Google has confirmed that a technical issue has permanently deleted location history data for numerous users of its Maps application, with no recovery possible for most affected customers. The problem emerged after Google transitioned its Timeline feature from cloud to on-device storage in 2024 to enhance privacy protections. Users began reporting missing historical location data on support forums and social media platforms in recent weeks. "This is the result of a technical issue and not user error or an intentional change," said a Google spokesperson. Only users who manually enabled encrypted cloud backups before the incident can recover their data, according to Google. The company began shifting location storage policies in 2023, initially stopping collection of sensitive location data including visits to abortion clinics and domestic violence shelters.... [ Read it >> ]

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schwit1 writes: A compact, deep-sea, cable-cutting device, capable of severing the world's most fortified underwater communication or power lines, has been unveiled by China -- and it could shake up global maritime power dynamics.

The revelation marks the first time any country has officially disclosed that it has such an asset, capable of disrupting critical undersea networks. The tool, which is able to cut lines at depths of up to 4,000 metres (13,123 feet) -- twice the maximum operational range of existing subsea communication infrastructure -- has been designed specifically for integration with China's advanced crewed and uncrewed submersibles like the Fendouzhe, or Striver, and the Haidou series.... [ Read it >> ]

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China's Cyberspace Administration and Ministry of Public Security have outlawed the use of facial recognition without consent. From a report: The two orgs last Friday published new rules on facial recognition and an explainer that spell out how orgs that want to use facial recognition must first conduct a "personal information protection impact assessment" that considers whether using the tech is necessary, impacts on individuals' privacy, and risks of data leakage. Organizations that decide to use facial recognition must data encrypt biometric data, and audit the information security techniques and practices they use to protect facial scans. Chinese that go through that process and decide they want to use facial recognition can only do so after securing individuals' consent. The rules also ban the use of facial recognition equipment in public places such as hotel rooms, public bathrooms, public dressing rooms, and public toilets. The measures don't apply to researchers or to what machine translation of the rules describes as "algorithm training activities" -- suggesting images of citizens' faces are fair game when used to train AI models.... [ Read it >> ]

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Countries must develop their own artificial intelligence infrastructure or risk significant economic losses as the technology transforms global economies, Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch said last week.

"It will have an impact on GDP of every country in the double digits in the coming years," Mensch told the A16z podcast, warning that nations without domestic AI systems would see capital flow elsewhere. The French startup executive compared AI to electricity adoption a century ago. "If you weren't building electricity factories, you were preparing yourself to buy it from your neighbors, which creates dependencies," he said.... [ Read it >> ]

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prisoninmate shares a report: Highlights of Linux 6.14 include Btrfs RAID1 read balancing support, a new ntsync subsystem for Win NT synchronization primitives to boost game emulation with Wine, uncached buffered I/O support, and a new accelerator driver for the AMD XDNA Ryzen AI NPUs (Neural Processing Units). ... [ Read it >> ]

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DNA-testing company 23andMe has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection [non-paywalled source] in Missouri and announced CEO Anne Wojcicki's immediate resignation, weeks after rejecting her proposal to buy back the business she co-founded. The bankruptcy filing represents "the best path forward to maximize the value of the business," said Mark Jensen, board member and special committee chair.... [ Read it >> ]

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It's "live-recording the World Wide Web," according to NPR, with a digital library that includes "hundreds of billions of copies of government websites, news articles and data."

They described the 29-year-old nonprofit Internet Archive as "more relevant than ever."

Every day, about 100 terabytes of material are uploaded to the Internet Archive, or about a billion URLs, with the assistance of automated crawlers. Most of that ends up in the Wayback Machine, while the rest is digitized analog media — books, television, radio, academic papers — scanned and stored on servers. As one of the few large-scale archivists to back up the web, the Internet Archive finds itself in a particularly unique position right now... Thousands of [U.S. government] datasets were wiped — mostly at agencies focused on science and the environment — in the days following Trump's return to the White House... ... [ Read it >> ]

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RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) writes:

A recent paper on ArXiv reports a novel idea about the central regions of "our" galaxy.

