“A group of researchers from the University of California, Irvine, have developed a way to use the sensors in high-quality optical mice to capture subtle vibrations and convert them into audible data,” reports Tom’s Hardware:

[T]he high polling rate and sensitivity of high-performance optical mice pick up acoustic vibrations from the surface where they sit. By running the raw data through signal processing and machine learning techniques, the team could hear what the user was saying through their desk. Mouse sensors with a 20,000 DPI or higher are vulnerable to this attack. And with the best gaming mice becoming more affordable annually, even relatively affordable peripherals are at risk….

[T]his compromise does not necessarily mean a complicated virus installed through a backdoor — it can be as simple as an infected FOSS that requires high-frequency mouse data, like creative apps or video games. This means it’s not unusual for the software to gather this data. From there, the collected raw data can be extracted from the target computer and processed off-site. “With only a vulnerable mouse, and a victim’s computer running compromised or even benign software (in the case of a web-based attack surface), we show that it is possible to collect mouse packet data and extract audio waveforms,” the researchers state.

The researchers created a video with raw audio samples from various stages in their pipeline on an accompanying web site where they calculate that “the majority of human speech” falls in a frequency range detectable by their pipeline. While the collected signal “is low-quality and suffers from non-uniform sampling, a non-linear frequency response, and extreme quantization,” the researchers augment it with “successive signal processing and machine learning techniques to overcome these challenges and achieve intelligible reconstruction of user speech.”

They’ve titled their paper Invisible Ears at Your Fingertips: Acoustic Eavesdropping via Mouse Sensors. The paper’s conclusion? “The increasing precision of optical mouse sensors has enhanced user interface performance but also made them vulnerable to side-channel attacks exploiting their sensitivity.”

Thanks to Slashdot reader jjslash for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

“More than 800,000 drivers for ride-hailing companies in California will soon be able to join a union,” reports the Associated Press, “and bargain collectively for better wages and benefits under a measure signed Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.”
Supporters said the new law will open a path for the largest expansion of private sector collective bargaining rights in the state’s history. The legislation is a significant compromise in the yearslong battle between labor unions and tech companies.

California is the second state where Uber and Lyft drivers can unionize as independent contractors. Massachusetts voters passed a ballot referendum in November allowing unionization, while drivers in Illinois and Minnesota are pushing for similar rights…
The collective bargaining measure now allows rideshare workers in California to join a union while still being classified as independent contractors and requires gig companies to bargain in good faith.
“The new law doesn’t apply to drivers for delivery apps like DoorDash.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ScienceAlert writes that some of the tiny nanoplastic fragments present in soil “can make their way into the edible parts of vegetables, research has found.”

A team of scientists from the University of Plymouth in the UK placed radishes into a hydroponic (water-based) system containing polystyrene nanoparticles. After five days, almost 5% of the nanoplastics had made their way into the radish roots. A quarter of those were in the edible, fleshy roots, while a tenth had traveled up to the higher leafy shoots, despite anatomical features within the plants that typically screen harmful material from the soil.

“Plants have a layer within their roots called the Casparian strip, which should act as a form of filter against particles, many of which can be harmful,” says physiologist Nathaniel Clark. “This is the first time a study has demonstrated nanoplastic particles could get beyond that barrier, with the potential for them to accumulate within plants and be passed on to anything that consumes them….”
There are some limitations to the study, as it didn’t use a real-world farming setup. The concentration of plastics in the liquid solution is higher than estimated for soil, and only one type of plastic and one kind of vegetable were tested. Nevertheless, the basic principle stands: the smallest plastic nanoparticles can apparently sneak past protective barriers in plants, and from there into the food we eat… “There is no reason to believe this is unique to this vegetable, with the clear possibility that nanoplastics are being absorbed into various types of produce being grown all over the world,” says Clark.

The research has been published in Environmental Research.

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“It’s not just you. The internet is getting worse, fast,” writes Cory Doctorow. Sunday he shared an excerpt from his upcoming book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.
He succinctly explains “this moment we’re living through, this Great Enshittening” using Amazon as an example. Platforms amass users, but then abuse them to make things better for their business customers. And then they abuse those business customers too, abusing everybody while claiming all the value for themselves. “And become a giant pile of shit.”

