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

‘An Open Letter To Meta: Support True Messaging Interoperability With XMPP’
In 1999 Slashdot reader Jeremie announced “a new project I recently started to create a complete open-source platform for Instant Messaging with transparent communication to other IM systems (ICQ, AIM, etc).” It was the first release of the eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, and by 2008 Slashdot was asking if XMPP was … ⌘ Read more

Scientists May Have Discovered How To Extract Power From the Earth’s Rotation
Long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam writes:

No more burning fossil fuels, playing with fissile material, damming rivers, erecting wind mills, or making solar panels. All of our energy needs could potentially be supplied by the angular kinetic energy of the Earth — and because of the mass of the planet, doing so woul … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Create New Heavy-Metal Molecule: ‘Berkelocene’
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Mercury News:

After a year of fastidious planning, a microscopic sample of the ultra-rare radioactive element berkelium arrived at a Berkeley Lab. With just 48 hours to experiment before it would become unusable, a group of nearly 20 researchers focused intently on creating a brand-new molecule. Using a chemica … ⌘ Read more

As the Arctic’s Winter Sea Ice Hits a New Record Low - What Happens Next?
The Washington Post reports that after months of polar darkness, the extent of sea ice blanketing the Arctic this winter “fell to the lowest level on record, researchers announced this week… the smallest maximum extent in the 47-year satellite record, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

“Since then, the ice has … ⌘ Read more

New Ubuntu Linux Security Bypasses Require Manual Mitigations
An anonymous reader shared this report from BleepingComputer:

Three security bypasses have been discovered in Ubuntu Linux’s unprivileged user namespace restrictions, which could be enable a local attacker to exploit vulnerabilities in kernel components. The issues allow local unprivileged users to create user namespaces with full administrative capabil … ⌘ Read more

First Trial of Generative AI Therapy Shows It Might Help With Depression
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: The first clinical trial of a therapy bot that uses generative AI suggests it was as effective as human therapy for participants with depression, anxiety, or risk for developing eating disorders. Even so, it doesn’t give a go-ahead to the dozens of companies hyping such tec … ⌘ Read more

NASA Adds SpaceX’s Starship To Launch Services Program Fleet
Despite recent test failures, NASA has added SpaceX’s Starship to its Launch Services Program contract, allowing it to compete for future science missions once it achieves a successful orbital flight. Florida Today reports: NASA announced the addition Friday to its current launch provider contract with SpaceX, which covers the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy … ⌘ Read more

Martian Dust May Pose Health Risk To Humans Exploring Red Planet, Study Finds
A new study warns that toxic Martian dust contains fine particles and harmful substances like silica and metals that pose serious health risks to astronauts, making missions to Mars more dangerous than previously thought. The Guardian reports: During Apollo missions to the moon, astronauts suffered from exposure to lun … ⌘ Read more

Madison Square Garden Bans Fan After Surveillance System IDs Him as Critic of Its CEO
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A concert on Monday night at New York’s Radio City Music Hall was a special occasion for Frank Miller: his parents’ wedding anniversary. He didn’t end up seeing the show – and before he could even get past security, he was informed that he was in fact ba … ⌘ Read more

Giant, Fungus-Like Organism May Be Completely Unknown Branch of Life
New research suggests that Prototaxites, once believed to be a giant fungus, may actually represent an entirely extinct and previously unknown branch of complex life, distinct from fungi, plants, animals, and protists. Live Science reports: The researchers studied the fossilized remains of one Prototaxites species named Prototaxites tait … ⌘ Read more

FDIC Rescinds Guidance Around Banks and Crypto
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) says banks no longer need prior approval before engaging in crypto-related activities, such as holding digital currency assets or partnering with companies in the industry. Axios reports: After publishing a general caution against banks participating in the industry just two years ago, the FDIC is the latest Trump administration regulator … ⌘ Read more

A New Image File Format Efficiently Stores Invisible Light Data
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Imagine working with special cameras that capture light your eyes can’t even see – ultraviolet rays that cause sunburn, infrared heat signatures that reveal hidden writing, or specific wavelengths that plants use for photosynthesis. Or perhaps using a special camera designed to distinguish t … ⌘ Read more

DOGE To Rewrite SSA Codebase In ‘Months’
Longtime Slashdot reader frank_adrian314159 writes: According to an article in Wired, Elon Musk has appointed a team of technologists from DOGE to “rewrite the code that runs the SSA in months.” This codebase has over 60 million lines of COBOL and handles record keeping for all American workers and payments for all Social Security recipients. Given that the code has to track the byzantine … ⌘ Read more