Remember the hoopla a few years ago about radio-astronomical observations producing an "image" of our central black hole — or rather, an image of the accretion disc around the black hole — long designated by astronomers as "Sagittarius A*" (or SGR-A*)? If you remember the image published then, one thing should be striking — it's not very symmetrical. If you think about viewing a spinning object, then you'd expect to see something with a "mirror" symmetry plane where we would see the rotation axis (if someone had marked it). If anything, that published image has three bright spots on a fainter ring. And the spots are not even approximately the same brightness.... [ Read it >> ]

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Long-time Slashdot reader invisik reminds us that the "fish doorbell" is still going strong, according to the Associated Press.

"Now in its fifth year, the site has attracted millions of viewers from around the world with its quirky mix of slow TV and ecological activism."... [ Read it >> ]

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NPR reports on research "into whether our defenses built up from past flu seasons can offer any protection against H5N1 bird flu."

So far, the findings offer some reassurance. Antibodies and other players in the immune system may buffer the worst consequences of bird flu, at least to some degree. "There's certainly preexisting immunity," says Florian Krammer, a virologist at Mount Sinai's Icahn School of Medicine who is involved in some of the new studies. "That's very likely not going to protect us as a population from a new pandemic, but it might give us some protection against severe disease." This protection is based on shared traits between bird flu and types of seasonal flu that have circulated among us. Certain segments of the population, namely older people, may be particularly well-primed because of flu infections during early childhood. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Slashdot reader spatwei shared this report from the cybersecurity site SC World:

: AI coding assistants such as GitHub Copilot and Cursor could be manipulated to generate code containing backdoors, vulnerabilities and other security issues via distribution of malicious rule configuration files, Pillar Security researchers reported Tuesday. Rules files are used by AI coding agents to guide their behavior when generating or editing code. For example, a rules file may include instructions for the assistant to follow certain coding best practices, utilize specific formatting, or output responses in a specific language. ... [ Read it >> ]

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For weeks Signal has been one of the three most-downloaded apps in the Netherlands, according to a local news site. And now "Higher education institutions in the Netherlands have been looking for an alternative," according to DUB (an independent news site for the Utrecht University community):... [ Read it >> ]

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"There's no shortage of videos showing Steam running on expensive ARM single-board computers with discrete GPUs," writes Slashdot reader VennStone. "So I thought it would be worthwhile to make a guide for doing it on (relatively) inexpensive RK3588-powered single-board computers, using Box86/64 and Armbian."... [ Read it >> ]

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Today long-time open source advocate/journalist Doc Searls revealed that years of work by consumer privacy groups has culminated in a proposed standard "that can vastly expand our agency in the digital world" — especially in a future world where agents surf the web on our behalf:... [ Read it >> ]

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The latest Facebook whistleblower, a former international lawyer, "cannot grant any of the nearly 100 interview requests she has received from journalists from print and broadcast news outlets in the United States and the United Kingdom," reports the Washington Post (citing "a person familiar with the matter"). ... [ Read it >> ]

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In 30 minutes the Free Software Foundation holds a live auction of memorabilia to celebrate their upcoming 40th anniversary. "By moving out of the FSF office, we got to sort through all the fun and historically important memorabilia and selected the best ones," they announced earlier — and 25 items will up for bids. (To participate in the live auction, you must register in advance.) ... [ Read it >> ]

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Reuters reported this week that several U.S. national security agencies "have halted work on a coordinated effort to counter Russian sabotage, disinformation and cyberattacks..."

The plan was led by the president's National Security Council (NSC) and involved at least seven national security agencies working with European allies to disrupt plots targeting Europe and the United States, seven former officials who participated in the working groups told Reuters... [S]ince Trump took office on January 20 much of the work has come to a standstill, according to eleven current and former officials, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss classified matters... Regular meetings between the National Security Council and European national security officials have gone unscheduled, and the NSC has also stopped formally coordinating efforts across U.S. agencies... ... [ Read it >> ]

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"For developers and organisations that require a custom software image, a flexible and transparent build system is essential," according to an announcement Friday at Raspberry Pi.com.

