"A leap in our ability to see the chemistry of matter in three-dimensions at the nanoscale was achieved, allowing scientists to understand how nanomaterials are chemically arranged," writes Slashdot reader Hovden: Traditionally, seeing matter at the smallest sizes requires too many high-energy electrons for 3D chemical imaging. The high beam exposure destroys the specimen before an experiment is completed. Even larger doses are required to achieve high resolution. Thus, chemical mapping in 3D has been unachievable except at lower resolution with the most radiation-hard materials. High-resolution 3D chemical imaging is now achievable near or below one-nanometer resolution. A team from Dow Chemical and the University of Michigan used a newly introduced method, called multi-modal data fusion, high-resolution chemical tomography, that provides 99% less dose by linking information encoded within both elastic and inelastic scattered signals. The researchers showed sub-nanometer 3D resolution of chemistry is measurable for a broad class of geometrically and compositionally complex materials. "Here are the pretty pictures," adds long-time Slashdot reader thoper. Phys.org also has this quote from Robert Hovden, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Michigan and corresponding author on the study published in Nature Communications. "Seeing invisible worlds, far smaller than the wavelengths of light, is absolutely critical to understanding the matter we are engineering at the nanoscale, not just in 2D but in 3D as well."

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Thursday the Verge reported that a new report from Microsoft "outlines the steps the company took to release responsible AI platforms last year." Microsoft says in the report that it created 30 responsible AI tools in the past year, grew its responsible AI team, and required teams making generative AI applications to measure and map risks throughout the development cycle. The company notes that it added Content Credentials to its image generation platforms, which puts a watermark on a photo, tagging it as made by an AI model. The company says it's given Azure AI customers access to tools that detect problematic content like hate speech, sexual content, and self-harm, as well as tools to evaluate security risks. This includes new jailbreak detection methods, which were expanded in March this year to include indirect prompt injections where the malicious instructions are part of data ingested by the AI model. It's also expanding its red-teaming efforts, including both in-house red teams that deliberately try to bypass safety features in its AI models as well as red-teaming applications to allow third-party testing before releasing new models. Microsoft's chief Responsible AI officer told the Washington Post this week that "We work with our engineering teams from the earliest stages of conceiving of new features that they are building." "The first step in our processes is to do an impact assessment, where we're asking the team to think deeply about the benefits and the potential harms of the system. And that sets them on a course to appropriately measure and manage those risks downstream. And the process by which we review the systems has checkpoints along the way as the teams are moving through different stages of their release cycles... "When we do have situations where people work around our guardrails, we've already built the systems in a way that we can understand that that is happening and respond to that very quickly. So taking those learnings from a system like Bing Image Creator and building them into our overall approach is core to the governance systems that we're focused on in this report." They also said " it would be very constructive to make sure that there were clear rules about the disclosure of when content is synthetically generated," and "there's an urgent need for privacy legislation as a foundational element of AI regulatory infrastructure."

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Come 2029, all cars sold in the U.S. "must be able to stop and avoid contact with a vehicle in front of them at speeds up to 62 mph," reports Car and Driver. "Additionally, the system must be able to detect pedestrians in both daylight and darkness. As a final parameter, the federal standard will require the system to apply the brakes automatically up to 90 mph when a collision is imminent, and up to 45 mph when a pedestrian is detected." Notably, the federal standardization of automated emergency braking systems includes pedestrian-identifying emergency braking, too. Once implemented, the NHTSA projects that this standard will save at least 360 lives a year and prevent at least 24,000 injuries annually. Specifically, the federal agency claims that rear-end collisions and pedestrian injuries will both go down significantly... "Automatic emergency braking is proven to save lives and reduce serious injuries from frontal crashes, and this technology is now mature enough to require it in all new cars and light trucks. In fact, this technology is now so advanced that we're requiring these systems to be even more effective at higher speeds and to detect pedestrians," said NHTSA deputy administrator Sophie Shulman. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the article.

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In 2016, an online "swarm intelligence" platform generated a correct prediction for the Kentucky Derby — naming all four top finishers, in order. (But the next year their predictions weren't even close, with TechRepublic suggesting 2016's race had an unusual cluster of just a few top racehorses.) So this year Decrypt.co tried crafting their own system "that can be called up when the next Kentucky Derby draws near. There are a variety of ways to enlist artificial intelligence in horse racing. You could process reams of data based on your own methodology, trust a third-party pre-trained model, or even build a bespoke solution from the ground up. We decided to build a GPT we named HorseGPT to crunch the numbers and make the picks for us... We carefully curated prompts to instill HorseGPT with expertise in data science specific to horse racing: how weather affects times, the role of jockeys and riding styles, the importance of post positions, and so on. We then fed it a mix of research papers and blogs covering the theoretical aspects of wagering, and layered on practical knowledge: how to read racing forms, what the statistics mean, which factors are most predictive, expert betting strategies, and more. Finally, we gave HorseGPT a wealth of historical Kentucky Derby data, arming it with the raw information needed to put its freshly imparted skills to use. We unleashed HorseGPT on official racing forms for this year's Derby. We asked HorseGPT to carefully analyze each race's form, identify the top contenders, and recommend wager types and strategies based on deep background knowledge derived from race statistics. HorseGPT picked two horses to win — both of which failed to do so. (Sierra Leone did finish second — in a rare photo finish. But Fierceness finished... 15th.) It also recommended the same two horses if you were trying to pick the top two finishers in the correct order — a losing bet, since, again, Fierceness finished 15th. But even worse, HorseGPT recommended betting on Just a Touch to finish in either first or second place. When the race was over, that horse finished dead last. (And when asked to pick the top three finishers in correct order, HorseGPT stuck with its choices for the top two — which finished #2 and #15 — and, again, Just a Touch, who came in last.) When Google Gemini was asked to pick the winner by The Athletic, it first chose Catching Freedom (who finished 4th). But it then gave an entirely different answer when asked to predict the winner "with an Italian accent." "The winner of the Kentucky Derby will be... Just a Touch! Si, that's-a right, the underdog! There will be much-a celebrating in the piazzas, thatta-a I guarantee!" Again, Just a Touch came in last. Decrypt noticed the same thing. "Interestingly enough, our HorseGPT AI agent and the other out-of-the-box chatbots seemed to agree with each other," the site notes, "and with many experts analysts cited by the official Kentucky Derby website." But there was one glimmer of insight into the 20-horse race. When asked to choose the top four finishers in order, HorseGPT repeated those same losing picks — which finished #2, #15, and #20. But then it added two more underdogs for fourth place finishers, "based on their potential to outperform expectations under muddy conditions." One of those two horses — Domestic Product — finished in 13th place. But the other of the two horses was Mystik Dan — who came in first. Mystik Dan appeared in only one of the six "Top 10 Finishers" lists (created by humans) at the official Kentucky Derby site... in the #10 position.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the New York Times: American officials are trying to increase international pressure on Russia not to deploy an antisatellite nuclear weapon in space, and have obtained information that undermines Moscow's explanation that the device it is developing is for peaceful scientific purposes, a senior State Department official said on Friday... On Friday, Mallory Stewart, the assistant secretary of state for arms control, said that while the United States had been aware of Russia's pursuit of such a device for years, "only recently have we been able to make a more precise assessment of their progress." Ms. Stewart, speaking at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the orbit the Russian satellite would occupy is in a high-radiation region not used by other satellites, information that undercuts Russia's defense that it is not developing a weapon.

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CircleID reports that Multinational internet service provider Cogent recently announced that it was offering $206 million in secured notes (a corporate bond backed by assets). "The unusual part is what it's using as security: some of its IPv4 addresses and the leases on those IPv4 addresses." All internet service providers (ISPs) give IP addresses to their users, but Cogent was among the first to lease those addresses independently of internet access. (Internet access customers normally require a unique address as part of their service.) Sources are hard to find, but prevailing wisdom is that they have over 10M addresses leased for about $0.30 per month, or $36M per year in revenue. The notes are expected to be repaid in five years. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader penciling_in for sharing the article.