So first Amazon subsidized prices and shipping, then locked in customers with Prime shipping subscriptions (while adding the chains of DRM to its ebooks and audiobooks)…

These tactics — Prime, DRM and predatory pricing — make it very hard not to shop at Amazon. With users locked in, to proceed with the enshittification playbook, Amazon needed to get its business customers locked in, too… [M]erchants’ dependence on those customers allows Amazon to extract higher discounts from those merchants, and that brings in more users, which makes the platform even more indispensable for merchants, allowing the company to require even deeper discounts…

[Amazon] uses its overview of merchants’ sales, as well as its ability to observe the return addresses on direct shipments from merchants’ contracting factories, to cream off its merchants’ bestselling items and clone them, relegating the original seller to page umpty-million of its search results. Amazon also crushes its merchants under a mountain of junk fees pitched as optional but effectively mandatory. Take Prime: a merchant has to give up a huge share of each sale to be included in Prime, and merchants that don’t use Prime are pushed so far down in the search results, they might as well cease to exist. Same with Fulfilment by Amazon, a “service” in which a merchant sends its items to an Amazon warehouse to be packed and delivered with Amazon’s own inventory. This is far more expensive than comparable (or superior) shipping services from rival logistics companies, and a merchant that ships through one of those rivals is, again, relegated even farther down the search rankings.

All told, Amazon makes so much money charging merchants to deliver the wares they sell through the platform that its own shipping is fully subsidised. In other words, Amazon gouges its merchants so much that it pays nothing to ship its own goods, which compete directly with those merchants’ goods…. Add all the junk fees together and an Amazon seller is being screwed out of 45-51 cents on every dollar it earns there. Even if it wanted to absorb the “Amazon tax” on your behalf, it couldn’t. Merchants just don’t make 51% margins. So merchants must jack up prices, which they do. A lot… [W]hen merchants raise their prices on Amazon, they are required to raise their prices everywhere else, even on their own direct-sales stores. This arrangement is called most-favoured-nation status, and it’s key to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against Amazon…
If Amazon is taxing merchants 45-51 cents on every dollar they make, and if merchants are hiking their prices everywhere their goods are sold, then it follows you’re paying the Amazon tax no matter where you shop — even the corner mom-and-pop hardware store. It gets worse. On average, the first result in an Amazon search is 29% more expensive than the best match for your search. Click any of the top four links on the top of your screen and you’ll pay an average of 25% more than you would for your best match — which, on average, is located 17 places down in an Amazon search result.
Doctorow knows what we need to do:

Ban predatory pricing — “selling goods below cost to keep competitors out of the market (and then jacking them up again).”
Impose structural separation, “so it can either be a platform, or compete with the sellers that rely on it as a platform.”
Curb junk fees, “which suck 45-51 cents on every dollar merchants take in.”
End its most favoured nation deal, which forces merchants “to raise their prices everywhere else, too.
Unionise drivers and warehouse workers.
Treat rigged search results as the fraud they are.
These are policy solutions. (Because “You can’t shop your way out of a monopoly,” Doctorow warns.) And otherwise, as Doctorow says earlier, “Once a company is too big to fail, it becomes too big to jail, and then too big to care.”
In the mean time, Doctorow also makes up a new word — “the enshitternet” — calling it “a source of pain, precarity and immiseration for the people we love.

“The indignities of harassment, scams, disinformation, surveillance, wage theft, extraction and rent-seeking have always been with us, but they were a minor sideshow on the old, good internet and they are the everything and all of the enshitternet.”

Thanks to long-time Slashdot readers mspohr and fjo3 for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI and Jony Ive could still have some serious loose ends to tie up before releasing their highly anticipated AI device. According to a Financial Times report, the partnership is still struggling with some “technical issues” that could ultimately end up pushing back the device’s release date, which is expected to be sometime in 2026.

