**Google Extends Lifespan of Chromebooks With 10-Year Update Policy**

Google is working to push back the expiration date of Chromebooks, addressing concerns held by school administrators that the laptops are too short-lived to be cost effective. From a report: The Alphabet-owned company -- which develops the Chrome operating system running on computers made mostly by others -- said Thursday it plans to provide software updates for Chromebooks for up to a decade. The new policy, which starts next year, ensures that no existing Chromebook will expire within the next two years. The disclosure of this policy change comes after an August column in The Wall Street Journal detailing schools' struggles with expiring Chromebooks. Chromebooks are ubiquitous in classrooms around the country, but some education software doesn't work after what Google calls the Auto Update Expiration date. Unsupported Chromebooks can't be used for mandatory state testing, even if the hardware still appears functional.

When the laptops expire, school districts recycle them, sometimes at a cost, and spend millions of dollars on replacements. Google currently sets expiration dates based on the release date of specific models. Newer models have eight years of support, while older Chromebooks have five. Starting in 2024, Google will support a given laptop "platform" -- a certain combination of hardware components -- for 10 years after the first device in the platform hits store shelves. These so-called platforms aren't unique to specific brands or manufacturers and can be found in a variety of distinct models.

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**HP's $5,000 Spectre Foldable PC Has a Lot To Prove**

HP is the latest company to announce a foldable-screen PC. From a report: The 17-inch Spectre Foldable PC has a keyboard that can be used wirelessly with the device propped up on its kickstand. Or you could magnetically attach the keyboard to the screen's bottom half or even slide the keyboard toward you for a 1.5-screen-like experience. The OLED device addresses concerns around battery life and portability by including two battery packs instead of one. But the bendy, Intel 12th-gen computer will have to do quite a lot to even begin rationalizing its staggering $5,000 price. The Spectre Fold works as a 17-inch, 0.33-inch (8.5 mm) thick OLED tablet. Uniquely, it has an integrated kickstand for propping the PC up at a 120-degree angle. This is key because HP cites the kickstand as one of the reasons the computer is so costly, but this also means you don't have to deal with separate origami stands/sleeves.

With the PC propped up, it should be easy to work with the included wireless keyboard or stylus, which both charge wirelessly on the device. The Bluetooth keyboard can attach to the bottom half of the PC's screen for a 12.3-inch laptop view. If you slide the keyboard down toward you, revealing more of the OLED, the PC will automatically display windows north of the keyboard. This scenario is like working on a 14-inch laptop. HP says it worked with Microsoft to customize Windows 11's Snap feature so it's easy to bring a window or two to the space above the docked keyboard. Lenovo's Yoga Book 9i, a clamshell laptop with a second OLED screen where you'd expect the keyboard and touchpad to be, also lets you place windows on top of a docked keyboard. But when I tested that laptop, I typically found looking down physically uncomfortable.

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**US Alleges Google Got Rich Because People Stick With Search Defaults**

The Justice Department will press its argument Thursday that Google sought to strike agreements with mobile carriers to win powerful default positions on smartphones to dominate search in an antitrust trial that could change the future of the internet. From a report: The government will wrap up questioning Thursday of Antonio Rangel, who teaches behavioral biology at the California Institute of Technology. Other witnesses will be James Kolotouros, for Google, and Brian Higgins, from Verizon Communications. The government says the Alphabet unit paid $10 billion annually to wireless companies like AT&T, device makers like Apple and browser makers like Mozilla to fend off rivals and keep its search engine market share near 90%. The government has also alleged that Google illegally took steps to protect communications about the payments.

The government called witnesses on Tuesday and Wednesday to show that Google, as far back as the mid-2000s, sought to attract a large number of search queries by winning default status on mobile devices. Another witness, Rangel, discussed how powerful default status was, although data he used to show this was largely redacted. Google's clout in search, the government alleges, has helped Google build monopolies in some aspects of online search advertising. Search is free so Google makes money through advertising.

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**Microsoft Facing Formal EU Complaint Over Teams Video App**

Microsoft's attempt at avoiding deeper European Union scrutiny of its Teams video-conferencing app fell flat with the bloc's antitrust enforcers readying a formal complaint against the firm's conduct. From a report: Microsoft's recent proposal to split its Teams from a broader business software package and sell it to customers separately with an annual discount wasn't enough to satisfy regulators' concerns, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The European Commission is preparing a statement of objections to send to the company, which could come in the next few months, the people said. At the end of August, Microsoft attempted to allay concerns raised by the EU's antitrust arm as part of a new investigation into how it ties Teams to its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 packages. The EU's investigation followed a complaint from Salesforce's messaging platform Slack some three years ago.

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**Hackers Claim It Only Took a 10-Minute Phone Call To Shut Down MGM Resorts**

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group claimed responsibility for the MGM Resorts cyber outage on Tuesday, according to a post by malware archive vx-underground. The group claims to have used common social engineering tactics, or gaining trust from employees to get inside information, to try and get a ransom out of MGM Resorts, but the company reportedly refuses to pay. The conversation that granted initial access took just 10 minutes, according to the group.

"All ALPHV ransomware group did to compromise MGM Resorts was hop on LinkedIn, find an employee, then call the Help Desk," the organization wrote in a post on X. Those details came from ALPHV, but have not been independently confirmed by security researchers. The international resort chain started experiencing outages earlier this week, as customers noticed slot machines at casinos owned by MGM Resorts shut down on the Las Vegas strip. As of Wednesday morning, MGM Resorts still shows signs that it's experiencing downtime, like continued website disruptions. In a statement on Tuesday, MGM Resorts said: "Our resorts, including dining, entertainment and gaming are currently operational." However, the company said Wednesday that the cyber incident has significantly disrupted properties across the United States and represents a material risk to the company.

"\[T\]he major credit rating agency Moody's warned that the cyberattack could negatively affect MGM's credit rating, saying the attack highlighted 'key risks' within the company," reports CNBC. "The company's corporate email, restaurant reservation and hotel booking systems remain offline as a result of the attack, as do digital room keys. MGM on Wednesday filed a 8-K report with the Securities and Exchange Commission noting that on Tuesday the company issued a press release 'regarding a cybersecurity issue involving the Company.'" MGM's share price has declined more than 6% since Monday.

