanying equipment already mounted on a metal base plate which is transported from the factory to the charging site.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/0151223/gm-and-evgo-to-build-400-ultra-fast-ev-chargers-across-the-us?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/0151223/gm-and-evgo-to-build-400-ultra-fast-ev-chargers-across-the-us?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Google Tests Desktop Windowing For Android Tablets

Google is testing a "desktop windowing" feature for Android tablets that "will let you resize apps freely and arrange them on your screen at will," reports The Verge. It's currently available as a developer preview. From the report: Currently, apps on Android tablets open in full-screen by default. When the new mode is enabled, each app will appear in a window with controls that allow you to reposition, maximize, or close the app. You'll also see a taskbar at the bottom of your screen with your running apps. [...] Once the feature is rolled out to everyone, you can turn it on by pressing and holding the window handle at the top of an app's screen. If you have a keyboard attached, you can also use the shortcut meta key (Windows, Command, or Search) + Ctrl + Down to activate desktop mode. (You can exit the mode by closing all your active apps or by dragging a window and dragging it to the top of your screen.)

Google notes that apps locked to portrait orientation are still resizable, which might make things look a bit weird if certain apps aren't optimized. However, Google plans to address this in a future update by scaling the UI of non-resizable apps while maintaining their aspect ratio.

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/0130247/google-tests-desktop-windowing-for-android-tablets?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/0130247/google-tests-desktop-windowing-for-android-tablets?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


White House Gets Voluntary Commitments From AI Companies To Curb Deepfake Porn

In a statement today, the White House said it has received commitments from several AI companies to curb the creation and distribution of deepfake porn, also known as image-based sexual abuse material. Engadget reports: The participating businesses have laid out the steps they are taking to prevent their platforms from being used to generate non-consensual intimate images (NCII) of adults and child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Specifically, Adobe, Anthropic, Cohere, Common Crawl, Microsoft and OpenAI said they'll be: "responsibly sourcing their datasets and safeguarding them from image-based sexual abuse."

All of the aforementioned except Common Crawl also agreed they'd be: "incorporating feedback loops and iterative stress-testing strategies in their development processes, to guard against AI models outputting image-based sexual abuse" and "removing nude images from AI training datasets" when appropriate. [...] The notable absences from today's White House release are Apple, Amazon, Google and Meta.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/09/12/2031226/white-house-gets-voluntary-commitments-from-ai-companies-to-curb-deepfake-porn?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/09/12/2031226/white-house-gets-voluntary-commitments-from-ai-companies-to-curb-deepfake-porn?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


AMD's New Variable Graphics Memory Lets Laptop Users Reassign Their RAM To Gaming

AMD has introduced Variable Graphics Memory (VGM) for its AI 300 "Strix Point" laptops, allowing users to convert up to 75% of their system memory into dedicated VRAM via the AMD Adrenalin app, enhancing gaming performance for titles requiring more VRAM. The Verge reports: You might be wondering: does that extra video memory actually make a difference? Well, it depends on the game. Some games, like Alan Wake II, require as many as 6GB of VRAM and will throw errors at launch if you're short -- Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, and Lenovo Legion Go buyers have been tweaking their VRAM settings for some time to take games to the threshold of playability. But in early testing with the Asus Zenbook S 16, a Strix Point laptop that's already shipped with this feature, my colleague Joanna Nelius saw that turning it on isn't a silver bullet for every game. With 8GB of VRAM, the laptop played Control notably faster (65fps vs. 54fps), but some titles had smaller boosts, no boost, or even slight frame rate decreases.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/12/212254/amds-new-variable-graphics-memory-lets-laptop-users-reassign-their-ram-to-gaming?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/12/212254/amds-new-variable-graphics-memory-lets-laptop-users-reassign-their-ram-to-gaming?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Unhappy Workers May Reduce Global GDP By As Much As 9%, Gallup Estimates

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Employees' negative daily emotions and lack of well-being can ultimately hurt worker engagement -- and the economy, according to a new report released this week. Gallup, in its "State of the Global Workplace," estimates that low employee engagement costs the global economy $8.9 trillion, or 9% of global GDP. The report includes findings from its latest annual World Poll, which surveyed 128,278 employees in more than 140 countries last year. That poll found that roughly 20% of workers globally reported feeling lonely, angry or sad on a daily basis. And 41% on average say they feel stress. Those most likely to say they feel lonely were younger workers (22%), employees who worked remotely full-time (25%) and those who felt most disengaged on the job (31%).

While work isn't always the cause of a person's negative daily emotions, employers should still be concerned. That's because work can either improve or worsen employees' well-being. On the one hand, the Gallup report noted, "when employees find their work and work relationships meaningful, employment is associated with high levels of daily enjoyment and low levels of all negative daily emotions. Notably, half of employees who are engaged at work are thriving in life overall." On the other, researchers found that being disengaged at work can negatively affect a person's wellbeing as much as -- or more than -- not having a job at all. "Employees who dislike their jobs tend to have high levels of daily stress and worry, as well as elevated levels of all other negative emotions," they wrote. "On many wellbeing items (stress, anger, worry, loneliness), being actively disengaged at work is equivalent to or worse than being unemployed."

The poll found that last year only 23% of employees were engaged at work, unchanged from the year prior. Gallup defines an engaged employee as someone "highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace. They are psychological 'owners,' drive performance and innovation, and move the organization forward." But those who said they were not engaged rose by 3 percentage points to 62%. These are employees characterized as "psychologically unattached to their work and company. Because their engagement needs are not being fully met, they are putting time but not energy or passion into their work."

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/12/2039257/unhappy-workers-may-reduce-global-gdp-by-as-much-as-9-gallup-estimates?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/12/2039257/unhappy-workers-may-reduce-global-gdp-by-as-much-as-9-gallup-estimates?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


FDA Approves Apple AirPods As Hearing Aids

The FDA on Thursday approved the first hearing aid software for Apple's latest AirPods Pro earbuds. According to Apple, the feature will be pushed to eligible devices through a software update in the coming weeks. The Washington Post reports: The move, which comes two years after the FDA first approved over-the-counter hearing aids, could help more Americans with hearing loss start getting help, the FDA said in a statement. The feature works by amplifying some sounds, such as voices, while minimizing others, such as ambient noise. Users can take a hearing test in the Apple Health app, and their AirPods will adjust sound level automatically based on the results. The feature is only available on the AirPods Pro 2, which cost $249.

