slashdot
feeds.twtxt.netSlashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters
Arkansas Social Media Age Verification Law Blocked By Federal Judge
A federal judge struck down Arkansas’ Social Media Safety Act, ruling it unconstitutional for broadly restricting both adult and minor speech and imposing vague requirements on platforms. Engadget reports: In a ruling (PDF), Judge Timothy Brooks said that the law, known as Act 689 (PDF), was overly broad. “Act 689 is a content-based restric … ⌘ Read more
MCP: the New ‘USB-C For AI’ That’s Bringing Fierce Rivals Together
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: What does it take to get OpenAI and Anthropic – two competitors in the AI assistant market – to get along? Despite a fundamental difference in direction that led Anthropic’s founders to quit OpenAI in 2020 and later create the Claude AI assistant, a shared technical hurdle has now brought them to … ⌘ Read more
Larry Fink Says Bitcoin Could Replace the Dollar as the World’s Reserve Currency Because of National Debt
With America’s national debt sitting comfortably over the $36.2 trillion mark, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is warning the burden could one day be the reason the dollar is dethroned as the reserve currency of the world.
From a report: He argues that decentralized currencies … ⌘ Read more
DeepMind is Holding Back Release of AI Research To Give Google an Edge
Google’s AI arm DeepMind has been holding back the release of its world-renowned research, as it seeks to retain a competitive edge in the race to dominate the burgeoning AI industry. From a report: The group, led by Nobel Prize-winner Sir Demis Hassabis, has introduced a tougher vetting process and more bureaucracy that made it harde … ⌘ Read more
Study Reveals Why Credit Card Interest Rates Remain Stubbornly High
Credit card interest rates, which averaged 23% in 2023, are significantly higher than any other major loan product primarily due to non-diversifiable default risk and banks’ market power, according to research published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The comprehensive study, which analyzed 330 million monthly credit card accounts … ⌘ Read more
London Mayor Axes Cyber Crime Victim Support Line
London’s mayor has axed a cyber crime helpline for the victims of online abuse, triggering a backlash from campaigners who argue that women and girls will be left struggling to access vital support. From a report: The service, which was shut down on Tuesday, assisted victims of fraud, revenge porn and cyberstalking to protect their digital identity. During its 18-months of op … ⌘ Read more
Gmail is Making It Easier For Businesses To Send Encrypted Emails To Anyone
Google is rolling out a new encryption model for Gmail that allows enterprise users to send encrypted messages without requiring recipients to use custom software or exchange encryption certificates. The feature, launching in beta today, initially supports encrypted emails within the same organization, with plans to expand to … ⌘ Read more
Average Person Will Be 40% Poorer If World Warms By 4C, New Research Shows
Economic models have systematically underestimated how global heating will affect people’s wealth, according to a new study that finds 4C warming will make the average person 40% poorer – an almost four-fold increase on some estimates. The Guardian: The study by Australian scientists suggests average per person GDP across the gl … ⌘ Read more
Xiaomi EV Involved in First Fatal Autopilot Crash
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: China’s Xiaomi said on Tuesday that it was actively cooperating with police after a fatal accident involving a SU7 electric vehicle on March 29 and that it had handed over driving and system data. The incident marks the first major accident involving the SU7 sedan, which Xiaomi launched in March last year and since December ha … ⌘ Read more
Alan Turing Institute Plans Revamp in Face of Criticism and Technological Change
Britain’s flagship AI agency will slash the number of projects it backs and prioritize work on defense, environment and health as it seeks to respond to technological advances and criticism of its record. From a report: The Alan Turing Institute – named after the pioneering British computer scientist – will shut … ⌘ Read more
Anthropic Will Begin Sweeping Offices For Hidden Devices
Anthropic said it will start sweeping physical offices for hidden devices as part of a ramped-up security effort as the AI race intensifies. From a report: The company, backed by Amazon and Google, published safety and security updates in a blog post on Monday, and said it also plans to establish an executive risk council and build an in-house security team. Ant … ⌘ Read more
First Flight of Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum Rocket Lasted Just 40 Seconds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The first flight of Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket didn’t last long on Sunday. The booster’s nine engines switched off as the rocket cartwheeled upside-down and fell a short distance from its Arctic launch pad in Norway, punctuating the abbreviated test flight with a spectacu … ⌘ Read more
‘There is No Vibe Engineering’
Software engineer Sergey Tselovalnikov weighs in on the new hype: The term caught on and Twitter quickly flooded with posts about how AI has radically transformed coding and will soon replace all software engineers. While AI undeniably impacts the way we write code, it hasn’t fundamentally changed our role as engineers. Allow me to explain.