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**Ian Wilmut, Scientist Behind Dolly the Cloned Sheep, Is Dead at 79**

Ian Wilmut, the British scientist who led the project that cloned a mammal for the first time, Dolly the sheep, died on Sunday at the age of 79. The Roslin Institute, a research center near Edinburgh where Dr. Wilmut had worked for decades, said in a statement that the cause was complications of Parkinson's disease. From the statement: Ian Wilmut was born near Stratford-upon-Avon before the family moved to Yorkshire. It was at school in Scarborough that he first became interested in biology. He went to the University of Nottingham, initially to study agriculture, later switching to animal science. His studies continued with a PhD and fellowship at the University of Cambridge, focused on the preservation of semen and embryos by freezing. This work led to the birth of Frostie, the first calf to be born from a frozen embryo.

Dr Wilmut then moved to the Animal Breeding Research Organisation (ABRO), near Edinburgh, the predecessor to the Roslin Institute. He continued to work with reproductive cells and embryos, and contributed to a project to make genetically modified sheep that could produce milk containing proteins used to treat human diseases. This highlighted that a new, more efficient method of developing sheep with these characteristics was needed. He led efforts to develop cloning, or nuclear transfer, techniques that could be used to make genetically modified sheep. It was these efforts which led to the births of Megan and Morag in 1995 and Dolly in 1996. Polly, the first mammal to be both cloned and genetically modified, was born in 1997. Following the success of the cloning research, Dr Wilmut began to focus on using cloning to make stem cells which could be used in regenerative medicine.

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**NASA-Inspired Airless Bicycle Tires Are Now Available**

The Ohio-based Smart Tire Company has started a Kickstarter campaign for its shape memory airless bicycle tires that were created in partnership with NASA. New Atlas reports: At the heart of each Metl tire is a Slinky-like spring that runs all the way around the tire. That spring is made of a shape memory nickel-titanium alloy known as NiTinol, which is described as being strong like titanium yet also stretchy like rubber. Importantly, when NiTinol is placed under pressure, it initially deforms but then goes back to its original shape. This characteristic allows the Metl tire to gently compress and rebound, providing a smooth ride just like a pneumatic tire.

The spring is encased in a poly-rubber material which forms the tire's transparent sidewalls and replaceable tread. According to the company, this setup incorporates only half as much rubber as a regular tire. Additionally, while the tread may have to be replaced roughly every 5,000 to 8,000 miles (8,047 to 12,875 km), the main tire should reportedly last for the life of the bike. For this commercial introduction of the technology, the Smart Tire Company is offering a road/gravel tire in size choices of 700 x 32c, 35c and 38c. The 35c model is claimed to weigh 450 grams (16 oz), which is around the middle of the weight range for comparable pneumatic tires.

And we're told that while this first version of the tire will be of a fixed firmness, future models may allow users to increase the firmness by pumping in more air. So they'll be semi-pneumatic, but they will still never go completely flat. Assuming the Metl tires reach production, a pledge of $500 will get you a set of two -- getting them retreaded should cost about $10. Complete aluminum or carbon fiber Metl-clad wheelsets are also available for pledges of $1,300 and $2,300, respectively. Potential backers should note, estimated delivery isn't until next June.

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**Conditions On Earth May Be Moving Outside the 'Safe Operating Space' For Humanity**

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Human actions have pushed the world into the danger zone on several key indicators of planetary health, threatening to trigger dramatic changes in conditions on Earth, according to a new analysis from 29 scientists in eight countries. The scientists analyzed nine interlinked "planetary boundaries," which they define as thresholds the world needs to stay within to ensure a stable, livable planet. These include climate change, biodiversity, freshwater and land use, and the impact of synthetic chemicals and aerosols. Human activities have breached safe levels for six of these boundaries and are pushing the world outside a "safe operating space" for humanity, according to the report, published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

The nine boundaries, first set out in a 2009 paper, aim to establish a set of defined "limits" on changes humans are making to the planet -- from pumping out planet-heating pollution to clearing forests for farming. Beyond these limits, the theory goes, the risk of destabilizing conditions on Earth increases dramatically. The limits are designed to be conservative, to enable society to solve the problems before reaching a "very high risk zone," said Katherine Richardson, a professor in biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen and a co-author on the report. She pointed to the unprecedented summer of extreme weather the world has just experienced at 1.2 degrees Celsius of global warming. "We didn't think it was going to be like this at 1 degree \[Celsius\]" she said. "No human has experienced the conditions that we're experiencing right now," she added.

Of the three boundaries that scientists found are still within a safe space, two of them -- ocean acidification and the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere -- are moving in the wrong direction. There is some good news, however. The ozone layer was on the wrong side of the boundary in the 1990s, Richardson said. But thanks to international cooperation to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals, it is on track to recover completely. Crossing planetary boundaries does not mean the world has reached a disastrous tipping point. Hitting one does not mean "falling off a cliff," Richardson said. But it is a clear warning signal. The significance of the planetary boundaries model is that it doesn't analyze climate and biodiversity in isolation, the report authors said. Instead, it looks at the interaction of both, as well as a host of other ways humans are affecting the planet. Breaching one boundary is likely to have knock-on effects for others.

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**TSMC Arizona Chip Plant Will Be a 'Paperweight', Says Analyst**

When it comes to reducing American dependence on Taiwan, the TSMC Arizona chip plant will be little more than a useless paperweight, says an analyst at one chip research firm. "The TSMC Arizona fab is effectively a paperweight in any geopolitical tension or war \[with China over Taiwan\] due to the fact that it still requires sending the chips back to Taiwan for packaging," said Dylan Patel, chief analyst at SemiAnalysis. 9to5Mac reports: A new report in The Information says while Apple chips may be made in the U.S., they will still need to be sent back to Taiwan before they get anywhere near an Apple device: "The Arizona factory -- which has been a focal point of the Biden plan and will cost $40 billion to build -- will do little to make the U.S. self-reliant in chips. That's because many advanced chips made in Arizona for Apple or other customers such as Nvidia, AMD and Tesla will still require assembly in Taiwan in a process known as packaging, according to interviews with multiple TSMC engineers and former Apple employees."

