Britain’s anti-competition regulators have been tasked with investigating Microsoft and Amazon’s dominance of the cloud computing market. From a report: Media watchdog Ofcom on Thursday referred its inquiry for further investigation to the Competition and Markets Authority, kickstarting the process. Ofcom said that it had identified features which make it more difficult for U.K. businesses to switch cloud providers, or use multiple cloud services, and that it is “particularly concerned” about the position of market leaders Amazon and Microsoft. “Some UK businesses have told us they’re concerned about it being too difficult to switch or mix and match cloud provider, and it’s not clear that competition is working well,” Fergal Farragher, Ofcom’s director responsible for the market study, said in a statement Thursday.

“So, we’re referring the market to the CMA for further scrutiny, to make sure business customers continue to benefit from cloud services.” Ofcom is concerned that so-called “hyperscalers” like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are limiting competition in the cloud computing market. These are companies that allow businesses of all stripes to carry out critical computing tasks — like storage and management of data, delivery of content, analytics and intelligence — over the internet, rather than through servers stored on site, or “on premise.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Amazon and Microsoft’s Cloud Dominance Referred for UK Competition Probe

Apple held talks with DuckDuckGo to replace Alphabet’s Google as the default search engine for the private mode on Apple’s Safari browser, but ultimately rejected the idea. From a report: The details of those talks — and Apple’s discussions about buying Microsoft’s Bing search engine in 2018 and 2020 — were revealed late Wednesday in transcripts unsealed by the judge overseeing the US government’s antitrust trial against Google. US District Judge Amit Mehta ruled Wednesday that he would unseal the testimony of DuckDuckGo Chief Executive Officer Gabriel Weinberg and Apple executive John Giannandrea, both of whom testified in the Washington trial in closed sessions. Weinberg testified that DuckDuckGo had about 20 meetings and phone calls with Apple executives, including the head of Safari, in 2018 and 2019 about becoming the default search engine for private browsing mode. In private mode, Safari doesn’t track websites that a user visits or keep a history of what a person has accessed.

“We were talking about it, I thought they would launch it,” Weinberg said, noting that Apple had integrated several of DuckDuckGo’s other privacy technologies into Safari. “Multiple times we’ve gotten integrations all the way through the finish line. Really, almost everything we’ve pitched except for search.” But Giannandrea, who joined Apple as the head of search in 2018, said that to his knowledge Apple hadn’t considered switching to DuckDuckGo. In a February 2019 email to other Apple executives, Giannandrea said it was “probably a bad idea” to switch to DuckDuckGo for private browsing in Safari. “The motivating factor for setting DuckDuckGo as the default for private browsing was an assumption” that it would be more private, Giannandrea testified. Because DuckDuckGo relies on Bing for its search information, it also likely provides Microsoft some user information, he said, which led him to believe that DuckDuckGo’s “marketing about privacy is somewhat incongruent with the details.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Apple Considered, Rejected Switch To DuckDuckGo From Google

“Every year the Grace Hopper Celebration, a conference and career fair aimed at non-males, brings women in the tech industry together,” writes long-time Slashdot reader piojo. “This year, a large number of men showed up. The women were not pleased.” Wired reports: AnitaB.org, the nonprofit that runs the conference, said there was “an increase in participation of self-identifying males” at this year’s event. The nonprofit says it believes allyship from men is important and noted it cannot ban men from attending due to federal nondiscrimination protections in the US. Organizers expressed frustration. Past iterations of the conference have “always felt safe and loving and embracing,” said Bo Young Lee, president of advisory at AnitaB.org, in a LinkedIn post. “And this year, I must admit, I didn’t feel this way.”

Cullen White, AnitaB.org’s chief impact officer, said in a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, that some registrants had lied about their gender identity when signing up, and men were now taking up space and time with recruiters that should go to women. “All of those are limited resources to which you have no right,” White said. […] During the conference, videos posted to TikTok showed a sea of men waiting in line to enter the conference or speak with recruiters in the expo hall. Men and women are seen running into the expo as a staffer yells for them to slow down. Avni Barman, the founder of female-talent focused media platform Gen She, says she immediately noticed “tons” more men and a more chaotic scene this time compared to previous years. According to Layoffs.fyi, tech companies around the world laid off more than 400,000 workers in 2022 and 2023. “As job cuts bite, all prospective tech workers have become more desperate for opportunities,” reports Wired.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Men Overran a Job Fair For Women In Tech

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Thirteen US states are now implementing underground thermal energy networks to reduce buildings’ carbon emissions as part of a nationwide push to adopt cleaner energy sources. Thermal energy networks use pipe loops that connect multiple buildings and provide heating and cooling through water-source heat pumps. Geothermal heat is commonly used in these networks, but it is also possible to bring in waste heat from other buildings through the sewer system. When installed, these networks can provide efficient, fossil fuel-free heating and cooling to commercial and residential buildings. Thanks to legislative backing and widespread support from utility companies and labor unions they’re likely to become an increasingly significant part of the future energy mix in the US.

