Shameless Plug

Texas Law Requiring Age Verification On Porn Sites Ruled Unconstitutional Published on September 01, 2023 at 03:30AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The day before a Texas antiporn law that requires age verification to access adult websites was set to take effect, the state's attorney general, Angela Colmenero, has been at least temporarily blocked from enforcing the law. US District Judge David Alan Ezra granted a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking enforcement after the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) joined adult performers and sites like Pornhub in a lawsuit opposing the law. Today, they convinced Ezra that Texas' law violates the First Amendment and would have "a chilling effect on legally-protected speech," FSC said in a press release. "This is a huge and important victory against the rising tide of censorship online," Alison Boden, FSC's executive director, said. "From the beginning, we have argued that the Texas ...

UK Government Seeks Expanded Use of AI-based Facial Recognition By Police Published on September 01, 2023 at 02:50AM UK's Home Office is looking to increase its use of controversial facial recognition technologies to track and find criminals within policing and other security agencies. From a report: In a document released on Wednesday, the government outlined its ambitions to potentially deploy new biometric systems nationally over the next 12 to 18 months. The move comes after privacy campaigners and independent academics criticised the technology for being inaccurate and biased, particularly against darker-skinned people. MPs have previously called for a moratorium on its use on the general population until clear laws are established by parliament. The government is calling for submissions from companies for technologies that "can resolve identity using facial features and landmarks," including for live facial recognition which involves screening the general public f...

Google Removes 'Pirate' URLs From Users' Privately Saved Links Published on September 01, 2023 at 02:10AM To date, Google has processed more than seven billion copyright takedown requests for its search engine. The majority of the reported links are purged from Google's search index, as required by the DMCA. Recently, however, Google appears to gone a step further, using search takedowns to "moderate" users' privately saved links collections. TorrentFreak: A few hours ago, Eddie Roosenmaallen shared an email from Google, notifying him that a link had been removed from his Google Saved collection because it violates Google's policy. The reason cited for the removal is the "downstream impact," as the URL in question is "blocked by Google Search." "The following saved item in one of your collections was determined to violate Google's policy. As a result, the item will be moderated..," Google writes, pointing out a defun...

US Copyright Office Wants To Hear What People Think About AI and Copyright Published on September 01, 2023 at 01:31AM The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around AI and copyright issues beginning August 30th as the agency figures out how to approach the subject. From a report: As announced [PDF] in the Federal Register, the agency wants to answer three main questions: how AI models should use copyrighted data in training; whether AI-generated material can be copyrighted even without a human involved; and how copyright liability would work with AI. It also wants comments around AI possibly violating publicity rights but noted these are not technically copyright issues. The Copyright Office said if AI does mimic voices, likenesses, or art styles, it may impact state-mandated rules around publicity and unfair competition laws. Written comments are due on October 18th, and replies must be submitted to the Copyright Office by November 15th. The copyright status of AI...

Starfield's 1,000 Planets May Be One Giant Leap for Game Design Published on September 01, 2023 at 12:52AM The stakes are high for Bethesda's newest role-playing game. Microsoft needs an Xbox hit, and players are hungry for an expansive and satisfying space adventure. From a report: Starfield almost immediately nudges its players to the edges of the cosmos. In the opening hours of the role-playing video game, it's possible to land your spaceship on Earth's moon or zip 16 light-years to Alpha Centauri. When you open your map and zoom out from a planet, you can behold its surrounding solar system; zoom out again, and you're scrolling past luminous stars and the mysterious worlds that orbit them. That sprawling celestial journey within Starfield, developed by Bethesda Game Studios, reveals both the tremendous potential and the monumental challenge of an open-world space adventure. Bethesda has hyped an expansive single-player campaign with 1,000 explorable planets. A...

With Version 117, Firefox Finally Speaks Chrome's Translation Language Published on September 01, 2023 at 12:14AM The latest version of the flagship FOSS browser is out, and it's picked up one of the main features for which we keep Chrome around. From a report: The Firefox version 117 feature list might not look all that impressive, but it does have a big-ticket feature that may tempt people back: automatic translation. The snag is it's disabled by default in the release version, and you'll have to manually enable it. Although it was enabled in the betas, Mozilla has decided to go for a staged rollout and not enable it for everyone until Firefox 118 in six weeks or so. The new feature is integrated, privacy-respecting machine translation between multiple languages. This was already possible in older versions, but it needed an extension, and that had two side effects. One is that the extension hooked deep into the core of the browser in ways that Mozilla wasn't com...