The FDA says it tested Apple's hearing aid feature in a clinical study with 118 subjects who believed they had mild or moderate hearing loss. The study found that people who set up their AirPods using Apple's hearing test noticed similar benefits as people who had a professional set up the earbuds. Over-the-counter hearing aids are best for people with mild to moderate hearing loss, audiologists say, many of whom don't seek treatment. [...] However, consumer earbuds aren't a good solution for people with severe hearing loss, experts maintain, and most over-the-counter hearing devices will still require a trip to the audiologist for some fine tuning.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/09/12/2014242/fda-approves-apple-airpods-as-hearing-aids?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/09/12/2014242/fda-approves-apple-airpods-as-hearing-aids?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Dumbphones and Fax Machines Are the New Boss Flex

Some executives are embracing old technology like dumbphones and fax machines, seeking digital detox and prioritizing focus. They see these vintage tools as power moves, allowing them to control their time and avoid constant distractions, WSJ writes in a story. These bosses believe old tech enhances leadership, enabling them to be present and productive.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/12/1637205/dumbphones-and-fax-machines-are-the-new-boss-flex?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/12/1637205/dumbphones-and-fax-machines-are-the-new-boss-flex?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Ex-Google Exec Said Goal Was To 'Crush' Competition, Trial Evidence Shows

A Google executive told colleagues the goal for the company's then-nascent online advertising business in 2009 was to "crush" rival advertising networks, according to evidence prosecutors presented at the tech titan's antitrust trial on Wednesday. From a report: The statements underscored the U.S. Department of Justice's claim that Google has sought to monopolize markets for publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks, and tried to dominate the market for ad exchanges which sit in the middle. On the third day of the trial, prosecutors began to introduce evidence of how Google employees thought about the company's products at the time when the government alleges it set out to dominate the ad tech market.

"We'll be able to crush the other networks and that's our goal," David Rosenblatt, Google's former president of display advertising, said of the company's strategy in late 2008 or early 2009, according to notes shown in court. Google denies the allegations, saying it faces fierce competition from rival digital advertising companies. Rosenblatt came to Google in 2008 when it acquired his former ad tech company, DoubleClick, and left the following year. The notes of his talk showed him discussing the advantages of owning technology on both sides and the middle of the market. "We're both Goldman and NYSE," he said, he said, according to the notes, referring to one of the world's biggest stock exchanges at the time and one of its biggest market makers. "Google has created what's comparable to the NYSE or London Stock Exchange; in other words, we'll do to display what Google did to search," Rosenblatt said.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/12/1629216/ex-google-exec-said-goal-was-to-crush-competition-trial-evidence-shows?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/12/1629216/ex-google-exec-said-goal-was-to-crush-competition-trial-evidence-shows?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


'An AI Bot Named James Has My Old Local News Job'

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired, written by Guthrie Scrimgeour: It always seemed difficult for the newspaper where I used to work, The Garden Island on the rural Hawaiian island of Kauai, to hire reporters. If someone left, it could take months before we hired a replacement, if we ever did. So, last Thursday, I was happy to see that the paper appeared to have hired two new journalists -- even if they seemed a little off. In a spacious studio overlooking a tropical beach, James, a middle-aged Asian man who appears to be unable to blink, and Rose, a younger redhead who struggles to pronounce words like "Hanalei" and "TV," presented their first news broadcast, over pulsing music that reminds me of the Challengers score. There is something deeply off-putting about their performance: James' hands can't stop vibrating. Rose's mouth doesn't always line up with the words she's saying.

When James asks Rose about the implications of a strike on local hotels, Rose just lists hotels where the strike is taking place. A story on apartment fires "serves as a reminder of the importance of fire safety measures," James says, without naming any of them. James and Rose are, you may have noticed, not human reporters. They are AI avatars crafted by an Israeli company named Caledo, which hopes to bring this tech to hundreds of local newspapers in the coming year. "Just watching someone read an article is boring," says Dina Shatner, who cofounded Caledo with her husband Moti in 2023. "But watching people talking about a subject -- this is engaging."

The Caledo platform can analyze several prewritten news articles and turn them into a "live broadcast" featuring conversation between AI hosts like James and Rose, Shatner says. While other companies, like Channel 1 in Los Angeles, have begun using AI avatars to read out prewritten articles, this claims to be the first platform that lets the hosts riff with one another. The idea is that the tech can give small local newsrooms the opportunity to create live broadcasts that they otherwise couldn't. This can open up embedded advertising opportunities and draw in new customers, especially among younger people who are more likely to watch videos than read articles. Reception of the AI avatars has been poor, notes Scrimgeour. "This ain't that,â says one Instagram commenter. "Keep journalism local." Another just reads: "Nightmares."

There's also concern around the jobs these avatars will take. "Caledo claims its AI won't take news jobs because it only does work that isn't being done otherwise," notes Scrimgeour, agreeing that his newspaper company never had a video broadcast while he worked there.

"The question is, will local audiences buy into the new tech? Early returns suggest that Kauai viewers, at least, might have trouble accepting James and Rose as kama'aina (locals)..."

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/11/2258257/an-ai-bot-named-james-has-my-old-local-news-job?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

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Mistral Releases Pixtral 12B, Its First-Ever Multimodal AI Model

Mistral AI has launched Pixtral 12B, its first multimodal model with language and vision processing capabilities, positioning it to compete with AI leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic. You can download its source code from Hugging Face, GitHub, or via a torrent link. VentureBeat reports: While the official details of the new model, including the data it was trained upon, remain under wraps, the core idea appears that Pixtral 12B will allow users to analyze images while combining text prompts with them. So, ideally, one would be able to upload an image or provide a link to one and ask questions about the subjects in the file. The move is a first for Mistral, but it is important to note that multiple other models, including those from competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic, already have image-processing capabilities.

When an X user asked [Sophia Yang, the head of developer relations at the company] what makes the Pixtral 12-billion parameter model unique, she said it will natively support an arbitrary number of images of arbitrary sizes. As shared by initial testers on X, the 24GB model's architecture appears to have 40 layers, 14,336 hidden dimension sizes and 32 attention heads for extensive computational processing. On the vision front, it has a dedicated vision encoder with 1024x1024 image resolution support and 24 hidden layers for advanced image processing. This, however, can change when the company makes it available via API.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/11/2241236/mistral-releases-pixtral-12b-its-first-ever-multimodal-ai-model?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/11/2241236/mistral-releases-pixtral-12b-its-first-ever-multimodal-ai-model?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Mark Zuckerberg Says He's Done Apologizing

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The home of the Golden State Warriors was packed on Tuesday evening this week, but it wasn't to watch Steph Curry. Thousands of fans gathered at the Chase Center in downtown San Francisco to watch one of Silicon Valley's biggest ballers, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, sit down for a conversation with the hosts of the Acquired podcast, David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert. Shortly after hopping onstage, Zuckerberg joked that he might need to schedule his next appearance in order to apologize for whatever he was about to say. After a beat, he added that he was just kidding and that, in fact, his days of apologizing are over.

Zuckerberg has had something of a rebrand recently. He raises cattle in Hawaii now, has long bouncy curls and a gold chain, and commissions Roman-style statues of his wife. Onstage, the Facebook founder wore a boxy T-shirt he designed himself alongside fashion designer Mike Amiri that read "learning through suffering" in Greek letters. The tongue-in-cheek comment about apologizing was a reference to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who himself addressed a flub he'd made on the Acquired podcast earlier this year, via a pre-recorded video on a screen hanging over the crowd. Huang's original comment -- that he never would have started Nvidia if he knew what he did today -- was grossly taken out of context, he said. In the video, he clarified that he absolutely would start Nvidia again, and that his comment was more about the blissful ignorance of startup founders.