Oracle Health Breach Compromises Patient Data At US Hospitals
A breach of legacy Cerner servers at Oracle Health exposed patient data from multiple U.S. hospitals and healthcare organizations, with threat actors using compromised customer credentials to steal the data before it had been migrated to Oracle Cloud. Despite confirming the breach privately, Oracle Health has yet to publicly acknowledge the incid … ⌘ Read more

xAI Acquires X
Elon Musk says its xAI company has acquired the social media platform X in an all-stock transaction. “The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45 billion less $12 billion debt),” said Musk. He writes on X: Since its founding two years ago, xAI has rapidly become one of the leading AI labs in the world, building models and data centers at unprecedented speed and scale. X is the digital town square where more than 600M act … ⌘ Read more

Trump Pardons Founder of Electric Vehicle Start-Up Nikola, Trevor Milton
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Trevor Milton, the founder of electric vehicle start-up Nikola who was sentenced to prison last year, was pardoned by Donald Trump late on Thursday, the White House confirmed on Friday. The pardon of Milton, who was sentenced to four years in prison for exaggerating the potentia … ⌘ Read more

Nearly Half of People in the US Have Toxic PFAS in Their Drinking Water
An anonymous reader shares a report: New data recently released by the Environmental Protection Agency indicate that more than 158 million people across the U.S. have drinking water contaminated by toxic “forever chemicals,” scientifically known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

“Drinking water is a major … ⌘ Read more

Smart TVs Are Employing Screen Monitoring Tech To Harvest User Data
Smart TV platforms are increasingly monitoring what appears on users’ screens through Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology, building detailed viewer profiles for targeted advertising.

Roku, which transitioned from a hardware company to an advertising powerhouse, reported $3.5 billion in annual ad revenue for 2024 – repr … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Propose ‘Bodyoids’ To Address Medical Research and Organ Shortage Challenges
Stanford University researchers have proposed creating “bodyoids” – ethically sourced human bodies grown from stem cells without neural components for consciousness or pain sensation – to revolutionize medical research and address organ shortages. In a new opinion piece published in MIT Technology … ⌘ Read more

Again and Again, NSO Group’s Customers Keep Getting Their Spyware Operations Caught
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amnesty International published a new report this week detailing attempted hacks against two Serbian journalists, allegedly carried out with NSO Group’s spyware Pegasus. The two journalists, who work for the Serbia-based Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), received … ⌘ Read more

UK Govt Data People Not Technical, Says Ex-Downing St Data Science Head
An anonymous reader shares a report: A former director of data science at the UK prime minister’s office has told MPs that people working with data in government are not typically technical and would be unlikely to get a similar job in the private sector.

In a hearing designed to illuminate the challenges facing the Department for Sc … ⌘ Read more

Inside YouTube’s Weird World Of Fake Movie Trailers
Fake movie trailers created with AI are proliferating across YouTube, with some garnering more views than official studio releases – and Hollywood studios are quietly profiting from the phenomenon rather than shutting it down. Instead of enforcing copyright on these unauthorized videos, Warner Bros. Discovery, Sony Pictures, and Paramount are claiming monetizatio … ⌘ Read more

Want To Go To College? Pay the College Board
The College Board, described as a $2 billion nonprofit, functions as the primary gatekeeper for academic success within American higher education, according to an analysis by Bloomberg. The organization significantly shapes university admissions by controlling not only who gains entry to college but also influencing what students know upon arrival.

This central role in managing and def … ⌘ Read more

FTC Tells Staff To Stop Calling the Agency ‘Independent’ in Complaints
An anonymous reader shares a report: Staff at the Federal Trade Commission have been instructed to no longer refer to the agency as “independent” in complaints, according to an email obtained by The Verge.

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75% of Scientists in Nature Poll Weigh Leaving US
A Nature survey has found that three-quarters of responding U.S. scientists are considering leaving the nation following disruptions to science under the Trump administration.

Out of 1,608 respondents, 75.3% said they were contemplating leaving the country. Scientists cited concerns over research funding and the general treatment of science as contributing factors for thei … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft President Calls For a National Talent Strategy For Electricians
theodp writes: “As I prepared for a White House meeting last fall on the nation’s electricity needs,” begins Microsoft President Brad Smith in The Country Needs More Electricity –And More Electricians, a Fox Business op-ed. “I met with the leaders at Microsoft who are building our AI infrastructure across the country. During ou … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft President Calls For a National Talent Strategy For Electricians
theodp writes: “As I prepared for a White House meeting last fall on the nation’s electricity needs,” begins Microsoft President Brad Smith in The Country Needs More Electricity –And More Electricians, a Fox Business op-ed. “I met with the leaders at Microsoft who are building our AI infrastructure across the country. During ou … ⌘ Read more