“Heat is the largest source of waste energy and it’s an untapped resource,” says Zeyneb Magavi, co-executive director at clean energy nonprofit HEET (Home Energy Efficiency Team). “Once we have a thermal energy network, we can tap into that resource by moving it to where we need it.” While the projects are still at the planning and regulatory stage in most of the 13 states, construction is already underway in some. […] The advantages of thermal energy networks extend beyond reducing carbon emissions. Scaling them up from a few buildings to a community or utility level can also help make the grid more resilient and efficient. Magavi says every time a “loop” of thermal energy network is added to the grid, its ability to predict and manage power flow becomes more accurate. This interconnectedness helps the system become more resilient in high-stress situations.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Underground Thermal Energy Networks Are Becoming Crucial To the US’s Energy Future

Becky Ferreira writes via the New York Times: Last November, a satellite in low-Earth orbit unfurled into an expansive array that extends across nearly 700 square feet, about the size of a studio apartment. The satellite, BlueWalker 3, has since become one of the brightest objects in the sky, outshining some of the most radiant stars in the Milky Way, according to a study published on Monday in Nature — and it is just the first of dozens of similar satellites that are in development by AST SpaceMobile, a company that aims to keep smartphones connected from orbit. “The issue is not necessarily that one satellite,” said Siegfried Eggl, an astrophysicist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and an author of the new study, “but that it is a predecessor or prototype of a constellation, so there’s going to be a lot of those out there eventually.”

Initially launched in September 2022, BlueWalker 3 is the forerunner of AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird satellites, which aim to serve as a network of orbital cell towers with the goal “to democratize access to knowledge and information regardless of where people live and work,” a spokesperson for AST SpaceMobile said. Last month, BlueWalker 3 successfully relayed its first 5G connection to a smartphone in a cellular coverage gap on Earth. AST SpaceMobile is one of many companies racing to capture the surging demand for global broadband connectivity. “At the moment, there are 18 constellations that we know are planned all over the world,” Dr. Eggl said. “The total number of satellites is a stunning half a million that people are planning to put up there. This is 100 times more than we already have.”

AST SpaceMobile made BlueWalker 3’s array so large in order to beam strong cellular coverage directly to phones on Earth. The satellite is made of many small antennas that can connect existing smartphones, which is an approach that distinguishes the company from Starlink and other planned constellations that currently rely on ground antennas or dishes. […] AST SpaceMobile said that it was working with astronomers on techniques to reduce disruptions. It also contrasted the number in its constellation with the tens of thousands planned by other companies. The spokesperson said it could “provide substantial global coverage with around 90 satellites.” Though BlueBird satellites would be far fewer in number, they are at least 64 times as big and bright as a Starlink satellite. The SpaceX orbiters are also brightest in the days after their deployment, but they become much fainter once they settle into their target orbits. Astronomers expect that the BlueBird satellites will remain bright in the sky throughout most of their lifetime. As a consequence, one of these satellites could interfere with data captured by astronomical observatories.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – A New Satellite Outshines Some of the Brightest Stars in the Sky

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom’s Hardware: Resin printer company Peopoly created quite a buzz with the unveiling of a prototype beltless FDM 3D printer, the Magneto X, at the East Coast RepRap Festival. The new printer is a desk top machine with a huge 400 x 300 x 300 mm build volume and print speeds up to 800mm/s. It borrows a design feature seen on CNC machines: magnetic linear motors. Normally, 3D printers move their components with rotating stepper motors attached to gears and pulleys. The linear motor can be thought of as a flat, unrolled motor with the “rotor” attached to the moving component — the tool head — and the stator forming a track along one axis. Dubbed the “MagXY” system, the tool head seems to levitate across the gantry without obvious means. It has a top print speed of 800 mm/s with a max acceleration of 22,000 mm/s, which would make it faster than modern Core XY printers from Bambu Lab.