One of those lingering dilemmas involves figuring out the AI assistant’s voice and mannerisms, according to FT‘s sources. The AI device is meant to be “a friend who’s a computer who isn’t your weird AI girlfriend,” according to a FT source who was briefed on the plans. Beyond landing on a personality, OpenAI and Ive are still figuring out potential privacy concerns stemming from a device that’s always listening. On top of that, the budget could reportedly be a challenge due to the increased computing power necessary to run these mass-produced AI devices.

Outside these latest struggles, we still know very little about the upcoming product. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, reportedly offered some clues to employees that it could be pocket-sized, aware of its environment and sans display. There are still plenty of questions about what OpenAI’s first hardware project will amount to, but the company could be exercising more caution since similar devices, like the Humane AI Pin, were discontinued after failing to deliver on sales.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openais-first-device-with-jony-ive-could-be-delayed-due-to-technical-issues-182226416.html?src=rss

Friday OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced two changes coming “soon” to Sora:

First, we will give rightsholders more granular control over generation of characters, similar to the opt-in model for likeness but with additional controls…
Second, we are going to have to somehow make money for video generation. People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences. We are going to try sharing some of this revenue with rightsholders who want their characters generated by users. The exact model will take some trial and error to figure out, but we plan to start very soon. Our hope is that the new kind of engagement is even more valuable than the revenue share, but of course we we want both to be valuable.

“We are hearing from a lot of rightsholders who are very excited for this new kind of ‘interactive fan fiction’,” Altman wrote, “and think this new kind of engagement will accrue a lot of value to them, but want the ability to specify how their characters can be used (including not at all).”

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California governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Friday that grants rideshare drivers in the state the right to unionize. It’s the second state to grant organizing rights to rideshare drivers, who are independent contractors, following the passage of a similar law in Massachusetts in 2024. There are over 800,000 rideshare drivers in California, and the bill that was just signed into law “establishes a clear legal framework for union certification, bargaining processes and enforcement,” according to a press release from the office of Assemblymember Buffy Wicks.

This means drivers working for companies like Uber and Lyft will be able to collectively bargain for better pay, benefits and working conditions. Under the terms of the law, driver organizations will be able to apply for union recognition starting in May 2026 as long as they have support from at least 10 percent of active rideshare drivers in the state. The organization would then need support from at least 30 percent of active drivers to begin bargaining on their behalf. 

As part of a deal made in September, Newsom also signed a measure that reduces the insurance coverage requirements for Uber and Lyft in the case of accidents caused by uninsured drivers, Associated Press reports.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/uber-and-lyft-drivers-in-california-are-able-to-unionize-under-new-law-171309594.html?src=rss

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has plans to build out a 24/7/365 surveillance team that focuses on scouring social media for case leads, as revealed in documents first discovered by Wired. According to public records, ICE has put out a request for information — which allows the agency to detail its preliminary scope of work to gauge any interest from contractors — that details using social media platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and YouTube to develop leads on wanted individuals.

For “urgent cases,” the team is expected to work on leads with ICE’s Top 10 Most Wanted within a 30-minute timeframe. However, the breadth of work ranges all the way to low-priority cases, like those involving someone convicted of a non-violent misdemeanor or “has no convictions but has a significant arrest history,” with a more generous eight-hour window to generate leads.

According to the documents, ICE wants at least 12 full-time staff to work at its National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center in Williston, Vermont, which will require three staffers on duty at all times. On the other side of the country, ICE is looking for a minimum staff of 16 full-time contractors for its Pacific Enforcement Response Center in Santa Ana, California, that will also have a duty rotation of at least two staffers on for “after-hour requirements and emergency situations.”

While the plans are in the very early stages, ICE’s plans are aggressive and even ask how prospective contractors would use artificial intelligence to achieve its goals. The federal agency is no stranger to controversial tech though, as it has previously been accused of using facial recognition.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/ice-is-planning-to-create-a-surveillance-team-that-hunts-for-leads-on-social-media-163743143.html?src=rss

There’s an 85-second ad (starring a humanoid robot) that argues “Technology promised to save us time. Instead it stole our focus. Opera Neon gives you both back.”