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The blog It's FOSS is "pissed at the casual arrogance of Ubuntu and its parent company Canonical..... The sheer audacity of not caring for its users reeks of Microsoft-esque arrogance." If you download a .deb package of a software, you cannot install it using the official graphical software center on Ubuntu anymore. When you double-click on the downloaded deb package, you'll see this error, "there is no app installed for Debian package files". If you right-click and choose to open it with Software Center, you are in for another annoyance. The software center will go into eternal loading. It may look as if it is doing something, but it will go on forever. I could even livestream the loading app store on YouTube, and it would continue for the 12 years of its long-term support period. Canonical software engineer Dennis Loose actually created an issue ticket for the problem himself — back in September of 2023. And two weeks ago he returned to the discussion to announce that fix "will be a priority for the next cycle". (Though "unfortunately we didn't have the capacity to work on this for 24.04...) But Its Foss accused Canonical of "cleverly booting out deb in favor of Snap, one baby step at a time" (noting the problem started with Ubuntu 23.10): There is also the issue of replacing deb packages with Snap, even with the apt command line tool. You use 'sudo apt install chromium', you get a Snap package of Chromium instead of Debian The venerable Linux magazine argues that Canonical "has secretly forced Snap installation on users." [I]t looks as if the Software app defaults to Snap packages for everything now. I combed through various apps and found this to be the case.... As far as the auto-installation of downloaded .deb files, you'll have to install something like gdebi to bring back this feature.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: The heat shield of the Orion spacecraft intended one day to carry astronauts to the moon under NASA's Artemis program suffered unexpected damage in more than 100 places as the spacecraft returned to Earth during an uncrewed test flight in 2022, according to a watchdog report released late Wednesday. While the capsule withstood the fiery tumult of reentry, when temperatures reached 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it plunged through the atmosphere at nearly 25,000 mph, the damage the heat shield suffered was far greater than NASA engineers had expected and more severe than NASA had revealed previously. Photos of the heat shield in the report showed gouges that look like small potholes. "Should the same issue occur on future Artemis missions, it could lead to the loss of the vehicle or crew," the report, by NASA's inspector general, concluded... The IG report provides the most detailed description of the issue to date. It also highlighted other problems with the spacecraft that could create significant challenges for the space agency as it seeks to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years. Portions of the heat shield "wore away differently than NASA engineers predicted, cracking and breaking off the spacecraft in fragments that created a trail of debris rather than melting away as designed," according to the report. That, in turn, "could have caused enough structural damage to cause one of Orion's parachutes to fail...." In addition to the heat shield erosion on Orion, which is manufactured by Lockheed Martin, the IG said several bolts on the crew module "experienced an exposed gap that allowed for increased heating to the bolt interior and greater than expected melting and erosion." Earlier this year, NASA announced the next flight for its moon program — sending a crew of four around the moon — would be delayed, according to the article. The moon-orbiting mission would now occur "no earlier than September 2025, largely because officials wanted to study the heat shield issue further and understand why it eroded as it did." The article adds that this new report "casts doubt on both NASA's rosy original assessment of the test flight" — as well as the likelihood that a lunar landing will occur by late 2026.

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The Washington Post reports that wind turbines "only take up five percent of the land where they've been built, new research shows." The rest of the space can be used for other purposes, such as agriculture, according to a study published recently in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology. This means developers could fit turbines in places that are often perceived as unsuitable for a wind farm. The new study highlights that turbines and existing human development, such as agriculture, cannot only share the same area, but also that building wind farms where there are already roads and other infrastructure could help reduce impacts on the land. "Clever siting, use of existing infrastructure, multiple use of landscapes — all these things ... can really contribute to solutions in areas where wind power is acceptable to the local people," said Sarah Jordaan, the study's principal investigator. Historically, planning studies for wind farms have often assumed that turbines would disturb all the land at the site and leave the area unusable for anything else, said Jordaan, an associate professor in the department of civil engineering at McGill University. The study's findings provide a more accurate accounting of how much land is needed for wind farms, she added.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the blog Bitcoinist: Jack Dorsey's financial services and digital payments company, Block Inc., announced it will begin investing 10% of its monthly Bitcoin-related gross profits into BTC purchases. This announcement was made following the release of Block's first-quarter earnings for 2024, which demonstrated substantial profits from its Bitcoin operations. Block reported Bitcoin-related gross profits amounting to $80 million in the first quarter alone. If this trend continues, the implementation of the new dollar cost averaging (DCA) program could see the company investing approximately $24 million in Bitcoin within one year... Dorsey also shared a detailed document [PDF] titled "Bitcoin Blueprint For Corporate Balance Sheets," which serves as a comprehensive guide for other corporations interested in integrating BTC into their financial strategies. According to the document, Block, formerly known as Square, began its substantial acquisitions in October 2020, purchasing 4,709 BTC at an aggregate price of $50 million. The company later bought an additional 3,318 BTC in February 2021 for $170 million. As of March 31, 2024, Block holds approximately 8,038 BTC, representing about 9% of its total cash and marketable securities.

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Markos Moulitsas is the poll-watching founder of the political blog Daily Kos. Thursday he wrote that in 2021, future third-party presidential candidate RFK Jr. had sued their web site. "Things are not going well for him." Back in 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sued Daily Kos to unmask the identity of a community member who posted a critical story about his dalliance with neo-Nazis at a Berlin rally. I updated the story here, here, here, here, and here. To briefly summarize, Kennedy wanted us to doxx our community member, and we stridently refused. The site and the politician then continued fighting for more than three years. "Daily Kos lost the first legal round in court," Moulitsas posted in 2021, "thanks to a judge who is apparently unconcerned with First Amendment ramifications given the chilling effect of her ruling." But even then, Moulitsas was clear on his rights: Because of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, [Kennedy] cannot sue Daily Kos — the site itself — for defamation. We are protected by the so-called safe harbor. That's why he's demanding we reveal what we know about "DowneastDem" so they can sue her or him directly. Moulitsas also stressed that his own 2021 blog post was "reiterating everything that community member wrote, and expanding on it. And so instead of going after a pseudonymous community writer/diarist on this site, maybe Kennedy will drop that pointless lawsuit and go after me... consider this an escalation." (Among other things, the post cited a German-language news account saying Kennedy "sounded the alarm concerning the 5G mobile network and Microsoft founder Bill Gates..." Moulitsas also noted an Irish Times article which confirmed that at the rally Kennedy spoke at, "Noticeable numbers of neo-Nazis, kitted out with historic Reich flags and other extremist accessories, mixed in with the crowd.") So what happened? Moulitsas posted an update Thursday: Shockingly, Kennedy got a trial court judge in New York to agree with him, and a subpoena was issued to Daily Kos to turn over any information we might have on the account. However, we are based in California, not New York, so once I received the subpoena at home, we had a California court not just quash the subpoena, but essentially signal that if New York didn't do the right thing on appeal, California could very well take care of it. It's been a while since I updated, and given a favorable court ruling Thursday, it's way past time to catch everyone up. New York is one of the U.S. states that doesn't have a strict "Dendrite standard" law protecting anonymous speech. But soon the blog founder discovered he had allies: The issues at hand are so important that The New York Times, the E.W.Scripps Company, the First Amendment Coalition, New York Public Radio, and seven other New York media companies joined the appeals effort with their own joint amicus brief. What started as a dispute over a Daily Kos diarist has become a meaningful First Amendment battle, with major repercussions given New York's role as a major news media and distribution center. After reportedly spending over $1 million on legal fees, Kennedy somehow discovered the identity of our community member sometime last year and promptly filed a defamation suit in New Hampshire in what seemed a clumsy attempt at forum shopping, or the practice of choosing where to file suit based on the belief you'll be granted a favorable outcome. The community member lives in Maine, Kennedy lives in California, and Daily Kos doesn't publish specifically in New Hampshire. A perplexed court threw out the case this past February on those obvious jurisdictional grounds.... Then, last week, the judge threw out the appeal of that decision because Kennedy's lawyer didn't file in time — and blamed the delay on bad Wi-Fi... Kennedy tried to dismiss the original case, the one awaiting an appellate decision in New York, claiming it was now moot. His legal team had sued to get the community member's identity, and now that they had it, they argued that there was no reason for the case to continue. We disagreed, arguing that there were important issues to resolve (i.e., Dendrite), and we also wanted lawyer fees for their unconstitutional assault on our First Amendment rights... On Thursday, in a unanimous decision, a four-judge New York Supreme Court appellate panel ordered the case to continue, keeping the Dendrite issue alive and also allowing us to proceed in seeking damages based on New York's anti-SLAPP law, which prohibits "strategic lawsuits against public participation." Thursday's blog post concludes with this summation. "Kennedy opened up a can of worms and has spent millions fighting this stupid battle. Despite his losses, we aren't letting him weasel out of this."