Peopoly is using and supporting both Klipper firmware and OrcaSlicer, which founder Mark Peng said greatly helped speed up their development time. […] Peopoly is leaning hard into the Open Source community. Not only have they become backers of Klipper firmware, they are also using — and supporting — Open Source OcraSlicer. The Magneto X’s nozzles are compatible with the popular E3D’s V6 volcano which suggests the machine will be open to modification by users. Peopoly also states its machine can be used without joining a cloud-based system and promises customer data will not be collected.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – 3D Printer Uses Magnets To Break Speed Limits

Kiley Price writes via Inside Climate News: In a new initiative announced on Tuesday, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is working with the nonprofit Revive & Restore and other partners to create a “genetic library” of the country’s endangered species — before it’s too late. Through a process called biobanking, FWS field staff are gathering biological samples such as blood, tissues and reproductive cells from animals to be cryogenically preserved at extremely low temperatures (at least -256 degrees Fahrenheit) and stored at a USDA facility in Colorado. The samples will also be genetically sequenced and this information will be uploaded to a publicly available database called GenBank, where researchers can study them and compare their genomes to other members of their species.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – USFWS Is Creating a Frozen Library of Biodiversity To Help Endangered Species

Long-time Slashdot reader RockDoctor writes: Regardless of their other potential benefits, modern cars, and modern electric cars in particular, involve complex networks of computer code, hardware, and servo systems cooperating (?) to deliver services to the user, like acceleration, steering and braking. Slashdot nerderati know better than most that such complex networks can never show unexpected, non-designed behavior, due to the infallibility of hardware, program coders and system designers… Yeah. Right. “I’ll have some of what he’s been smoking!” That’s Musk-grade optimism.

On Sunday evening, a middle-aged driver in a “brand new” vehicle found it would not decelerate below 30mph (50kmph). He retained steering control, and avoided crashing until police vehicles “boxed in” his vehicle and helped him exit into a police van (most have sliding side doors) from the moving vehicle. The police then “carried out a controlled halt” on the unmanned vehicle, stopping it from driving away with the van’s brakes until a roadside assistance technician arrived 3 hours later and managed to shut it down. “[W]hen the [technician] got to me […] later, he plugged in the car to do a diagnostic check and there was pages of faults,” said the “kidnapped” driver from Glasgow. “He said he had never seen anything like it and decided he was not willing to turn the engine on to see what was wrong.”

By inference, the vehicle did not have a mechanical brake (“hand brake”: English; “parking brake”: American), which should have been able to keep the vehicle halted regardless of the motor’s actions (even if a “clutch” did get burned out). From the only time I’ve been inside an electric car, I can’t say if that is normal; it’s certainly something I’ll look for if I ever rent another. Had the failure happened at 10 a.m. in the morning, not 10 p.m. in the evening, the body count could have been … substantial.

A dumb question, stemming from my only use of an electric car: do they have a weight sensor under the driver’s seat that locks-out the main motor unless there is (say) 30kg in the driver’s seat? Most have some such sensors — they trigger the “seatbelt not fastened” alarm or silence it for empty seats — but whether they can override the drive system … ?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Kidnapped By a Runaway Electric Car

Researchers from the University of Maryland (UMD) were able to easily evade the current methods of AI watermarking during testing and found it even easier to add fake emblems to images that weren’t generated by AI. “But beyond testing how easy it is to evade watermarks, one UMD team notably developed a watermark that is near impossible to remove from content without completely compromising the intellectual property,” reports Engadget. “This application makes it possible to detect when products are stolen.” From the report: In a similar collaborative research effort (PDF) between the University of California, Santa Barbara and Carnegie Mellon University, researchers found that through simulated attacks, watermarks were easily removable. The paper discerns that there are two distinct methods for eliminating watermarks through these attacks: destructive and constructive approaches. When it comes to destructive attacks, the bad actors can treat watermarks like it’s a part of the image. Tweaking things like the brightness, contrast or using JPEG compression, or even simply rotating an image can remove a watermark. However, the catch here is that while these methods do get rid of the watermark, they also mess with the image quality, making it noticeably worse. In a constructive attack, watermark removal is a bit more sensitive and uses techniques like the good old Gaussian blur.