Or, as BleepingComputer describes it, Opera Neon “is a new browser that puts AI in control of your tabs and browsing activities, but it’ll cost $19.90 per month.”

It’ll do tasks for you, open websites for you, manage tabs for you, and listen to you. The idea behind these agentic browsers is to put AI in control. “Neon acts at your command, opening tabs, conducting research, finding the best prices, assessing security, whatever you need. It delivers outcomes you can use, share, and build on,” Opera noted…

As spotted on X, Opera Neon, the premium AI browser for Windows & macOS, costs $59.90 for nine months. Opera neon invite. This is an early bird offer, but when the offer expires, Opera Neon will cost $19.90 per month.

The browser’s web page says Opera Neon “can handle everyday tasks for you, like filling in forms, placing orders, replying to emails, or tidying up files. Reusable cards turn repeated chores into single-step tasks, letting you focus on the work that matters most to you.”

Opera describes itself as “the company that gave you tabs…”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post notes AI’s “increasingly outsize role” in propping up America’s economic fortunes.

“Last week, the United States reported that the economy expanded at a rate of 1.6 percent in the first half of the year, with most of that growth driven by AI spending. Without AI investment, growth would have been at about a third of that rate, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.”

The huge economic influence of AI spending illustrates how Silicon Valley is placing a bet of unprecedented scale that the technology will revolutionize every aspect of life and work. Its sway suggests there will be economic damage far beyond Silicon Valley if that bet doesn’t work out or companies pull back. Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon are on track to spend nearly $400 billion this year on data centers…

Concern about a potential bubble in AI investment has recently grown in technology and financial circles. ChatGPT and other AI tools are hugely popular with companies and consumers, and hundreds of billions of dollars has been sunk into AI ventures over the past three years. But few of the new initiatives are profitable, and huge profits will be needed for the immense investments to pay off… “I’m getting more and more skeptical and more and more concerned with what’s happening” with artificial intelligence, said Andrew Odlyzko, an economic historian and University of Minnesota emeritus professor who has studied financial bubbles closely, including the telecom bubble that collapsed in 2001 as part of the dot-com crash. Some industry insiders have expressed concern that the latest AI releases have fallen short of expectations, suggesting the technology may not advance enough to pay back the huge investments being made, he said. “AI is a craze,” Odlyzko said…
[The Federal Reserve’s August “beige book” summarizes interviews with business owners across the country, according to the article — and it found surging investments in AI data centers, which could tie their fortunes to other sectors.] That’s boosting demand for electricity and trucking in the Atlanta region, a hot spot for the facilities, and creating new projects for commercial real estate developers in the Philadelphia region. Because tech companies now dominate public markets, any change in their fortunes and share prices can also have a powerful influence on stock indexes, 401(k)s and the wider economy… Stock market slumps can have knock-on effects by undercutting the confidence of American businesses and consumers, leading them to spend less, said Gregory Daco [chief economist at strategy consulting firm EY-Parthenon]… “That directly affects economic activity,” he said, potentially widening the economic fallout…

Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a Sept. 4 note to clients that even if AI investment works out for companies like Google, there will be an “inevitable slowdown” in data center construction. That will cut revenue to companies providing the projects with chips and electricity, the note said. In a more extreme scenario where Big Tech pulls back spending to 2022 levels, the entire S&P 500 would lose 30 percent of the revenue growth Wall Street currently expects next year, the analysts wrote.

The AI bubble is 17 times the size of the dot-com frenzy — and four times the subprime bubble, according to estimates in a recent note from independent research firm the MacroStrategy Partnership (as reported by MarketWatch).

And “never before has so much money been spent so rapidly on a technology that, for all its potential, remains somewhat unproven as a profit-making business model,” writes Bloomberg, adding that OpenAI and other large tech companies are “relying increasingly on debt to support their unprecedented spending.” (Although Bloomberg also notes that ChatGPT alone has roughly 700 million weekly users, and that last month Anthropic reported roughly three quarters of companies are using Claude to automate work.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you prefer open-ear AirPods but still have an older model, this deal could be worth noting. Amazon’s October Prime Day has the AirPods 4 on sale for $90, or 30 percent off their usual price. That’s also the lowest we’ve seen them.

