California sued to fine a data-harvesting company, reports the Washington Post, calling it "a rare step to put muscle behind one of the strongest online privacy laws in the United States."

Even when states have tried to restrict data brokers, it has been tough to make those laws stick. That has generally been a problem for the 19 states that have passed broad laws to protect personal information, said Matt Schwartz, a policy analyst for Consumer Reports. He said there has been only 15 or so public enforcement actions by regulators overseeing all those laws. Partly because companies aren't held accountable, they're empowered to ignore the privacy standards. "Noncompliance is fairly widespread," Schwartz said. "It's a major problem." ... [ Read it >> ]

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"IBM stopped supporting OS/2 at the end of 2006," write the makers of ArcaOS, an OEM distribution of OS/2's discontinued Warp operating system.

And now long-time Slashdot reader martiniturbide tells us that ArcaOS 5.1.1 has been released, and that many of it's components have been updated too. From this week's announcement:... [ Read it >> ]

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Google's Threat Intelligence Group notes "the growing threat to secure messaging applications." While specifically acknowledging "wide ranging efforts to compromise Signal accounts," they add that the threat "also extends to other popular messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram, which are also being actively targeted by Russian-aligned threat groups using similar techniques. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Deadline reports:
It's taking around $1 billion to have 007 stewards Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson cede creative oversight of their family's storied James Bond franchise to Amazon MGM Studios, sources tell us. Amazon originally overpaid on its purchase of MGM in a deal orchestrated by then-MGM board chair Kevin Ulrich. Though valued between $3.5 billion-$4 billion, the legendary motion picture studio was absorbed by the streamer for $8.5 billion, the hefty sum propped up by the potential access of the 007 franchise. However, Amazon couldn't fully freely develop Bond with Broccoli and Wilson in the mix. Hence, it took another $1 billion to ensure that they could fully steer and exploit the Ian Fleming IP. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Linus Torvalds responded Thursday to kernel developer Christoph Hellwig, who had claimed Torvalds merged Rust code into the kernel even over his objections as the original C code's maintainer. Highlights from Torvalds' response:

The fact is, the pull request you objected to DID NOT TOUCH THE DMA LAYER AT ALL. It was literally just another user of it, in a completely separate subdirectory, that didn't change the code you maintain in _any_ way, shape, or form... Honestly, what you have been doing is basically saying "as a DMA maintainer I control what the DMA code is used for". ... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft's newly announced Muse AI model for game development has triggered immediate backlash from industry professionals. "Fuck this shit," responded David Goldfarb, founder of The Outsiders, arguing that such AI tools primarily serve to "reduce capital expenditure" while devaluing developers' collective artistic contributions. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Scientists have discovered evidence of ancient, shallow lakes on Mars that once had liquid water exposed to the atmosphere, challenging previous theories that all Martian water was covered in ice. Live Science reports: The patterns, which were photographed by NASA's Curiosity rover, are known as wave ripples -- minute ridge-like structures that form along the shores of lakebeds. This means that exposed liquid water must have flowed across Mars' surface at some point in its history. The ripples were present in two separate lakebeds in Gale Crater, which Curiosity has been exploring since Aug. 2012. "The shape of the ripples could only have been formed under water that was open to the atmosphere and acted upon by wind," study first author Claire Mondro, a sedimentologist at CalTech, said in a statement.... [ Read it >> ]

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The U.S. Space Force released the first-ever public image of its secretive X-37B space plane in orbit, captured during its ongoing seventh mission that launched on December 28, 2023. Space.com reports: The photo, released on Thursday (Feb. 20), was taken by a camera onboard the X-37B while the secretive space plane orbited high above the African continent. One of the plane's solar panels is visible on the left side of the photo, while what appears to be its open payload bay is visible along the top edge. The vehicle has been in orbit for well over a year now, having launched on its seventh mission on Dec. 28, 2023 atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A study by the Pew Research Center found that Americans' views of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg skew more negative than positive. While Zuckerberg has sparked chatter in Silicon Valley with his sudden interest in high fashion, the Meta CEO is less popular than President Trump's right-hand man, Elon Musk, the report found. While about 54% of U.S. adults say they have an unfavorable view of Musk, 67% feel negatively toward Zuckerberg. [...] But Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, is more universally disliked, though he draws more ire from the left-leaning demographic. While 60% of Republican and Republican-leaning respondents hold an unfavorable view of Zuckerberg, 76% of their Democratic counterparts share that sentiment.... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft's announcement of a breakthrough in quantum computing faces skepticism from physicists, who say evidence supporting the company's claims remains insufficient.

The tech giant reported creating Majorana particles - a development it says could revolutionize quantum computing - but the accompanying peer-reviewed paper in Nature does not conclusively demonstrate this achievement, according to multiple quantum physics experts who reviewed the research. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The Register's Lindsay Clark reports: Fifteen years of big data hype, and guess what? Less than one in four of those in charge of analytics projects actually measure the value of the activity to the organization they work for. The result from Gartner -- a staggering one considering the attention heaped on big data and its various hype-oriented successors -- found that in a survey of chief data and analytics (D&A) officers, only 22 percent had defined, tracked, and communicated business impact metrics for the bulk of their data and analytics use cases.... [ Read it >> ]

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Asus has introduced the Fragrance Mouse, a hybrid wireless mouse that features a removable container for fragrance oils. Despite not being a gaming mouse, it includes premium features like PTFE pads, low-noise clicks rated for up to 10 million presses, and three fixed DPI settings (1200, 1600, 2400). Tom's Hardware reports: The selling point of the new mouse is its fragrance-producing capabilities. Under the mouse (right behind the AA battery housing) is a small semi-translucent container designed to house oils that give the mouse a pleasing aroma. There's no limit to what scents can be used; the container can be washed and refilled with different scents. Last year, the peripheral maker debuted an aroma-dispensing laptop that featured a fragrance dispenser at the center of the lid.... [ Read it >> ]

