Cloudflare Dashboard and APIs Down After Data Center Power Outage
An ongoing Cloudflare outage has taken down many of its products, including the company’s dashboard and related application programming interfaces (APIs) customers use to manage and read service configurations. From a report: The complete list of services whose functionality is wholly or partially impacted includes the Cloudflare dashboard, the C … ⌘ Read more

People Are Speaking With ChatGPT For Hours, Bringing 2013’s ‘Her’ Closer To Reality
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In 2013, Spike Jonze’s Her imagined a world where humans form deep emotional connections with AI, challenging perceptions of love and loneliness. Ten years later, thanks to ChatGPT’s recently added voice features, people are playing out a small slice … ⌘ Read more

Caltech Ends Its Wi-Fi Lawsuit Against Apple and Broadcom
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Verge:

Caltech has had some ups (winning $1.1 billion) and some downs (losing the $1.1 billion award and being ordered to a trial on damages) since suing Apple and Broadcom in 2016 over Wi-Fi patents. Reuters reported this week that Caltech is dropping its yearslong lawsuit against Apple and Broadcom, about two … ⌘ Read more

FBI Abused Spy Law 280,000 Times In a Year
The FBI misused surveillance powers granted by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) over 278,000 times between 2020 and early 2021 to conduct warrantless searches on George Floyd protesters, January 6 Capitol rioters, and donors to a congressional campaign, according to a newly unclassified court opinion. The Register reports: On Friday, the US Foreign Intelligenc … ⌘ Read more

Discord Discloses Data Breach After Support Agent Got Hacked
Discord has informed users of a data breach that occurred after a third-party support agent’s account was compromised, exposing user email addresses, messages exchanged with Discord support, and any attachments sent as part of the tickets. Discord immediately disabled the account and worked with the customer service partner to prevent similar incidents in … ⌘ Read more

Metaverse Could Contribute Up To 2.4% of US GDP By 2035, Study Shows
A study commissioned by Meta has found that the metaverse could contribute around 2.4% to U.S. annual GDP by 2035, equating to as much as $760 billion. Reuters reports: The concept of the metaverse includes augmented and virtual reality technologies that allow users to immerse themselves in a virtual world or overlay information digitally on … ⌘ Read more

China Invites Venezuela To Join Moon Base Project
China has invited Venezuela to join its lunar research station project as the country works to gain partners for the endeavor. SpaceNews reports: Venezuela would be the first country to join China and Russia in the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), which is planned to be constructed in the early 2030s using super heavy-lift launch vehicles. The launches will fol … ⌘ Read more

Cryptocurrencies Add Nothing Useful To Society, Says Nvidia
The US chip-maker Nvidia has said cryptocurrencies do not “bring anything useful for society” despite the company’s powerful processors selling in huge quantities to the sector. From a report: Michael Kagan, its chief technology officer, said other uses of processing power such as the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT were more worthwhile than mining crypto … ⌘ Read more

Germany Urges Loophole for EU Ban on Fossil-Fuel Cars: Synthetic Carbon-Captured Fuels
CNN reports:
When EU lawmakers voted to ban the sale of new combustion engine cars in the bloc by 2035, it was a landmark victory for climate. In February, the European Parliament approved the law. All that was needed was a rubber stamp from the bloc’s political leaders.

Then Germany changed its mind.
… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Is Testing a Built-In Cryptocurrency Wallet For the Edge Browser
Microsoft appears to be testing a built-in cryptocurrency wallet for Edge, according to screenshots pulled from a beta build of the browser. Ars Technica reports: The feature, which the screenshots say is strictly for internal testing, was unearthed by Twitter user @thebookisclosed, who has a history of digging up present-but-disab … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Tax Structure Like Something Out of a Bond Movie, EU Says
Amazon’s efforts to minimize its taxes in the European Union were given a code-name evocative of a spy thriller with British agent 007, according to an EU lawyer, who claimed the arrangements broke the bloc’s state-aid rules. From a report: “Project Goldcrest – it sounds like the title of a James Bond movie, but it is not,” it’s the name “Amazon gave … ⌘ Read more

Meta To End News Access For Canadians if Online News Act Becomes Law
Facebook-parent Meta Platforms said on Saturday that it would end availability of news content for Canadians on its platforms if the country’s Online News Act passes in its current form. From a report: The “Online News Act,” or House of Commons bill C-18, introduced in April last year laid out rules to force platforms like Meta and Alphab … ⌘ Read more