While Zuckerberg's opening comment was just a friendly jab at Huang, it set the tone for Zuckerberg's new attitude toward life and business. The founder of Facebook has spent a lot of time apologizing for Facebook's content moderation issues. But when reflecting on the biggest mistakes of his career, Zuckerberg said his largest one was a "political miscalculation" that he described as a "20-year mistake." Specifically, he said, he'd taken too much ownership for problems allegedly out of Facebook's control. "Some of the things they were asserting that we were doing or were responsible for, I don't actually think we were," said Zuckerberg. "When it's a political problem there are people operating in good faith who are identifying a problem and want something to be fixed, and there are people who are just looking for someone to blame."

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/11/2224235/mark-zuckerberg-says-hes-done-apologizing?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/11/2224235/mark-zuckerberg-says-hes-done-apologizing?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Ford Seeks Patent For Tech That Listens To Driver Conversations To Serve Ads

Ford is seeking a patent for technology that would allow it to tailor in-car advertising by listening to conversations among vehicle occupants, as well as by analyzing a car's historical location and other data, according to a patent application published late last month. The Record: "In one example, the controller may monitor user dialogue to detect when individuals are in a conversation," the patent application says. "The conversations can be parsed for keywords or phrases that may indicate where the occupants are traveling to." The tech -- labeled as "in-vehicle advertisement presentation" -- will determine where a car is located, how fast it is traveling, what type of road it is driving on and whether it is in traffic. It also will predict routes, speeds and destinations to customize ads to drivers, the application said.

The system could pull data from "audio signals within the vehicle and/or historical user data, selecting a number of the advertisements to present to the user during the trip," the patent application said. By monitoring dialogue between vehicle occupants the ad controller system can determine when to deliver audio versus visual ads, providing ads to drivers as they travel "through a human-machine interface (HMI) of the vehicle," the application said.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/11/146214/ford-seeks-patent-for-tech-that-listens-to-driver-conversations-to-serve-ads?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/11/146214/ford-seeks-patent-for-tech-that-listens-to-driver-conversations-to-serve-ads?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Alibaba Now Sells a $200,000 Diamond-Making Machine

Ars Technica's Benj Edwards writes: In an age when you can get just about anything online, it's probably no surprise that you can buy a diamond-making machine for $200,000 on Chinese eCommerce site Alibaba. If, like me, you haven't been paying attention to the diamond industry, it turns out that the availability of these machines reflects an ongoing trend toward democratizing diamond production -- a process that began decades ago and continues to evolve. [...] Today, there are two primary methods for creating lab-grown diamonds: the HPHT process and chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Both types of machines are now listed on Alibaba, with prices starting at around $200,000, as pointed out in a Hacker News comment by engineer John Nagle (who goes by "Animats" on Hacker News). A CVD machine we found is more pricey, at around $450,000.

While the idea of purchasing a diamond-making machine on Alibaba might be intriguing, it's important to note that operating one isn't as simple as plugging it in and watching diamonds form. According to Lakha's article, these machines require significant expertise and additional resources to operate effectively. For an HPHT press, you'd need a reliable source of high-quality graphite, metal catalysts like iron or cobalt, and precise temperature and pressure control systems. CVD machines require a steady supply of methane and hydrogen gases, as well as the ability to generate and control microwaves or hot filaments. Both methods need diamond seed crystals to start the growth process. Moreover, you'd need specialized knowledge to manage the growth parameters, handle potentially hazardous materials and high-pressure equipment safely, and process the resulting raw diamonds into usable gems or industrial components. The machines also use considerable amounts of energy and require regular maintenance. Those factors may make the process subject to some regulations that are far beyond the scope of this piece. In short, while these machines are more accessible than ever, turning one into a productive diamond-making operation would still require significant investment in equipment, materials, expertise, and safety measures. But hey, a guy can dream, right?

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/235210/alibaba-now-sells-a-200000-diamond-making-machine?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/235210/alibaba-now-sells-a-200000-diamond-making-machine?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Oracle Is Designing a Data Center That Would Be Powered By Three Small Nuclear Reactors

With electricity demand from AI becoming so "crazy," Oracle's Larry Ellison announced the company is designing a data center that will be powered by three small nuclear reactors capable of providing more than a gigawatt of electricity. "The location and the power place we've located, they've already got building permits for three nuclear reactors," Ellison said. "These are the small modular nuclear reactors to power the data center. This is how crazy it's getting. This is what's going on." CNBC reports: Small modular nuclear reactors are new designs that promise to speed the deployment of reliable, carbon-free energy as power demand rises from data centers, manufacturing and the broader electrification of the economy. Generally, these reactors are 300 megawatts or less, about a third the size of the typical reactor in the current U.S. fleet. They would be prefabricated in several pieces and then assembled on the site, reducing the capital costs that stymie larger plants.

Right now, small modular reactors are a technology of the future, with executives in the nuclear industry generally agreeing that they won't be commercialized in the U.S. until the 2030s. There are currently three operational small modular reactors in the world, according to the Nuclear Energy Agency. Two are in China and Russia, the central geopolitical adversaries of the U.S. A test reactor is also operational in Japan.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/2253225/oracle-is-designing-a-data-center-that-would-be-powered-by-three-small-nuclear-reactors?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/2253225/oracle-is-designing-a-data-center-that-would-be-powered-by-three-small-nuclear-reactors?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Former Samsung Execs Arrested For Using Stolen Tech To Build Chip Factory In China

South Korean police have arrested two former Samsung executives for allegedly leaking $3.2 billion worth of Samsung secrets to China to aid in building 20nm DRAM chips. Tom's Hardware reports: The authorities reported that one of the arrested suspects, 66-year-old Mr. Choi, set up a joint venture building chips in China alongside some local officials and served as its CEO. He was allegedly assisted by a plant designer, Mr. Oh, in this venture, while he also attempted to recruit other South Korean experts to work for him. However, Choi's arrest comes after being suspected of leaking Samsung memory technologies to build 20nm DRAM chips at the Chinese factory, Chengdu Gaozhen.

Samsung is one of the leading memory manufacturers, working with other major companies like Nvidia to produce VRAM while offering its own storage and memory solutions. The police said Choi's move "weakened the nation's competitiveness when the countries are in a global chip war." With the capture of the company's head, the authorities claim that this will stop the operation of the Chinese venture. However, investigators are still looking into the case to determine if other cases of industrial espionage will spring up from this case.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/2246241/former-samsung-execs-arrested-for-using-stolen-tech-to-build-chip-factory-in-china?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/2246241/former-samsung-execs-arrested-for-using-stolen-tech-to-build-chip-factory-in-china?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Windows Update Zero-Day Being Exploited To Undo Security Fixes

wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Microsoft on Tuesday raised an alarm for in-the-wild exploitation of a critical flaw in Windows Update, warning that attackers are rolling back security fixes on certain versions of its flagship operating system. The Windows flaw, tagged as CVE-2024-43491 and marked as actively exploited, is rated critical and carries a CVSS severity score of 9.8/10. Redmond's documentation of the bug suggests a downgrade-type attack similar to the 'Windows Downdate' issue discussed at this year's Black Hat conference. Microsoft's bulletin reads: "Microsoft is aware of a vulnerability in Servicing Stack that has rolled back the fixes for some vulnerabilities affecting Optional Components on Windows 10, version 1507 (initial version released July 2015). This means that an attacker could exploit these previously mitigated vulnerabilities on Windows 10, version 1507 (Windows 10 Enterprise 2015 LTSB and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 2015 LTSB) systems that have installed the Windows security update released on March 12, 2024 -- KB5035858 (OS Build 10240.20526) or other updates released until August 2024. All later versions of Windows 10 are not impacted by this vulnerability."