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The world's highest astronomical site is officially open for business after being in the works for 26 years. Space.com reports: The Japanese University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory, or TAO, which was first conceptualized 26 years ago to study the evolution of galaxies and exoplanets, is perched on top of a tall mountain in the Chilean Andes at 5,640 meters (18,500 feet) above sea level. The facility's altitude surpasses even the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, which is at an elevation of 5,050 meters (16,570 feet). TAO is located on the summit of Atacama's Cerro Chajnantor mountain, whose name means "place of departure" in the now-extinct Kunza language of the indigenous Likan Antai community. The region's high altitude, sparse atmosphere and perennially arid climate is deadly to humans, but makes an excellent spot for infrared telescopes like TAO as their observational accuracies rely on low moisture levels, which render Earth's atmosphere transparent in infrared wavelengths. TAO's 6.5-meter telescope consists of two science instruments designed to observe the universe in infrared, which is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than visible light but shorter than microwaves. One of the instruments, named SWIMS, will image galaxies from the very early universe to understand how they coalesced out of pristine dust and gas, a process whose specifics remain murky despite decades of research. The second, named MIMIZUKU, will aid the overarching science goal by studying primordial disks of dust within which stars and galaxies are known to form, according to the mission plan. Constructing the telescope on the summit of Mt. Chajnantor "was an incredible challenge, not just technically, but politically too," Yuzuru Yoshii, a professor at the University of Tokyo in Japan who spearheaded TAO since 1998, said in a statement. "I have liaised with Indigenous peoples to ensure their rights and views are considered, the Chilean government to secure permission, local universities for technical collaboration, and even the Chilean Health Ministry to make sure people can work at that altitude in a safe manner." "Thanks to all involved, research I've only ever dreamed about can soon become a reality, and I couldn't be happier," he added.

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This year's Free Comic Book Day coincided with Star Wars Day. So there's two new free Star Wars titles being handed out today in comic shops around the world. They're among several geek-friendly titles among the 48 free comics that fans will get to choose from during this once-a-year event, including: - Street Fighter vs Final Fight - Jonny Quest - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Conan the Barbarian - Flash Gordon And, of course, four from Marvel Comics. More details from IGN: DC is about to kick off Absolute Power, a major crossover event that involves Amanda Waller teaming with Batman's rogue android Failsafe and the Brainiac Queen to drain the world's heroes of their power. This prologue issue serves as a primer for the event... Alongside their Conan issue, Titan is also releasing a new Doctor Who comic that has the distinction of being the first story to feature Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor... Robert Kirkman's Skybound has been busy establishing a new shared Energon Universe, one which comprises Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici's Void Rivals as well as the Transformers and G.I. Joe franchises... This issue features new stories for all three series and is designed to be an easy gateway into this rapidly growing comic book line. There's a Stranger Things story, an Archie Horror comic, and the story of how Popeye lost his eye. The event is designed to help the industry by attracting comic book readers to independent comic book stores -- and in 2017 NPR offered this advice for visiting comics fans. "While you're there, buy something... The comics shops still have to pay for the 'free' FCBD books they stock, and they're counting on the increased foot traffic to lift sales."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Join your localMilitia or III% Patriot Group," a post urged the more than 650 members of a Facebook group called the Free American Army. Accompanied by the logo for the Three Percenters militia network and an image of a man in tactical gear holding a long rifle, the post continues: "Now more than ever. Support the American militia page." Other content and messaging in the group is similar. And despite the fact that Facebook bans paramilitary organizing and deemed the Three Percenters an "armed militia group" on its 2021 Dangerous Individuals and Organizations List, the post and group remained up until WIRED contacted Meta for comment about its existence. Free American Army is just one of around 200 similar Facebook groups and profiles, most of which are still live, that anti-government and far-right extremists are using to coordinate local militia activity around the country. After lying low for several years in the aftermath of the US Capitol riot on January 6, militia extremists have been quietly reorganizing, ramping up recruitment and rhetoric on Facebook -- with apparently little concern that Meta will enforce its ban against them, according to new research by the Tech Transparency Project, shared exclusively with WIRED. Individuals across the US with long-standing ties to militia groups are creating networks of Facebook pages, urging others to recruit "active patriots" and attend meetups, and openly associating themselves with known militia-related sub-ideologies like that of the anti-government Three Percenter movement. They're also advertising combat training and telling their followers to be "prepared" for whatever lies ahead. These groups are trying to facilitate local organizing, state by state and county by county. Their goals are vague, but many of their posts convey a general sense of urgency about the need to prepare for "war" or to "stand up" against many supposed enemies, including drag queens, immigrants, pro-Palestine college students, communists -- and the US government. These groups are also rebuilding at a moment when anti-government rhetoric has continued to surge in mainstream political discourse ahead of a contentious, high-stakes presidential election. And by doing all of this on Facebook, they're hoping to reach a broader pool of prospective recruits than they would on a comparatively fringe platform like Telegram. "Many of these groups are no longer fractured sets of localized militia but coalitions formed between multiple militia groups, many with Three Percenters at the helm," said Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project. "Facebook remains the largest gathering place for extremists and militia movements to cast a wide net and funnel users to more private chats, including on the platform, where they can plan and coordinate with impunity." Paul has been monitoring "hundreds" of these groups and profiles since 2021 and found that they have been growing "increasingly emboldened with more serious and coordinated organizing" in the past year.

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Natron Energy, a pioneer in sodium-ion battery technology, has officially commenced mass production of its lithium-free sodium batteries in its Holland, Michigan facility, offering an alternative energy storage solution with benefits such as faster cycling, longer lifespan, and safer usage compared to lithium-ion batteries. New Atlas reports: Not only is sodium somewhere between 500 to 1,000 times more abundant than lithium on the planet we call Earth, sourcing it doesn't necessitate the same type of earth-scarring extraction. Even moving beyond the sodium vs lithium surname comparison, Natron says its sodium-ion batteries are made entirely from abundantly available commodity materials that also include aluminum, iron and manganese. Furthermore, the materials for Natron's sodium-ion chemistry can be procured through a reliable US-based domestic supply chain free from geopolitical disruption. The same cannot be said for common lithium-ion materials like cobalt and nickel. Sodium-ion tech has received heightened interest in recent years as a more reliable, potentially cheaper energy storage medium. While its energy density lags behind lithium-ion, advantages such as faster cycling, longer lifespan and safer, non-flammable end use have made sodium-ion an attractive alternative, especially for stationary uses like data center and EV charger backup storage. [...] Natron says its batteries charge and discharge at rates 10 times faster than lithium-ion, a level of immediate charge/discharge capability that makes the batteries a prime contender for the ups and downs of backup power storage. Also helping in that use case is an estimated lifespan of 50,000 cycles.