Meta is Building a Decentralized, Text-Based Social Network
Twitter’s decline is paving the way for other platforms to build next-generation replacements. And now the biggest player in the game is getting involved: Meta is in the early stages of building a dedicated app for people to post text-based updates. From a report: “We’re exploring a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text updates,” the compa … ⌘ Read more

FBI Chief Says TikTok ‘Screams’ of US National Security Concerns
China’s government could use TikTok to control data on millions of American users, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a U.S. Senate hearing on Wednesday, saying the Chinese-owned video app “screams” of security concerns. Reuters reports: Wray told a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats to U.S. security that the Chinese governme … ⌘ Read more

Google Expands VPN Access To All Google One Members, Rolls Out New ‘Dark Web Report’ Feature
Google is expanding VPN access to all Google One members on all plans and rolling out a new dark web report feature for all subscribers. From a report: VPN by Google One was previously only available to members on the Premium 2TB plan, but will now be available to all Google One members, includi … ⌘ Read more

Linux Desktop Powers Consider Uniting For an App Store
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Now, leaders from the GNOME Foundation and KDE Foundation, along with Debian Linux, are considering […] building an app store on top of Flatpak, a universal Linux software deployment and package management program. This idea of replacing traditional but not very friendly ways of delivering Linux desktop apps, such a … ⌘ Read more

Nearly 40% of Software Engineers Will Only Work Remotely
dcblogs writes: Despite the demand of employers like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, AT&T and others, nearly 40% of software engineers preferred only remote roles, and if their employers mandated a return to the office, 21% indicated they would quit immediately, while another 49% said they would start looking for another job, according to Hired’s 2023 State of Software En … ⌘ Read more

You Can Watch Pluto TV in VLC, and the MPA Considers This Piracy
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) issued a DMCA notice to a GitHub repo that contained a playlist that let viewers watch Pluto TVs streams on their own apps, such as VLC, MPV, and Tvheadend. From a report: The move was first noticed by TorrentFreak, and GitHub has complied and removed the repo, which ultimately does nothing. If you still have a … ⌘ Read more

Visa, Mastercard Pause Crypto Push in Wake of Industry Meltdown
U.S. payment giants Visa and Mastercard are slamming the brakes on plans to forge new partnerships with crypto firms after a string of high-profile collapses shook faith in the industry, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Both Visa and Mastercard have decided to push back the launch of certain products and s … ⌘ Read more

5th Person Confirmed To Be Cured of HIV
Researchers are announcing that a 53-year-old man in Germany has been cured of HIV. From a report: Referred to as “the Dusseldorf patient” to protect his privacy, researchers said he is the fifth confirmed case of an HIV cure. Although the details of his successful treatment were first announced at a conference in 2019, researchers could not confirm he had been officially cured at that time. … ⌘ Read more

No, a Piece of the Sun Didn’t Just ‘Break Off’
The CBC reports:

You may have seen stories over the past week or so with headlines like, “Part of the sun breaks free and forms a strange vortex, baffling scientists,” or “Unbelievable moment a piece of the sun BREAKS OFF baffles scientists” or even “NASA captures piece of sun breaking off, baffles scientists.” It all started with a harmless, informative tweet. Tamitha Skov, a spac … ⌘ Read more

Australians Able To Opt Out of Targeted Ads, Erase Their Data Under Proposed Privacy Reforms
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Australians would gain greater control of their personal information, including the ability to opt out of targeted ads, erase their data and sue for serious breaches of privacy, under a proposal to the Albanese government. On Thursday the … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s Bing is an Emotionally Manipulative Liar, and People Love It
Microsoft’s Bing chatbot is being rolled out to the masses and people are discovering that “Bing’s AI personality is not as poised or polished as you might expect,” reports The Verge. In conversations with the chatbot shared on Reddit and Twitter, Bing can be seen insulting users, lying to them, sulking, gaslighting and emotionally manip … ⌘ Read more

A Developer is Reimplementing GNU’s Core Utilities in Rust
A Rust-based re-implementation of GNU core utilities like cp and mv is “reaching closer to parity with the widely-used GNU upstream and becoming capable of taking on more real-world uses,” reports Phoronix:

Debian developer Sylvestre Ledru [also an engineering director at Mozilla] began working on uutils during the COVID-19 pandemic and presented last week … ⌘ Read more

GitHub and EFF Back YouTube Ripper In Legal Battle With the RIAA
GitHub and digital rights group EFF have filed briefs supporting stream-ripping site Yout.com in its legal battle with the RIAA. GitHub warns that the lower court’s decision threatens to criminalize the work of many other developers. The EFF, meanwhile, stresses that an incorrect interpretation of the DMCA harms people who use stream-rippers lawfu … ⌘ Read more