Although watermarking AI-generated content needs to improve before it can successfully navigate simulated tests similar to those featured in these research studies, it’s easy to envision a scenario where digital watermarking becomes a competitive race against hackers. Until a new standard is developed, we can only hope for the best when it comes to new tools like Google’s SynthID, an identification tool for generative art, which will continue to get workshopped by developers until it hits the mainstream. Further reading: Researchers Tested AI Watermarks — and Broke All of Them

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Researchers Say Current AI Watermarks Are Trivial To Remove

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Microsoft’s proprietary protocol, Remote Network Driver Interface Specification (RNDIS), started with a good idea. It would enable hardware vendors to add networking support to USB devices without having to build them from scratch. There was only one little problem. RNDIS has no security to speak of. As Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Linux Foundation fellow responsible for stable Linux kernel releases, wrote in November 2022 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), “The Microsoft RNDIS protocol is, as designed, insecure and vulnerable on any system that uses it with untrusted hosts or devices. Because the protocol is impossible to make secure, just disable all RNDIS drivers to prevent anyone from using them again.”

He added, in another message, “The protocol was never designed to be used with untrusted devices. It was created, and we implemented support for it, when we trusted USB devices that we plugged into our systems, AND we trusted the systems we plugged our USB devices into.” That’s no longer the case. Kroah-Hartman concluded, “Today, with untrusted hosts and devices, it’s time just to retire this protocol. As I mentioned in the patch comments, Android disabled this many years ago in their devices, with no loss of functionality.”

[…] But now, sick and tired of having a built-in Windows security exploit in Linux, Kroah-Hartman has decided that enough was enough. He’s disabled all the RNDIS protocol drivers in Linux’s Git repository. That means that while the RNDIS code is still in the Linux kernel, if you try to build Linux using this new patch, all your RNDIS drivers will be broken and won’t build. This is one step short of purging RNDIS from Linux.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Linux Tries To Dump Windows’ Notoriously Insecure RNDIS Protocol

Jason Koebler writes via 404 Media: An independent repair shop in Germany has invented a tool that can break through anti-repair locks Apple has put on a specific sensor on the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. The Nerd.Tool.1 was invented by Stephan Steins of Dortmund’s Notebook Nerds repair shop. It is specifically designed to allow independent repair shops to replace the display angle sensor on broken MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops. This was formerly a replacement that only Apple could do because the replacement part had to be “calibrated” with the specific device, which only Apple could do, until now. This sensor detects when the laptop lid is closed, and turns the screen and fan off, and puts the laptop to sleep. If it’s broken, the laptop’s screen will remain on even when the lid is closed, which drains the battery, can keep the fans running, and generally shorten the life of the computer.

The Nerd.Tool.1 recalibrates replacement sensors, allowing repair techs to replace them without any fuss. “We are calibrating new sensors nearly the same way Apple does,” Steins told me. “They can do it via their T2 [security chip] or their M1/M2 chips. We are using the nerd.tool.1 for this task. The sensor holds all the data. It is not serialized or paired to the logic board so we are just calibrating it.” “We broke Apple’s lock,” independent repair advocate and repair pro Louis Rossmann explained in a YouTube video demoing the Nerd.Tool.1. “To whoever it is at Apple who decided to not make this available to technicians, ‘Fuck you, we win,'” Rossman said.

“We are selling the nerd.tool.1 to be able to spend time in developing other solutions,” added Steins. “We will do our best to get nerd.tool.2 to fix other issues which repair shops are facing. The response has been awesome! The community is very kind, which shows how painful these missing tools are for many independent repair shops.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – DIY Tinkerer Invents MacBook Tool That Breaks Apple’s Repair Locks

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: You can now reply to an email just like it’s an instant messaging chat, tacking on a “crying laughing” emoji to an email instead of replying. Google has a whole support article detailing the new feature, which allows you to “express yourself and quickly respond to emails with emojis.” Like a messaging app, a row of emoji reaction counts will appear below your email now, and other people on the thread can tap to add to the reaction count. Currently, it’s only on the Android Gmail app, but it’s presumably coming to other Gmail clients.

Of course, email is from the 1970s and does not natively support emoji reactions. That makes this a Gmail-proprietary feature, which is a problem for federated emails that are expected to work with a million different clients and providers. If you send an emoji reaction and someone on the email chain is not using an official Gmail client, they will get a new, additional email containing your singular reactive emoji. Google is not messing with the email standard, so people not using Gmail will be the most affected.