To protect against this exploit, Microsoft says Windows users should install this month's Servicing stack update (SSU KB5043936) and the September 2024 Windows security update (KB5043083), in that order.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/229252/windows-update-zero-day-being-exploited-to-undo-security-fixes?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/229252/windows-update-zero-day-being-exploited-to-undo-security-fixes?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


A Surgeon General Warning Label Must Appear on Social Media Apps, 42 State Attorneys General Demand

It's hard to get 42 states to agree on much. But a bipartisan group of attorneys general on Tuesday demanded that Congress require Surgeon General warning labels on social media apps to help curtail addiction and a mental health crisis among young adults. From a report: "As state Attorneys General, we sometimes disagree about important issues, but all of us share an abiding concern for the safety of the kids in our jurisdictions -- and algorithm-driven social media platforms threaten that safety," the 42 attorneys general said in a letter to Congress. States have taken legal action against a number of social media companies, including Meta and TikTok. But they argue more needs to be done in Washington to alert people to the dangers social media platforms present.

"In addition to the states' historic efforts, this ubiquitous problem requires federal action -- and a surgeon general's warning on social media platforms, though not sufficient to address the full scope of the problem, would be one consequential step toward mitigating the risk of harm to youth," the attorneys general said. The letter echoed much of what Surgeon General Vivek Murthy outlined in a scathing New York Times op-ed in June, that drew a direct comparison between the apps -- TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and others -- to cancer causing cigarettes.

Murthy cited several studies, including a 2019 American Medical Association study published in JAMA that showed teens who spend three hours a day on social media double their risk of depression. Teens spend nearly five hours a day on social media apps, according to a Gallup poll.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/1915208/a-surgeon-general-warning-label-must-appear-on-social-media-apps-42-state-attorneys-general-demand?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/1915208/a-surgeon-general-warning-label-must-appear-on-social-media-apps-42-state-attorneys-general-demand?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


China's Huawei Shows the World Its $2,800 'Trifold' Phone

An anonymous reader shares a report: Over successive administrations, the U.S. government has used stiff trade restrictions to try to stifle the Chinese telecom giant Huawei. In turn, the company never misses an opportunity to show that it is still standing. Last year, at the tail end of a visit to China by Gina Raimondo, the U.S. commerce secretary, Huawei unveiled a smartphone that was powered by an advanced semiconductor made in China. The chip was exactly the kind of technology that the United States, in an effort led by Ms. Raimondo, had tried to prevent China from developing.

The Huawei phone, called the Mate 60 Pro, was heralded in China as the triumph of a national champion over American constraints. It sold out within minutes on Chinese e-commerce platforms. Many shoppers chose to pair their purchase with a phone case emblazoned with a photo of Ms. Raimondo's face. In the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen on Tuesday, Huawei again made a bid for the spotlight with the announcement of a new device just hours after Apple introduced its iPhone 16 in California. Huawei's latest phone, the Mate XT, is heavy on novelty: It can be folded, twice [non-paywalled source].

The tablet-size device folds along two vertical seams to become the size of a typical phone. It is the first commercially available trifold smartphone. It comes in two colors, red and black, and will go on sale on Sept. 20. "It's a piece of work that everyone has thought of but never managed to create," said Richard Yu, Huawei's consumer group chairman. "I have always had a dream to put our tablet in my pocket, and we did it." The Mate XT, with a screen that measures 10.2 inches diagonally, is equipped with artificial intelligence-enabled translation, messaging and photo editing features. Mr. Yu also unveiled a thin keyboard that folds in half to the same size as the phone. He showed the audience how he carried both together in the pocket of his suit jacket. Starting at $2,800, the Mate XT is priced like a luxury product.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/1910221/chinas-huawei-shows-the-world-its-2800-trifold-phone?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/1910221/chinas-huawei-shows-the-world-its-2800-trifold-phone?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


A Robot Begins Removal of Melted Fuel From the Fukushima Nuclear Plant. It Could Take a Century

A robot entered a damaged reactor at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday, beginning a two-week mission to retrieve melted fuel debris for the first time since the 2011 disaster. The operation marks a crucial step in the decades-long process to decommission the plant and address the highly radioactive material inside three damaged reactors.

The robot, maneuvered remotely due to lethal radiation levels, will collect less than 3 grams of debris using tongs. This sample will provide vital data on the status of the reactor cores and inform future cleanup strategies. An estimated 880 tons of molten fuel remains in the three reactors, posing potential safety risks as the structures age. AP adds: Removal of the melted fuel was initially planned to start in late 2021 but has been delayed by technical issues, underscoring the difficulty of the process. The government says decommissioning is expected to take 30-40 years, while some experts say it could take as long as 100 years.

Others are pushing for an entombment of the plant, as at Chernobyl after its 1986 explosion, to reduce radiation levels and risks for plant workers. That won't work at the seaside Fukushima plant, says Lake Barrett, who led the cleanup after the 1979 disaster at the U.S. "You're in a high seismic area, you're in a high-water area, and there are a lot of unknowns in those (reactor) buildings,â he said. "I don't think you can just entomb it and wait."

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/1456251/a-robot-begins-removal-of-melted-fuel-from-the-fukushima-nuclear-plant-it-could-take-a-century?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/1456251/a-robot-begins-removal-of-melted-fuel-from-the-fukushima-nuclear-plant-it-could-take-a-century?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Apple Must Pay $14 Billion Tax Bill To Ireland, EU Court Rules

Bruce66423 shares a report: The European Union's top court ruled against Apple Tuesday in the tech company's protracted legal battle over contested back taxes in Ireland. The ruling means Apple will be forced to pay Ireland up to $14.4 billion in back taxes and represents the latest setback in Europe for the tech giant. Earlier this year, Apple became the first company to be accused of violating the EU's new major tech competition law. The tax case stretches back to 2016, when the European Commission (EC) ordered Apple repay Ireland roughly $14.4 billion of unpaid taxes.

The commission argued that the tech giant had received "illegal" tax benefits from Ireland over the course of two decades. Apple had housed its European headquarters in Ireland and paid a corporate tax rate of less than 1% in some years, which the EC argued gave Apple an unfair advantage over other companies. Apple and Ireland appealed the decision in 2019. The European Court of Justice on Tuesday overturned the lower court decision and upheld the EC's 2016 order. "Today is a big win for European citizens and for tax justice. The Court of Justice confirms ... that Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid which Ireland now has to recover," Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition chief, said in a statement Tuesday.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/1559251/apple-must-pay-14-billion-tax-bill-to-ireland-eu-court-rules?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/24/09/10/1559251/apple-must-pay-14-billion-tax-bill-to-ireland-eu-court-rules?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


The Mosquito-Borne Disease 'Triple E' Is Spreading In the US As Temperatures Rise

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A 41-year-old man in New Hampshire died last week after contracting a rare mosquito-borne illness called eastern equine encephalitis virus, also known as EEE or "triple E." It was New Hampshire's first human case of the disease in a decade. Four other human EEE infections have been reported this year, in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Though this outbreak is small, and triple E does not pose a risk to most people living in the United States, public health officials and researchers are concerned about the threat the deadly virus poses to the public, both this year and in future summers. There is no known cure for the disease, which can cause severe flu-like symptoms and seizures in humans four to 10 days after exposure and kills between 30 and 40 percent of the people it infects (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source). Half of the people who survive a triple E infection are left with permanent neurological damage. Because of EEE's high mortality rate, state officials have begun spraying insecticide in Massachusetts, where 10 communities have been designated "critical" or "high risk" for triple E. Towns in the state shuttered their parks from dusk to dawn and warned people to stay inside after 6 pm, when mosquitoes are most active.