Given that TSMC has been struggling even to build a chip fab for older tech, there seems no prospect that it would ever attempt to set up chip packaging facilities in the U.S. "Building this type of facility is a huge expenditure of \[capital\], time, and effort, and it does not seem likely that TSMC will want to do this anytime soon in the desert in Arizona, particularly given all the problems the firm has encountered with construction, costs and personnel so far," said Paul Triolo, senior vice president for China at consultancy DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group.

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**Stability AI Brings Text-To-Audio Generation To the Masses**

Stability AI today announced the initial public release of its Stable Audio technology, providing anyone with ability to use simple text prompts to generate short audio clips. VentureBeat reports: StableAudio is a new capability, though it is based on many of the same core AI techniques that enable Stable Diffusion to create images. Namely the Stable Audio technology makes use of a diffusion model, albeit trained on audio rather than images, in order to generate new audio clips. "Stability AI is best known for its work in images, but now we're launching our first product for music and audio generation, which is called Stable Audio," Ed Newton-Rex, VP of Audio at Stability AI told VentureBeat. "The concept is really simple, you describe the music or audio that you want to hear in text and our system generates it for you."

Newton-Rex is no stranger to the world of computer generated music, having built his own startup called Jukedeck in 2011, which he sold to TikTok in 2019. The technology behind Stable Audio however does not have its roots in Jukedeck, but rather in Stability AI's internal research studio for music generation called Harmonai, which was created by Zach Evans. Stable Audio works directly with raw audio samples for higher quality output. The model was trained on over 800,000 pieces of licensed music from audio library AudioSparks. \[...\]

As a diffusion model, Evans said that the Stable Audio model has approximately 1.2 billion parameters, which is roughly on par with the original release of Stable Diffusion for image generation. The text model used for prompts to generate audio was all built and trained by Stability AI. Evans explained that the text model is using a technique known as Contrastive Language Audio Pretraining (CLAP). As part of the Stable Audio launch, Stability AI is also releasing a prompt guide to help users with text prompts that will lead to the types of audio files that users want to generate. "Stable Audio will be available both for free and in a $12/month Pro plan," notes VentureBeat. "The free version allows 20 generations per month of up to 20 second tracks, while the Pro version increases this to 500 generations and 90 second tracks."

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**Arm Prices IPO At $51 Per Share, Valuing Company At Over $54 Billion**

Arm, the British semiconductor and software design company, has priced its initial public offering at $51 a share, valuing its market cap at over $54 billion. It's set to start trading on Thursday under the symbol "ARM." CNBC reports: The U.K.-based company is listing at least 95.5 million American depository shares on the Nasdaq, and SoftBank, its current owner, will control about 90% of the company's outstanding shares. The offering is at the top of Arm's expected price range of $47 to $51. Arm said in its prospectus that revenue in its fiscal year that ended in March slipped less than 1% from the prior year to $2.68 billion. Net income in fiscal 2023 dropped 22% to $524 million.

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**Password-Stealing Linux Malware Served For 3 Years and No One Noticed**

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A download site surreptitiously served Linux users malware that stole passwords and other sensitive information for more than three years until it finally went quiet, researchers said on Tuesday. The site, freedownloadmanager\[.\]org, offered a benign version of a Linux offering known as the Free Download Manager. Starting in 2020, the same domain at times redirected users to the domain deb.fdmpkg\[.\]org, which served a malicious version of the app. The version available on the malicious domain contained a script that downloaded two executable files to the /var/tmp/crond and /var/tmp/bs file paths. The script then used the cron job scheduler to cause the file at /var/tmp/crond to launch every 10 minutes. With that, devices that had installed the booby-trapped version of Free Download Manager were permanently backdoored.

After accessing an IP address for the malicious domain, the backdoor launched a reverse shell that allowed the attackers to remotely control the infected device. Researchers from Kaspersky, the security firm that discovered the malware, then ran the backdoor on a lab device to observe how it behaved. "This stealer collects data such as system information, browsing history, saved passwords, cryptocurrency wallet files, as well as credentials for cloud services (AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Azure)," the researchers wrote in a report on Tuesday. "After collecting information from the infected machine, the stealer downloads an uploader binary from the C2 server, saving it to /var/tmp/atd. It then uses this binary to upload stealer execution results to the attackers' infrastructure."

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**Africa's Internet Registry Placed Under Receivership**

"AFRINIC, the regional internet registry for the African continent and Indian Ocean region, has been placed under receivership following an injunction obtained against it in the Supreme Court of Mauritius," writes Slashdot reader Kelerei. "This appears to be a result of poor governance at AFRINIC, and in part a consequence of an IP address assignment debacle in 2021." MyBroadband reports: Industry players on both sides of a conflict involving the registry have welcomed the Mauritian Supreme Court's latest ruling, as it potentially creates a path to reconstitute the ailing entity's board and appoint a CEO. Headquartered in Mauritius, AFRINIC found itself on the wrong side of the country's corporate governance laws after repeatedly ignoring warnings from its members and community about the danger. It also disregarded judgments on some occasions, with the courts warning AFRINIC that it was in danger of being held in contempt. The blow that finally left Afrinic without a quorate board and ultimately without a CEO was struck by Crystal Web, a defunct Internet Service Provider that used to offer consumer DSL and fiber broadband in South Africa. Although Crystal Web landed the paralyzing hit, it was hardly the primary litigant in the over 55 court cases brought against AFRINIC since June 2020.

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**Marvel's VFX Workers Vote to Unionize in Historic Landslide Victory**

Visual effects workers at Marvel Studios have unanimously voted to unionize with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, marking a historic milestone for the industry. Rolling Stone reports: Following the successful vote with the NLRB, Marvel's VFX union will now enter into collective bargaining negotiations with Marvel. A start date for those negotiations hasn't been announced yet. Underpinning the union drive were the poor working conditions visual effects professionals have endured on Marvel productions, including a lack of pay equity, grueling hours, understaffing, excessive requests for changes, and unfair turnaround times.

VFX crews have been a crucial part of film and TV productions since the introduction of visual effects in the first Star Wars films of the 1970s. But while many other backstage/behind-the-scenes crews and professions (such as production designers, editors, lighting, make-up, and props) have long been unionized under the IATSE umbrella, VFX workers largely remained non-union.