SoftBank May Pledge More Than $1 Trillion for AI Effort in US, Nikkei Says
SoftBank Group plans to create industrial parks for AI across the US and is considering an investment of more than $1 trillion, Nikkei reported. From a report: Founder and Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son is expected to visit the US to discuss his ideas for such industrial parks, the newspaper said. The factories would likely us … ⌘ Read more

SoftBank May Pledge More Than $1 Trillion for AI Effort in US, Nikkei Says
SoftBank Group plans to create industrial parks for AI across the US and is considering an investment of more than $1 trillion, Nikkei reported. From a report: Founder and Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son is expected to visit the US to discuss his ideas for such industrial parks, the newspaper said. The factories would likely us … ⌘ Read more

‘Apple Needs a Snow Sequoia’
uninet writes: The same year Apple launched the iPhone, it unveiled a massive upgrade to Mac OS X known as Leopard, sporting “300 New Features.” Two years later, it did something almost unheard of: it released Snow Leopard, an upgrade all about how little it added and how much it took away. Apple needs to make it snow again. Current releases of MacOS Sequoia and iOS/iPadOS 18 are riddled with easily reproducible bugs … ⌘ Read more

IBM US Cuts May Run Deeper Than Feared - and the Jobs Are Heading To India
The Register: Following our report last week on IBM’s ongoing layoffs, current and former employees got in touch to confirm what many suspected: The US cuts run deeper than reported, and the jobs are heading to India. IBM’s own careers site numbers back that up. On January 7, 2024, Big Blue listed just 173 open positions in India. … ⌘ Read more

As NASA Faces Cuts, China Reveals Ambitious Plans For Planetary Exploration
As NASA faces potential budget cuts, China is unveiling an ambitious series of deep space missions – including Mars sample returns, outer planet exploration, and a future Mars base. While some of China’s plans are aspirational, their track record of successful missions lends credibility to their expanding role in space. A … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Maps AI Model ‘Thought’ Processes
Anthropic researchers have developed a breakthrough “cross-layer transcoder” (CLT) that functions like an fMRI for large language models, mapping how they process information internally. Testing on Claude 3.5 Haiku, researchers discovered the model performs longer-range planning for specific tasks – such as selecting rhyming words before constructing poem sentences – and processes multilingua … ⌘ Read more

Labor Arbitrage RIP
An anonymous reader shares a report: For decades, India’s economic promise has rested on its demographic dividend – the competitive edge of a massive, young, and increasingly educated workforce. Economists and policymakers have routinely cited the country’s population profile as its ticket to economic superpower status, with projections of reaching $10 trillion in GDP and achieving high-income status by 2047. These forecasts depend hea … ⌘ Read more

Virginia Will Punish Fast Drivers With Devices That Limit Their Speed
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Virginia is set to become the first state in the country to require some reckless drivers to put devices on their cars that make it impossible to drive too fast. D.C. passed similar legislation last year. Several other states, including Maryland, are considering joining them. … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Says ‘Our GPUs Are Melting’ As It Limits ChatGPT Image Generation Requests
Following OpenAI’s viral Studio Ghibli moment, CEO Sam Altman says it has temporarily limited image generation in ChatGPT due to the overwhelming demand on its GPU infrastructure. “It’s super fun seeing people love images in ChatGPT, but our GPUs are melting,” he posted on X today. The Verge reports: The demand crunch al … ⌘ Read more

US Robotics Companies Push For National Strategy To Compete With China
U.S. robotics companies, including Tesla and Boston Dynamics, are urging lawmakers to establish a national robotics strategy to keep pace with China’s aggressive investment in AI-driven robotics. The Associated Press reports: Jeff Cardenas, co-founder and CEO of humanoid startup Apptronik, of Austin, Texas, pointed out to lawmaker … ⌘ Read more

Ubisoft Spins Out Subsidiary With a Billion-Dollar Investment From Tencent
Ubisoft is launching a new subsidiary focused on Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six, backed by a 1.16 billion-euro investment from Tencent. “The as-yet-unnamed subsidiary will fold in the teams working on those three series, including Ubisoft studios in Montreal, Quebec, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Barcelona and Sofia,” reports En … ⌘ Read more

H&M To Use Digital Clones of Models In Ads and Social Media
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Fashion retailer H&M is to use artificial intelligence (AI) to create digital “twins” of 30 models. It says it will use the AI doppelgangers in some social media posts and marketing in the place of humans, if given permission by models. “We are curious to explore how to showcase our fashion in new creati … ⌘ Read more