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"It all started with the fans," says 72-year-old actor Mark Hamill, in a montage of fans and actors in a newly-released video commemorating this year's Star Wars day. Or, as Tom's Guide writes, "It's such a nice feeling to be a part of a huge community since fans are the ones who created this special day (by using "may the force be with you" as a pun for the date we all look forward to every year)." Lucasfilm and its owner Disney approved of this occasion, and now, we hold both official and unofficial celebrations to honor the beloved franchise... There are plenty of Star Wars Day deals to shop, movies, and TV shows that you can be a part of this year... [The new animated series] Star Wars: Tales of the Empire will explore the dark side of the galaxy by focusing on two warriors navigating the Galactic Empire... Stream Tales of the Empire on Disney Plus starting May 4. But there's more. Friday the official Star Wars site wrote that this Star Wars Day "is a big one for gamers." This weekend will see the release of a free Zynga game by Nintendo called Star Wars: Hunters on iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch, while the game Brawlhalla will add Darth Maul as a playable character for the next three weeks. There's also an upgrade to "vehicular soccer" game Rocket League which enables the unlocking of Star Wars-themed items like Anakin's Podracer Decal and the Darth Maul Decal. There's also discounts on games like EA's Star Wars Triple Bundle, Star Wars Battlefront II, and LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, as well as discounts on games with Star Wars-themed content like Minecraft and The Sims 4. And the franchise has even "returned to Fortnite, "bringing a new collection of Star Wars content to the popular game, including LEGO® Fortnite, Battle Royale, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival." There's more discounts on Star Wars-themed merchandise at Amazon and Macy's, as well as on books from Abrams Book and Chronicle books. In fact, there's special offers from a whole alphabet's worth of major brands including American Tourister luggage, Box Lunch, Corkcircle, Dark Horse... and even Hallmark, Target, and Walmart. But ultimately the day is a celebration of the movies that fans have loved for 47 years, writes Tom's Guide: Lucasfilm announced that on May 4th you can experience the entire Skywalker saga in movie theaters. This includes all nine episodic films in chronological order. The site also points out that two new Star Wars series will be premiering later this year. Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is an eight-episode seriues "focuses on four children who go on an adventure while making their way home across a dangerous galaxy. Accompanying them is a force user (who will be played by Jude Law)." And Star Wars: The Acolyte (set in a new time period, the Jedi glory days before the Skywalker saga) begins streaming on Disney Plus June 4. (Fans will get a preview of The Acolyte at 25th-anniversary screenings of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace happening now.) And the site even makes one last geeky suggestion for those who don't feel like going out this year: The official Star Wars website has released some unique and fun recipes you can make when May 4th rolls around. This includes a Chandrilan Squigs recipe inspired by Mon Mothma and even a Bad Batch of cookies you can decorate to your liking.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Oil and gas equipment intended to cut methane emissions is preventing scientists from accurately detecting greenhouse gases and pollutants, a satellite image investigation has revealed. Energy companies operating in countries such as the US, UK, Germany and Norway appear to have installed technology that could stop researchers from identifying methane, carbon dioxide emissions and pollutants at industrial facilities involved in the disposal of unprofitable natural gas, known in the industry as flaring. Flares are used by fossil fuel companies when capturing the natural gas would cost more than they can make by selling it. They release carbon dioxide and toxic pollutants when they burn as well as cancer-causing chemicals. Despite the health risks, regulators sometimes prefer flaring to releasing natural gas -- which is 90% methane -- directly into the atmosphere, known as "venting". The World Bank, alongside the EU and other regulators, have been using satellites for years to find and document gas flares, asking energy companies to find ways of capturing the gas instead of burning or venting it. The bank set up the Zero Routine Flaring 2030 initiative at the Paris climate conference to eradicate unnecessary flaring, and its latest report stated that flaring decreased by 3% globally from 2021 to 2022. But since the initiative, "enclosed combustors" have begun appearing in the same countries that promised to end flaring. Experts say enclosed combustors are functionally the same as flares, except the flame is hidden. Tim Doty, a former regulator at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said: "Enclosed combustors are basically a flare with an internal flare tip that you don't see. Enclosed flaring is still flaring. It's just different infrastructure that they're allowing. "Enclosed flaring is, in truth, probably less efficient than a typical flare. It's better than venting, but going from a flare to an enclosed flare or a vapor combustor is not an improvement in reducing emissions." The only method of detecting flaring globally is by using satellite-mounted tools called Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite of detectors (VIIRS), which find flares by comparing heat signatures with bright spots of light visible from space. But when researchers tried to replicate the database, they saw that the satellites were not picking up the enclosed flares. Without the satellite data, countries were forced to rely mostly on self-disclosed reporting from oil and gas companies, researchers said. Environmentalists fear the research community's ability to understand pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector could be jeopardized.

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Senior Department arms control official Paul Dean on Thursday urged China and Russia to declare that artificial intelligence would never make decisions on deploying nuclear weapons. Washington had made a "clear and strong commitment" that humans had total control over nuclear weapons, said Dean. Britain and France have made similar commitments. Reuters reports: "We would welcome a similar statement by China and the Russian Federation," said Dean, principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence and Stability. "We think it is an extremely important norm of responsible behaviour and we think it is something that would be very welcome in a P5 context," he said, referring to the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

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Apple reported fiscal second-quarter earnings that topped estimates, despite a 10% drop in iPhone sales. The company also announced that its board had authorized $110 billion in share repurchases, "a 22% increase over last year's $90 billion authorization," notes CNBC. "It's the largest buyback in history, ahead of Apple's previous repurchases." From the report: Apple did not provide formal guidance, but Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC's Steve Kovach that overall sales would grow in the "low single digits" during the June quarter. Apple posted $81.8 billion in revenue during the year-ago June quarter and LSEG analysts were looking for a forecast of $83.23 billion. On an earnings call with analysts, Apple finance chief Luca Maestri said the company expected the current quarter will deliver double-digit year-over-year percentage growth in iPad sales. What's more, he said the Services division is forecast to continue growing at about the current high rate it's achieved during the past two quarters. Apple reported net income of $23.64 billion, or $1.53 per share, down 2% from $24.16 billion, or $1.52 per share, in the year-earlier period. Cook told CNBC that sales in the fiscal second quarter suffered from a difficult comparison to the year-earlier period, when the company realized $5 billion in delayed iPhone 14 sales from Covid-based supply issues. "If you remove that $5 billion from last year's results, we would have grown this quarter on a year-over-year basis," Cook said. "And so that's how we look at it internally from how the company is performing." Apple said iPhone sales fell nearly 10% to $45.96 billion, suggesting weak demand for the current generation of smartphones, which were released in September. The sales were in line with analyst estimates, and Cook said that without last year's increased sales, iPhone revenue would have been flat. Mac sales were up 4% to $7.45 billion, but they are still below the segment's high-water mark set in 2022. Cook said sales were driven by the company's new MacBook Air models which were released with an upgraded M3 chip in March. Other Products, which is how Apple reports sales of its Apple Watch and AirPods headphones, was down 10% year over year to $7.9 billion.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent, published last month: Humans now share the web equally with bots, according to a major new report -- as some fear that the internet is dying. In recent months, the so-called "dead internet theory" has gained new popularity. It suggests that much of the content online is in fact automatically generated, and that the number of humans on the web is dwindling in comparison with bot accounts. Now a new report from cyber security company Imperva suggests that it is increasingly becoming true. Nearly half, 49.6 per cent, of all internet traffic came from bots last year, its "Bad Bot Report" indicates. That is up 2 percent in comparison with last year, and is the highest number ever seen since the report began in 2013. In some countries, the picture is worse. In Ireland, 71 per cent of internet traffic is automated, it said. Some of that rise is the result of the adoption of generative artificial intelligence and large language models. Companies that build those systems use bots scrape the internet and gather data that can then be used to train them. Some of those bots are becoming increasingly sophisticated, Imperva warned. More and more of them come from residential internet connections, which makes them look more legitimate. "Automated bots will soon surpass the proportion of internet traffic coming from humans, changing the way that organizations approach building and protecting their websites and applications," said Nanhi Singh, general manager for application security at Imperva. "As more AI-enabled tools are introduced, bots will become omnipresent."