Zoom To Lay Off 1,300 Employees, Or About 15% of Its Workforce
Zoom on Tuesday announced plans to cut about 1,300 workers, or 15% of its workforce, according to a blog post on the company’s website. CNBC reports: CEO Eric Yuan wrote in the blog post that as the world continues to adjust to life after the Covid pandemic, the company needs to adapt to the “uncertainty of the global economy” as well as “its effect on our c … ⌘ Read more

Carbonyl: a New Graphical Web Browser in Your Linux Terminal
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Someone made a Chromium fork… for your terminal. The terminal-based browser Carbonyl “adheres to, and is compatible with modern standards,” writes MUO, “meaning that pages behave as they should, and you can even watch streaming video, within the Linux terminal!”

But best of all, “Pages connect and render i … ⌘ Read more

Bing Users Claim a ChatGPT-assisted Bing Temporarily Appeared Friday
Several Bing users say a ChatGPT-assisted version of Bing “mysteriously appeared (and disappeared) earlier today,” the Verge reported Friday:

Student and designer Owen Yin reported seeing the “new Bing” on Twitter this morning. He told The Verge via Twitter DM that he has Bing set as his homepage on Microsoft’s Edge browser and the new UI jus … ⌘ Read more

AI Models Spit Out Photos of Real People and Copyrighted Images
MIT’s Technology Review reports:

Popular image generation models can be prompted to produce identifiable photos of real people, potentially threatening their privacy, according to new research. The work also shows that these AI systems can be made to regurgitate exact copies of medical images and copyrighted work by artists. It’s a finding that could s … ⌘ Read more

AI Models Spit Out Photos of Real People and Copyrighted Images
MIT’s Technology Review reports:

Popular image generation models can be prompted to produce identifiable photos of real people, potentially threatening their privacy, according to new research. The work also shows that these AI systems can be made to regurgitate exact copies of medical images and copyrighted work by artists. It’s a finding that could s … ⌘ Read more

Netflix Says Strict New Password Sharing Rules Were Posted in Error
New Netflix rules that would have enforced a limitation on users’ sharing passwords are reportedly a mistake and don’t apply in the US – for now. From a report: Netflix has long been planning to cut down on password sharing, or letting friends share one paid account. The company appeared to go further, however, with the inclusion in its help … ⌘ Read more

Decentralized Social Media Project Nostr’s Damus Gets Listed On Apple App Store
Nostr, a startup decentralized social network, got its Twitter-like Damus application listed on Apple’s App Store. CoinDesk reports: Nostr is an open protocol that aims to create a censorship-resistant global social network. Media commentators have described it as a possible alternative to Elon Musk’s Twitter. Accordi … ⌘ Read more

‘Nothing, Forever’ Is an Endless ‘Seinfeld’ Episode Generated By AI
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Four pixelated cartoon characters talk to each other about coffee, Amazon deliveries, and veganism as they stand apart in a decorated NYC apartment. There is one woman and three men who seem to be the animated versions of Seinfeld’s main characters, Elaine, Jerry, George, and Kramer. … ⌘ Read more

UK Scientists Discover Method To Reduce Steelmaking’s CO2 Emissions By 90%
Researchers from the University of Birmingham have developed an innovative method for existing furnaces that could reduce steelmaking’s CO2 emission by nearly 90%. The Next Web reports: The iron and steel industry is a major cause of greenhouse gasses, accounting for 9% of global emissions. That’s because of the inherent carbon- … ⌘ Read more

US and EU To Launch First-Of-Its-Kind AI Agreement
The United States and European Union on Friday announced an agreement to speed up and enhance the use of artificial intelligence to improve agriculture, healthcare, emergency response, climate forecasting and the electric grid. Reuters reports: A senior U.S. administration official, discussing the initiative shortly before the official announcement, called it the first swee … ⌘ Read more

A Robot Was Scheduled To Argue In Court, Then Came the Jail Threats
schwit1 shares a report from NPR: A British man who planned to have a “robot lawyer” help a defendant fight a traffic ticket has dropped the effort after receiving threats of possible prosecution and jail time. […] The first-ever AI-powered legal defense was set to take place in California on Feb. 22, but not anymore. As word got out, an un … ⌘ Read more