[…] Vibe coding is interacting with the codebase via prompts. As … ⌘ Read more
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan Says Company Will Spin Off Non-Core Units
Intel Chief Executive Officer Lip-Bu Tan said the chipmaker will spin off assets that aren’t central to its mission and create new products including custom semiconductors to try to better align itself with customers. From a report: Intel needs to replace the engineering talent it has lost, improve its balance sheet and better attune manufacturing process … ⌘ Read more
UK’s GCHQ Intern Transferred Top Secret Files To His Phone
Bruce66423 shares a report from the BBC: A former GCHQ intern has admitted risking national security by taking top secret data home with him on his mobile phone. Hasaan Arshad, 25, pleaded guilty to an offence under the Computer Misuse Act on what would have been the first day of his trial at the Old Bailey in London. The charge related to committing an unauth … ⌘ Read more
Intel and Microsoft Staff Allegedly Lured To Work For Fake Chinese Company In Taiwan
Taiwanese authorities have accused 11 Chinese companies, including SMIC, of secretly setting up disguised entities in Taiwan to illegally recruit tech talent from firms like Intel and Microsoft. The Register reports: One of those companies is apparently called Yunhe Zhiwang (Shanghai) Technology Co., Ltd and dev … ⌘ Read more
OpenAI Plans To Release a New ‘Open’ AI Language Model In the Coming Months
OpenAI plans to release a new open-weight language model – its first since GPT-2 – in the coming months and is seeking community feedback to shape its development. “That’s according to a feedback form the company published on its website Monday,” reports TechCrunch. “The form, which OpenAI is inviting ‘developers, researchers … ⌘ Read more
Google To Pay $100 Million To Settle 14-Year-Old Advertising Lawsuit
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Google has agreed to pay $100 million in cash to settle a long-running lawsuit claiming it overcharged advertisers by failing to provide promised discounts and charged for clicks on ads outside the geographic areas the advertisers targeted. A preliminary settlement of the 14-year-old class a … ⌘ Read more
Honey Lost 4 Million Chrome Users After Shady Tactics Were Revealed
The Chrome extension Honey has lost over 4 million users after a viral video exposed it for hijacking affiliate codes and misleading users about finding the best coupon deals. 9to5Google reports: As we reported in early January, Honey had lost around 3 million users immediately after the video went viral, but ended up gaining back around 1 … ⌘ Read more
ChatGPT ‘Added One Million Users In the Last Hour’
OpenAI is having another viral moment after releasing Images for ChatGPT last week, with millions of people creating Studio Ghibli-inspired AI art. In a post on X today, CEO Sam Altman said the company has “added one million users in the last hour” alone. A few days prior he begged users to stop generating images because he said “our GPUs are melting.”
[ and artifi … ⌘ Read more
‘No Longer Think You Should Learn To Code,’ Says CEO of AI Coding Startup
Learning to code has become sort of become pointless as AI increasingly dominates programming tasks, said Replit founder and chief executive Amjad Masad. “I no longer think you should learn to code,” Masad wrote on X.
The statement comes as major tech executives report significant AI inroads into software development. Google … ⌘ Read more
Publishers Trial Paying Peer Reviewers - What Did They Find?
Two scientific journals that experimented with paying peer reviewers found the practice sped up the review process without compromising quality, according to findings published this month.