When Apple updated its standard AirPods in 2024, it released two models: one with active noise cancellation (ANC) and one without. We consider the non-ANC models to be the best budget AirPods you can get, so they’re an even better buy at this sale price. The ANC versions are also discounted at the moment, so you can pick them up for $140 instead of the usual $180.

The AirPods’ H2 chip brings a bunch of Pro-adjacent features to the standard model. That list includes Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness, Transparency, Personalized Spatial Audio and wireless charging. For calls, it supports Voice Isolation, which helps filter out background noise and make it easier for you to be heard. And if that call is via FaceTime, it supports Apple’s 48kHz “cinema-quality” audio.

Sound is improved over the AirPods 3. “There’s more low-end tone than the previous model right out of the gate, and the punchier treble opens the sound stage so it’s wider and more immersive,” Engadget’s Billy Steele wrote. “The improved frequency response is on full display with Dolby Atmos content (movies, music, and TV), but the AirPods 4 are also more sonically adept with non-spatial tunes and video.”

You can expect around five hours of battery life on a single charge. With the ANC model, that estimate drops to around four hours with the marquee feature activated. With either version, you can drop them in the charging case to extend their total time to around 30 hours. And hey, it’s good to give your ears a rest now and then anyway.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-airpods-4-drop-to-90-for-prime-day-130033169.html?src=rss

Your Apple Account is the key to everything you do on your iPhone, iPad, MacBook, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro. It keeps your purchases, subscriptions and personal data secure. If you think your account has been hacked, if you’ve logged in on a shared device or if you haven’t updated your password in a while, it’s a good idea to update it. Apple officially rebranded Apple ID as Apple Account in 2024, but your login details work the same way. We’ll walk you through how to reset or change your Apple Account password on your iPhone, iPad, Mac or the web.

How to change your Apple Account password on your iPhone or iPad

The fastest way to update your password is through your device’s settings. This method works for iPhone, iPad and Vision Pro devices, and can also be started on Apple Watches if you have Stolen Device Protection enabled.

1. Navigate to Settings > Your Name > Sign-In & Security.

2. Tap Change Password.

3. You’ll need to enter your current password or device passcode.

4. Enter your new password and confirm the new password.

5. Tap Change.

If you want to change your child’s Apple Account password, you can do so if you have an iPhone, iPad or Apple Vision Pro running the latest version of iOS, iPadOS or visionOS with two-factor authentication turned on.

1. Navigate to Settings > Family > Your child’s account.

2. Tap Apple Account & Password.

3. Tap Change Child’s Name Password.

4. You’ll be prompted to enter your device passcode and follow the onscreen instructions.

How to change your Apple Account password on your Mac

If you’re on macOS Sequoia or later, the process is just as simple. Although the general process is the same as in previous macOS versions, specific menu names may be different.

1. Navigate to the Apple menu > System Settings > Your Name.

2. Select Sign-In & Security.

3. Select Change Password.

4. You’ll need to enter your current password that you use to unlock your Mac.

5. Follow the prompts to enter and verify your new Apple Account password.

How to change your Apple Account password on the web

If you don’t have access to your devices, you can still change your password online. However, you will initially be prompted to access a trusted device to manage your Apple Account (where possible).

1. Go to account.apple.com and sign in to your Apple Account.

2. Navigate to Sign-In and Security > Password.

3. Follow the prompts to enter and verify your new Apple Account password.

How to reset your Apple Account password

If you don’t remember your password, Apple gives you a couple of ways to reset it. The easiest way to reset your password is by using your iPhone or other trusted Apple device (one that’s already signed in to your Apple Account).

Using your iPhone, iPad or Apple Vision Pro:

1. Navigate to Settings > Your Name > Sign-In & Security > Change Password.

2. Follow the onscreen instructions to reset your password.

Using your Mac:

1. Navigate to the Apple menu > System Settings > Your Name > Sign-In & Security > Change Password.

2. Follow the onscreen instructions to reset your password.

If you don’t have access to a trusted device, there are a few things you can do:

• Borrow an Apple device from a friend or family member or use one at an Apple Store to access the Apple Support app. You’ll be able to choose the option to “Help Someone Else” if you have access to your Apple Account email address or phone number.

