An anonymous reader shares a report: The FCC adopted a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to rescind and revise certain rules attached to consumer broadband labels. The measure passed on a two-to-one vote, with Commissioner Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on the FCC, voting no and calling the notice “one of the most anti-consumer items I have seen.”

The vote was held at the Commission’s open meeting for the month of October. As per a draft notice circulated earlier this month, the FCC is looking to roll back several rules, including requirements that service providers read the label to consumers via phone, itemize state and local pass-through fees, and display labels in consumer account portals, among others. Advocates at Public Knowledge urged the Commission to reconsider, saying in a recent filing that “the Commission could create a permission structure for ISPs to continue to act without accountability.”

In her remarks during Tuesday’s open meeting, Commissioner Gomez appeared to concur, depicting the move as “anti-consumer” and counter to the goals of Congress. The FCC was mandated via the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) to create rules for implementing consumer broadband labels. After a lengthy rulemaking process and discussions with industry and consumer groups, ISPs were required to start displaying labels in 2024.

“I typically vote in favor of notices of proposed rulemaking because I believe in asking balanced questions, even on proposals that I dislike, so that we can encourage fruitful and helpful public comment. Answers to tough questions help us strike the right balance so that our rules can both encourage competition and serve consumers. However, the questions posed in this NPRM are so anti-consumer that I could not bring myself to even agree to them,” said Gomez.

Gomez stressed that the notice will harm consumers by enabling ISPs to hide add-on fees and stripping people of their ability to access information in their own language. Moreover, added Gomez, it’s unclear why the FCC is doing this. “What adds insult to injury is that the FCC does not even explain why this proposal is necessary. Make it make sense,” she added.

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Attackers are exploiting a major weakness that has allowed them access to the NPM code repository with more than 100 credential-stealing packages since August, mostly without detection.

The finding, laid out Wednesday by security firm Koi, brings attention to an NPM practice that allows installed packages to automatically pull down and run unvetted packages from untrusted domains. Koi said a campaign it tracks as PhantomRaven has exploited NPM’s use of “Remote Dynamic Dependences” to flood NPM with 126 malicious packages that have been downloaded more than 86,000 times. Some 80 of those packages remained available as of Wednesday morning, Koi said.

A blind spot

“PhantomRaven demonstrates how sophisticated attackers are getting [better] at exploiting blind spots in traditional security tooling,” Koi’s Oren Yomtov wrote. “Remote Dynamic Dependencies aren’t visible to static analysis.”

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Sometimes, game development is a labor of love. Other times, it’s an agonizing experience akin to pulling teeth. More than a decade after first announcing the project, Lunar Software and Raw Fury appear to be in the home stretch with their project Routine. The sci-fi horror game has been given a December 4, 2025 release date. For their sakes, I hope it comes to pass.

The duo first announced Routine all the way back at Gamescom in 2012 and gave it a 2013 release date. After that window came and went, the project went dark until Summer Game Fest 2022, with promises that the game a) still existed and b) had been fully remade for the new generation of gaming hardware. If the current schedule holds, Routine will be on Steam and Xbox, including day one availability on Game Pass, by the end of this year. 

The Aliens vibes are strong in the brief release date teaser. Think film grain effects, janky gadgets and of course the looming threat of death around every corner. The player will explore an abandoned lunar base to try and figure out how everything went horribly wrong before your arrival. The answer seems to involve murderous robots that would make Weyland-Yutani proud.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/13-years-after-it-was-announced-sci-fi-horror-game-routine-has-a-release-date-of-december-4-205604793.html?src=rss

Microsoft shipped its first Xbox handheld nearly two weeks ago. The $600 white Xbox Ally cannot reliably sleep, wake, or hold a charge while asleep. Neither Microsoft nor Asus would admit there’s a problem or offer a timeline to fix it after repeated requests by The Verge. Asus said it needs more time to test.

Installing Bazzite, a Linux-based operating system, solves the problems, the publication reports. The same hardware runs games up to 30% faster than Windows and beats the Steam Deck in all but one benchmark. Steam runs more responsively without Windows bloat. The device can be used like a Nintendo Switch, pausing games with the power button and resuming hours or days later. Bazzite initially had sleep issues but fixed them two days after programmer Antheas Kapenekakis obtained the hardware and consulted with two AMD contacts. The black Xbox Ally X, which doesn’t have as many sleep issues, gets a similar speed boost with Bazzite.

Two Xbox Ally units tested on Windows repeatedly woke themselves at random intervals. One lost 10% battery after 12 hours of supposed sleep, the other 23%. After another 12 hours, both had only 30% battery remaining. One tried to apply a Windows Update while asleep. Both units refused to wake from sleep at times and required hard resets. Many users have reported similar issues on Reddit with both Xbox Ally versions.

Further reading: Microsoft’s Next Xbox Will Run Full Windows and Eliminate Multiplayer Paywall, Report Says.

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This is a visualization crated by MetaBallStudios (previously) imagining various numbers of things as representing by a collection of 1cm square cubes. Things start off small enough with the number of letters in the English alphabet (26) and first generation Pokemon (151), but quickly get out of hand from there. Honestly, it’s really hard for me to imagine any number over 100,000, which is about what I’ll earn over the course of my entire life provided I can land a $100,000 job and hold it for a year.