"[T]o support these customers, we have created rpi-image-gen, a powerful new tool designed to put you in complete control of your Raspberry Pi images."... [ Read it >> ]

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Science magazine reports:
A strange-looking telescope that scanned the skies from a perch in northern Chile for 15 years has released its final data set: detailed maps of the infant universe showing the roiling clouds of hydrogen and helium gas that would one day coalesce into the stars and galaxies we see today. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Wired's web site "is going to stop paywalling articles that are primarily based on public records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act," their global editorial director announced this week:

They're called public records for a reason, after all. And access to public documents is more important than ever at this moment, with government websites and records disappearing... [S]ome may argue that, from a business standpoint, not charging for stories primarily relying on public records automatically means fewer subscriptions and therefore less revenue. We disagree. ... [ Read it >> ]

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NASA is considering "closing its headquarters and scattering responsibilities among the states," reports Politico, citing two people familiar with the plan.

"The proposal could affect up to 2,500 jobs and redistribute critical functions, including who manages space exploration and organizes major science missions."... [ Read it >> ]

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Hungary's Parliament not only voted to ban Pride events. They also voted to "allow authorities to use facial recognition software to identify attenders and potentially fine them," reports the Guardian.

[The nationwide legislation] amends the country's law on assembly to make it an offence to hold or attend events that violate Hungary's contentious "child protection" legislation, which bars any "depiction or promotion" of homosexuality to minors under the age of 18. The legislation was condemned by Amnesty International, which described it as the latest in a series of discriminatory measures the Hungarian authorities have taken against LGBTQ+ people... ... [ Read it >> ]

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"Italy is using its Piracy Shield law to go after Google," reports Ars Technica, "with a court ordering the Internet giant to immediately begin poisoning its public DNS servers" to prevent people from reaching pirate streams of football games.

"Italy's communication regulator praises the ruling and hopes to continue sticking it to international tech firms."... [ Read it >> ]

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"China is considering trying to blunt greater U.S. tariffs and other trade barriers," reports the Wall Street Journal, "by offering to curb the quantity of certain goods exported to the U.S., according to advisers to the Chinese government."
Tokyo's adoption of so-called voluntary export restraints, or VERs, to limit its auto shipments to the U.S. in the 1980s helped prevent Washington from imposing higher import duties. A similar move from Beijing, especially in sectors of key concern to Washington, like electric vehicles and batteries, would mitigate criticism from the U.S. and others over China's "economic imbalances": heavily subsidized companies making stuff for slim profits but saturating global markets, to the detriment of other countries' manufacturers... ... [ Read it >> ]

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"China is considering trying to blunt greater U.S. tariffs and other trade barriers," reports the Wall Street Journal, "by offering to curb the quantity of certain goods exported to the U.S., according to advisers to the Chinese government."
Tokyo's adoption of so-called voluntary export restraints, or VERs, to limit its auto shipments to the U.S. in the 1980s helped prevent Washington from imposing higher import duties. A similar move from Beijing, especially in sectors of key concern to Washington, like electric vehicles and batteries, would mitigate criticism from the U.S. and others over China's "economic imbalances": heavily subsidized companies making stuff for slim profits but saturating global markets, to the detriment of other countries' manufacturers... ... [ Read it >> ]

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Besides administering standardized pre-college tests, America's nonprofit College Board designs college-level classes that high school students can take. But now they're also crafting courses "not just with higher education at the table, but industry partners such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the technology giant IBM," reports Education Week. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The governments of Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Israel, and Singapore "are likely customers of Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions," reports TechCrunch, "according to a new technical report by a renowned digital security lab."

On Wednesday, The Citizen Lab, a group of academics and security researchers housed at the University of Toronto that has investigated the spyware industry for more than a decade, published a report about the Israeli-founded surveillance startup, identifying the six governments as "suspected Paragon deployments." ... [ Read it >> ]

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This week the "Old Vintage Computing Research" blog published a 21,000-word exploration of the DEC PDP-11, the 16-bit minicomputer sold by Digital Equipment Corporation. Slashdot reader AndrewZX calls the blog post "an excellent deep dive" into the machine's history and capabilities "and the classic Venix UNIX that it ran." The blogger still owns a working 1984 DEC Professional 380, "a tank of a machine, a reasonably powerful workstation, and the most practical PDP-adjacent thing you can actually slap on a (large) desk." ... [ Read it >> ]

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Was the cutting of undersea cables part of a larger pattern? Russia and its proxies are accused by western officials of "staging dozens of attacks and other incidents across Europe since the invasion of Ukraine three years ago," reports the Associated Press.