Critical Care Medicine offered $250 to half of 715 invited reviewers, with 53% accepting compared to 48% of unpaid reviewers. Paid reviews were completed one day fas … ⌘ Read more
Apple Fined $162 Million for App Privacy System That Harms Developers
France’s competition authority has fined Apple 150 million euros ($162 million) for abusing its market dominance through its App Tracking Transparency system, ruling the privacy initiative unfairly disadvantages app developers. The watchdog determined that requiring third-party developers to use two pop-ups for tracking permissions whil … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft is Redesigning the Windows BSOD And It Might Change To Black
Microsoft has announced that it’s overhauling its Blue Screen of Death error message in Windows 11. From a report: The new design drops the traditional blue color, frowning face, and QR code in favor of a simplified screen that looks a lot more like the black screen you see when Windows is performing an update. It’s not immediately cl … ⌘ Read more
FBI Raids Home of Prominent Computer Scientist Who Has Gone Incommunicado
An anonymous reader shares a report: A prominent computer scientist who has spent 20 years publishing academic papers on cryptography, privacy, and cybersecurity has gone incommunicado, had his professor profile, email account, and phone number removed by his employer, Indiana University, and had his homes raided by the FBI. No on … ⌘ Read more
California Has 48% More EV Chargers Than Gas Nozzles
California has 11.3% of America’s population — but bought 30% of America’s new zero-emission vehicles. That’s according to figures from the California Air Resources Board, which also reports 1 in 4 Californians have chosen a zero-emission car over a gas-powered one… for the last two years in a row.
But what about chargers? It turns out that California now has 48% … ⌘ Read more
HTTPS Certificate Industry Adopts New Security Requirements
The Certification Authority/Browser Forum “is a cross-industry group that works together to develop minimum requirements for TLS certificates,” writes Google’s Security blog. And earlier this month two proposals from Google’s forward-looking roadmap “became required practices in the CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements,” improving the security and agility … ⌘ Read more
Linus Torvalds Gently Criticizes Build-Slowing Testing Code Left in Linux 6.15-rc1
“The big set of open-source graphics driver updates for Linux 6.15 have been merged,” writes Phoronix, “but Linux creator Linus Torvalds isn’t particularly happy with the pull request.”
The new “hdrtest” code is for the Intel Xe kernel driver and is around trying to help ensure the Direct Rendering Manager hea … ⌘ Read more
As Microsoft Turns 50, Four Employees Remember Its Early Days
“Microsoft built things. It broke things.”
That’s how the Seattle Times kicks off a series of articles celebrating Microsoft’s 50th anniversary — adding that Microsoft also gave some people “a lucrative retirement early in their lives, and their own stories to tell.”
What did they remember from Microsoft’s earliest days?
Scott Oki joined Microsoft as employ … ⌘ Read more
Copilot Can’t Beat a 2013 ‘TouchDevelop’ Code Generation Demo for Windows Phone
What happens when you ask Copilot to “write a program that can be run on an iPhone 16 to select 15 random photos from the phone, tint them to random colors, and display the photos on the phone”?
That’s what TouchDevelop did for the long-discontinued Windows Phone in a 2013 Microsoft Research ‘SmartSynth’ natural … ⌘ Read more
China is Already Testing AI-Powered Humanoid Robots in Factories
The U.S. and China “are racing to build a truly useful humanoid worker,” the Wall Street Journal wrote Saturday, adding that “Whoever wins could gain a huge edge in countless industries.”
“The time has come for robots,” Nvidia’s chief executive said at a conference in March, adding “This could very well be the largest industry of all.”
China … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Attempts To Close Local Account Windows 11 Setup Loophole
Slashdot reader jrnvk writes: The Verge is reporting that Microsoft will soon make it harder to run the well-publicized bypassnro command in Windows 11 setup. This command allows skipping the Microsoft account and online connection requirements on install. While the command will be removed, it can still be enabled by a regedit change — for … ⌘ Read more
Bloomberg’s AI-Generated News Summaries Had At Least 36 Errors Since January
The giant financial news site Bloomberg “has been experimenting with using AI to help produce its journalism,” reports the New York Times. But “It hasn’t always gone smoothly.”
While Bloomberg announced on January 15 that it would add three AI-generated bullet points at the top of articles as a summary, “The news outlet ha … ⌘ Read more
How Rust Finally Got a Specification - Thanks to a Consultancy’s Open-Source Donation
As Rust approaches its 10th anniversary, “there is an important piece of documentation missing that many other languages provide,” notes the Rust Foundation.
While there’s documentation and tutorials — there’s no official language specification:
In December 2022, an RFC was submitted to encourage the … ⌘ Read more
What that Facebook Whistleblower’s Memoir Left Out
A former Facebook director of global policy recently published “the book Meta doesn’t want you to read,” a scathing takedown of top Meta executives titled Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.
But Wednesday RestofWorld.org published additional thoughts from Meta’s former head of public policy for Bangladesh (who is now an executive director a … ⌘ Read more
Has the Decline of Knowledge Worker Jobs Begun?