General Motors announced that it will cut more than 1,700 manufacturing jobs in reaction to changes in the electric vehicle market. “In response to slower near-term EV adoption and an evolving regulatory environment, General Motors is realigning EV capacity,” the company said in a statement reported by CNBC. “Despite these changes, GM remains committed to our US manufacturing footprint, and we believe our investments and dedication to flexible operations will make GM more resilient and capable of leading through change.”

The layoffs are primarily happening at a Michigan plant that builds GM’s EVs and at an Ultium Cells battery cell plant in Ohio. The company is also “temporarily” laying off 700 at an Ultium Cells plant in Tennessee.

The regulatory issues in question are likely the $7,500 federal tax rebate that had previously been granted to EV purchases, which expired earlier this year under the “Big Beautiful Bill” that made things a lot less pretty for many environmentally-focused programs and industries. But GM had also said earlier this month that it would sunset much of its hydrogen fuel cell R&D in order to place more focus on batteries, charging tech and EVs, so announcing layoffs in those very areas is a rough move.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gm-will-cut-more-than-1700-jobs-in-ev-and-battery-manufacturing-200814378.html?src=rss

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said that maintaining the US edge in AI will require a steady approach that ensures China remains hooked on American technology. From a report: The chipmaker is in an “awkward place” as President Donald Trump prepares to meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping later this week, Huang told reporters Tuesday at a company conference in Washington. The Nvidia chief praised Trump’s commitment to winning but urged careful engagement with China because of the country’s massive software developer base and its growing technology capabilities.

During the meeting, Trump and Xi are expected to finalize an agreement to ease trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies. When it comes to those negotiations, Huang said he has “no idea” if GPUs — the chips central to artificial intelligence capabilities — will be a topic between Trump and Xi.

Huang was careful to leave the negotiating to Trump but encouraged US leadership to think longer term on its overall AI strategy. “A policy that causes America to lose half of the world’s developers is not beneficial long-term,” Huang said, warning that it was still possible for the US to cede the AI race to China. Keeping US technology in front requires finesse,” he said. “It requires balance. It requires long-term thinking.”

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Cardio load gets a major fix in the new Fitbit app, which Android users can test out starting this week in a “public preview.” (This is the same preview that gives you access to the AI fitness coach, which I tested yesterday, with baffling results.) Cardio load will now be tracked weekly, making it much easier for the app to make sensible recommendations.

What is (and was) cardio load? 

The cardio load feature is Fitbit’s attempt to guide you in how much to exercise. Obviously a beginner shouldn’t jump into hour-long hard workouts right out of the gate, nor should a person training for a marathon slack off for no reason. Cardio load is an attempt to put a number on the amount of exercise that would be neither too much nor too little for you. 

Plenty of athletes and trainers use some kind of model for exercise volume, whether it’s runners counting miles in a spreadsheet, or a coach going by their gut and saying “let’s take it easy today.” 

Fitbit uses a hilariously-named TRIMP approach (“TRaining IMPulse”), where every minute with an elevated heart rate counts toward your cardio load, with higher heart rates counting as more effort. I have more on this calculation here. 

Why cardio load was confusing

The idea sounded good: Fitbit would calculate how much cardio load you should aim for each day, based on how much exercise you’d been doing. You could tell the app whether you wanted to increase your fitness, or just maintain the fitness you have, and it would adjust its numbers accordingly. 

But for a lot of people, the numbers never made sense. The numbers would fluctuate from day to day, often mismatched with what a person’s history and health actually called for. Many users found that the recommended cardio load went up and up, and rest days brought warnings of undertraining.

A sampling of Reddit threads from r/fitbit include titles like “Cardio load baffles me,” “Cardio load, I hate you,” “Cardio load unrealistic,” “Cardio load is not just wrong, it’s dangerous,” and “Fitbit, either fix cardio load or scrap it.” 

Why the new feature may be better

Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Fitbit

Google explained that it’s implementing a fairly simple fix—calculating cardio load recommendations by the week instead of by the day. The cardio load calculations themselves won’t change at all.

After all, it’s normal to have hard days alternating with easy days or rest days, and any load management guidance should be able to handle that. Google also points out that your background activity level (like how much you walk when you go grocery shopping) also adds to your cardio load, and that also makes day-to-day recommendations hard to follow. 

The new version of the Fitbit app now shows a big donut on the top of the screen with your progress toward your weekly goal. With a couple of quick runs, I’m now 41% of the way toward my weekly target. There’s even a graph showing where my target is versus what it considers “overreaching.” This makes a lot more sense.

Steven Hatfill, a senior advisor for the Department of Health and Human Services was fired over the weekend, with health officials telling reporters that he was terminated for giving himself a fake, inflated title and for not cooperating with leadership.

For his part, Hatfill told The New York Times that his ouster was part of “a coup to overthrow M. Kennedy,” referring to anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Further Hatfill said the coup was being orchestrated by Matt Buckham, Kennedy’s chief of staff, though Hatfill didn’t provide any explanation of how his ouster was evidence of that. An HHS spokesperson responded to the allegation, telling the Times that “firing a staff member for cause does not add up to a coup.”