Like West Nile virus, another mosquito-borne illness that poses a risk to people in the US every summer, triple E is constrained by environmental factors that are changing rapidly as the planet warms. That's because mosquitoes thrive in the hotter, wetter conditions that climate change is producing. "We have seen a resurgence of activity with eastern equine encephalitis virus over the course of the past 10 or so years," said Theodore G. Andreadis, a researcher who studied mosquito-borne diseases at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, a state government research and public outreach outfit, for 35 years. "And we've seen an advancement into more northern regions where it had previously not been detected." Researchers don't know what causes the virus to surge and abate, but Andreadis said it's clear that climate change is one of the factors spurring its spread, particularly into new regions. [...]

Studies have shown that warmer air temperatures up to a certain threshold, around 90 degrees Fahrenheit, shorten the amount of time it takes for C. melanura eggs to hatch. Higher temperatures in the spring and fall extend the number of days mosquitoes have to breed and feed. And they'll feed more times in a summer season if it's warmer -- mosquitoes are ectothermic, meaning their metabolism speeds up in higher temperatures. Rainfall, too, plays a role in mosquito breeding and activity, since mosquito eggs need water to hatch. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which means that even small rainfall events dump more water today than they would have last century. The more standing water there is in roadside ditches, abandoned car tires, ponds, bogs, and potholes, the more opportunities mosquitoes have to breed. And warmer water decreases the incubation period for C. melanura eggs, leading one study to conclude that warmer-than-average water temperatures "increase the probability for amplification of EEE." Climate change isn't the only factor encouraging the spread of disease vectors like mosquitoes. The slow reforestation of areas that were clear-cut for industry and agriculture many decades ago is creating new habitat for insects. At the same time, developers are building new homes in wooded or half-wooded zones in ever larger numbers, putting humans in closer proximity to the natural world and the bugs that live in it. The report notes that the best way to prevent mosquito bites is to "wear long sleeves and pants at dusk and dawn, when mosquitoes are most prone to biting, and regularly apply an effective mosquito spray." Local health departments can also help protect the public by "testing pools of water for mosquito larvae and conducting public awareness and insecticide spraying campaigns when triple E is detected," notes Wired.

A vaccine for the disease exists for horses, but because the illness is so rare "there is little incentive for vaccine manufacturers to develop a preventative for triple E in humans," adds the report.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/2324216/the-mosquito-borne-disease-triple-e-is-spreading-in-the-us-as-temperatures-rise?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/2324216/the-mosquito-borne-disease-triple-e-is-spreading-in-the-us-as-temperatures-rise?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Pacific Islands Submit Court Proposal For Recognition of Ecocide As a Crime

Vanuatu, Fiji, and Samoa have proposed a change to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to recognize ecocide as a crime, allowing for the prosecution of individuals responsible for significant environmental harm. If successful, the change would recognize ecocide as a crime alongside genocide and war crimes. The Guardian reports: Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa have proposed a formal recognition by the court of the crime of ecocide, defined as "unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts." The proposal was tabled before the ICC in New York on Monday afternoon, and will have to be discussed in full at a later date. Holding full discussions on the proposal is a process likely to take some years, and will face fierce opposition, though much of it will be behind the scenes as most countries will not wish to openly speak out against it.

Philippe Sands KC, a prominent international lawyer and professor of law at University College London, acted as a co-chair of the independent expert panel for the legal definition of ecocide, convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation. He told the Guardian he was "100% certain" that ecocide would eventually be recognized by the court. "The only question is when," he said. "I was skeptical at first, but now I am a true believer. There has already been real change, as some countries have put it in domestic law. I think this is the right idea at the right time." Belgium recently adopted ecocide as a crime, and the EU has changed some of its guidance on international crime to include it as a "qualified" offense. Mexico is also considering such a law. [...]

Getting to the point where the ICC will consider the proposal has taken years. Stop Ecocide International has been campaigning on the issue since 2017, and Vanuatu made the first call for the crime to be recognized by the ICC in 2019. Although it could take as long as a decade from now before anyone is charged with ecocide even if the changes were implemented by the ICC, the proposal tabled on Monday was vital to gaining broader acceptance of the concept, according to [Jojo Mehta, a co-founder of the Stop Ecocide International campaigning group, which is an observer to the ICC]. "There has been growing progress, as people are increasingly aware of the threat of climate [breakdown]," she said. "People are saying that this much harm to the planet is just not acceptable."

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/239227/pacific-islands-submit-court-proposal-for-recognition-of-ecocide-as-a-crime?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/239227/pacific-islands-submit-court-proposal-for-recognition-of-ecocide-as-a-crime?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


US Proposes Requiring Reporting For Advanced AI, Cloud Providers

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Commerce Department said Monday it is proposing to require detailed reporting requirements for advanced artificial intelligence developers and cloud computing providers to ensure the technologies are safe and can withstand cyberattacks. The proposal from the department's Bureau of Industry and Security would set mandatory reporting to the federal government about development activities of "frontier" AI models and computing clusters. It would also require reporting on cybersecurity measures as well as outcomes from so-called red-teaming efforts like testing for dangerous capabilities including the ability to assist in cyberattacks or lowering barriers to entry for non-experts to develop chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons. External red-teaming has been used for years in cybersecurity to identify new risks, with the term referring to U.S. Cold War simulations where the enemy was termed the "red team." [...] Commerce said the information collected under the proposal "will be vital for ensuring these technologies meet stringent standards for safety and reliability, can withstand cyberattacks, and have limited risk of misuse by foreign adversaries or non-state actors." Further reading: Biden Signs Executive Order To Oversee and Invest in AI

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/2133210/us-proposes-requiring-reporting-for-advanced-ai-cloud-providers?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/2133210/us-proposes-requiring-reporting-for-advanced-ai-cloud-providers?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


CrowdStrike Hopes Legal Threats Will Fade As Time Passes

CrowdStrike CFO Burt Podbere says the cybersecurity firm has not faced lawsuits over July's global IT outage. Speaking at a conference, Podbere emphasized efforts to shift customer focus from legal threats to business discussions. The Register: There were dark rumblings from Delta Air Lines last month, for example, threatening litigation over alleged gross negligence. At the time, CrowdStrike reiterated its apologies, saying: "Public posturing about potentially bringing a meritless lawsuit against CrowdStrike as a long-time partner is not constructive to any party." During his time at the Citi conference, Podbere admitted: "We don't know how it's all going to shake out.