• Reset your password on the web at iforgot.apple.com and follow the instructions.

Tips for a strong Apple Account password

When setting up your new password, keep these things in mind:

• Use at least eight characters

• Include a mix of uppercase, lowercase, numbers and symbols

• Avoid common words, birthdates or anything that’s easy to guess

Apple won’t let you reuse a recent password, so be ready to come up with something fresh. iOS devices and password apps can generate strong passwords for you, but these are not going to be easy to remember. A password manager is a smart way to keep track of it if you’re juggling multiple logins.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/how-to-change-your-apple-account-password-120010992.html?src=rss

The book Life 3.0 remembers a 2017 conversation where Alphabet CEO Larry Page “made a ‘passionate’ argument for the idea that ‘digital life is the natural and desirable next step’ in ‘cosmic evolution’,” remembers an essay in the Wall Street Journal. “Restraining the rise of digital minds would be wrong, Page contended. Leave them off the leash and let the best minds win…”

“As it turns out, Larry Page isn’t the only top industry figure untroubled by the possibility that AIs might eventually push humanity aside. It is a niche position in the AI world but includes influential believers. Call them the Cheerful Apocalyptics… ”

I first encountered such views a couple of years ago through my X feed, when I saw a retweet of a post from Richard Sutton. He’s an eminent AI researcher at the University of Alberta who in March received the Turing Award, the highest award in computer science… [Sutton had said if AI becomes smarter than people — and then can be more powerful — why shouldn’t it be?] Sutton told me AIs are different from other human inventions in that they’re analogous to children. “When you have a child,” Sutton said, “would you want a button that if they do the wrong thing, you can turn them off? That’s much of the discussion about AI. It’s just assumed we want to be able to control them.” But suppose a time came when they didn’t like having humans around? If the AIs decided to wipe out humanity, would he be at peace with that? “I don’t think there’s anything sacred about human DNA,” Sutton said. “There are many species — most of them go extinct eventually. We are the most interesting part of the universe right now. But might there come a time when we’re no longer the most interesting part? I can imagine that…. If it was really true that we were holding the universe back from being the best universe that it could, I think it would be OK…”

I wondered, how common is this idea among AI people? I caught up with Jaron Lanier, a polymathic musician, computer scientist and pioneer of virtual reality. In an essay in the New Yorker in March, he mentioned in passing that he had been hearing a “crazy” idea at AI conferences: that people who have children become excessively committed to the human species. He told me that in his experience, such sentiments were staples of conversation among AI researchers at dinners, parties and anyplace else they might get together. (Lanier is a senior interdisciplinary researcher at Microsoft but does not speak for the company.)”There’s a feeling that people can’t be trusted on this topic because they are infested with a reprehensible mind virus, which causes them to favor people over AI when clearly what we should do is get out of the way.” We should get out of the way, that is, because it’s unjust to favor humans — and because consciousness in the universe will be superior if AIs supplant us. “The number of people who hold that belief is small,” Lanier said, “but they happen to be positioned in stations of great influence. So it’s not something one can ignore….”

You may be thinking to yourself: If killing someone is bad, and if mass murder is very bad, then the extinction of humanity must be very, very bad — right? What this fails to understand, according to the Cheerful Apocalyptics, is that when it comes to consciousness, silicon and biology are merely different substrates. Biological consciousness is of no greater worth than the future digital variety, their theory goes… While the Cheerful Apocalyptics sometimes write and talk in purely descriptive terms about humankind’s future doom, two value judgments in their doctrines are unmissable.The first is a distaste, at least in the abstract, for the human body. Rather than seeing its workings as awesome, in the original sense of inspiring awe, they view it as a slow, fragile vessel, ripe for obsolescence… The Cheerful Apocalyptics’ larger judgment is a version of the age-old maxim that “might makes right”…

Read more of this story at Slashdot.