Another weird quirk is that because emoji reactions are just emails (that Gmail sends to other clients and hides for itself), any emoji reactions you send can’t be taken back. There’s only Gmail’s “Undo send” feature for taking back reactions, which delays sending emails for about 30 seconds, so you can second-guess yourself. After that, you’re creating a permanent emoji reaction paper trail. […] If the idea of emoji reactions to email has you selecting the puke emoji, as far as we can tell, there’s no way to just turn this off. The report notes that this new feature won’t work on business or school accounts. “Emoji reactions also aren’t available for group email lists, messages with more than 20 recipients, emails on which you’re BCC’d, encrypted emails, and emails where the sender has a custom reply-to address.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Gmail Unleashes ‘Email Emoji Reactions’ Onto an Unsuspecting World

Russia’s communications watchdog plans to block VPNs from March 1 next year, a Russian senator for the ruling United Russia party said on Tuesday. From a report: Demand for VPN services soared after Russia restricted access to some Western social media after President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022. Senator Artem Sheikin said an order from the Roskomnadzor watchdog would come into force on March 1 that would block VPNs. “From March 1, 2024, an order will come into force to block VPN services providing access to sites banned in Russia,” Sheikin was quoted as saying by state news agency RIA.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Russia Plans To Block VPN In March 2024

Alongside the Pixel 8 and Android 14, Google today launched the new Pixel Watch 2 — a $350 second-gen smartwatch featuring a faster processor, overhauled sensor array, and longer battery life. The Verge reports: At a glance, the main difference is that the screen sits flush with the digital crown, where the original had a slight cutout. Another change imperceptible to the naked eye: the body is now made of 100 percent recycled aluminum instead of stainless steel. The result is a slightly lighter watch, but not by much. The Pixel Watch weighed 36 grams, while the Pixel Watch 2 is 31g. That’s a bit disappointing, considering the Watch 2’s price remains the same as last year. We’re looking at the same 41mm case size and OLED display on top. But flip the watch over, and you’ll find a completely different sensor array. Instead of a single line of LEDs, there are now multiple LEDs and photodiodes to take measurements from several angles and positions. That then feeds into an algorithm that Fitbit CEO James Park says is 40 percent more accurate for vigorous activities.

This year, Google also added a skin temperature and continuous electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor. Both help enable proactive stress tracking, which Fitbit introduced with its Sense 2. The EDA sensor detects minuscule amounts of sweat, which can help determine bodily stress when combined with metrics like heart rate variability, heart rate, and skin temperature. As with the Sense 2, you’re supposed to get a slightly delayed notification when a stressful event has been detected. You’re then encouraged to log how that event made you feel. Battery life was a major pain point when the Pixel Watch first launched. Park acknowledges that you couldn’t use the always-on display on the first-gen watch if you wanted that 24-hour battery life. This time around, he says that the team has worked hard to make sure the Pixel Watch 2’s 306mAh battery can get 24 hours with the always-on display enabled. Users should also be able to get a 50 percent charge in 30 minutes and a full day’s worth in 75 minutes. Helping that should be Wear OS 4 — which Google says ought to extend battery life — and the new, more power-efficient Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 processor. (Speaking of Wear OS 4, Google says that, at first, it’ll be exclusive to Pixel Watch 2.) Other features include the ability to automatically record workouts and do heart rate zone training; a new Safety Check feature that will alert your loved ones of your location after a preset timer expires (e.g. taking an Uber across town or going on a late-night walk); and support for Google services like Gmail, Google Wallet, and Calendar.

You can learn more about the Pixel Watch 2 here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – The Pixel Watch 2 Adds New Sensors, Longer Battery Life, and Better Accuracy

Major fossil fuel companies have committed tens of millions of pounds in funding to UK universities since 2022, it can be revealed, despite many of these institutions having actively pledged to divest from oil and gas. From a report: According to freedom of information requests submitted by the climate journalism site DeSmog, more than $50m in research agreements, tuition fees, scholarships, grants and consultancy fees have been pledged to 44 UK universities by 32 oil, coal and gas companies since 2022. The largest contributors were Shell, the Malaysian state-owned oil company Petronas, and BP. These three companies account for more than 76% of the total figure awarded, having given $25.5m, $6.30m and $5.94m respectively.