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"Players who made Steam purchases of Helldivers 2 are now, months after the fact, being told by Sony that their games will be useless unless linked to a PSN account," writes longtime Slashdot reader Baron_Yam. From a report: Publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment announced today that Helldivers 2 players on Steam will soon be required to link their in-game profiles to a PlayStation Network account -- a feature that was optional at launch due to "technical issues" -- or risk losing access to the game. SIE explained that account linking allows players to take advantage of "safety and security" provided by PlayStation, as it can more easily protect folks from "griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behavior." Many Steam players haven't responded well to the news. As of the time of writing, over 2,500 negative user reviews have been submitted to the game's storefront page today, blemishing an otherwise spotless "Very Positive" rating. Some reviews cite data harvesting and security concerns as potential worries. Others point to the fact that Sony waited months after launch to make account linking mandatory. How this affects players in regions that don't have access to the PlayStation Network is a bigger concern, though. In the Helldivers 2 Discord, community manager Thomas 'Twinbeard' Petersson said they aren't yet sure what these rule changes meant for players in areas without PSN access, which could be another factor contributing to the negative downturn.

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A bipartisan group of senators, led by Jeff Merkley, John Kennedy, and Roger Marshall, is advocating for limitations on the Transportation Security Administration's use of facial recognition technology due to concerns about privacy and civil liberties. PBS reports: In a letter on Thursday, the group of 14 lawmakers called on Senate leaders to use the upcoming reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration as a vehicle to limit TSA's use of the technology so Congress can put in place some oversight. "This technology poses significant threats to our privacy and civil liberties, and Congress should prohibit TSA's development and deployment of facial recognition tools until rigorous congressional oversight occurs," the senators wrote. The effort, led by Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., John Kennedy, R-La., and Roger Marshall, R-Kan., "would halt facial recognition technology at security checkpoints, which has proven to improve security effectiveness, efficiency, and the passenger experience," TSA said in a statement. The technology is currently in use at 84 airports around the country and is planned to expand in the coming years to the roughly 430 covered by TSA.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Late last year, an artificial intelligence engineer at Amazon was wrapping up the work week and getting ready to spend time with some friends visiting from out of town. Then, a Slack message popped up. He suddenly had a deadline to deliver a project by 6 a.m. on Monday. There went the weekend. The AI engineer bailed on his friends, who had traveled from the East Coast to the Seattle area. Instead, he worked day and night to finish the job. But it was all for nothing. The project was ultimately "deprioritized," the engineer told CNBC. He said it was a familiar result. AI specialists, he said, commonly sprint to build new features that are often suddenly shelved in favor of a hectic pivot to another AI project. The engineer, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said he had to write thousands of lines of code for new AI features in an environment with zero testing for mistakes. Since code can break if the required tests are postponed, the Amazon engineer recalled periods when team members would have to call one another in the middle of the night to fix aspects of the AI feature's software. AI workers at other Big Tech companies, including Google and Microsoft, told CNBC about the pressure they are similarly under to roll out tools at breakneck speeds due to the internal fear of falling behind the competition in a technology that, according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, is having its "iPhone moment."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Relations between Russia and Germany were already tense, with Germany providing military support to Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Russian state hackers were behind a cyberattack last year that targeted the Social Democrats, the leading party in the governing coalition. "Russian state hackers attacked Germany in cyberspace," she said at a news conference in the Australian city of Adelaide. "We can attribute this attack to the group called APT28, which is steered by the military intelligence service of Russia." "This is absolutely intolerable and unacceptable and will have consequences," she said. The Russian Embassy in Germany on Friday denied Moscow was involved in a 2023 cyberattack. In a statement the embassy said its envoy "categorically rejected the accusations that Russian state structures were involved in the given incident ... as unsubstantiated and groundless." The Council of the EU later said that Czechia's institutions have also been a target of the cyber campaign. In a statement by the EU's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, the bloc's nations said they "strongly condemn the malicious cyber campaign conducted by the Russia-controlled Advanced Persistent Threat Actor 28 (APT28) against Germany and Czechia." Further reading: EU and NATO Condemn Russian Cyber Attacks Against Germany and Czechia.

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill this week banning and criminalizing the manufacture and sale of lab-grown meat in the state. From a report: The legislation joins similar efforts from three other states -- Alabama, Arizona and Tennessee -- that have also looked to stop the sale of lab-grown meat, which is believed to still be years away from commercial viability. "Florida is fighting back against the global elite's plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals," DeSantis said. "We will save our beef." Lab-grown meat, also known as cultivated meat, has attracted considerable attention in recent years as startups have raised millions of dollars to improve the technology meant to create a climate-friendly alternative to traditional meat sources. Cultivated meat is usually grown in a metal vessel from a sample of animal cells. They multiply in a container called a bioreactor while being fed with water, amino acids, vitamins and lipids -- a process that can be difficult to do at scales large enough to create enough food for commercial sale. Still, some companies have made strides, with two California startups receiving approval from U.S. regulators last year to sell lab-grown chicken. Those companies said Florida's bill stifles innovation in a space that is becoming competitive globally.

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The UK government's climate action plan is unlawful, the high court has ruled, as there is not enough evidence that there are sufficient policies in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. From a report: The energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, will now be expected to draw up a revised plan within 12 months. This must ensure that the UK achieves its legally binding carbon budgets and its pledge to cut emissions by more than two-thirds by 2030, both of which the government is off track to meet. The environmental charities Friends of the Earth and ClientEarth took joint legal action with the Good Law Project against the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) over its decision to approve the carbon budget delivery plan (CBDP) in March 2023. In a ruling on Friday, Mr Justice Sheldon upheld four of the five grounds of the groups' legal challenge, stating that the decision by the former energy security and net zero secretary Grant Shapps was "simply not justified by the evidence." He said: "If, as I have found, the secretary of state did make his decision on the assumption that each of the proposals and policies would be delivered in full, then the secretary of state's decision was taken on the basis of a mistaken understanding of the true factual position." The judge agreed with ClientEarth and Friends of the Earth that the secretary of state was given "incomplete" information about the likelihood that proposed policies would achieve their intended emissions cuts. This breached section 13 of the Climate Change Act, which requires the secretary of state to adopt plans and proposals that they consider will enable upcoming carbon budgets to be delivered. Sheldon also agreed with the environment groups that the central assumption that all the department's policies would achieve 100% of their intended emissions cuts was wrong. The judge said the secretary of state had acted irrationally, and on the basis of an incorrect understanding of the facts. This comes after the Guardian revealed the government would be allowing oil and gas drilling under offshore wind turbines, a decision criticised by climate experts as "deeply irresponsible."