Bloomberg was first to report Hatfill’s termination.

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YouTube’s going through a lot of changes right now, and according to the company, that’s to help it better stand out on TVs. Today, YouTube announced that it’s going to allow creators to upload bigger thumbnails, plus make browsing and shopping while watching on a TV a bit more convenient. But there’s also a big change coming to content itself, and it’s not just limited to TVs.

Soon, YouTube is going to start using AI to automatically upscale any videos with resolutions lower than 1080p. While you can technically still upload videos that are 720p nowadays, with smartphone cameras getting better and better, that essentially reads to me as “old videos.” It’s a bit concerning to me, as someone who’s been watching a lot of TV shows from the ’90s and early 2000s on YouTube as of late.

Credit: YouTube

Done right, AI upscaling is a simple way to de-noise a video, and is more resistant to hallucination than generations made from whole cloth. But it’s not without its own hiccups, and some creators have actually accused YouTube of using AI upscaling already, without telling them, and with some undesirable results. The accusations have been limited to YouTube Shorts for now, but notably, even Will Smith seems to have possibly run afoul of the system’s hidden AI, as the celebrity was himself accused of generating a crowd with AI in a YouTube Short of a recent concert. However, internet sleuths have determined the footage is likely legit, but was automatically made to look like “AI slop” by YouTube. Note, for instance, how different the footage looks on Instagram.

Luckily, YouTube says that this version of AI upscaling will be fully in the hands of creators and users. According to the feature’s announcement “Creators will retain complete control over their library, as both original files and original video resolution will be kept intact, with a clear option to opt-out of these enhancements.” Viewers, meanwhile, will be able to see when AI upscaling has been used thanks to a “super resolution” label in the resolution selection settings, and opt for the original resolution instead.

Additionally, YouTube told The Verge that videos that were shot below 1080p, but manually remastered and uploaded in 1080p or above, won’t be affected by the upscaling tech. What matters is the resolution the video was uploaded in.

All of that’s a relief for folks like me, who don’t want bizarre seven-fingered extras in our sitcoms, although it’s unclear whether this control will also extend to YouTube Shorts, or if YouTube might continue experimenting with mandatory AI upscaling there behind-the-scenes (which, to be fair, has not yet been confirmed).

Regardless, it makes sense why YouTube is making this change, as it tries to capture more eyes across more devices. Low resolution videos might look fine on a six-inch smartphone display, but blown up to 50+ inches on a TV, not so much.

YouTube hasn’t said exactly when the feature will go live, but if you notice what looks like weird AI artifacting the next time you’re watching a YouTube video, try checking the resolution settings by mousing over the video and tapping or clicking the cog icon.

The Federal Communications Commission voted yesterday to raise the maximum prices that prison and jail phone services can charge inmates and their families.

The 2–1 vote with Republicans voting to raise the limits came with a dissent from Democrat Anna Gomez, who said the new rates will be “almost double in some facilities.” A new inflation factor will allow rates to rise further.

“The FCC once again is going above and beyond to address the unsubstantiated needs of monopoly providers to squeeze every penny possible from families that want to stay in touch with their loved ones,” Gomez said at the FCC meeting. “Throughout this order, the FCC chooses to reward corporations with money taken from vulnerable families.”

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Blogger and technologist Anil Dash, writing about OpenAI’s recently launched browser, Atlas: When I first got Atlas up and running, I tried giving it the easiest and most obvious tasks I could possibly give it. I looked up “Taylor Swift showgirl” to see if it would give me links to videos or playlists to watch or listen to the most popular music on the charts right now; this has to be just about the easiest possible prompt.

The results that came back looked like a web page, but they weren’t. Instead, what I got was something closer to a last-minute book report written by a kid who had mostly plagiarized Wikipedia. The response mentioned some basic biographical information and had a few photos. Now we know that AI tools are prone to this kind of confabulation, but this is new, because it felt like I was in a web browser, typing into a search box on the Internet. And here’s what was most notable: there was no link to her website.

I had typed “Taylor Swift” in a browser, and the response had literally zero links to Taylor Swift’s actual website. If you stayed within what Atlas generated, you would have no way of knowing that Taylor Swift has a website at all.

Unless you were an expert, you would almost certainly think I had typed in a search box and gotten back a web page with search results. But in reality, I had typed in a prompt box and gotten back a synthesized response that superficially resembles a web page, and it uses some web technologies to display its output. Instead of a list of links to websites that had information about the topic, it had bullet points describing things it thought I should know. There were a few footnotes buried within some of those response, but the clear intent was that I was meant to stay within the AI-generated results, trapped in that walled garden.

During its first run, there’s a brief warning buried amidst all the other messages that says, “ChatGPT may give you inaccurate information”, but nobody is going to think that means “sometimes this tool completely fabricates content, gives me a box that looks like a search box, and shows me the fabricated content in a display that looks like a web page when I type in the fake search box.”

And it’s not like the generated response is even that satisfying.

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