A further 10 companies made up nearly 21% of the remaining contributions during this period: Sinopec, Equinor, BHP Group, Total Energies, Eni SPA, Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil, Scottish Power, Kellas Midstream and Ithaca Energy. Previous reporting from openDemocracy and the Guardian found that between 2017 and December 2021, $108.1m in funding was given to UK universities by some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies. These partnerships have shown no sign of abating, and DeSmog’s research shows an additional $50m has been pledged since 2022, even after 102 higher education institutions promised to stop taking funding from the fossil fuel industry.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – UK Universities Take Million in Fossil Fuel Funding Since 2022

A notorious group of hackers blamed for recent breaches on major casino companies is also suspected of being behind a recent cyberattack against Clorox that has led to a nationwide shortage of its cleaning products. Bloomberg News: Officials suspect that “Scattered Spider” is responsible for a breach that Clorox first disclosed in August, according to four people familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. The same group, known for its so-called social engineering tactics, was tied to attacks on Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts International in recent weeks, Bloomberg News previously reported.

Scattered Spider hackers specialize in targeting call centers and IT help desks, impersonating employees to trick support staff into coughing up information to gain access to accounts. The fallout from their recent attacks has been profound. At MGM properties, guests couldn’t charge purchases to their rooms, slot machines were shut down and reservation websites weren’t working. The impact on Clorox was arguably much worse. The company didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. On Friday, Clorox indicated that it was still working to recover from the disruption. “We are ramping up production and working to restock trade inventories,” the company said in a statement. “We are focusing on maximizing shipments and restocking trade inventories.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Clorox Security Breach Linked to Group Behind Casino Hacks

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on Wednesday to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov for being pioneers of the nanoworld. The new laureates discovered and developed quantum dots, semiconductors made of particles squeezed so small that their electrons barely have room to breathe. From a report: “For a long time, nobody thought you could ever actually make such small particles,” Johan Aqvist, the chair of the Academy’s Nobel committee for chemistry, said at the news conference announcing the 2023 laureates. Presenting the topic with five colorful flasks lined up in front of him, which he said contained quantum dots in a liquid solution, he said: “But this year’s laureates succeeded.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded To 3 Scientists for Exploring the Nanoworld

Los Angeles is housing more people than ever, and building lots more low-income housing, yet it can’t keep pace with this ever-rising number of people who end up in cars, tents and shelters. “It’s a bucket with a hole in it, so we’ve got to do something … to fill that hole,” says Dana Vanderford, who helps lead the department’s Homelessness Prevention unit. With that goal, the pilot program is using artificial intelligence to predict who’s most likely to land on the streets, so the county can step in to offer help before that happens. From a report: The program tracks data from seven county agencies, including emergency room visits, crisis care for mental health, substance abuse disorder diagnosis, arrests and sign-ups for public benefits like food aid. Then, using machine learning, it comes up with a list of people considered most at-risk for losing their homes. Vanderford says these people aren’t part of any other prevention programs. “We have clients who have understandable mistrust of systems,” she says. They’ve “experienced generational trauma. Our clients are extremely unlikely to reach out for help.” Instead, 16 case managers divide up the lists and reach out to the people on them, sending letters and cold calling.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Los Angeles is Using AI To Predict Who Might Become Homeless and Help Before They Do

Apple rolled out a software update Wednesday to address an overheating issue that plagued some early buyers of the iPhone 15 Pro line. From a report: The update, called iOS 17.0.3, is available as an over-the-air fix in the software update section of the iPhone settings app. The release notes say the update “provides important bug fixes, security updates, and addresses an issue that may cause iPhone to run warmer than expected.” The update was also released for older iPhones as well as iPads. Some early iPhone 15 Pro owners reported that their iPhone could get hotter than normal. Apple on Saturday blamed bad code in apps including Uber, Instagram and the Asphalt 9 racing game, in addition to a bug in the device’s software. The company said the new device set-up could overwork the processor and lead to overheating.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Apple Releases iPhone Software Update To Fix Overheating Issue

Google will soon release a version of its virtual assistant that is powered by the company’s Bard artificial intelligence technology, helping users handle more complex tasks. From a report: The new offering, called Assistant with Bard, will be available in a test phase shortly and then roll out to the general public in the coming months, the company said Wednesday. The release will equip the Assistant, which helps users of Android and Google devices complete tasks and find information, with some of the capabilities of Bard, a chatbot that is the company’s answer to OpenAI’s wildly popular ChatGPT. “Generative AI is creating new opportunities to build a more intuitive, intelligent, personalized digital assistant,” Sissie Hsiao, a Google vice president, wrote in a blog post accompanying the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Google’s New Virtual Assistant To Include Bard AI Tools