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China launched an uncrewed lunar mission Friday that aims to bring back samples from the far side of the moon for the first time, in a potentially major step forward for the country's ambitious space program. From a report: The Chang'e-6 probe -- China's most complex robotic lunar mission to date -- blasted off on a Long March-5 rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in south China's Hainan island, where space fans had gathered to watch the historic moment. The country's National Space Administration said the launch was a success. The launch marks the start of a mission that aims to be a key milestone in China's push to become a dominant space power with plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2030 and build a research base on its south pole. It comes as a growing number of countries, including the United States, eye the strategic and scientific benefits of expanded lunar exploration in an increasingly competitive field. China's planned 53-day mission would see the Chang'e-6 lander touch down in a gaping crater on the moon's far side, which never faces Earth. China became the first and only country to land on the moon's far side during its 2019 Chang'e-4 mission. Any far-side samples retrieved by the Chang'e-6 lander could help scientists peer back into the evolution of the moon and the solar system itself -- and provide important data to advance China's lunar ambitions.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: A software engineer has been keeping nearly 7,500 Firefox tabs open on her Mac computer for over two years -- and doesn't plan on closing them anytime soon. The Firefox power user, who goes by the pseudonym "Hazel" online, posted a screenshot showing 7,470 tabs open earlier this week after finding the browser initially unable to restore all the tabs. Hazel was able to bring the tabs back to life via a Firefox profile cache, however, and tells PCMag that reloading the full session took "no more than a minute." "I feel like a part of me is restored," Hazel wrote on X once the Firefox tabs had returned. The Firefox fan tells PCMag in a message that she keeps so many tabs open for nostalgia reasons. "I like to scroll back and see clusters of tabs from months ago -- it's like a trip down memory lane on whatever I was doing/learning about/thinking about," she says. Surprisingly, all those tabs haven't impacted the computer's performance. "Firefox is quite memory efficient and isn't actually loading the websites unless I click on the tab -- so it's not very resource intensive," Hazel says.

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Microsoft is making security its number one priority for every employee, following years of security issues and mounting criticisms. The Verge: After a scathing report from the US Cyber Safety Review Board recently concluded that "Microsoft's security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul," it's doing just that by outlining a set of security principles and goals that are tied to compensation packages for Microsoft's senior leadership team. Last November, Microsoft announced a Secure Future Initiative (SFI) in response to mounting pressure on the company to respond to attacks that allowed Chinese hackers to breach US government email accounts. Just days after announcing this initiative, Russian hackers managed to breach Microsoft's defenses and spy on the email accounts of some members of Microsoft's senior leadership team. Microsoft only discovered the attack nearly two months later in January, and the same group even went on to steal source code. These recent attacks have been damaging, and the Cyber Safety Review Board report added fuel to Microsoft's security fire recently by concluding that the company could have prevented the 2023 breach of US government email accounts and that a "cascade of security failures" led to that incident. "We are making security our top priority at Microsoft, above all else -- over all other features," explains Charlie Bell, executive vice president for Microsoft security, in a blog post today. "We will instill accountability by basing part of the compensation of the company's Senior Leadership Team on our progress in meeting our security plans and milestones."

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Plumpaquatsch writes: Investigators teamed up with colleagues from the Balkans and Lebanon in raids set up by months of intense surveillance. Authorities say the operation thwarted over 10 million euro in damages and led to 21 arrests. Dubbed 'Operation Pandora,' the sting began in Germany in December 2023, after a suspicious bank teller contacted police when a 76-year-old customer from Freiburg sought to hurriedly withdraw 120,000 euro ($128,232) from her savings account to hand over to a fake police officer. When real police investigators tracked the internet-based telephone number that had been used to lure the woman, they discovered a veritable goldmine. Rather than shutting down the number, authorities instead went on the offensive, setting up their own call center in which hundreds of officers from Baden-Wurttemberg, Bavaria, Berlin and Saxony worked around the clock monitoring some 1.3 million calls in real time, as the number from the initial scam was tied to an entire network of fraud call centers. Police were able to trace and record data from the calls, as well as warn potential victims of what was in fact happening, in turn winning valuable time to put together the April 18 sting. Police say their efforts allowed them to thwart some 10 million euro in damages in roughly 6,000 cases of attempted fraud.

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samleecole writes: Utah set up an online form for people to accuse other citizens and public establishments of violating the state's recently-enacted transphobic "bathroom bill." The submission form is being flooded with memes and troll comments, and the auditor also left the submissions database open to the public -- without a password, authentication, or any other protections that would keep anyone from viewing other people's submissions. After 404 Media contacted the auditor's office for comment, they changed the permissions to require authentication. The form link has been posted to Twitter, and people have repeatedly posted screenshots of themselves uploading memes. In the database, those included photos of Barry Wood, characters from Bee Movie, and Shutterstock images of bull testicles. Twitter users have also found a link to the database that the form is connected to, which is hosted on a public Google cloud console bucket that as of Thursday, required no authentication to view. I tested the form, and found that my submission -- a photo of the yelling table cat meme -- appeared instantly in the Google Console bucket. The submission form offers anonymity with the option for the state auditor to contact submitters for more details. I haven't seen names and contact information shared in the database, but comments and image attachments were easily viewable.

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Google has asked a U.S. judge not to impose sweeping changes to the Alphabet unit's app store Play that were proposed by "Fortnite" maker Epic Games in the companies' closely-watched antitrust fight. From a report: Google made its filing late on Thursday in San Francisco federal court, where Epic last year persuaded a jury that the tech giant unlawfully stifled competition with its controls over apps downloads on Android devices and payments to developers for in-app transactions. Epic's proposal "would make it nearly impossible for Google to compete," Google's filing said. The gaming company in March asked U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco to force Google to make it easier for users to download apps from other sources and to allow developers more flexibility in offering and charging for purchases. The Cary, North Carolina-based company also said it should be allowed to bring its Epic Games Store to Android "without delays and barriers." Google agreed in December to pay $700 million to resolve the states' case and, among other reforms, will allow more alternative billing options for in-app purchases.

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A Miami-based CEO will serve over six years in prison for selling counterfeit Cisco equipment to numerous buyers on Amazon and eBay, with some of the shoddy hardware ending up in sensitive US government systems. From a report: On Wednesday, 40-year-old Onur Aksoy was sentenced to six years and six months in prison for raking in at least $100 million from the counterfeit sales. Aksoy committed the fraud from at least 2013 to 2022 -- the year he was arrested -- by buying the fake Cisco equipment from suppliers in China. The counterfeits were then resold as legitimate Cisco products for an estimated retail value of over $1 billion. "Aksoy sold hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of counterfeit computer networking equipment that ended up in US hospitals, schools, and highly sensitive military and other governmental systems, including platforms supporting sophisticated US fighter jets and military aircraft," Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri said in a statement.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Hyundai has agreed to spend nearly $1 billion on Motional, an investment that will give the automaker a majority stake while providing the self-driving startup with the necessary capital to keep operating. The Korean automaker invested $475 million directly into Motional as part of a broader deal that includes buying out joint venture partner Aptiv. As part of the deal, Hyundai will spend another $448 million to buy 11% of Aptiv's common equity interest in Motional, according to information revealed Thursday in Aptiv's first-quarter earnings report. Aptiv also shared that it expects to reduce its common equity interest in Motional from 50% as of March 31 to about 15%, leaving Hyundai with the remaining 85% control. Aptiv Chairman and CEO Kevin Clark flagged in January that the company would reduce its ownership interest in Motional. The company said at the time that it would stop allocating capital towards Motional due to the high cost of commercializing a robotaxi business and the long road ahead to profits. Aptiv on Thursday reduced its full-year net sales forecast for 2024 to be between $20.85 billion and $21.45 billion, down from between $21.3 billion to $21.9 billion. Motional confirmed the new funding round and increased stake from Hyundai, but didn't confirm Aptiv's numbers. Hyundai, however, said the amounts listed in Aptiv's earnings report were accurate. "Motional started as Boston-based autonomous vehicle startup nuTonomy in 2013, before being acquired by Delphi for $450 million," reports TechCrunch. "Delphi would later split it's business with the Aptiv unit absorbing nuTonomy. The entity became Motional under a $4 billion Hyundai-Aptiv joint venture in 2019." "While it's clear from Aptiv's earnings report that the company is trying to manage risks and optimize finances amid a less positive outlook, the company's retreat, and Hyundai's step forward, raises questions about Motional's future."

