Jack Dorsey Departs Bluesky
Jack Dorsey is no longer on the board of Bluesky, the Twitter alternative he helped start. The announcement comes shortly after Dorsey unfollowed all but three accounts on X and referred to Elon Musk’s platform as “freedom technology.” The Verge reports: In two posts today, Bluesky thanked Dorsey while confirming his departure and adding that it’s searching for a new board member “who shares our commitment to building a … ⌘ Read more

Ex-White House Cyber Policy Director: Microsoft is a National Security Risk
This week the Register spoke to former senior White House cyber policy director A.J. Grotto — who complained it was hard to get even slight concessions from Microsoft:
“If you go back to the SolarWinds episode from a few years ago … [Microsoft] was essentially up-selling logging capability to federal agencies” instead of ma … ⌘ Read more

Could a New Charge Double the Service-life of Li-Ion Batteries?
“An improved charging protocol might help lithium-ion batteries to last much longer,” writes Science Daily:

The best commercial lithium-ion batteries…have a service life of up to eight years. Batteries are usually charged with a constant current flow. But is this really the most favorable method? A new study by Prof. Philipp Adelhelm’s group a … ⌘ Read more

Data Collected by the US Justice Department Exposed in Consultant’s Breach
DOJ-Collected Information Exposed In Data Breach Affecting 340,000
Information Collected

An anonymous reader shared this report from Security Week:

Economic analysis and litigation support firm Greylock McKinnon Associates, Inc. (GMA) is notifying over 340,000 individuals that their personal and medical information was compro … ⌘ Read more

Will America’s Next Soldiers Be Machines?
Foreign Policy magazine visits a U.S. military training exercise that pitted Lt. Isaac McCurdy and his platoon of infantry troops against machines with camera lenses for eyes and sheet metal for skin:

Driving on eight screeching wheels and carrying enough firepower on their truck beds to fill a small arms depot, a handful of U.S. Army robots stormed through the battlefield of the fictional ci … ⌘ Read more

New Spectre V2 Attack Impacts Linux Systems On Intel CPUs
An anonymous reader shared this report from BleepingComputer:

Researchers have demonstrated the “first native Spectre v2 exploit” for a new speculative execution side-channel flaw that impacts Linux systems running on many modern Intel processors. Spectre V2 is a new variant of the original Spectre attack discovered by a team of researchers at the VUSec grou … ⌘ Read more

US Government Says Recent Microsoft Breach Exposed Federal Agencies to Hacking
From the Washington Post:

The U.S. government said Thursday that Russian government hackers who recently stole Microsoft corporate emails had obtained passwords and other secret material that might allow them to breach multiple U.S. agencies.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of the Departme … ⌘ Read more

‘Defeated’ CEO’s Finally Concede Hybrid Working Is Here to Stay
“After a year of cracking down with rigid return-to-office mandates, defeated CEOs are now finally accepting that hybrid working is here to stay,” reports Fortune:

KPMG surveyed U.S. CEOs of companies turning over at least $500 million and found that just one-third expect a full return to the office in the next three years.

So it’s official: Leaders wh … ⌘ Read more

73-Year-Old Clifford Stoll Is Now Selling Klein Bottles
O’Reilly’s “Tech Trends” newsletter included an interesting item this month:

Want your own Klein Bottle? Made by Cliff Stoll, author of the cybersecurity classic The Cuckoo’s Egg, who will autograph your bottle for you (and may include other surprises).

First described in 1882 by the mathematician Felix Klein, a Klein bottle (like a Mobius strip) has a one-side … ⌘ Read more

Google Finally Launches Android’s ‘Find My Device’ Network
This week the new “Find My Device” feature rolled out to Android devices around the world, starting in the U.S. and Canada.

“With a new, crowdsourced network of over a billion Android devices, Find My Device can help you find your misplaced Android devices and everyday items quickly and securely,” according to a Google blog post.
ZDNet explains:

Although Goog … ⌘ Read more

Cloud Brightening Research Begins in California
Aboard the deck of a World War II-era aircraft carrier, University of Washington scientists flicked the switch on a glorified snow-making machine,” reports the Seattle Times. They describe the scientists “blasting a plume of saline spray off the coast of Alameda, California… trying to perfect a shot of salty particles that would make clouds better at reflecting sunlight back tow … ⌘ Read more

The Linux Foundation’s ‘OpenTofu’ Project Denies HashiCorp’s Allegations of Code Theft
The Linux Foundation-backed project OpenTofu “has gotten legal pushback from HashiCorp,” according to a report — just seven months after forking OpenTofu’s code from HashiCorp’s IT deployment software Terraform:

On April 3, HashiCorp issued a strongly-worded Cease and Desist letter to OpenTofu, accusing th … ⌘ Read more

Should the US Ban Chinese EVs?
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Influential US Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has called on U.S. President Joe Biden to ban electric vehicles from Chinese brands. Brown calls Chinese EVs “an existential threat” to the U.S. automotive industry and says that allowing imports of cheap EVs from Chinese brands “is inconsistent with a pro-worker industrial policy.” Brown’s letter to the president ( … ⌘ Read more

Japanese Astronauts To Land On Moon As Part of New NASA Partnership
Under a new agreement between the U.S. and Japan, the first non-American on the Moon as part of the Artemis lunar exploration campaign will be a Japanese astronaut. SpaceNews reports: At an event in Washington, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Masahito Moriy … ⌘ Read more

ESA Prepares To Create Solar Eclipses To Study the Sun
Andrew Jones reports via IEEE Spectrum: The European Space Agency will launch a mission late this year to demonstrate precision formation flying in orbit to create artificial solar eclipses. In a press conference last week, the agency announced details of the mission and the technology the orbiters will use to pull off its exquisitely-choreographed maneuvers. ESA … ⌘ Read more

House Votes To Extend – and Expand – a Major US Spy Program
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A controversial US wiretap program days from expiration cleared a major hurdle on its way to being reauthorized. After months of delays, false starts, and interventions by lawmakers working to preserve and expand the US intelligence community’s spy powers, the House of Representatives voted on Friday to e … ⌘ Read more

Calpine’s California Battery Plant Is Among World’s Largest
Calpine’s billion-dolllar Nova Power Bank near Los Angeles will be among the largest in the world when it comes online later this year. According to Reuters, the plant is built on the site of a failed gas-fired power plant and “will be able to power about 680,000 homes for up to four hours when charged.” From the report: The 680-megawatt lithium-ion batt … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Discover First Nitrogen-Fixing Organelle
In two recent papers, an international team of scientists describes the first known nitrogen-fixing organelle within a eukaryotic cell, which the researchers are calling a nitroplast. Phys.Org reports: The discovery of the organelle involved a bit of luck and decades of work. In 1998, Jonathan Zehr, a UC Santa Cruz distinguished professor of marine sciences, found a sh … ⌘ Read more

96% of US Hospital Websites Share Visitor Info With Meta, Google, Data Brokers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Hospitals – despite being places where people implicitly expect to have their personal details kept private – frequently use tracking technologies on their websites to share user information with Google, Meta, data brokers, and other third parties, according to resea … ⌘ Read more

Adobe Firefly Used Thousands of Midjourney Images In Training Its ‘Ethical AI’ Model
According to Bloomberg, Adobe used images from its competitor Midjourney to train its own artificial intelligence image generator, Firefly – contradicting the “commercially safe” ethical standards the company promotes. Tom’s Guide reports: The startup has never declared the source of its training data but many su … ⌘ Read more

Huawei Building Vast Chip Equipment R&D Center In Shanghai
AmiMoJo writes: Huawei Technologies is building a massive semiconductor equipment research and development center in Shanghai as the Chinese tech titan continues to beef up its chip supply chain to counter a U.S. crackdown. The centre’s mission includes building lithography machines, vital equipment for producing cutting-edge chips. To staff the new c … ⌘ Read more

Google Threatens To Cut Off News After California Proposes Paying Media Outlets
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google says it will start removing links to California news websites in a “short term test for a small percentage of California users.” The move is in response to the pending California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), which would require Google to pay a fee for … ⌘ Read more

China Tells Telecom Carriers To Phase Out Foreign Chips in Blow To Intel, AMD
China’s push to replace foreign technology is now focused on cutting American chip makers out of the country’s telecoms systems. From a report: Officials earlier this year directed the nation’s largest telecom carriers to phase out foreign processors that are core to their networks by 2027, a move that would hit American … ⌘ Read more

Intel Axes 13th Gen Core i5, i7, i9 K-series CPUs
Tom’s Hardware: Intel is discontinuing its boxed overclockable Core i5, i7, and i9 Raptor Lake CPUs. Every K-series chip in the lineup will be discontinued on May 24th, 2024, after which vendors will no longer be able to purchase them. Intel’s product change document states that the last product discontinuance order date and non-cancelable/non-returnable cut-off points will … ⌘ Read more

Your Anonymous OpenTable Reviews Will Soon Display Your First Name
OpenTable’s restaurant pages still feature a lot of reviews left by anonymous diners at the moment, but that will not be the case starting next month. From a report: The online restaurant reservation service is changing its policy around reviews so that they’re not as anonymous – and it’s even applying the new rule retroactively. As BleepingCo … ⌘ Read more