The New York Times notes that white-collar workers
have faced higher unemployment than other groups in the U.S. over the past few years — along with slower wager growth.
Some economists wonder if this trend might be irreversible… and partly attributable to AI:
After sitting below 4% for more than two years, the overall unemployment rate has topped that threshold since May… “We … ⌘ Read more
Google Sunsets Two Devices From Its Nest Smart Home Product Line
“After a long run, Google is sunsetting two of its signature Nest products,” reports PC World:
Google has just announced that it’s discontinuing the 10-year-old Nest Protect and the 7-year-old Nest x Yale lock. Both of those products will continue to work, and — for now — they remain on sale at the Google Store, complete with discounts until sup … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Announces ‘Hyperlight Wasm’: Speedy VM-Based Security at Scale with a WebAssembly Runtime
Cloud providers like the security of running things in virtual machines “at scale” — even though VMs “are not known for having fast cold starts or a small footprint…” noted Microsoft’s Open Source blog last November. So Microsoft’s Azure Core Upstream team built an open so … ⌘ Read more
Nearly 1.5 Million Private Photos from Five Dating Apps Were Exposed Online
“Researchers have discovered nearly 1.5 million pictures from specialist dating apps — many of which are explicit — being stored online without password protection,” reports the BBC, “leaving them vulnerable to hackers and extortionists.”
And the images weren’t limited to those from profiles, the BBC learned from the ethical … ⌘ Read more
Samsung Unveils AI-Powered, Screen-Enabled Home Appliances
Samsung teased its “AI Vision Inside” refrigerators at January’s CES tradeshow. (Its internal sensors can now detect 37 different fresh ingredients and 50 processed foods, generating lists for your cellphone or a screen on your refrigerator’s door.)
But the refrigerators are part of a larger “AI Home” lineup of screen-enabled appliances with advanced AI features, … ⌘ Read more
Aptera Takes First 300-Mile Highway Trip in Solar-Powered EV
“I’ve been dreaming of this moment for 20 years,” says Aptera co-CEO Steve Fambro. Aptera’s solar-powered electric car just drove 300 miles on a single charge.
“We’re one step closer to a future where every journey is powered by the sun,” Aptera says in their announcement.
“This go around, Aptera took to the highway for the first time ever…” write … ⌘ Read more
Did Life on Earth Come from ‘Microlightning’ Between Charged Water Droplets?
Some scientists believe life on earth originated in organic matter in earth’s bodies of water more than 3.5 billion years ago,” reports CNN. “But where did that organic material come from…?”
Maybe electrical energy sparked the beginnings of life on earth — just like in Frankenstein:
Researchers decades ago proposed th … ⌘ Read more
Reddit’s 50% Stock-Price Plunge Fails to Entice Buyers as Growth Slows
Though it’s stock price is still up 200% from its IPO in March of 2024
— last week Reddit’s stock had dropped nearly 50% since February 7th.
And then this week, it dropped another 10%, reports Bloomberg, citing both the phenomenon of “volatile technology stocks under pressure” — but also specifically “the gloomy sentiment around Reddit … ⌘ Read more
‘Why Did the Government Declare War on My Adorable Tiny Truck?’
Automotive historian Dan Albert loves the “adorable tiny truck” he’s driving. It’s one of the small Japan-made “kei” pickups and minivans that “make up about a third of car sales in Japan.” Americans can legally import older models for less than $10,000, and getting 40 miles per gallon they’re “Cheap to buy and run… rugged, practical, no-frills mach … ⌘ Read more
Are Tech-Driven ‘Career Meltdowns’ Hitting Generation X?
“I am having conversations every day with people whose careers are sort of over,” a 53-year-old film and TV director told the New York Times:
If you entered media or image-making in the ‘90s — magazine publishing, newspaper journalism, photography, graphic design, advertising, music, film, TV — there’s a good chance that you are now doing something else for work. Th … ⌘ Read more
Why a Lost Cellphone Forced an Airplane to Turn Around in Mid-Flight
Last week an Air France flight to the Caribbean had to turn around and return to Paris, reports the Washington Post, “after a passenger could not locate their cellphone.”
Because of fears that an unattended cellphone could overheat — and because the passenger and crew couldn’t find the phone — the Boeing 777 turned around off the coast … ⌘ Read more