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"Aamrok 3.0, ported to Qt5/KDE Frameworks 5, has been released," writes Slashdot reader serafean. "With the heavy lifting being done, the Qt6/KF6 version is expected later in the year." Originally developed for Linux as part of the KDE desktop environment, Amarok is a free, cross-platform music player that supports various audio formats and a user interface that can be tailored to individual preferences. These are the main features/changes, as highlighted in a KDE blog post: FEATURES: - Added a visual hint that context view applets can be resized in edit mode. - Display missing metadata errors in Wikipedia applet UI. - Add a button to stop automatic Wikipedia page updating. (BR 485813) CHANGES: - Replace defunct lyricwiki with lyrics.ovh as lyrics provider for now. (BR 455937) - Show only relevant items in wikipedia applet right click menu (BR 323941), use monobook skin for opened links and silently ignore non-wikipedia links. - Don't show non-functional play mode controls in dynamic mode (BR 287055) The changelog is available here. You can find the package on download.kde.org.

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Aria Alamalhodaei reports via TechCrunch: Hubble Network has become the first company in history to establish a Bluetooth connection directly to a satellite -- a critical technology validation for the company, potentially opening the door to connecting millions more devices anywhere in the world. The Seattle-based startup launched its first two satellites to orbit on SpaceX's Transporter-10 ride-share mission in March; since that time, the company confirmed that it has received signals from the onboard 3.5mm Bluetooth chips from over 600 kilometers away. The sky is truly the limit for space-enabled Bluetooth devices: the startup says its technology can be used in markets including logistics, cattle tracking, smart collars for pets, GPS watches for kids, car inventory, construction sites, and soil temperature monitoring. Haro said the low-hanging fruit is those industries that are desperate for network coverage even once per day, like remote asset monitoring for the oil and gas industry. As the constellation scales, Hubble will turn its attention to sectors that may need more frequent updates, like soil monitoring, to continuous coverage use cases like fall monitoring for the elderly. Once its up and running, a customer would simply need to integrate their devices' chipsets with a piece of firmware to enable connection to Hubble's network.

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In a first for "digital health technology," the Apple Watch's atrial fibrillation (AFib) history feature has been approved by the FDA to join the FDA's Medical Device Development Tools (MDDT) program. This means the wearable is now usable in clinical studies. The Verge reports: The FDA announcement describes using it as a noninvasive way to collect the data both before and after treatment: "Designed to be used as a biomarker test to help evaluate estimates of AFib burden as a secondary effectiveness endpoint within clinical studies intended to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of cardiac ablation devices to treat."

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When given the choice, pet parrots prefer to video-call each other instead of watch pre-recorded videos of other birds. Those are the findings from a new paper (PDF) set to appear next week at a conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Hawaii. Phys.Org reports: The study, led by animal-computer interaction specialists at the University of Glasgow, gave tablet devices to nine parrots and their owners to explore the potential of the video chats to expand the birds' social lives. Their results suggest that the clever birds, who often suffer from loneliness in captivity, may be able to tell the difference between live and pre-recorded content on digital devices, and strongly prefer interacting with other birds in real time. Over the course of the six-month study, the parrots chose to initiate calls to other birds significantly more often than they opted to watch pre-recorded footage. They also seemed more engaged in the live chats, spending much longer on calls with other birds than they did watching videos from a library of options. The findings could help steer the future course of the emerging "animal internet," which uses digital technology to empower animals to interact with humans and each other in new ways.

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Several users on Reddit have noticed that Spotify has started hiding song lyrics behind a paywall. "This means you won't be able to sing along unless you know the lyrics already, or are willing to look them up in another app," reports Android Police. From the report: Still, you lose the convenience of real-time sync with the track and automatic scrolling. Like skips per hour, it appears Spotify will implement a limit system and accessing lyrics will count against the user's limit, which should ideally reset after a stipulated time. Spotify usually requests lyrics from songwriters, publishers, and independent artists. However, in most other cases, the company has a working relationship with MusixMatch to provide lyrics, and perhaps Spotify isn't willing to absorb the costs of this partnership. That would explain why lyrics are now paywalled, but as a free-tier user, such changes are chipping away at the service's appeal.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: Last week, hundreds of nurses protested the implementation of sloppy AI into hospital systems in front of Kaiser Permanente. Their primary concern: that systems incapable of empathy are being integrated into an already dysfunctional sector without much thought toward patient care: "No computer, no AI can replace a human touch," said Amy Grewal, a registered nurse. "It cannot hold your loved one's hand. You cannot teach a computer how to have empathy." There are certainly roles automation can play in easing strain on a sector full of burnout after COVID, particularly when it comes to administrative tasks. The concern, as with other industries dominated by executives with poor judgement, is that this is being used as a justification by for-profit hospital systems to cut corners further. From a National Nurses United blog post (spotted by 404 Media): "Nurses are not against scientific or technological advancement, but we will not accept algorithms replacing the expertise, experience, holistic, and hands-on approach we bring to patient care," they added. Kaiser Permanente, for its part, insists it's simply leveraging "state-of-the-art tools and technologies that support our mission of providing high-quality, affordable health care to best meet our members' and patients' needs." The company claims its "Advance Alert" AI monitoring system -- which algorithmically analyzes patient data every hour -- has the potential to save upwards of 500 lives a year. The problem is that healthcare giants' primary obligation no longer appears to reside with patients, but with their financial results. And, that's even true in non-profit healthcare providers. That is seen in the form of cut corners, worse service, and an assault on already over-taxed labor via lower pay and higher workload (curiously, it never seems to impact outsized high-level executive compensation).

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Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global Management have made a bid to acquire Paramount for $26 billion and take it private. Variety reports: Sony and private-equity giant Apollo submitted a letter with the non-binding offer Wednesday to Paramount Global, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The bid, which would include the assumption of debt and could be negotiated, would be a premium over the company's current $22 billion enterprise value. Shares of Paramount Global jumped 13% on news of the offer from Apollo and Sony Entertainment, closing at $13.86 per share Thursday. It's not clear how Paramount's board will proceed on the Sony-Apollo proposal, having rejected previous overtures from the private-equity firm. The company has an exclusive negotiating window with Skydance that ends Friday (May 3), but discussions among the parties could extend beyond that. If it happens, the combination of Sony Pictures with Paramount Pictures would likely result in mass layoffs -- and knock the number of major Hollywood studios from five to four, after Disney took over 20th Century. Sony Corp., which acquired Columbia Pictures in 1990 for $3.5 billion, is the largest studio operator in the industry that does not have a broad-scale direct-to-consumer streaming play. Under the proposed bid with Apollo, Sony would be the majority owner of the combined company. Sony Corp. would merge Sony Pictures Entertainment into a joint venture with Paramount Global. Sony and Apollo would both contribute cash to finance the deal. What's unclear is what would happen to the 28 local TV stations CBS owns; FCC rules bar foreign entities (i.e. Tokyo-based Sony) from having majority ownership control of broadcast TV stations, so Sony would need to carve out a separate U.S. ownership structure for the station group. In the Skydance scenario, Redstone would sell her stake in National Amusements, which holds 77% of the voting shares in Paramount Global, to Skydance, whereupon Skydance would merge with Paramount Global in an all-stock deal that would value Skydance at roughly $5 billion. Paramount Global would remain a publicly traded company. Redstone would receive up to $2 billion from the Skydance-NAI transaction; in addition, Skydance would pay a premium for Paramount Global shares and pay $3 billion to the company to help pay down debt. Ellison would serve as CEO of the merged Paramount-Skydance, while Jeff Shell, the former NBCUniversal CEO who is chairman of sports and media at RedBird and works under founder and managing partner Gerry Cardinale, would take on a key management role.