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**Google Lays Off Hundreds on Recruiting Team**

Google is laying off hundreds of people across its global recruiting team as hiring at the tech giant continues to slow. Semafor: The company declined to cite what percentage of its recruiting workforce was impacted, but said that it plans to retain a significant majority. Workers who were laid off began learning their roles had been eliminated earlier today, according to posts on social media. "The volume of requests for our recruiters has gone down," Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini said in a statement. "In order to continue our important work to ensure we operate efficiently, we've made the hard decision to reduce the size of our recruiting team. We're supporting everyone impacted with a transition period, outplacement services, and severance as they look for new opportunities here at Google and beyond."

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**France Halts iPhone 12 Sales Over Radiation Levels**

AmiMoJo writes: France has ordered Apple to stop selling the iPhone 12 for emitting too much electromagnetic radiation. On Tuesday, the French watchdog which governs radio frequencies also told the tech giant to fix existing phones. The ANFR has advised Apple that if it cannot resolve the issue via a software update, it must recall every iPhone 12 ever sold in the country. France's digital minister Jean-Noel Barrot told French newspaper Le Parisien the decision was due to radiation levels above the acceptable threshold, according to Reuters. He said the ANFR found the iPhone 12's Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) was above what is legally allowed. "Apple is expected to respond within two weeks," he said. "If they fail to do so, I am prepared to order a recall of all iPhones 12 in circulation. The rule is the same for everyone, including the digital giants."

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**Sony's New PS5 Update Includes Dolby Atmos and the Ability To Mute the Startup Beep**

Sony is rolling out a big new PS5 update today, just over a month after it first started testing the changes in a beta. From a report: The update adds Dolby Atmos, lets you mute that annoying bootup beep, and even supports pairing a second controller as an assist one to let you help friends or family complete a game. Sony is also expanding its PS Remote Play app to Google's Chromecast with Google TV (4K), allowing you to stream games from a PS5 or PS4 to Android TV OS 12 devices. The Dolby Atmos support comes in the form of Sony's 3D Audio implementation (Tempest 3D AudioTech). It's compatible with Dolby Atmos devices like sound bars, TVs, or home theater systems. Media apps like Netflix can also update their apps on PS5 soon to support Dolby Atmos audio.

You can now mute the PS5 beep sound that chirps when you turn the console on or off, or even when it goes into rest mode after being idle. If you just want to adjust the volume of the beep there's now an option for that, too. One of the most useful additions is the ability to use a second DualSense controller for assistance. "You can now assign a second controller to one account as an assist controller, and use two controllers to operate your PS5 console as if you were using a single controller," explains Hideaki Nishino, senior vice president of platform experience at Sony Interactive Entertainment. "This feature introduces a new way for you to enjoy games collaboratively with others or help a friend or child navigate a particularly challenging section of a game."

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**Mozilla Patches Firefox, Thunderbird Against Zero-Day Exploited in Attacks**

Mozilla has released emergency security updates to fix a critical zero-day vulnerability exploited in the wild, impacting its Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client. From a report: Tracked as CVE-2023-4863, the security flaw is caused by a heap buffer overflow in the WebP code library (libwebp), whose impact spans from crashes to arbitrary code execution. "Opening a malicious WebP image could lead to a heap buffer overflow in the content process. We are aware of this issue being exploited in other products in the wild," Mozilla said in an advisory published on Tuesday. Mozilla addressed the exploited zero-day in Firefox 117.0.1, Firefox ESR 115.2.1, Firefox ESR 102.15.1, Thunderbird 102.15.1, and Thunderbird 115.2.2. Even though specific details regarding the WebP flaw's exploitation in attacks remain undisclosed, this critical vulnerability is being abused in real-world scenarios.

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**Apple is Killing the iPhone's Silent Switch**

The ring/silent switch has been on the iPhone since the very first one was announced in 2007 by Steve Jobs, but now the writing is on the wall for the device's last significant moving part. From a report: With its replacement by a haptic "action button," it's just a matter of time before the rest of the lineup is as smooth as a pebble from the river. At today's iPhone event, the no doubt long-contemplated change was announced with little fanfare, selling the new button as a customizable shortcut to anything the user wants. Launch the camera, or an assistance feature, or a particular app, etc. Seems useful in some ways, especially for accessibility. But I mourn the loss of this switch the way I do every time they compromise the hardware design of Apple devices. Removing TouchID is one such choice I still hold out hope they will reverse. The haptic touchpads in MacBooks is not something I enjoy compared to the actual depression of the originals, though it's probably a net benefit repair-wise. The attempt to unify under a single port was unsuccessful in everything but driving dongle sales. They have tried and failed to kill the magnetic power connector.

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**China Flags 'Security Incidents' With Apple's iPhones**

China flagged security problems with iPhones while saying it isn't barring purchases, the government's first comments on the topic after news reports that authorities are moving to restrict the use of Apple products in sensitive departments and state-owned companies. From a report: "We noticed that there have been many media reports about security incidents concerning Apple phones," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular press briefing in Beijing on Wednesday, without elaborating. China plans to expand a ban on the use of iPhones to a plethora of state-backed companies and agencies, Bloomberg News has reported, a sign of growing challenges for Apple in its biggest foreign market and global production base. Several agencies have begun instructing staff not to bring their iPhones to work. "China has not issued laws and regulations to ban the purchase of Apple or foreign brands' phones," Mao said, adding that the government attaches "great importance" to security and that all companies operating in China need to abide by its laws and regulations.

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**Unity Rushes To Clarify Price Increase Plan, as Game Developers Fume**

Unity, the tech company behind one of the most popular engines for creating video games, is scrambling to clarify how a price increase for its services will work, after its announcement Tuesday morning broadly infuriated the game development community. From a report: The fees, which Unity said are essential for funding development of its tech, left many game makers wondering if having a hit game through Unity would cost them more money than they could make. Developers spoke throughout the day of delaying their games to switch to rival Epic Games' Unreal Engine or other services on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. But by the evening, Unity exec Marc Whitten was updating Axios on the policies, potentially defusing some concerns raised by game creators.