"Everything we're doing and trying to do is take the legal discussion away from our interaction with customers and move it to the business discussion. "And as time goes on, that does get easier because we're moving further away from the Sun, right? And that's how we think about it."

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/2034207/crowdstrike-hopes-legal-threats-will-fade-as-time-passes?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/2034207/crowdstrike-hopes-legal-threats-will-fade-as-time-passes?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


US Prepares To Challenge Google's Online Ad Dominance

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: For years, Google has faced complaints about how it dominates the online advertising market. Many of the concerns stem from the internet giant's suite of software known as Google Ad Manager, which websites around the world use to sell ads on their sites. The technology conducts split-second auctions to place ads each time a user loads a page. The dominance of that technology has landed Google in federal court. On Monday, Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia will preside over the start of a trial in which the Department of Justice accuses the company of abusing control of its ad technology and violating antitrust law (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source).

It would be Google's second antitrust trial in less than a year. In August, a federal judge ruled in a separate case that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in online search, a major victory for the Justice Department. The new trial is the latest salvo by federal antitrust regulators against Big Tech, testing a century-old competition law against companies that have reshaped the way people shop, communicate and consume information. Federal regulators have also filed antitrust lawsuits against Apple,Amazon and Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, saying those companies have also abused their power. Google's vice president for regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, said in a blog post on Sunday that the Justice Department was "picking winners and losers in a highly competitive industry."

"With the cost of ads going down and the number of ads sold going up, the market is working," she said. "The DOJ's case risks inefficiencies and higher prices -- the last thing that America's economy or our small businesses need right now."

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/2112257/us-prepares-to-challenge-googles-online-ad-dominance?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/2112257/us-prepares-to-challenge-googles-online-ad-dominance?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


AirPods Pro 2 Adds 'Clinical Grade' Hearing Aid Feature

Apple says AirPods Pro 2 will receive a software feature "soon" that will turn the wireless earbuds into "clinical-grade" hearing aids. "This includes a hearing protection mode being enabled by default, offering passive noise cancellation in loud environments," adds 9to5Mac. From the report: Firstly, users can take a clinically-validated hearing test. The hearing test uses your AirPods and iPhone, and can be conducted by a user in under five times. The result of your hearing test can be viewed securely in the Health app. If hearing loss is detected, the hearing aid mode is then available to use. The AirPods will make it easier to hear sounds from the world around you. A custom hearing profile is automatically applied when listening to audio, like music or podcasts.

The hearing aid feature is currently making its way through the FDA and other regulatory bodies. Apple said the functionality will be available in more than 100 countries. The feature will be enabled through a free software update coming later this year to AirPods Pro 2.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/216216/airpods-pro-2-adds-clinical-grade-hearing-aid-feature?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/216216/airpods-pro-2-adds-clinical-grade-hearing-aid-feature?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Sharks Deserting Coral Reefs as Oceans Heat Up, Study Shows

Sharks are deserting their coral reef homes as the climate crisis continues to heat up the oceans, scientists have discovered. From a report: This is likely to harm the sharks, which are already endangered, and their absence could have serious consequences for the reefs, which are also struggling. The reef sharks are a key part of the highly diverse and delicate ecosystem, which could become dangerously unbalanced without them. The researchers tagged and tracked more than 120 grey reef sharks living on the remote coral reefs of the Chagos archipelago in the central Indian Ocean from 2013 to 2020. As reefs became more stressed, particularly during the major ocean-warming El NiÃ±o event of 2015-16, the sharks spent significantly less time there. They failed to return to normal residency for up to 16 months after a stress event.

However, the sharks actually spent more time on a minority of the coral reefs. These reefs were healthier and more resilient, due to factors including the eradication of invasive rats and higher populations of birds, which help fertilise the reef. The researchers said this showed that increasing the protection of coral reefs from human-caused damage may help sharks remain on their home reefs. Sharks are cold-blooded and their body temperature is linked to water temperature. "If it gets too hot, they're going to need to move," said Dr David Jacoby, a lecturer in zoology at Lancaster University and the leader of the research project. "We think many are choosing to move into offshore, deeper and cooler waters, which is concerning. Some of the sharks were disappearing entirely from the reef for long periods of time. Reef sharks are already absent from nearly 20% of coral reefs globally, partly through [overfishing], and this new finding has the potential to exacerbate these trends."

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/1814235/sharks-deserting-coral-reefs-as-oceans-heat-up-study-shows?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/1814235/sharks-deserting-coral-reefs-as-oceans-heat-up-study-shows?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Bending Spoons Plans To Cut 75% of WeTransfer Staff After Acquisition

An anonymous reader shares a report: Italy-based app company Bending Spoons, which owns Evernote and Meetup, is planning to lay off 75% of the staff of file transfer service WeTransfer, TechCrunch has learned. Bending Spoons acquired the Dutch company in July for an undisclosed amount.

The company confirmed the plans for the WeTransfer layoff to TechCrunch. The staff that is being let go will be informed after Bending Spoons goes through local regulations in different countries regarding lay offs. Dutch media reported that WeTransfer has over 350 employees.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/1046203/bending-spoons-plans-to-cut-75-of-wetransfer-staff-after-acquisition?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/1046203/bending-spoons-plans-to-cut-75-of-wetransfer-staff-after-acquisition?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Audible To Start Generating AI Voice Replicas of Select Audiobook Narrators

Amazon's Audible will begin inviting a select group of US-based audiobook narrators to train AI on their voices, the clones of which can then be used to make audiobook recordings. From a report: The effort, which kicks off next week, is designed to add more audiobooks to the service, quickly and cheaply -- and to welcome traditional narrators into the evolving world of audiobook automation which, to date, many have regarded warily. Last year, Audible began offering US-based, self-published authors who make their books available on the Kindle Store the option of having their works narrated by a generic "virtual voice." The initiative has been popular. As of May, more than 40,000 books in Audible were marked as having made use of the technology. Under the new arrangement, rather than limiting the audio work entirely to company-owned synthetic voices, Audible will be encouraging professional narrators to get in on the action.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/1338209/audible-to-start-generating-ai-voice-replicas-of-select-audiobook-narrators?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/1338209/audible-to-start-generating-ai-voice-replicas-of-select-audiobook-narrators?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Four-Day Work Week Proposal by UK Government Raises Issues, Says Econ Professor

Workers get the right to request a four-day workweek under a new proposal by the U.K. government. But a professor of economics at the University of Leeds argues "There remain problems, however" — starting with the fact that "under current laws, employers can still resist the requests of workers, if they want to."

There is also the problem of unevenness in the effect of the law. While workers in well-paid jobs have bargaining leverage to assert their legal rights, others in lower-paid jobs face minimal protection and risk direct exploitation... [A]dvancing the case for a four-day working week is likely to be more difficult if it is seen as benefiting only one section of society (one that already enjoys strong rights and privileges)....