Even Reality TV Hosts Are Being Replaced By Robots
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard, written by Katie Way: MILF Manor is a reality TV show made to be dissected on the internet. Everything, from its ripped-from-30-Rock title to the Oedipal set-up of mothers and their sons thrown into the same “dating pool,” is so patently outrageous that it boomerangs back into normalcy – of course these mothers need … ⌘ Read more

Human Waste Safe for Growing Vegetables, Researchers Say
As farmers in Europe and across the world grapple with increases in the cost of fertilizers, researchers suggest a solution may be closer to home in what people flush down the toilet. From a report: A peer-reviewed paper by scientists in Europe published Monday in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science found that fertilizer made from human feces and ur … ⌘ Read more

Basecamp Details ‘Obscene’ $3.2 Million Bill That Prompted It To Quit the Cloud
An anonymous reader shares a report: David Heinemeier Hansson, CTO of 37Signals – which operates project management platform Basecamp and other products – has detailed the colossal cloud bills that saw the outfit quit the cloud in October 2022. The CTO and creator of Ruby On Rails did all the sums and came up with an e … ⌘ Read more

Replika Users Say the AI Chatbot Has Gotten Way Too Horny
samleecole shares a report from Motherboard: Replika began as an “AI companion who cares.” First launched five years ago, the chatbot app was originally meant to function like a conversational mirror: the more users talked to it, in theory, the more it would learn how to talk back. It uses its own GPT-3 model – the viral AI language generator by OpenAI – and scri … ⌘ Read more

Native Americans Ask Apache Foundation To Change Name
Natives in Tech, a US-based non-profit organization, has called upon the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) to change its name, out of respect for indigenous American peoples and to live up to its own code of conduct. The Register reports: In a blog post, Natives in Tech members Adam Recvlohe, Holly Grimm, and Desiree Kane have accused the ASF of appropriating Indigen … ⌘ Read more

Roomba Testers Feel Misled After Intimate Images Ended Up on Facebook
An investigation recently revealed how images of a minor and a tester on the toilet ended up on social media. iRobot said it had consent to collect this kind of data from inside homes – but participants say otherwise. From a report: When Greg unboxed a new Roomba robot vacuum cleaner in December 2019, he thought he knew what he was gett … ⌘ Read more

BMW Doubles Up On Paid Subscriptions In the US, Charges $105 A Year For Remote Engine Start
An anonymous reader shares a report: BMW is expanding the number of feature subscriptions it is offering in the United States. The marque has revealed that five vehicle features are now available through its subscription service, consisting of Remote Engine Start, Drive Recorder, Traffic Camera, … ⌘ Read more

Artists Worry Adobe Could Track Their Design Processes to Train AI
“A recent viral moment highlights just how nervous the artist community is about artificial intelligence,” reports Fast Company:
It started earlier this week, when French comic book author Claire Wendling posted a screenshot of a curious passage in Adobe’s privacy and personal data settings to Instagram. It was quickly reposted on Twitter by anoth … ⌘ Read more

Cryonics Company Charges a Monthly Subscription Fee (Plus Your Life Insurance Payout)
“To date, about 500 people have been put in cryogenic stasis after legal death,” writes a Bloomberg Opinion technology columnist, “with the majority of them in the U.S.

“But a few thousand more, including Emil Kendziorra, are on waiting lists, wearing bracelets or necklaces with instructions for emergenc … ⌘ Read more

France Fines Apple for Illegally Harvesting iPhone Owners’ Data for Ads
“France’s data protection authority, CNIL, fined Apple €8 million (about $8.5 million) Wednesday,” reports Gizmodo, “for illegally harvesting iPhone owners’ data for targeted ads without proper consent.”

It’s an unusual sanction for the iPhone maker, which has faced fewer legal penalties over privacy than its Big Tech competitors. … ⌘ Read more

Apple Books Quietly Launches AI-Narrated Audiobooks
Audiobooks narrated by a text-to-speech AI are now available via Apple’s Books service, in a move with potentially huge implications for the multi-billion dollar audiobook industry. From a report: Apple describes the new “digital narration” feature on its website as making “the creation of audiobooks more accessible to all,” by reducing “the cost and complexity” of produ … ⌘ Read more

Twitter Rival Mastodon Rejects Funding To Preserve Nonprofit Status
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Twitter rivalMastodon has rejected more than five investment offers from Silicon Valley venture capital firms in recent months, as its founder pledged to protect the fast-growing social media platform’s non-profit status. Mastodon, an open-source microblogging site founded in 2016 by Ge … ⌘ Read more