The new "Runtime Fee" announced Tuesday morning is tied to a player's installations of a game, an action that previously didn't cost developers anything. With Unity's new plan, developers who use Unity's free tier of development services would owe Unity $0.20 per installation once their game hit thresholds of 200,000 downloads and earn $200,000 in revenue. Developers paying over $2,000 a year for a Unity Pro plan would have to hit higher thresholds and would be charged with lower fees. The newfee system will begin at the start of 2024. \[...\] After initially telling Axios earlier Tuesday that a player installing a game, deleting it and installing it again would result in multiple fees, Unity's Whitten told Axios that the company would actually only charge for an initial installation. (A spokesperson told Axios that Unity had "regrouped" to discuss the issue.) He hoped this would allay fears of "install-bombing," where an angry user could keep deleting and re-installing a game to rack up fees to punish a developer.

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**CIA Bribed Its Own COVID-19 Origin Team To Reject Lab-Leak Theory, Anonymous Whistleblower Claims**

An unnamed CIA whistleblower has made the dramatic allegation that half a dozen analysts there were bribed to reject the theory that COVID-19 resulted from a research-related leak of a new coronavirus, according to a press release today from the office of the Republican leading a congressional investigation into the pandemic. The allegation was strongly rejected in a CIA statement released hours later. Science.org: A majority of U.S. intelligence agencies has so far concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic mostly likely started when SARS-CoV-2 jumped from an infected animal host into people; a wildlife market in Wuhan, China, has received intense attention from researchers as the potential source. But the Department of Energy and FBI so far have favored the so-called lab-leak hypothesis, even though none of the agencies has expressed high confidence in their conclusions on COVID-19's origin. CIA, for example, had reportedly said it was "unable to determine" whether SARS-CoV-2 made a direct jump from animals to humans -- or came from a lab.

Now, Representative Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), who chairs the House of Representatives's Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, says his panel and the House's Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have heard testimony from a whistleblower "who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer." According to the press release, the whistleblower testified that only the most senior analyst of a seven-member CIA team investigating the origin of COVID-19 supported the zoonotic transmission theory. The whistleblower alleged the other six team members supporting the lab origin then received "a significant monetary incentive to change their position," wrote Wenstrup and Representative Mike Turner (R-OH), who chairs the intelligence panel.

In response to emailed questions from Science, CIA Director of Public Affairs Tammy Kupperman Thorp challenged the whistleblower's account: "At CIA we are committed to the highest standards of analytic rigor, integrity, and objectivity. We do not pay analysts to reach specific conclusions. We take these allegations extremely seriously and are looking into them. We will keep our Congressional oversight committees appropriately informed," she wrote in the agency's statement.

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**US Behind More Than a Third of Global Oil and Gas Expansion Plans, Report Finds**

An anonymous reader shares a report: The US accounts for more than a third of the expansion of global oil and gas production planned by mid-century, despite its claims of climate leadership, research has found. Canada and Russia have the next biggest expansion plans, calculated based on how much carbon dioxide is likely to be produced from new developments, followed by Iran, China and Brazil. The United Arab Emirates, which is to host the annual UN climate summit this year, Cop28 in Dubai in November, is seventh on the list.

The data, in a report from the campaign group Oil Change International, also showed that five "global north countries" -- the US, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK -- will be responsible for just over half of all the planned expansion from new oil and gas fields to 2050. Greenhouse gas emissions from all of the oil and gas expansion that is planned in the next three decades would be more than enough to drive global temperatures well beyond the limit of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels that countries agreed in 2021 at Cop26 in Glasgow, the report found.

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**Gasoline, Diesel Vehicles Dominate India's Auto Market, EVs Lag**

India's road transport minister on Tuesday warned local and foreign automakers to either cut production of polluting diesel vehicles or face higher taxes and levies, setting alarm bells ringing in the world's third-largest car market. From a report: Here are some facts about India's automotive market, the biggest after China and the United States, where players such as Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors and foreign giants such as Mercedes and Volkswagen operate. In India, about four million passenger vehicles were sold in the fiscal year that ended in March, according to data from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers.

Petrol vehicles have been the top sellers in recent years -- increasing their market share to around 68.4% in January-July 2023 from 42.5% in 2014, according to data from automotive market intelligence provider JATO Dynamics. Cost-conscious Indians are preferring to buy petrol cars as they are cheaper than diesel, even though diesel cars offer better fuel efficiency. In the luxury segment, though, which includes cars and SUVs made by Mercedes, BMW and Audi, petrol variants have accounted for 62% of sales so far this year, down from 68% in 2021, according to JATO Dynamics.

Tuesday's warning from minister Nitin Gadkari targeted diesel carmakers, whose market share has seen a steady decline to nearly 18% of passenger vehicles in January-July this year from 47.9% in 2014. But when it comes to luxury cars, diesel variants remain in vogue, with their market share rising to 33% so far this year from 31% in 2021.

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**'Cryptoqueen' Sidekick Gets 20 Years For $4 Billion Ponzi**

The cofounder and main promoter of the $4 billion OneCoin pyramid scheme was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in one of the first and biggest criminal frauds involving cryptocurrency. Bloomberg: Karl Sebastian Greenwood, 46, was sentenced in New York Tuesday, after pleading guilty in December to creating and promoting a phony cryptocurrency. Greenwood was the wingman of Ruja Ignatova, the so-called "Cryptoqueen" and most wanted crypto fugitive in the world. US District Judge Edgardo Ramos called the fraud "massive in many respects," noting that OneCoin had no blockchain, no real cryptocoin and no trading market. Victims could not withdraw their investments and most face the likelihood they'll never get any of their money back. "At base, it involved nothing more than old-fashioned snake oil," the judge said. Greenwoood's sentencing closes one chapter of the OneCoin case, which authorities describe as one of the largest pyramid schemes in history. It impacted 3.5 million victims across the globe and foreshadowed a broader crackdown on crime in the cryptocurrency markets.

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**Apple Launches iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max Featuring Titanium Bodies**

Apple just announced its new high-end iPhones: the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. The Verge: They're made of titanium, they have Action Buttons, and Apple promises they're the most powerful smartphones Apple has ever made. The 15 Pro starts at $999 with 128GB of storage, and the Pro Max at $1,199 with 256GB of storage. Both will be available for preorder this Friday and on sale September 22nd. This year's Pro has a 6.1-inch screen, and the Pro Max has a 6.7-inch display -- same as the new iPhone 15 and 15 Plus. Both are powered by the A17 Pro chip, which Apple says has the fastest performance in any smartphone and can even challenge some high-end PCs. Along with a redesigned GPU, Apple seems to think these devices could be poised to level up the kinds of games you can play on your phone.