Another problem is the scope for compressed hours — working a five-day week of around 40 hours in four days. Under the new proposal, workers requesting and getting a four-day working week will still be required to put in the same hours. Longer work days may be welcomed by some — for example, they may cut down on childcare costs. But they risk undermining the benefits of a shorter working week. Indeed, they may threaten the health of workers by creating heavier work days which they need longer to recover from. At worst, a three-day weekend may be needed to recover from a four-day working week with longer days.
While a four-day work week could improve the quality of life and help address climate change, the analysis argues that the government's proposal ultimately raises issues about the "purpose and potential" of a four-day working week, possibly suggesting other policy changes that may also be needed. "It is important that low wages are addressed alongside work-time reduction."

"If the government is serious about achieving a four-day working week to raise productivity and improve employee wellbeing, it needs to encourage trials in the public sector... "
"The government also needs to target a future date, say 2040, for the realisation of a four-day working week. This could be facilitated by establishing a partnership of unions and employers to identify barriers to a four-day working week and ways to overcome them."

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/033243/four-day-work-week-proposal-by-uk-government-raises-issues-says-econ-professor?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/09/033243/four-day-work-week-proposal-by-uk-government-raises-issues-says-econ-professor?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Videogame Performers' Union Hails New 80-Game Agreement as Preserving Human Creativity

This week after striking for over a month, videogame performers reached agreements with 80 games this week, reports the Associated Press. "SAG-AFTRA announced the agreements with the 80 individual video games on Thursday. Performers impacted by the work stoppage can now work on those projects.

"The strike against other major video game publishers, including Disney and Warner Bros.' game companies and Electronic Arts Productions Inc., will continue."

The interim agreement secures wage improvements, protections around "exploitative uses" of artificial intelligence and safety precautions that account for the strain of physical performances, as well as vocal stress. The tiered budget agreement aims to make working with union talent more feasible for independent game developers or smaller-budget projects while also providing performers the protections under the interim agreement.

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA's national executive director and chief negotiator, said in a statement that companies signing the agreements are "helping to preserve the human art, ingenuity and creativity that fuels interactive storytelling."

"These agreements signal that the video game companies in the collective bargaining group do not represent the will of the larger video game industry," Crabtree-Ireland continued. "The many companies that are happy to agree to our AI terms prove that these terms are not only reasonable, but feasible and sustainable for businesses."

Deadline calls the agreement "a blow for major developers."

As Deadline previously reported, AI is the one and only issue at the crux of this strike, as the union has managed to find common ground with the developers on every other provision. More specifically, the union has said that the sticking point in these negotiations is encompassing all performers in any AI provisions, without loopholes related to whether an actors' likeness is recognizable. In video games, similar to other forms of animated content, motion capture performers and voice actors are often performing as creatures or other non-human characters that make their voice and likeness unrecognizable.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/09/08/2120259/videogame-performers-union-hails-new-80-game-agreement-as-preserving-human-creativity?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/09/08/2120259/videogame-performers-union-hails-new-80-game-agreement-as-preserving-human-creativity?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Starlink Now Constitutes Roughly Two Thirds of All Active Satellites

"SpaceX deployed its 7,000th Starlink satellite this week, making the vast majority of active satellites around earth part of a single megaconstellation," writes Slashdot reader DogFoodBuss. "The Starlink communications system is now orders of magnitude larger than its nearest competitor, offering unprecedented access to low-latency broadband from anywhere on the planet." According to the latest data from satellite tracker CelesTrak, SpaceX now controls over 62% of all operational satellites. The Independent reports: The latest data from non-profit satellite tracker CelesTrak shows that SpaceX has 6,370 active Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit, with several hundred more inactive or deorbited. The figure, which has risen more than six-fold in just three years, represents just over 62 per cent of all operational satellites, and is roughly 10-times the number of Starlink's closest rival, UK-based startup OneWeb.

SpaceX plans to launch up to 42,000 satellites to complete the Starlink constellation, capable of delivering high-speed internet and phone connectivity to any corner of the globe. Starlink currently operates in 102 countries and has more than three million customers paying a monthly fee to access the network through a $300 ground-based dish. The company expects to launch its service in dozens more countries, with only Afghanistan, China, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Syria not on the current waitlist due to internet restrictions or trade embargos. "Starlink now constitutes roughly 2/3 of all active Earth satellites," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on X following the latest SpaceX launch.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/06/2214210/starlink-now-constitutes-roughly-two-thirds-of-all-active-satellites?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/06/2214210/starlink-now-constitutes-roughly-two-thirds-of-all-active-satellites?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Boeing's Starliner Makes 'Picture Perfect' Landing - Without Its Crew

Boeing's "beleaguered" Starliner spacecraft "successfully landed in New Mexico just after midnight Eastern time," reports NPR:

After Starliner made a picture-perfect landing, Stich told reporters that the spacecraft did well during its return flight. "It was a bullseye landing," he said. "It's really great to get the spacecraft back...." He said while he and others on the team felt happy about the successful landing, "there's a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would've been the way we had planned it" with astronauts on board when it landed...
 Now that Starliner is back on the ground, Boeing and NASA will further analyze the thrusters to see if modifying the spacecraft or how it's flown could keep the thrusters from overheating in the future.

Futurism explains why NASA wanted an uncrewed Starliner flight:

While attempting to duplicate the issue at NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, engineers eventually found what appeared to be the smoking gun, as SpaceNews' Jeff Foust details in a detailed new breakdown of the timeline. A Teflon seal in a valve known as a "poppet" expanded as it was being heated by the nearby thrusters, significantly constraining the flow of the oxidizer — a disturbing finding, because it greatly degraded the thrusters' performance.

Worse, without being able to perfectly replicate and analyze the issue in the near vacuum of space, engineers weren't entirely sure how the issue was actually playing out in orbit... While engineers found that the thrusters had returned to a more regular shape after being fired in space, they were worried that similar deformations might take place during prolonged de-orbit firings.

A lot was on the line. Without perfect control over the thrusters, NASA became worried that the spacecraft could careen out of control. "For me, one of the really important factors is that we just don't know how much we can use the thrusters on the way back home before we encounter a problem," NASA associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox said, as quoted by SpaceNews.
Now CBS News reports that "the road ahead is far from clear" for Starliner:

The service module was jettisoned as planned before re-entry, burning up in the atmosphere, and engineers will not be able to examine the hardware to pin down exactly what caused the helium leaks and degraded thruster performance during the ship's rendezvous with the station. Instead, they will face more data analysis, tests and potential redesigns expected to delay the next flight, with or without astronauts aboard, to late next year at the earliest.
"Even though it was necessary to return the spacecraft uncrewed, NASA and Boeing learned an incredible amount about Starliner in the most extreme environment possible," Ken Bowersox, space operations director at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement. "NASA looks forward to our continued work with the Boeing team to proceed toward certification of Starliner for crew rotation missions to the space station," Bowersox added. In any case, the successful landing was a shot in the arm for Boeing engineers and managers, who insisted the Starliner could have safely brought Wilmore and Williams back to Earth.
Steve Stich, manager of NASA's commercial crew program, agreed that if the crew had been on board "it would have been a safe, successful landing."

Two details about the astronauts now waiting for their February return flight from the International Space Station.

 NPR reports that "in case the space station suffers an emergency that forces an evacuation before that capsule arrives, the station's crew had to jerry-rig two extra seats in a different SpaceX spacecraft that's currently docked there."