Adobe Is Buying Videos for $3 Per Minute To Build AI Model
Adobe has begun to procure videos to build its AI text-to-video generator, trying to catch up to competitors after OpenAI demonstrated a similar technology. From a report: The software company is offering its network of photographers and artists $120 to submit videos of people engaged in everyday actions such as walking or expressing emotions including joy and ang … ⌘ Read more

Many AI Products Still Rely on Humans To Fill the Performance Gaps
An anonymous reader shares a report: Recent headlines have made clear: If AI is doing an impressively good job at a human task, there’s a good chance that the task is actually being done by a human. When George Carlin’s estate sued the creators of a podcast who said they used AI to create a standup routine in the late comedian’s style, the podcaste … ⌘ Read more

Apple Loses Bid To Throw Out UK Lawsuit Over App Store Fees
Apple on Friday lost a bid to throw out a mass lawsuit valued at just under $1 billion, brought in London on behalf of more than 1,500 app developers over its App Store fees. Reuters: The case, worth up to 785 million pounds ($979 million) and one of several faced by the U.S. tech giant in the United Kingdom, alleges Apple charged third-party developers u … ⌘ Read more

Discord is Nuking Nintendo Switch Emulator Devs and Their Entire Servers
Discord has shut down the Discord servers for the Nintendo Switch emulators Suyu and Sudachi and has completely disabled their lead developers’ accounts. The Verge: Both Suyu and Sudachi began as forks of Yuzu, the emulator that Nintendo sued out of existence on March 4th. “Discord responds to and complies with all legal and valid Di … ⌘ Read more

Irish Power Crunch Could Be Prompting AWS To Ration Compute Resources
Datacenter power issues in Ireland may be coming to a head amid reports from customers that Amazon is restricting resources users can spin up in that nation, even directing them to other AWS regions across Europe instead. From a report: Energy consumed by datacenters is a growing concern, especially in places such as Ireland where there are … ⌘ Read more

Walmart Will Deploy Robotic Forklifts in Its Distribution Centers
An anonymous reader shares a report: The story of warehouse robotics is a story of attempting to keep up with Amazon. It’s been more than a decade since the online giant revolutionized its delivery services through its Kiva Systems acquisition. As Walmart works to remain competitive, it’s taking a more piecemeal approach to automation, throu … ⌘ Read more

Epic Games Proposes Google App Store Reforms After Antitrust Win
Epic Games, the maker of the popular “Fortnite” video game, has urged a U.S. judge to compel Google to open up its Play Store to more competition following a jury verdict that found the tech giant had abused its power over Android app distribution.

In a court filing on Thursday [PDF], Epic proposed requiring Google to allow the distribution of c … ⌘ Read more

We Never Agreed To Only Buy HP Ink, Say Printer Owners
HP “sought to take advantage of customers’ sunk costs,” printer owners claimed this week in a class action lawsuit against the hardware giant. The Register: Lawyers representing the aggrieved were responding in an Illinois court to an earlier HP motion to dismiss a January lawsuit. Among other things, the plaintiffs’ filing stated that the printer buyers “never e … ⌘ Read more

Canadian Legislators Accused of Using AI To Produce 20,000 Amendments
sinij shares a report: Members of Parliament in Canada are expected to vote for up to 15 hours in a row Thursday and Friday on more than 200 Conservative amendments to the government’s sustainable jobs bill. The amendments are what’s left of nearly 20,000 changes the Conservatives proposed to Bill C-50 last fall at a House of Commons comm … ⌘ Read more

Google Is Killing Its VPN Service
An anonymous reader shares a report: If you’re – apparently, one of the few people – using the VPN service that comes with Google One, we’ve got bad news for you. In an email you’re going to receive from Google if you haven’t gotten it yet, it revealed that it’s phasing out the perk sometime later this year. The company rolled out Google One’s VPN feature back in 2020, but you could only access it then if … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Makes ChatGPT ‘More Direct, Less Verbose’
Kyle Wiggers reports via TechCrunch: OpenAI announced today that premium ChatGPT users – customers paying for ChatGPT Plus, Team or Enterprise – can now leveraged an updated and enhanced version of GPT-4 Turbo, one of the models that powers the conversational ChatGPT experience. This new model (“gpt-4-turbo-2024-04-09”) brings with it improvements in writing, math, logical r … ⌘ Read more

Apple To Expand Presence In Florida With New Miami Office
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Mac: Following moves of other tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft, Apple is reportedly set to open a new office space in a Miami suburb. This won’t be the first corporate space for Apple in the city, but it will be larger than the existing office. Reported by Bloomberg, anonymous sources close to the matter say t … ⌘ Read more