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**Google Says It's No. 1 Search Tool Because Users Prefer It to Rivals**

Companies choose Alphabet's Google as the default search engine for their browsers and smartphones because it is the best one, and not because of a lack of competition, a Google lawyer said Tuesday at the start of a high-stakes antitrust trial in Washington. From a report: Consumers use Google "because it delivers value to them, not because they have to," John Schmidtlein, a partner at Williams & Connolly LLP who is representing the company, said during his opening statements on the first day of the trial. "Users today have more search options and ways to access information online than ever before."

Schmidtlein pushed back on claims by US Justice Department antitrust enforcers that Google has used its market power -- and billions of dollars in exclusive deals with web browsers -- to illegally block rivals. Users have choices, and it's easy to switch, he said. For example, Microsoft pre-selects its own search engine, Bing, on Windows PCs, yet most PC users switch to Google because it's a better product, he said. Web browsers offered by Apple and Mozilla, which makes Firefox, have long chosen a default search engine in exchange for a revenue-share that helps pay for innovations, Schmidtlein said.

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**Zara Finds Shoplifters Outsmarted Its New Security System**

Inditex is racing to iron bugs out of a new anti-shoplifting system for its Zara stores, slightly delaying its rollout partly because the security tags were easy to identify and remove in initial tests, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Chief Executive Officer Oscar Garcia Maceiras unveiled the new technology in March and pledged to roll it out for tests in all Zara stores worldwide over the summer. The system relies on tiny chips known as RFID, doing away with the hard plastic tags on garments that require checkout clerks to remove them. The new technology has run into teething issues. Staff in several countries have raised concerns to management that the technology may actually make theft easier, according to the people, who asked not to be identified.

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**Apple Announces iPhone 15 with USB-C**

Apple has just announced the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus, and the big news is a USB-C port. From a report: We've been waiting for the day that the iPhone would switch to the widely used USB-C standard instead of Apple's proprietary Lightning connector. Apple confirmed last year that it would make the change to USB-C to comply with the European Union's upcoming regulations, and the iPhone 15 is now the first iPhone to make the switch. The iPhone 15 is priced starting at $799 for a 128GB model and the iPhone 15 Plus starts at $899 for a 128GB version.

USB-C is good news, but if you were hoping for a totally new iPhone 15 design, well, that's not happening this year. This year's iPhone looks largely the same as the iPhone 14 before it, with the iPhone 15 continuing to use a 6.1-inch display. All models of the iPhone 15 will come with the Dynamic Island. That's the pill-shaped cutout that first debuted on the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, providing a new way to see certain notifications and interact with apps. The iPhone 15 also has an OLED Super Retina display, which supports Dolby Vision content with 1,600 nits of brightness. The peak brightness of this display is 2,000 nits in sunlight, double that of the iPhone 14.

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**World Bank Spent Billions of Dollars Backing Fossil Fuels in 2022, Study Finds**

The World Bank poured billions of dollars into fossil fuels around the world last year despite repeated promises to refocus on shifting to a low-carbon economy, research has suggested. From a report: The money went through a special form of funding known as trade finance, which is used to facilitate global transactions. Urgewald, a campaign group that tracks global fossil fuel finance, found that the World Bank supplied about $3.7bn in trade finance in 2022 that was likely to have ended up funding oil and gas developments.

Heike Mainhardt, the author of the research, called for reform of the World Bank and its private finance arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), to make such transactions more transparent and to exclude funding for fossil fuels from its lending. "They can't say that they are aligned with the Paris agreement, because there isn't enough transparency to be able to tell," she said. Fossil fuel companies would take advantage of this, she added. "They can see that they can access public money this way, without drawing attention to themselves, and they're very clever, so they will do this," she told the Guardian. Trade finance is a form of funding more opaque than standard project finance. Whereas project finance usually flows to governments, organisations or consortiums for a particular well-defined purpose and is relatively easy to track, trade finance is more diffuse.

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**Lockheed Risks $800 Million Withheld Over New F-35 Software**

Lockheed Martin may see more than $800 million in payments withheld through next June until it wins approval for the software powering its most advanced version of the F-35, according to newly disclosed delivery figures. From a report: The No. 1 US defense contractor is on tap to finish production of about 52 of the upgraded TR-3 model fighter jets by Dec. 31 and approximately 12 per month after that, or 72 more by June 30, for as many as 124 jets, according to the data released Monday by Russ Goemaere, the Pentagon's spokesman on the F-35.

The Pentagon is withholding $7 million per aircraft until the new software is validated because the aircraft are being placed in storage until then. At 124 jets, that's $868 million. Last month, the Defense Department withheld $7 million on each of the first four upgraded F-35s. The aircraft needs the delay-plagued software upgrade to function fully with new cockpit hardware before it can carry more precise weapons and gather more information on enemy aircraft and air defenses. The upgrade will increase processing power 37 times and memory 20 times over the F-35's current capabilities.

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**Europe's Economic Outlook Worsens as High Prices Plague Consumer Spending**

The European Union has lowered its forecast for economic growth this year and next, saying inflation is taking a heavy toll on people's willingness to spend in shops -- while higher interest rates are sharply restricting the credit needed for investment and purchases. From a report: The revised forecast Monday from the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, comes as fears of recession grow and as the European Central Bank faces a key decision this week on whether to keep raising rates, which are aimed at getting inflation under control. The 20 countries that use the euro currency are expected to see growth of 0.8% this year instead of 1.1% projected in the spring forecast, the commission said. For next year, growth expectations were lowered to 1.3% from 1.6%. For the broader 27-country EU, the forecast also was lowered to 0.8% from 1% this year and to 1.4% from 1.7% next year.

"Weakness in domestic demand, in particular consumption, shows that high and still increasing consumer prices for most goods and services are taking a heavier toll than expected," a commission statement said. EU Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said at a news conference that "further weakening in the coming months" was foreseen as the economy faces "multiple headwinds." One source of uncertainty is how far the ECB will go on interest rates -- more expensive credit restrains economic growth in some areas such as real estate, but if higher rates succeed in lowering inflation, that would boost consumer spending power.