That includes cyberattacks and committing acts of sabotage/vandalism/arson, as well as spreading propaganda and even plotting killings, according to the article. ("Western intelligence agencies uncovered what they said was a Russian plot to kill the head of a major German arms manufacturer that is a supplier of weapons to Ukraine...") The news agency documented 59 incidents "in which European governments, prosecutors, intelligence services or other Western officials blamed Russia, groups linked to Russia or its ally Belarus."... [ Read it >> ]

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Slashdot reader Required Snark shared this article from Phys.org:

In the realm of science fiction, [sun-energy capturing] Dyson spheres and ringworlds have been staples for decades. But it is well known that the simplest designs are unstable against gravitational forces and would thus be torn apart. Now a scientist from Scotland, UK has shown that certain configurations of these objects near a two-mass system can be stable against such fractures... ... [ Read it >> ]

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"I intend to sue the National Archives," said Joseph diGenova, an 80-year-old former Trump campaign lawyer (and a U.S. Attorney from 1983 to 1988). While releasing 63,000 unredacted pages about the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, the U.S. government erroneously "made public the Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information of potentially hundreds of former congressional staffers and other people," reports USA Today. ("It is virtually impossible to tell the scope of the breach because the National Archives put them online without a way to search them by keyword, some JFK files experts and victims of the information release told USA TODAY...") ... [ Read it >> ]

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Founded in 1979, the Association for the Advancement of AI is an international scientific society. Recently 25 of its AI researchers surveyed 475 respondents in the AAAI community about "the trajectory of AI research" — and their results were surprising.

Futurism calls the results "a resounding rebuff to the tech industry's long-preferred method of achieving AI gains" — namely, adding more hardware:... [ Read it >> ]

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Two "groundbreaking research reports" on open source security were announced this week by the Linux Foundation in partnership with the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) and Linux Foundation Europe. The reports specifically address the EU's Cyber Resilience Act (or CRA) and "highlight knowledge gaps and best practices for CRA compliance." ... [ Read it >> ]

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Computer programming jobs in the US have declined by more than a quarter over the past two years, placing the profession among the 10 hardest-hit occupations of 420-plus jobs tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and potentially signaling the first concrete evidence of artificial intelligence replacing workers. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple's latest iOS 18.3.2 update is automatically re-enabling its Apple Intelligence feature even for users who previously disabled it, adding to mounting concerns about the company's AI strategy.

The update presents a splash screen with no option except to tap "Continue," which activates the feature. Users must then manually disable it through settings, with the AI consuming up to 7GB of storage space. This forced activation comes amid broader troubles with Apple's AI initiatives.... [ Read it >> ]

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The French National Assembly has rejected a controversial provision that would have forced messaging platforms like Signal and WhatsApp to allow government access to encrypted private conversations, lawmakers voted Thursday night. The measure, embedded within anti-drug trafficking legislation, would have implemented a "ghost participant model" allowing law enforcement to silently join encrypted chats without users' knowledge.... [ Read it >> ]

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London's Heathrow Airport resumed operations late Friday after an electrical fire at a nearby substation forced a full-day closure, causing global travel chaos with hundreds of canceled flights and thousands of stranded passengers. The explosion at a Hayes substation 1.5 miles from the airport knocked out power early Thursday, requiring 70 firefighters to battle a blaze in a transformer containing 25,000 liters of cooling oil. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Web infrastructure provider Cloudflare unveiled "AI Labyrinth" this week, a feature designed to thwart unauthorized AI data scraping by feeding bots realistic but irrelevant content instead of blocking them outright. The system lures crawlers into a "maze" of AI-generated pages containing neutral scientific information, deliberately wasting computing resources of those attempting to collect training data for language models without permission. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is pushing to cut bureaucracy by reducing management layers, according to a recording of a recent internal all-hands meeting obtained by Business Insider. Amazon plans to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by 15% by March-end, a process the company says is now complete and affected a "relatively small subset of employees." ... [ Read it >> ]

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Hollywood filmmaker Carl Erik Rinsch has been charged with defrauding Netflix of $11 million after allegedly misusing funds intended for an unfinished science fiction series, federal prosecutors said.