New Advances Promise Secure Quantum Computing At Home
Scientists from Oxford University Physics have developed a breakthrough in cloud-based quantum computing that could allow it to be harnessed by millions of individuals and companies. The findings have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Phys.Org reports: In the new study, the researchers use an approach dubbed “blind quantum computing,” which connec … ⌘ Read more

China Moving At ‘Breathtaking Speed’ In Final Frontier, Space Force Says
China is rapidly advancing its space capabilities to challenge the United States’ dominance in space, as evidenced by its significant increase in on-orbit intelligence and reconnaissance satellites and the development of sophisticated counterspace weapons. Space.com reports: “Frankly, China is moving at a breathtaking speed. Since … ⌘ Read more

Why CISA Is Warning CISOs About a Breach At Sisense
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said today it is investigating a breach at business intelligence company Sisense, whose products are designed to allow companies to view the status of multiple third-party online services in a single dashboard. CISA urged all Sisense customers to reset … ⌘ Read more

Students Are Likely Writing Millions of Papers With AI
Amanda Hoover reports via Wired: Students have submitted more than 22 million papers that may have used generative AI in the past year, new data released by plagiarism detection company Turnitin shows. A year ago, Turnitin rolled out an AI writing detection tool that was trained on its trove of papers written by students as well as other AI-generated texts. Since th … ⌘ Read more

Harvard Reinstates Standardized Testing Requirement
Harvard College is reinstating the requirement for standardized testing, reversing course on a pandemic-era policy that made them optional. It follows similar moves from elite universities like Yale, Dartmouth, and MIT. Axios reports: At Harvard, the mandate will be in place for students applying to begin school in fall 2025. Harvard had previously committed to a test-opti … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Owes $525 Million In Cloud-Storage Patent Fight, US Jury Says
A federal jury in Illinois on Wednesday said Amazon Web Services owes tech company Kove $525 million for violating three patents relating to its data-storage technology. From the report: The jury determined (PDF) that AWS infringed three Kove patents covering technology that Kove said had become “essential” to the ability of Amazon’s cloud-c … ⌘ Read more

Hackable Intel and Lenovo Hardware That Went Undetected For 5 Years Won’t Ever Be Fixed
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hardware sold for years by the likes of Intel and Lenovo contains a remotely exploitable vulnerability that will never be fixed. The cause: a supply chain snafu involving an open source software package and hardware from multiple manufacturers that d … ⌘ Read more

Code.org Launches AI Teaching Assistant For Grades 6-10 In Stanford Partnership
theodp writes: From a Wednesday press release: “Code.org, in collaboration with The Piech Lab at Stanford University, launched today its AI Teaching Assistant, ushering in a new era of computer science instruction to support teachers in preparing students with the foundational skills necessary to work, live and thrive … ⌘ Read more

Humane AI Pin Review Roundup
The embargo has lifted for reviews of Humane’s AI Pin and the general consensus appears to be that this device isn’t ready to usher us into the all-but-inevitable AI future. Starting at $699 with a pricy $24-a-month subscription, the wearable device is designed to incorporate artificial intelligence into everyday scenarios, with the ability to make calls, translate languages, recommend nearby restaurants, and capture … ⌘ Read more

US Lawmaker Proposes a Public Database of All AI Training Material
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amid a flurry of lawsuits over AI models’ training data, US Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has introduced (PDF) a bill that would require AI companies to disclose exactly which copyrighted works are included in datasets training AI systems. The Generative AI Disclosure Act “would re … ⌘ Read more

America’s Chip Renaissance Needs Workers
An anonymous reader shares a report: Last week South Korea’s SK Hynix announced it would partner with Purdue University on a $3.9 billion semiconductor complex here, the largest single corporate investment in state history. Now comes the hard part. SK Hynix must not only build the fabrication plant, or fab, which will package high-bandwidth memory chips used in artificial intelligence, and a co … ⌘ Read more

Android 15’s first beta release is out
Android 15’s first public beta is available to download now, provided you have a Pixel phone. From a report: It’s the first consumer-facing release after two developer previews, and while we have a good idea of what to expect from Google’s next mobile OS version, we’ll certainly hear more at the company’s annual developer conference soon enough. The blog post highlighting updates in today’s release … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Begins Showing Full Screen Windows 11 Ad on Windows 10 PCs as End of Support Date Looms
Microsoft has started showing full screen warnings about the upcoming end of support date on Windows 10 PCs. From a report: Users on Reddit have reported seeing the prompt, which began appearing after this week’s Patch Tuesday updates were installed, and encourages the user to lear … ⌘ Read more