 Space.com reports that when the uncrewed Starliner returned, "Among the gear that it carried home were the 'Boeing Blue' spacesuits that Williams and Wilmore wore aboard the capsule. The astronauts have no need for them now. "The suits are not compatible," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said during a press conference on Wednesday (Sept. 4). "So the Starliner suits would not work in Dragon, and vice versa."

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/09/07/0921242/boeings-starliner-makes-picture-perfect-landing---without-its-crew?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/09/07/0921242/boeings-starliner-makes-picture-perfect-landing---without-its-crew?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Malaysia Orders ISPs To Reroute DNS Traffic

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, which regulates online and broadcast media in the Asian nation, has instructed internet service providers in the country to redirect DNS traffic that uses third-party servers back to their own DNS servers, according to local media reports. From a report: MCMC in a statement tonight said this is to ensure that users continue to benefit from the protection provided by the local ISP's DNS servers and that malicious sites are inaccessible to Malaysians. As a commitment to protecting the safety of Internet users, MCMC has blocked a total of 24,277 websites between between 2018 to Aug 1, classified into various categories, which are online gambling (39 per cent), pornography/obscene content (31 per cent), copyright infringement (14 per cent), other harmful sites (12 per cent), prostitution (two per cent) and unlawful investments/scams (two per cent). Further reading: MCMC orders DNS redirection for businesses, govts, enterprises by Sept 30, according to Maxis FAQ.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/07/0649249/malaysia-orders-isps-to-reroute-dns-traffic?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/07/0649249/malaysia-orders-isps-to-reroute-dns-traffic?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


SpyAgent Android Malware Steals Your Crypto Recovery Phrases From Images

SpyAgent is a new Android malware that uses optical character recognition (OCR) to steal cryptocurrency wallet recovery phrases from screenshots stored on mobile devices, allowing attackers to hijack wallets and steal funds. The malware primarily targets South Korea but poses a growing threat as it expands to other regions and possibly iOS. BleepingComputer reports: A malware operation discovered by McAfee was traced back to at least 280 APKs distributed outside of Google Play using SMS or malicious social media posts. This malware can use OCR to recover cryptocurrency recovery phrases from images stored on an Android device, making it a significant threat. [...] Once it infects a new device, SpyAgent begins sending the following sensitive information to its command and control (C2) server:

- Victim's contact list, likely for distributing the malware via SMS originating from trusted contacts.
- Incoming SMS messages, including those containing one-time passwords (OTPs).
- Images stored on the device to use for OCR scanning.
- Generic device information, likely for optimizing the attacks.

SpyAgent can also receive commands from the C2 to change the sound settings or send SMS messages, likely used to send phishing texts to distribute the malware. McAfee found that the operators of the SpyAgent campaign did not follow proper security practices in configuring their servers, allowing the researchers to gain access to them. Admin panel pages, as well as files and data stolen from victims, were easily accessible, allowing McAfee to confirm that the malware had claimed multiple victims. The stolen images are processed and OCR-scanned on the server side and then organized on the admin panel accordingly to allow easy management and immediate utilization in wallet hijack attacks.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/09/06/220250/spyagent-android-malware-steals-your-crypto-recovery-phrases-from-images?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/09/06/220250/spyagent-android-malware-steals-your-crypto-recovery-phrases-from-images?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


ChromeOS 128 Adds Snap Layouts For Apps, OCR Text Extraction, and Improved Settings

Google's new ChromeOS 128 update introduces a feature similar to Windows 11's Snap layouts. Called Snap Groups, the feature enables users to organize on-screen apps in various fullscreen layouts. "When you pair two windows for split-screen display, ChromeOS now forms a Snap group," explains the ChromeOS team. "As a Snap group, you can bring the windows back into focus together, resize them simultaneously, and move them both as a group."

Other notable features of ChromeOS 128 include Optical Character Recognition (OCR), ChromeVox support for the Magnifier tool, isolated web apps (IWA), and improved settings for the camera and microphone on Chromebook devices.

You can view the release notes on the support document here.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/06/2041200/chromeos-128-adds-snap-layouts-for-apps-ocr-text-extraction-and-improved-settings?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/06/2041200/chromeos-128-adds-snap-layouts-for-apps-ocr-text-extraction-and-improved-settings?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


Playing D&D Helps Autistic Players In Social Interactions, Study Finds

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since its introduction in the 1970s, Dungeons & Dragons has become one of the most influential tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) in popular culture, featuring heavily in Stranger Things, for example, and spawning a blockbuster movie released last year. Over the last decade or so, researchers have turned their focus more heavily to the ways in which D&D and other TRPGs can help people with autism form healthy social connections, in part because the gaming environment offers clear rules around social interactions. According to the authors of a new paper published in the journal Autism, D&D helped boost players' confidence with autism, giving them a strong sense of kinship or belonging, among other benefits.

"There are many myths and misconceptions about autism, with some of the biggest suggesting that those with it aren't socially motivated, or don't have any imagination," said co-author Gray Atherton, a psychologist at the University of Plymouth. "Dungeons & Dragons goes against all that, centering around working together in a team, all of which takes place in a completely imaginary environment. Those taking part in our study saw the game as a breath of fresh air, a chance to take on a different persona and share experiences outside of an often challenging reality. That sense of escapism made them feel incredibly comfortable, and many of them said they were now trying to apply aspects of it in their daily lives." [...] For this latest study. Atherton et al. wanted to specifically investigate how autistic players experience D&D when playing in groups with other autistic players. It's essentially a case study with a small sample size -- just eight participants -- and qualitative in nature, since the post-play analysis focused on semistructured interviews with each player after the conclusion of the online campaign, the better to highlight their individual voices.

The players were recruited through social media advertisements within the D&D, Reddit and Discord online communities; all had received an autism diagnosis by a medical professional. They were split into two groups of four players, with one of the researchers (who's been playing D&D for years) acting as the dungeon master. The online sessions featured in the study was the Waterdeep: Dragonheist campaign. The campaign ran for six weeks, with sessions lasting between two and four hours (including breaks). Participants spoke repeatedly about the positive benefits they received from playing D&D, providing a friendly environment that helped them relax about social pressures. "When you're interacting with people over D&D, you're more likely to understand what's going on," one participant said in their study interview. "That's because the method you'll use to interact is written out. You can see what you're meant to do. There's an actual sort of reference sheet for some social interactions." That, in turn, helped foster a sense of belonging and kinship with their fellow players.

Participants also reported feeling emotionally invested and close to their characters, with some preferring to separate themselves from their character in order to explore other aspects of their personality or even an entirely new persona, thus broadening their perspectives. "I can make a character quite different from how I interact with people in real-life interactions," one participant said. "It helps you put yourself in the other person's perspective because you are technically entering a persona that is your character. You can then try to see how it feels to be in that interaction or in that scenario through another lens." And some participants said they were able to "rewrite" their own personal stories outside the game by adopting some of their characters' traits -- a psychological phenomenon known as "bleed."

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/09/06/206213/playing-dd-helps-autistic-players-in-social-interactions-study-finds?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed
 at Slashdot.

https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/09/06/206213/playing-dd-helps-autistic-players-in-social-interactions-study-finds?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed