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Google Plans RISC-V Android Tools In 2024, Wants Developers To 'Be Ready' Published on November 01, 2023 at 02:30AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Android is slowly entering the RISC-V era. So far we've seen Google say it wants to give the up-and-coming CPU architecture "tier-1" support in Android, putting RISC-V on equal footing with Arm. Qualcomm has announced the first mass-market RISC-V Android chip, a still-untitled Snapdragon Wear chip for smartwatches. Now Google has announced a timeline for developer tools via the Google Open Source Blog. The last post is titled "Android and RISC-V: What you need to know to be ready." Getting the Android OS and app ecosystem to support a new architecture is going to take an incredible amount of work from Google and developers, and these tools are laying the foundation for that work. First up, Google already has the "Cuttlefish" virtual device emulator running, including a gif o...

Apple's App Charges Violate EU Antitrust Law, Dutch Agency Says Published on November 01, 2023 at 01:31AM Apple could be forced to scale back its App Store fees for developers after one of the European Union's antitrust watchdogs said its commissions violate the bloc's rules. From a report: In the latest twist in a long-running clash between the Dutch Authority for Consumers & Markets and the US tech giant, officials ruled that Apple's commission on certain app subscriptions are an abuse of the company's market power. In a confidential decision seen by Bloomberg, the Dutch regulator said Apple's rules unfairly target companies that offer subscription services, such as Match Group's dating app Tinder, which has to pay high commission rates on app sales, unlike ones that don't have paid digital content. Apple harms such companies "by charging them an additional and inexplicably higher fee," according to the Dutch decision, which was sent in...

Nokia Sues Amazon From US To India Over Streaming-Tech Patents Published on November 01, 2023 at 12:51AM Nokia sued Amazon in courts across three continents, alleging the e-commerce giant uses its technologies in streaming services and devices without authorization. From a report: The suits were filed in the US, Germany, India, the UK, and the European Unified Patent Court, Arvin Patel, Nokia's Chief Licensing Officer said in a statement on the company's website. Separately, a suit was also filed against HP in the US over video-related technologies, he said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[Dot]US Harbors Prolific Malicious Link Shortening Service Published on November 01, 2023 at 12:10AM Security reporter Brian Krebs: The top-level domain for the United States -- .US -- is home to thousands of newly-registered domains tied to a malicious link shortening service that facilitates malware and phishing scams, new research suggests. The findings come close on the heels of a report that identified .US domains as among the most prevalent in phishing attacks over the past year. Researchers at Infoblox say they've been tracking what appears to be a three-year-old link shortening service that is catering to phishers and malware purveyors. Infoblox found the domains involved are typically three to seven characters long, and hosted on bulletproof hosting providers that charge a premium to ignore any abuse or legal complaints. The short domains don't host any content themselves, but are used to obfuscate the real address of landing pages that try to phish users or install ...

FDA Warns of Infection Risk From 26 Big-Brand Eye Drops Published on October 31, 2023 at 02:10AM The Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers to ditch 26 over-the-counter eye drop products found at big retailers -- including CVS, Rite Aid, and Target -- due to a risk of infection. Consumers should not buy any of the products and should immediately stop using them if they've already purchased them. From a report: The products include Target's branded Up & Up Dry Eye Relief Lubricant Eye Drops and Up & Up Extreme Relief Dry Eye, as well as Lubricant Eye Drops and Lubricant Gel Drops branded by CVS Health and Rite Aid. The warning also includes eye drop products branded as Rugby and Leader (both from Cardinal Health) and Velocity Pharma. A full list can be found here, as can links to report adverse events. In an advisory posted Friday, the FDA reported that no infections or adverse events have been linked to the products so far. But the agency said it "foun...

Hackers Accessed 632,000 Email Addresses at US Justice, Defense Departments Published on October 31, 2023 at 01:30AM A Russian-speaking hacking group obtained access to the email addresses of about 632,000 US federal employees at the departments of Defense and Justice as part of the sprawling MOVEit hack last summer, according to a report on the wide-ranging attack obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. From a report: The report, by the US Office of Personnel Management, provides new details about a cyberattack in which hackers exploited flaws in MOVEit, a popular file-transfer tool. Federal cybersecurity officers previously confirmed that government agencies were compromised by the attack but have provided little information on the scope of the attack, nor did they name the agencies affected. The Office of Personnel Management, in a July report on the incident submitted to a congressional committee, said an unauthorized actor obtained access to government email addre...

Windows CE Reaches End of Life, If Not End of Sales Published on October 31, 2023 at 12:52AM Microsoft's dedicated OS for embedded and pocket devices, Windows CE, has reached the end of its support lifetime. From a report: Windows CE -- and there's never been an official explanation of what the WinCE-inducing name stood for -- debuted in November 1996, just a few months after Windows NT 4, the first version of NT with the Explorer desktop from Windows 95. Earlier this month, as reported by HPC Factor, the last ever version, CE 8, branded Compact Embedded 2013, reached its end of support. In 2011, Microsoft said it would be replaced by a unified platform based on Windows 8, but we know how well that went down. By 2020, the official migration path was set -- to a container on top of Win10 IoT. Its fortunes have always fluctuated. In 1999, we asked does MS care about WinCE? By 2003, we reported that eTForecasts said it would outship PCs. Indirectly, the researchers were right --...

Xbox's New Policy Says Goodbye To Unofficial Accessories Published on October 31, 2023 at 12:10AM In a significant development for Xbox users, the era of tinkering with your console to use unapproved accessories is drawing to a close. From a report: Xbox has taken a definitive stance by instituting a new policy that will block the use of unauthorized accessories with its consoles, effective as of November 17. This decision has already begun to reverberate amongst the gaming community, and many have already had a warning about it on their consoles in the form of error message 0x82d60002. The error message states: "A connected accessory is not authorized. Using unauthorized accessories compromises your gaming experience. For this reason, the unauthorized accessory will be blocked from use on 11/12/2023. For help returning it, check with the store it came from or contact the manufacturer. To see authorized accessories, go to https://ift.tt/fmWwald. (0x82d60002)." Read mo...

G7 Nations Will Announce an 'AI Code of Conduct' for Companies Building AI Published on October 30, 2023 at 04:36AM The seven industrial countries known as the "G7" — America, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, and Britain — will agree on a code of conduct Monday for companies developing advanced AI systems, reports Reuters. The news comes "as governments seek to mitigate the risks and potential misuse of the technology," Reuters reports — citing a G7 document. The 11-point code "aims to promote safe, secure, and trustworthy AI worldwide and will provide voluntary guidance for actions by organizations developing the most advanced AI systems, including the most advanced foundation models and generative AI systems", the G7 document said. It "is meant to help seize the benefits and address the risks and challenges brought by these technologies". The code urges companies to take appropriate measures to identify, evaluate and mitigate ri...

Linux Mint Gets 'Experimental' Wayland Support in December Published on October 30, 2023 at 02:04AM "The work started on Wayland," the Linux Mint project announced in their monthly newsletter. An anonymous reader shared this report from 9to5Linux about an upcoming new option in the Ubuntu-based distro: Linux Mint 21.3 [planned for Christmas of 2023] will be the first Linux Mint release to offer a Wayland session, but in an experimental state. The default session will still be the X11 one, but users who want to try Wayland can do so by selecting the "Cinnamon on Wayland" session from the login screen. "The Wayland session won't be as stable as the default one. It will lack features and it will come with its own limitations. We won't recommend it but you'll be able to give it a shot if you want to and it'll be there for interested people if they want to give us feedback," said Linux Mint project leader Clement Lefebvre. I said that ...

America's Net Neutrality Question: Should the FCC Define the Internet as a 'Common Carrier'? Published on October 30, 2023 at 01:04AM The Washington Post's editorial board looks at America's "net neutrality" debate. But first they note that America's communications-regulating FCC has "limited authority to regulate unless broadband is considered a 'common carrier' under the Telecommunications Act of 1996." The FCC under President Barack Obama moved to reclassify broadband so it could regulate broadband companies; the FCC under President Donald Trump reversed the change. Dismayed advocates warned the world that, without the protections in place, the internet would break. You'll never guess what happened next: nothing. Or, at least, almost nothing. The internet did not break, and internet service providers for the most part did not block and they did not throttle. All the same, today's FCC, under Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel,...

For the First Time, Scientists Have Fired Up the World's Smallest Particle Accelerators Published on October 30, 2023 at 12:04AM "Scientists recently fired up the world's smallest particle accelerator for the first time," reports Space.com. "The tiny technological triumph, which is around the size of a small coin, could open the door to a wide range of applications, including using the teensy particle accelerators inside human patients." The new machine, known as a nanophotonic electron accelerator (NEA), consists of a small microchip that houses an even smaller vacuum tube made up of thousands of individual "pillars." Researchers can accelerate electrons by firing mini laser beams at these pillars. The main acceleration tube is approximately 0.02 inches (0.5 millimeter) long, which is 54 million times shorter than the 16.8-mile-long (27 kilometers) ring that makes up CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland — the world's largest...

When Supermarket Freezer Doors Have Screens With Ads Published on October 29, 2023 at 03:04AM Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Over at Computers Are Bad, J.B. Crawford [a senior professional services engineer at GitLab] offers a pretty epic takedown of the startup "Cooler Screens", which has replaced the formerly transparent cooler doors at Walgreens and other stores with six-foot, heat-generating 4K resolution digital screen doors that block the view of the merchandise that's behind them to enable IoT "contextual advertising". "I find myself looking at a Walgreens cooler that just two years ago was covered in clear glass admitting direct inspection of which tall-boy teas were in stock," Crawford writes of his experience. "Today, it's an impenetrable black void. Some Walgreens employee has printed a sheet of paper, 'TEA' in 96-point Cambria, and taped it to the wall above the door...." While Cooler Screens was first test...

Powerful Malware Disguised as Crypto Miner Infects 1M+ Windows, Linux PCs Published on October 29, 2023 at 02:04AM PC Magazine reports: A powerful piece of malware has been disguising itself as a trivial cryptocurrency miner to help it evade detection for more than five years, according to antivirus provider Kaspersky. This so-called "StripedFly" malware has infected over 1 million Windows and Linux computers around the globe since 2016, Kaspersky says in a report released Thursday... StripedFly incorporated a version of EternalBlue, the notorious NSA-developed exploit that was later leaked and used in the WannaCry ransomware attack to infect hundreds of thousands of Windows machines back in 2017. According to Kaspersky, StripedFly uses its own custom EternalBlue attack to infiltrate unpatched Windows systems and quietly spread across a victim's network, including to Linux machines. The malware can then harvest sensitive data from infected computers, such as login crede...

Apple Backs US Government's Push for a National Right-to-Repair Bill . (But What About Parts Pairing?) Published on October 29, 2023 at 12:04AM An anonymous reader shared this report from Ars Technica: Following the passage of California's repair bill that Apple supported, requiring seven years of parts, specialty tools, and repair manual availability, Apple announced Tuesday that it would back a similar bill on a federal level. It would also make its parts, tools, and repair documentation available to both non-affiliated repair shops and individual customers, "at fair and reasonable prices." "We intend to honor California's new repair provisions across the United States," said Brian Naumann, Apple's vice president for service and operation management, at a White House event Tuesday... "I think most OEMs [Original Equipment Manufacturers] will realize they can save themselves a lot of trouble by making parts, tools, and other requirements of s...

Scientists Call Out Rogue Emissions From China at Global Ozone Summit Published on October 28, 2023 at 02:10AM Efforts to curb emissions of a powerful greenhouse gas commonly produced as a by-product of refrigerant manufacture might be falling short, and it seems eastern China is a major culprit. Nature: The hydrofluorocarbon gas, HFC-23, is around 14,700 times as powerful as carbon dioxide at warming the globe and has long been the subject of national and international climate-change mitigation efforts. Those efforts gained new traction nearly a decade ago when China and India -- the world's largest producers of the chemical -- agreed to dial down its emissions. New research, however, confirms that emissions continued to rise in subsequent years, and an analysis of data from atmospheric-monitoring stations suggests that factories in eastern China are responsible for nearly half of the total. The rogue emissions are one of several air-pollution sources under discussion at the lat...

Citi Charts Path For Thousands of Coders To Experiment With AI Published on October 28, 2023 at 01:30AM Citigroup is planning to grant the majority of its over 40,000 coders access to generative artificial intelligence as Wall Street continues to embrace the burgeoning technology. From a report: As part of a small pilot program, the Wall Street giant has quietly allowed about 250 of its developers to experiment with generative AI, the technology popularized by ChatGPT. Now, it's planning to expand that program to the majority of its coders next year. The bank and its rivals have slowly begun experimenting with the technology, which created waves last year when ChatGPT made its debut and showed how generative AI can produce sentences, essays or poetry based on a user's simple questions or commands. The technology typically creates this new work after being trained on vast quantities of pre-existing material. Increasingly, bank executives argue artificial intelligence will make...

Russia Renamed Its Ambitious Satellite Program After Putin Misspoke Its Name Published on October 28, 2023 at 12:50AM An anonymous reader shares a report: It was always abundantly clear that the leader of the Russian space corporation Roscosmos from 2018 to 2022, Dmitry Rogozin, sought to kowtow to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now we have an anecdote from Putin himself that highlights how much. The story concerns a satellite constellation now known as Sfera (or Sphere, in English), a modestly ambitious constellation of 264 satellites. The Sphere constellation is intended to provide broadband Internet service from middle-Earth orbit to Russia as well as high-resolution Earth observation satellites. As is usual with Russian space projects, because they tend to be poorly funded, the timeline for Sphere's deployment has been delayed and its scope reduced. It also underwent an unscheduled name change. Prior to 2018, this satellite program was known as Ehfir (Ether), a reference t...

Windows 11 Now Lets You Write Anywhere You Can Type Published on October 28, 2023 at 12:10AM An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is starting to roll out new changes to Windows Ink that let you write anywhere you can type in Windows 11. After months of previewing the changes, the handwriting-to-text conversion now works inside search boxes and other elements of Windows 11 where you'd normally type your input. [...] If you have a Surface device with a stylus or any other Windows tablet that supports Windows Ink then you'll immediately see this new feature if you head into Settings and start to write into a search box, or in other text edit fields in Windows 11. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UK Regulator Trying To Block Release of Shell North Sea Documents Published on October 27, 2023 at 02:10AM The UK's oil and gas regulator is coming under fire from environmental groups for using lawyers to try to prevent the publication of five key documents relating to the environmental impact of Shell's activities in the North Sea. From a report: At a hearing in December, a legal representative for the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) is expected to argue against the publication of documents that contain details about the risk of pollution as a result of decommissioning the Brent oilfield, which was operated by Shell for more than 40 years. It says it opposes publication "on a matter of process basis." Shell has applied for an exemption from international rules that require all infrastructure to be removed from the field and the UK government is deciding whether it will allow the oil company to leave the 170-metre-high oil platform legs in place for the three...

Google Adds Generative AI Threats To Its Bug Bounty Program Published on October 27, 2023 at 01:30AM Google has expanded its vulnerability rewards program (VRP) to include attack scenarios specific to generative AI. From a report: In an announcement shared with TechCrunch ahead of publication, Google said: "We believe expanding the VRP will incentivize research around AI safety and security and bring potential issues to light that will ultimately make AI safer for everyone." Google's vulnerability rewards program (or bug bounty) pays ethical hackers for finding and responsibly disclosing security flaws. Given that generative AI brings to light new security issues, such as the potential for unfair bias or model manipulation, Google said it sought to rethink how bugs it receives should be categorized and reported. The tech giant says it's doing this by using findings from its newly formed AI Red Team, a group of hackers that simulate a variety of adversaries, ranging ...

Hyundai To Hold Software-Upgrade Clinics Across the US For Vehicles Targeted By Thieves Published on October 27, 2023 at 12:50AM Hyundai said this week that it will set up "mobile clinics" at five U.S. locations to provide anti-theft software upgrades for vehicles now regularly targeted by thieves using a technique popularized on TikTok and other social media platforms. From a report: The South Korean automaker will hold the clinics, which will run for two to three days on or adjacent to weekends, in New York City; Chicago; Minneapolis; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Rochester, New York. The clinics will take place between Oct. 28 and Nov. 18. Hyundai said it will also support single-day regional clinics run by dealerships before the end of 2023, although it didn't name locations or dates. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI Forms Team To Study 'Catastrophic' AI Risks, Including Nuclear Threats Published on October 27, 2023 at 12:11AM OpenAI today announced that it's created a new team to assess, evaluate and probe AI models to protect against what it describes as "catastrophic risks." From a report: The team, called Preparedness, will be led by Aleksander Madry, the director of MIT's Center for Deployable Machine Learning. (Madry joined OpenAI in May as "head of Preparedness," according to LinkedIn, ) Preparedness' chief responsibilities will be tracking, forecasting and protecting against the dangers of future AI systems, ranging from their ability to persuade and fool humans (like in phishing attacks) to their malicious code-generating capabilities. Some of the risk categories Preparedness is charged with studying seem more... far-fetched than others. For example, in a blog post, OpenAI lists "chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear" thre...

Pope Francis Encourages More Children To Code Published on October 26, 2023 at 02:10AM theodp writes: The BBC reports that Pope Francis has endorsed a global project aimed at getting more children into computer programming. The Code with Pope initiative, championed by Cosmose AI founder Miron Mironiuk, aims to bridge "the glaring disparities in education" across the globe by providing access to Python coding education through the free online learning platform Codeforia for students aged 11-15 across Europe, Africa and Latin America. Mironiuk will meet the Pope at the Vatican, but he admits he's not anticipating the pontiff to emulate his students in acquiring new skills. "I don't expect him to know Python very well," he said. This is not the first time the Pope has encouraged young people to get into coding, having helped write a line of code together with tech-backed nonprofit Code.org in 2019. Pope Francis has also blessed AI's potential for good, me...

NASA's First Two-Way End-to-End Laser Communications System Published on October 26, 2023 at 01:30AM NASA is demonstrating laser communications on multiple missions -- showcasing the benefits infrared light can have for science and exploration missions transmitting terabytes of important data. NASA: The International Space Station is getting a "flashy" technology demonstration this November. The ILLUMA-T (Integrated Laser Communications Relay Demonstration Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal) payload is launching to the International Space Station to demonstrate how missions in low Earth orbit can benefit from laser communications. Laser communications uses invisible infrared light to send and receive information at higher data rates, providing spacecraft with the capability to send more data back to Earth in a single transmission and expediting discoveries for researchers. Managed by NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, ILLUMA-T ...