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**US Copyright Office Denies Protection for Another AI-Created Image**

The U.S. Copyright Office has again rejected copyright protection for art created using artificial intelligence, denying a request by artist Jason M. Allen for a copyright covering an award-winning image he created with the generative AI system Midjourney. From a report: The office said on Tuesday that Allen's science-fiction themed image "Theatre D'opera Spatial" was not entitled to copyright protection because it was not the product of human authorship. The Copyright Office in February rescinded copyrights for images that artist Kris Kashtanova created using Midjourney for a graphic novel called "Zarya of the Dawn," dismissing the argument that the images showed Kashtanova's own creative expression.

It has also rejected a copyright for an image that computer scientist Stephen Thaler said his AI system created autonomously. Allen said on Wednesday that the office's decision on his work was expected, but he was "certain we will win in the end." "If this stands, it is going to create more problems than it solves," Allen said. "This is going to create new and creative problems for the copyright office in ways we can't even speculate yet."

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**A $700 Million Bonanza for the Winners of Crypto's Collapse: Lawyers**

An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from the New York Times:

The collapse in cryptocurrency prices last year forced a procession of major firms into bankruptcy, triggering a government crackdown and erasing the savings of millions of inexperienced investors. But for a small group of corporate turnaround specialists, crypto's implosion has become a financial bonanza.

Lawyers, accountants, consultants, cryptocurrency analysts and other professionals have racked up more than $700 million in fees since last year from the bankruptcies of five major crypto firms, including the digital currency exchange FTX, according to a New York Times analysis of court records. That sum is likely to grow significantly as the cases unfold over the coming months.
Large fees are common in corporate bankruptcies, which require complex and time-intensive legal work to untangle. But in the crypto world, the mounting fees have sparked widespread outrage because many of the people owed money are amateur traders who lost their personal savings, rather than corporations with the ability to weather a financial crisis. Every dollar in fees is deducted from the pool of funds that will be returned to creditors at the end of the bankruptcies.

The fees are "exorbitant and ridiculous," said Daniel Frishberg, a 19-year-old investor who lost about $3,000 when the crypto company Celsius Network filed for bankruptcy last year. "At every hearing, they have an army of people there, and most of them don't need to be there. You don't need 20 people taking notes."

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**IEEE Specctrum Announces Top Programming Languages of 2023: Python and SQL**

Last week IEEE Spectrum released its 10th annual rankings of the Top Programming Languages.
It choose a top language for each of three categories: actively used among typical IEEE members and working software engineers, in demand by employers, or "in the zeitgeist".

The results?

This year, Python doesn't just remain No. 1 in our general "Spectrum" ranking — which is weighted to reflect the interests of the typical IEEE member — but it widens its lead.

Python's increased dominance appears to be largely at the expense of smaller, more specialized, languages. It has become the jack-of-all-trades language — and the master of some, such as AI, where powerful and extensive libraries make it ubiquitous. And although Moore's Law is winding down for high-end computing, low-end microcontrollers are still benefiting from performance gains, which means there's now enough computing power available on a US $0.70 CPU to make Python a contender in embedded development, despite the overhead of an interpreter. Python also looks to be solidifying its position for the long term: Many children and teens now program their first game or blink their first LED using Python. They can then move seamlessly into more advanced domains, and even get a job, with the same language.

But Python alone does not make a career. In our "Jobs" ranking, it is SQL that shines at No. 1. Ironically though, you're very unlikely to get a job as a pure SQL programmer. Instead, employers love, love, love, seeing SQL skills in tandem with some other language such as Java or C++. With today's distributed architectures, a lot of business-critical data live in SQL databases...

But don't let Python and SQL's rankings fool you: Programming is still far from becoming a monoculture. Java and the various C-like languages outweigh Python in their combined popularity, especially for high-performance or resource-sensitive tasks where that interpreter overhead of Python's is still too costly (although there are a number of attempts to make Python more competitive on that front). And there are software ecologies that are resistant to being absorbed into Python for other reasons.

The article cites the statistical analysis/visualization language R, as well as Fortran and Cobol, as languages that are hard to port code from or that have accumulated large already-validated codebases. But Python also remains at #1 in their third "Trending" category — with Java in second there and on the general "IEEE Spectrum" list.

JavaScript appears below Python and Java on all three lists. Java is immediately below them on the Trending and "Jobs" list, but two positions further down on the general "Spectrum" list (below C++ and C).

The metrics used for the calculation include the number of hits on Google, recent questions on Stack Overflow, tags on Discord, mentions in IEEE's library of journal articles and its CareerBuilder job site, and language use in starred GitHub repositories and number of new programming books.

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**Hobbyist Builds HDMI ISA Graphics Card For Vintage PCs By Improving Graphics Gremlin**

Earlier this year, Singapore-based embedded security researcher yeokm1 built a ChatGPT client for MS-DOS.
Now they're back with a new project:
HDMI is a relatively modern video connector we take for granted on modern PCs and monitors. Now vintage PCs can join in the fun too with a native connection to modern HDMI monitors without any additional adapter.

Two years ago, I learned of an open-source project called Graphics Gremlin by Eric Schlaepfer who runs the website Tubetime.us. It is an 8-bit ISA graphics card that supports display standards like Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) and Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA). CGA and MDA are display standards used by older IBM(-compatible) PCs in the 1980s. The frequencies and connectors used by CGA and MDA are no longer supported by modern monitors hence it is difficult for older PCs of the 1980s era to have modern displays connected to them without external adapters. Graphics Gremline addresses this problem by using techniques like scan doubling (for CGA) and increasing the vertical refresh rate (for MDA) then outputing to a relatively newer but still old VGA port.

I fabricated and assembled the design then installed it into my IBM5155... I decided to modify the Graphics Gremlin design so it can connect natively to an external HDMI monitor and service the internal Composite-based CRT at the same time.

The post concludes triumphantly with a photo of their IBM 5155 running the CGA Compatibility Tester displaying the color palette.

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**How a Breached  Microsoft Engineer Account Compromised the Email Accounts of US Officials**

An anonymous reader shared this report from Bloomberg:

China-linked hackers breached the corporate account of a Microsoft engineer and are suspected of using that access to steal a valuable key that enabled the hack of senior U.S. officials' email accounts, the company said in a blog post. The hackers used the key to forge authentication tokens to access email accounts on Microsoft's cloud servers, including those belonging to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Representative Don Bacon and State Department officials earlier this year.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Microsoft disclosed the breach in June, but it was still unclear at the time exactly how hackers were able to steal the key that allowed them to access the email accounts. Microsoft said the key had been improperly stored within a "crash dump," which is data stored after a computer or application unexpectedly crashes...
The incident has brought fresh scrutiny to Microsoft's cybersecurity practices.

Microsoft's blog post says they corrected two conditions which allowed this to occur. First, "a race condition allowed the key to be present in the crash dump," and second, "the key material's presence in the crash dump was not detected by our systems."
We found that this crash dump, believed at the time not to contain key material, was subsequently moved from the isolated production network into our debugging environment on the internet connected corporate network. This is consistent with our standard debugging processes. Our credential scanning methods did not detect its presence (this issue has been corrected).

After April 2021, when the key was leaked to the corporate environment in the crash dump, the Storm-0558 actor was able to successfully compromise a Microsoft engineer's corporate account. This account had access to the debugging environment containing the crash dump which incorrectly contained the key. Due to log retention policies, we don't have logs with specific evidence of this exfiltration by this actor, but this was the most probable mechanism by which the actor acquired the key.

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**Is Gen Z Giving Up on College?**

Business Insider reports on "a soaring number of Gen Zers who has decided to skip college altogether.

"Four million fewer teenagers enrolled at a college in 2022 than in 2012."

 For many, the price tag has simply grown too exorbitant to justify the cost. From 2010 to 2022, college tuition rose an average of 12% a year, while overall inflation only increased an average of 2.6% each year. Today it costs at least $104,108 on average to attend four years of public university — and $223,360 for a private university.

At the same time, the salaries students can expect to earn after graduation haven't kept up with the cost of college. A 2019 report from the Pew Research Center found that earnings for young college-educated workers had remained mostly flat over the past 50 years. Four years after graduating, according to recent data from the Higher Education Authority, a third of students earn less than $40,000 — lower than the average salary of $44,356 that workers with only a high-school diploma earn. Factor in the average student debt of $33,500 that college graduates owe after they leave school, and many graduates will spend years catching up with their degree-less counterparts. This student-debt-driven financial hole is leaving more young graduates with a lower net worth than previous generations.

The widening gap between the value and the cost of college has started to shift Gen Z's attitude toward higher education. A 2022 survey by Morning Consult found that 41% of Gen Zers said they "tend to trust US colleges and universities," the lowest percentage of any generation. It's a significant shift from when millennials were in their shoes a decade ago: A 2014 Pew Research survey found that 63% of millennials valued a college education or planned to get one. And of those who graduated, 41% of that cohort considered their schooling "very useful" in readying them to enter the workforce — that's compared to 45% of Gen Xers and 47% of boomers who felt the same...

The focus now, especially in the midst of so much uncertainty in the economy, is on using college to prepare for a single, overriding goal: getting a good job.
The article argues this is transforming which classes get emphasized by both students and colleges. For example, in 2014 computer programming was only the 7th most popular major at U.C. Berkeley — but now it's #1. And the data science degree Berkeley created five years ago is now already its third most popular.
And meanwhile, "last year only 7% of Harvard freshmen planned to major in the humanities — down from 20% a decade earlier and almost 30% in the 1970s."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader yusing for sharing the article.

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**Roblox Cancelled Awards Presentation Due To Security Incident**

Slashdot reader quonset writes: Roblox Corporation was to have its award ceremony for developers on Saturday when it cancelled the event at the last moment. According to reports, a game developer was reportedly arrested on gun charges outside the event.

More from MarketWatch:

Citing jail records, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Sunday that a man identified as game developer Mikhail Olson, known by the nickname Simbuilder, was arrested by U.S. Park Police on suspicion of having a concealed firearm in his vehicle, along with armor-piercing ammunition and a large-capacity magazine.

The awards ceremony was held at Fort Mason Center, which is on federal property. According to the Chronicle, the suspect was arrested Saturday afternoon after allegedly assaulting U.S. Park Police officers who had been called over a report of a disturbance outside the Roblox conference.

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**To Build Their AI Tech, Microsoft and Google are Using a Lot of Water**

An anonymous Slashdot reader shares this report from the Associated Press:

The cost of building an artificial intelligence product like ChatGPT can be hard to measure. But one thing Microsoft-backed OpenAI needed for its technology was plenty of water, pulled from the watershed of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers in central Iowa to cool a powerful supercomputer as it helped teach its AI systems how to mimic human writing.

 As they race to capitalize on a craze for generative AI, leading tech developers including Microsoft, OpenAI and Google have acknowledged that growing demand for their AI tools carries hefty costs, from expensive semiconductors to an increase in water consumption. But they're often secretive about the specifics. Few people in Iowa knew about its status as a birthplace of OpenAI's most advanced large language model, GPT-4, before a top Microsoft executive said in a speech it "was literally made next to cornfields west of Des Moines."

Building a large language model requires analyzing patterns across a huge trove of human-written text. All of that computing takes a lot of electricity and generates a lot of heat. To keep it cool on hot days, data centers need to pump in water — often to a cooling tower outside its warehouse-sized buildings. In its latest environmental report, Microsoft disclosed that its global water consumption spiked 34% from 2021 to 2022 (to nearly 1.7 billion gallons, or more than 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools), a sharp increase compared to previous years that outside researchers tie to its AI research. "It's fair to say the majority of the growth is due to AI," including "its heavy investment in generative AI and partnership with OpenAI," said Shaolei Ren, a researcher at the University of California, Riverside who has been trying to calculate the environmental impact of generative AI products such as ChatGPT. In a paper due to be published later this year, Ren's team estimates ChatGPT gulps up 500 milliliters of water (close to what's in a 16-ounce water bottle) every time you ask it a series of between 5 to 50 prompts or questions...

Google reported a 20% growth in water use in the same period, which Ren also largely attributes to its AI work.

OpenAI and Microsoft both said they were working on improving "efficiencies" of their AI model-training.

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