Rinsch, 47, was arrested in West Hollywood this week on charges of wire fraud, money laundering and unlawful monetary transactions that could result in decades of imprisonment if convicted. The FBI and Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York allege Rinsch diverted funds meant for his series "Conquest" to speculate on cryptocurrency, stay in luxury hotels and purchase high-end items including five Rolls-Royces and a Ferrari. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple has been hit with a federal lawsuit claiming that the company's promotion of now-delayed Apple Intelligence features constituted false advertising and unfair competition. From a report: The suit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, seeks class action status and unspecified financial damages on behalf of those who purchased Apple Intelligence-capable iPhones and other devices. "Apple's advertisements saturated the internet, television, and other airwaves to cultivate a clear and reasonable consumer expectation that these transformative features would be available upon the iPhone's release," the suit reads. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Meta is testing an AI feature that generates comment suggestions for Instagram posts. Users with access to the test see a pencil icon beside the comment field that activates "Write with Meta AI." The system analyzes photos before offering three comment suggestions, which users can refresh for alternatives. For a photo showing someone smiling with a thumbs-up in their living room, suggested comments include "Cute living room setup" and "Love the cozy atmosphere."... [ Read it >> ]

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Higher use of chatbots like ChatGPT may correspond with increased loneliness and less time spent socializing with other people, according to new research from OpenAI in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From a report: Those who spent more time typing or speaking with ChatGPT each day tended to report higher levels of emotional dependence on, and problematic use of, the chatbot, as well as heightened levels of loneliness, according to research released Friday. The findings were part of a pair of studies conducted by researchers at the two organizations and have not been peer reviewed. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The U.S. Treasury Department's sanctions watchdog removed cryptocurrency mixing tool Tornado Cash from its global blacklist on Friday, following a federal appeals court ruling last November that the Office of Foreign Asset Control couldn't sanction its smart contracts. Despite the delisting of over 100 Ethereum addresses from the Specially Designated Nationals list, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent emphasized continuing concerns about North Korea's digital asset theft operations. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft has begun urging Windows 10 users to upgrade their systems ahead of the October 14, 2025 support deadline, but with a solution many find impractical: just buy a new computer. According to StatCounter data, 58.7% of Windows users remain on Windows 10 despite the impending end of security updates and technical assistance. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Yahoo on Friday said it has struck a deal to sell TechCrunch, the 20-year-old tech journalism site, to Regent, a media investment firm. Axios: Yahoo's business centers mostly on aggregation. Journalism isn't its core focus. Regent is trying to pull together a portfolio of tech news sites and is eager to invest in news. Earlier this week, it acquired Foundry, which houses a slew of online tech publications, such as PCWorld, Macworld and TechAdvisor. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Google has filed a lawsuit against alleged scammers who created and sold fake business profiles on Google Maps, the company said. The legal action follows an investigation that uncovered and eliminated more than 10,000 illegitimate listings.

The investigation began after a Texas business reported an unlicensed locksmith impersonating them on the platform. Google discovered the scams primarily targeted "duress verticals" -- services needed in urgent situations like locksmiths and towing companies. "Once we're alerted to the actual fraud, we take extreme efforts to identify similar fraudulent listings," said Halimah DeLaine Prado, Google's general counsel. ... [ Read it >> ]

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DaringFireball: Whole Reddit thread examining this simple question: "What month is it?" and Siri's "I'm sorry, I don't understand" response (which I just reproduced on my iPhone 16 Pro running iOS 18.4b4). One guy changed the question to "What month is it currently?" and got the answer "It is 2025." More comments from that thread:"I ask Siri to play a podcast and she literally says, "I'm trying to play from Apple Podcasts but it doesn't look like you have it installed." I didn't even know you could delete that app. I certainly haven't. So I have to manually do it every time now. It used to work." ... [ Read it >> ]

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European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane warned that Europe must develop a digital euro to counter growing American influence over the continent's financial system [alternative source] amid escalating geopolitical tensions. Lane specifically cited Europe's "current dependence on US payment-card providers Visa and Mastercard, as well as technology companies including PayPal, Apple and Google" as a vulnerability requiring urgent action. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Thursday walked back comments he made in January, when he cast doubt on whether useful quantum computers would hit the market in the next 15 years. From a report: At Nvidia's "Quantum Day" event, part of the company's annual GTC Conference, Huang admitted that his comments came out wrong. "This is the first event in history where a company CEO invites all of the guests to explain why he was wrong," Huang said. ... [ Read it >> ]

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