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Dan Goodin reports via Ars Technica: A maximum severity vulnerability that allows hackers to hijack GitLab accounts with no user interaction required is now under active exploitation, federal government officials warned as data showed that thousands of users had yet to install a patch released in January. A change GitLab implemented in May 2023 made it possible for users to initiate password changes through links sent to secondary email addresses. The move was designed to permit resets when users didn't have access to the email address used to establish the account. In January, GitLab disclosed that the feature allowed attackers to send reset emails to accounts they controlled and from there click on the embedded link and take over the account. While exploits required no user interaction, hijackings worked only against accounts that weren't configured to use multi-factor authentication. Even with MFA, accounts remained vulnerable to password resets. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-7028, carries a severity rating of 10 out of a possible 10. The vulnerability, classified as an improper access control flaw, could pose a grave threat. GitLab software typically has access to multiple development environments belonging to users. With the ability to access them and surreptitiously introduce changes, attackers could sabotage projects or plant backdoors that could infect anyone using software built in the compromised environment. An example of a similar supply chain attack is the one that hit SolarWinds in 2021, infecting more than 18,000 of its customers. Other recent examples of supply chain attacks are here, here, and here. These sorts of attacks are powerful. By hacking a single, carefully selected target, attackers gain the means to infect thousands of downstream users, often without requiring them to take any action at all. According to Internet scans performed by security organization Shadowserver, more than 2,100 IP addresses showed they were hosting one or more vulnerable GitLab instances. In order to protect your system, you should enable MFA and install the latest patch. "GitLab users should also remember that patching does nothing to secure systems that have already been breached through exploits," notes Goodin.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Microsoft has changed its policy to ban U.S. police departments from using generative AI through the Azure OpenAI Service, the company's fully managed, enterprise-focused wrapper around OpenAI technologies. Language added Wednesday to the terms of service for Azure OpenAI Service prohibits integrations with Azure OpenAI Service from being used "by or for" police departments in the U.S., including integrations with OpenAI's text- and speech-analyzing models. A separate new bullet point covers "any law enforcement globally," and explicitly bars the use of "real-time facial recognition technology" on mobile cameras, like body cameras and dashcams, to attempt to identify a person in "uncontrolled, in-the-wild" environments. [...] The new terms leave wiggle room for Microsoft. The complete ban on Azure OpenAI Service usage pertains only to U.S., not international, police. And it doesn't cover facial recognition performed with stationary cameras in controlled environments, like a back office (although the terms prohibit any use of facial recognition by U.S. police). That tracks with Microsoft's and close partner OpenAI's recent approach to AI-related law enforcement and defense contracts. Last week, taser company Axon announced a new tool that uses AI built on OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo model to transcribe audio from body cameras and automatically turn it into a police report. It's unclear if Microsoft's updated policy is in response to Axon's product launch.

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Ecobee, the company that pioneered smart thermostats with its Ecobee Smart in 2008, has announced it will end online support for the device and its commercial counterpart, the Ecobee Energy Management System, on July 31, 2024. The move will disable internet-dependent features such as web portal control, smart integrations, and weather-related functionality, while basic HVAC control and scheduling will remain operational.

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An anonymous reader shares a column: When Apple CEO Tim Cook and a bunch of his deputies take the virtual stage next week to announce new iPads, they're going to spend a lot of time talking about specs. If the rumors are true, we're going to get new iPad Pros with OLED screens and thinner bodies, new Airs with faster chips and a correctly placed front camera, and a couple of new accessories. Before they even launch, I feel confident telling you these are the best iPads ever. But after all these years, I still don't know how to tell you whether you should want an iPad. Or what you'd want to do with it. This has been true forever, of course. The iPad is the jack-of-all-trades in Apple's lineup, a terrific device in many ways that still feels increasingly redundant now that so many people have big phones and long-lasting laptops. Apple seems to have spent the last decade-plus enamored with the idea of the iPad as a shapeshifter -- a device that can be exactly what you need at any given time. The company loves that the iPad's use case is hard to pin down, that it means different things to different people. It's a fun, good, ambitious idea: The One Gadget To Rule Them All. The way to make that happen, though, is not to upgrade the chips or move the buttons or redesign the rounded corners. It's to focus less on the iPad itself and more on the things you attach to it. [...] The iPad is a screen and a processor, and everything else should be an add-on for whenever you need it. Give the gamers a controller and an external GPU. Give the music lovers a speaker dock, and give the smart home fanatics a bunch of buttons that connect to various devices. The photographers need lenses; the spreadsheeters need a keyboard with function keys. The Pencil and the Magic Keyboard are a start, but Apple needs to do much more. The company needs to spend less time worrying about the iPad itself -- a device famous for how long it lasts and that hardly anyone is using to its full potential -- and more time on how to make it more than just a tablet. (Plus, bonus for Apple: it's going to be a lot easier to get people to buy accessories than to convince them to upgrade their iPad when they don't need to.)

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The FBI cut its warrantless searches of American data in half in 2023, according to a government report released on Tuesday. From a report: According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's annual transparency report, the FBI conducted 57,094 searches of "US person" data under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act last year -- a 52 percent decrease from 2022. In a press briefing, a senior FBI official said that the drop was due to reforms the agency implemented in 2021 and 2022, The Record reports. Despite the drop in overall searches of Americans' data, the report also notes that the number of foreign targets whose data could be searched in the Section 702 database rose to 268,590, a 9 percent increase from the previous year. The number of "probable cause" targets also increased significantly, from 417 in 2022 to 759 in 2023. Of those, 57 percent are estimated to be "US persons," which includes US citizens and permanent residents.

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Google is making its last attempt to fight back against a historic effort by the US Department of Justice to break the tech giant's grip on online search, as the most significant antitrust trial in 25 years comes to a close in Washington. From a report: A federal court in Washington began hearing closing arguments on Thursday after a 10-week trial in which the DoJ accused Alphabet, the parent company of Google, of suppressing search rivals by paying tens of billions annually for anti-competitive agreements with wireless carriers, browser developers and device manufacturers. During the hearing on Thursday, John Schmidtlein, a lawyer from Williams & Connolly representing Google, sought to push back on claims that it had hindered rivals' efforts to gain a foothold in online search, and argued that users had plenty of alternatives. Unsealed court documents revealed this week that Alphabet paid Apple $20bn in 2022 alone to be the default search engine for its iPhone and Safari browser on its other devices. "Google winning agreements because it has a better product is not a harm to the competitive process, even if it gives it scale to improve its product," Schmidtlein told the court. A lawyer for the government, Kenneth Dintzer, told the court that Google's "anti-competitive conduct harms competition and is self perpetuating." Defaults "are a powerful way to drive searches, otherwise Google wouldn't pay billions of dollars for them," he added. Amit Mehta, the judge hearing the case, noted that search "today looks a lot different than it didâ 10 to 15 years ago. He pushed back on the DoJ's contention that the quality of search had suffered due to the lack of competition, although he also noted that only two "substantial competitors" had entered the search market in the past decade. "Doesn't that tell us all we need to know in terms of barriers of entry," he asked.

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Apple is tweaking how it applies a new fee that can apply to iOS developers in the European Union as it continues to configure its approach to the bloc's Digital Markets Act (DMA): Developers of free apps will be able to avoid the fee entirely under changes it announced Thursday, which apply from today, while other developers earning under a certain revenue threshold will get longer before they have to pay Apple the fee. From a report: The so-called "core technology fee" remains opt in for iOS developers in the region, as Apple continues to offer its standard business terms, but those wanting to take up new entitlements the DMA has required Apple to offer -- such as allowing sideloading of apps, third party app stores, and support for alternative payment tech than Apple's own -- must agree to the set of business terms that include the CTF (as Apple calls it). The fee remains under scrutiny in the region where the Commission, which enforces the DMA on Apple and other gatekeepers -- and opened its first investigations including on Apple in March -- is actively exploring whether the mechanism is enabling the iPhone maker to avoid its obligations to open up the App Store to competition, such as from third party app stores. But so far the EU hasn't prevented Apple from charging a fee.

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Microsoft is fully rolling out passkey support for all consumer accounts today. From a report: After enabling them in Windows 11 last year, Microsoft account owners can also now generate passkeys across Windows, Android, and iOS. This makes it effortless to sign in to a Microsoft account without having to type a password in every time.

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