EPA Removes Federal Protections For Most of the Country's Wetlands Published on August 31, 2023 at 03:30AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The Environmental Protection Agency removed federal protections for a majority of the country's wetlands on Tuesday to comply with a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The EPA and Department of the Army announced a final rule amending the definition of protected "waters of the United States" in light of the decision in Sackett v. EPA in May, which narrowed the scope of the Clean Water Act and the agency's power to regulate waterways and wetlands. A 2006 Supreme Court decision determined that wetlands would be protected if they had a "significant nexus" to major waterways. This year's court decision undid that standard. The EPA's new rule "removes the significant nexus test from consideration when identifying tributaries and other waters as federally protected," the agency said. In May,...

FCC Says 'Too Bad' To ISPs Complaining That Listing Every Fee is Too Hard Published on August 31, 2023 at 02:50AM The Federal Communications Commission yesterday rejected requests to eliminate an upcoming requirement that Internet service providers list all of their monthly fees. From a report: Five major trade groups representing US broadband providers petitioned the FCC in January to scrap the requirement before it takes effect. In June, Comcast told the FCC that the listing-every-fee rule "impose[s] significant administrative burdens and unnecessary complexity in complying with the broadband label requirements." The five trade groups kept up the pressure earlier this month in a meeting with FCC officials and in a filing that complained that listing every fee is too hard. The FCC refused to bend, announcing yesterday that the rules will take effect without any major changes. "Every consumer needs transparent information when making decisions about what Intern...

Hundreds of Thousands Trafficked To Work as Online Scammers in Southeast Asia, Says UN Report Published on August 31, 2023 at 02:11AM Hundreds of thousands of people are being forcibly engaged by organised criminal gangs into online criminality in Southeast Asia - from romance-investment scams and crypto fraud to illegal gambling - a report issued today by the UN Human Rights Office shows. From a report: Victims face a range of serious violations and abuses, including threats to their safety and security; and many have been subjected to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, arbitrary detention, sexual violence, forced labour, and other human rights abuses, the report says. "People who are coerced into working in these scamming operations endure inhumane treatment while being forced to carry out crimes. They are victims. They are not criminals," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk. "In continuing to call for justice for tho...

OpenAI Disputes Authors' Claims That Every ChatGPT Response is Derivative Work Published on August 31, 2023 at 01:30AM OpenAI has responded to a pair of nearly identical class-action lawsuits from book authors -- including Sarah Silverman, Paul Tremblay, Mona Awad, Chris Golden, and Richard Kadrey -- who earlier this summer alleged that ChatGPT was illegally trained on pirated copies of their books. From a report: In OpenAI's motion to dismiss (filed in both lawsuits), the company asked a US district court in California to toss all but one claim alleging direct copyright infringement, which OpenAI hopes to defeat at "a later stage of the case." The authors' other claims -- alleging vicarious copyright infringement, violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), unfair competition, negligence, and unjust enrichment -- need to be "trimmed" from the lawsuits "so that these cases do not proceed to discovery and beyond with legally infirm th...

Leaked Microsoft Memo Tells Managers Not To Use Budget Cuts as Explainer for Lack of Pay Rises Published on August 31, 2023 at 12:52AM An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft employees were already expecting lackluster pay rises. In a company-wide email sent earlier this year, the tech company's CEO Satya Nadella warned staff of salary freezes and cuts to the bonusbudget. But despite previous transparency around the cost-cutting measures, employees enquiring about how the budget cuts have impacted their performance review will now be fobbed off. According to leaked guidance, managers are being ordered to dodge such questions in the name of company culture. "It's natural for employees to ask questions about budget given the decisions shared in Satya's email," the guidance reportedly states. "However, it's most important to focus discussions with direct reports on their impact for the past fiscal year and directly tie it to their rewards." Man...

UN Backs New Term For Conservation Talks Published on August 31, 2023 at 12:12AM The word "funga" should be used alongside flora and fauna when discussing conservation issues to reflect the importance of fungi to ecosystem health, a UN body has said. From a report: The secretariat of the UN convention on biological diversity (UNCBD) said it was time that fungi were "recognised and protected on an equal footing with animals and plants in legal conservation frameworks." "Whenever referring to the macroscopic diversity of life on Earth, we should use 'flora, fauna and funga,' and 'animal, plants and fungi,'" it said in an Instagram post. Mycologists, mostly from Latin America, established the term "funga" five years ago. It refers to the levels of diversity of fungi in any given place, and is analogous to "flora and fauna," which refer to plants and animals. Unlike flora and fauna, it is not a Latin term but was chosen be...

Sports Leagues Ask US For 'Instantaneous' DMCA Takedowns and Website Blocking Published on August 30, 2023 at 03:30AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Sports leagues are urging the US to require "instantaneous" takedowns of pirated livestreams and new requirements for Internet service providers to block pirate websites. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 requires websites to "expeditiously" remove infringing material upon being notified of its existence. But pirated livestreams of sports events often aren't taken down while the events are ongoing, said comments submitted last week by Ultimate Fighting Championship, the National Basketball Association, and National Football League. The "DMCA does not define 'expeditiously,' and OSPs [online service providers] have exploited this ambiguity in the statutory language to delay removing content in response to takedown requests," the leagues told the US Patent...

Reports of the PC's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated, Says IDC Published on August 30, 2023 at 02:50AM The PC market is expected to return to growth in 2024, according to estimates from IDC analysts. From a report: Still, industry players might want to taper their enthusiasm. PC shipments are forecast to grow 3.7 percent year-on-year to hit 261.4 million units in 2024, putting them above 2018 levels, but not quite on par with 2019 demand. Meanwhile, 2023 is predicted to sink by 13.7 percent to 252 million units. Research manager Jitesh Ubrani called demand "tepid at best" and said 2023 will be the year with the "greatest annual decline in consumer PC shipments since the category's inception." IDC recognizes the market still faces challenges including "concerns around the consumer market refresh cycle, businesses pushing device purchases forward, and education budgets that are not rebounding in many markets." Market hesitancy, as always, boils down t...

FBI Dismantles a Malware System That Took Millions in Ransom Published on August 30, 2023 at 02:10AM The FBI said Tuesday that it has taken down a network of hacked devices responsible for extorting tens of millions of dollars from victims around the world. From a report: US officials described the network known as Qakbot as one of the most notorious "botnets" in the world, referring to computer networks that have been infected with malicious software so that they can be controlled remotely without the owner's knowledge -- often to send phishing emails. These emails can in turn be used to hack into victims' computer systems, which attackers will hold for ransom. Qakbot was instrumental in enabling cyberattacks against businesses and critical services around the world, according to US officials, including hits on the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and hospitals run by Prospect Medical Group. The latter resulted in the closure of emergency rooms and me...

Google DeepMind Launches Watermarking Tool For AI-Generated Images Published on August 30, 2023 at 01:30AM Google DeepMind has launched a new watermarking tool that labels whether images have been generated with AI. From a report: The tool, called SynthID, will initially be available only to users of Google's AI image generator Imagen, which is hosted on Google Cloud's machine learning platform Vertex. Users will be able to generate images using Imagen and then choose whether to add a watermark or not. The hope is that it could help people tell when AI-generated content is being passed off as real, or help protect copyright. [...] Traditionally images have been watermarked by adding a visible overlay onto them, or adding information into their metadata. But this method is "brittle" and the watermark can be lost when images are cropped, resized, or edited, says Pushmeet Kohli, vice president of research at Google DeepMind. SynthID is created using two neural networks...

First Bitcoin ETF Could Be Coming Soon as Court Rules in Favor of Grayscale Over SEC Published on August 30, 2023 at 12:50AM The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has paved the way for bitcoin exchange-traded funds. From a report: On Tuesday, the court sided with Grayscale in a lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission which had denied the company's application to convert the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust to an ETF. The decision could impact other companies that want to create bitcoin ETFs, like BlackRock and Fidelity. A spot bitcoin ETF would be traded through a traditional stock exchange, although the bitcoin would be held by a brokerage, and would allow investors to gain exposure to the world's biggest cryptocurrency without having to own the coin themselves. Many crypto bulls believe that approval of a spot bitcoin ETF will lead to more mainstream institutional adoption. Bitcoin, ether and other major cap crypto coins surged on the news, and Coinbase, whic...

The New Google Chat Borrows From Slack, Teams, Discord and Even ChatGPT Published on August 30, 2023 at 12:10AM Google is making some big changes to Google Chat, its answer to Slack and Microsoft Teams. The messaging app -- aka the product formerly known as hangouts -- is getting a new design, some features that will feel distinctly familiar to Slack and Teams users, and a lot of Google's new Duet AI collaboration tools. From a report: Most of the new features are rolling out later this year and early next, but they add up to a much more useful and competitive Chat platform. Duet is the flagship new feature and potentially a reason for a lot of Workspace users to start using Chat. You can use Duet to search and ask questions about all your stuff in Drive and Gmail and summarize both documents and conversations. You'll also be able to use AI-powered autocorrect in Chat, and thanks to Smart Reply, you might never have to manually talk to your co-workers again. You'll be abl...

Amazon Linux 2023 Virtual Machine Images Still MIA Published on August 29, 2023 at 03:31AM When Amazon Linux 2023 was released on March 15, it was supposed to be offered as a virtual machine image that organizations could run on their own servers. From a report: "When Amazon Linux 2023 becomes generally available, it will be provided as a virtual machine image for on-premises use, enabling you to easily develop, test, and certify applications from a local development environment," the web titan's FAQs stated at the time. "This option is not available during the preview." But that commitment has since vanished from the FAQ: it's not there right now nor in this capture of the page on June 2. And it's not clear whether Amazon intends to enable on-premises usage of its Linux distribution. Those who use Linux in their businesses have been asking Amazon to clarify the situation for eighteen months, starting with a GitHub Issues feature request opened on Marc...

Foxconn Founder Terry Gou Announces Run For Taiwan Presidency, Pledging To Fix China Ties Published on August 29, 2023 at 03:10AM Foxconn's billionaire founder, Terry Gou, has announced he intends to enter Taiwan's 2024 presidential race as an independent." Touting his business and finance experience at the tech giant, Gou is pledging to boost the country's economy and fix its relations with China. "Give me four years and I promise that I will bring 50 years of peace to the Taiwan Strait and build the deepest foundation for the mutual trust across the strait ... Taiwan must not become Ukraine and I will not let Taiwan become the next Ukraine." The Guardian reports: Gou has hinted at running for several months after he was not chosen as the candidate for the main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT). He pledged support for the KMT's chosen candidate, Hou Yo-ih, but continued to hold public campaign-style events. Gou will need to collect 290,000 signatu...

Microsoft Makes Some Certification Exams Open Book Published on August 29, 2023 at 02:50AM Microsoft has made some of its certification exams open book affairs, allowing access to its learning portal while candidates sit tests. From a report: "On August 22, we will begin updating our exams so that you will be able to access Microsoft Learn as you complete your exam," wrote Liberty Munson, director of psychometrics at Microsoft's Worldwide Learning organization. Microsoft Learn is a portal that links to product documentation, tutorials, code fragments, and other technical material. Much of that content will be available during exams, although a technical Q&A service will remain hidden. The open book exams will be offered to candidates sitting exams for the role-based certifications Microsoft offers for job titles including Azure Administrator, Developer, Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer; Microsoft 365 Modern Desktop Administrator, and Enterprise Administrator. Ex...

Disney VFX Workers File For Union Election Published on August 29, 2023 at 02:30AM Walt Disney Pictures' VFX team filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board on Monday. As Motherboard notes, the filing "marks the second time in history that workers in the visual effects industry have announced their intent to organize -- the first being Marvel VFX workers, who did so three weeks prior." From the report: The Walt Disney Pictures workers, who are behind the visual effects in movies like the live-action Aladdin and Pirates of the Caribbean, plan to join the VFX Union, a new branch of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which represents much of the entertainment industry behind the scenes. Their filing comes after over 80 percent of the 18 in-house VFX crewmembers at Walt Disney Pictures in Los Angeles signed cards demonstrating their desire to unionize, according to a press release by the union. "Today, courageous v...

Chess Cheating Saga Ends: Hans Niemann Will Be Allowed Back on Chess Website Published on August 29, 2023 at 02:10AM Chess.com and Hans Niemann have reached a settlement in which Niemann has agreed to drop a $100 million lawsuit against Chess.com and Magnus Carlsen, and will be allowed to return to compete, the company announced Monday. From a report: This puts an end to the legal aspect of a cheating scandal that captivated the chess world for nearly a year. As part of the settlement, chess world champion Carlsen said "there is no determinative evidence that Niemann cheated in his game against me at the Sinquefield Cup. I am willing to play Niemann in future events, should we be paired together." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CenturyLink Left 86-Year-Old Woman With No Internet Service For a Month Published on August 29, 2023 at 01:27AM Helen Marie Plourde, an 86-year-old Minnesota resident, just spent over a month without home Internet and phone service because CenturyLink failed to fix a problem that began in July. From a report: CenturyLink didn't show up for scheduled appointments at her home in Saint Paul, Plourde told Ars in a phone interview on Thursday, August 24, one day after the latest missed service appointment. Another appointment was scheduled for August 28, but she was skeptical that it would actually happen. "I'll believe it when I see them," Plourde said. Plourde buys broadband through Velocity Telephone, which resells CenturyLink fiber service in her area and acts as an intermediary between customers and CenturyLink for repairs. Velocity told us that it set up CenturyLink appointments for Plourde on August 10, August 17, and August 23, but no CenturyLink technicians show...

SEC Says NFTs Sold by an LA-based Entertainment Firm Are Securities Published on August 29, 2023 at 12:18AM In an enforcement action announced on Monday, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Los Angelesâ"based entertainment company Impact Theory with conducting an unregistered offering of securities via non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. From a report: As the SEC expands its definition of which types of crypto assets qualify as securities, the case breaks new ground by determining that NFTs fall under the agency's jurisdiction. "Absent a valid exemption, offerings of securities, in whatever form, must be registered," Antonia Apps, director of the SEC's New York Regional Office, said in a statement. The question of whether NFTs qualify as securities has remained open for several years. Before the SEC weighed in, a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York remained the highest-profile case to tackle the issue, with a group of N...