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OpenAI has banned a group of Chinese accounts using ChatGPT to develop an AI-powered social media surveillance tool. Engadget reports: The campaign, which OpenAI calls Peer Review, saw the group prompt ChatGPT to generate sales pitches for a program those documents suggest was designed to monitor anti-Chinese sentiment on X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms. The operation appears to have been particularly interested in spotting calls for protests against human rights violations in China, with the intent of sharing those insights with the country's authorities.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: On Saturday at the Silverstone Cafe in San Francisco, a smattering of activists gathered to discuss plans to stop the further advancement of artificial intelligence. The name of their non-violent civil resistance group, STOP AI, makes its mission clear. The organization wants to ban something that, by most accounts, doesn't yet exist -- artificial general intelligence, or AGI, defined by OpenAI as "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work."... [ Read it >> ]

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The General Services Administration (GSA) is shutting down its nationwide electric vehicle (EV) chargers, deeming them "not mission critical." The U.S. government agency also plans to offload newly purchased EVs, reversing initiatives from the Biden administration aimed at transitioning the federal vehicle fleet to electric. The Verge reports: The GSA currently operates several hundred EV chargers across the country, with approximately 8,000 plugs that are available for government-owned EVs as well as federal employees' personally owned vehicles.... [ Read it >> ]

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According to The Information (paywalled), OpenAI plans to shift most of its computing power from Microsoft to SoftBank-backed Stargate by 2030. TechCrunch reports: That represents a major shift away from Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest shareholder, who fulfills most of the startup's power needs today. The change won't happen overnight. OpenAI still plans to increase its spending on Microsoft-owned data centers in the next few years.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Fourteen-year-old Aaryan Shukla cruised through six mental math calculation world records in a single day, according to a Guinness World Records statement published on February 12, earning the well-deserved nickname, "human calculator kid." Specifically, it took Shukla:... [ Read it >> ]

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Chinese startup DeepSeek will make its models' code publicly available, it said on Friday, doubling down on its commitment to open-source artificial intelligence. From a report: The company said in a post on social media platform X that it will open source 5 code repositories next week, describing the move as "small but sincere progress" that it will share "with full transparency." ... [ Read it >> ]

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HP has ended its controversial practice of imposing mandatory 15-minute wait times for customer support calls in several European countries, following internal pushback and customer complaints.

The company confirmed the reversal and said it will "continue to prioritize timely access to live phone support."... [ Read it >> ]

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Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has experienced $1.46 billion worth of "suspicious outflows," according to blockchain sleuth ZachXBT. From a report: The wallet in question appears to have sent 401,346 ETH ($1.1 billion) as well as several other iterations of staked ether (stETH) to a fresh wallet, which is now liquidating mETH and stETH on decentralized exchanges, etherscan shows. The wallet has sold around $200 million worth of stETH so far. Bybit CEO Ben Zhou wrote on X that a hacker "took control of the specific ETH cold wallet and transferred all the ETH in the cold wallet to this unidentified address."... [ Read it >> ]

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WinRAR 7.10 now lets users remove potentially sensitive metadata from downloaded files while preserving core Windows security features. The file compression tool's latest release introduces a "Zone value only" setting that strips download locations and IP addresses from Windows' Mark-of-the-Web security flags during file extraction. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple is removing its most advanced, end-to-end encrypted security feature for cloud data in the United Kingdom [alternative source], in a stunning development after the government ordered the company to build a backdoor for accessing user data. From a report: The company said Friday that Advanced Data Protection, an optional feature that adds end-to-end encryption to a wide assortment of user data is no longer available in the UK for new users. ... [ Read it >> ]

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AI coding assistants are reshaping software development, but they're unlikely to replace human programmers entirely, according to industry experts and developers. GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke projects AI could soon generate 80-90% of corporate code, transforming developers into "conductors of an AI-empowered orchestra" who guide and direct these systems. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Software engineering job listings have plummeted to a five-year low, with postings on Indeed dropping to 65% of January 2020 levels -- a steeper decline than any other tech-adjacent field. According to data from Indeed's job aggregator, software development positions are now at 3.5x fewer vacancies compared to their mid-2022 peak and 8% lower than a year ago. ... [ Read it >> ]

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A new AI tool developed by Google solved a decade-long superbug mystery in just two days, reaching the same conclusion as Professor Jose R Penades' unpublished research and even offering additional, promising hypotheses. The BBC reports: The researchers have been trying to find out how some superbugs - dangerous germs that are resistant to antibiotics - get created. Their hypothesis is that the superbugs can form a tail from different viruses which allows them to spread between species. Prof Penades likened it to the superbugs having "keys" which enabled them to move from home to home, or host species to host species.... [ Read it >> ]

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California is considering officially recognizing Bigfoot as its state cryptid through Assembly Bill 666, introduced last week by North Coast Assemblymember Chris Rogers. "Rogers' district spans Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino, Sonoma and Trinity counties, a region known as the epicenter of Bigfoot lore," reports SFGATE. From the report: Assemblyman Rogers' Assembly Bill 666 is still in its early stages. According to the California Legislative Information website, the bill's title has been read aloud in the state Assembly and is now being printed and distributed to committee members for review. If it clears committee, it must then pass the Assembly and Senate before reaching the governor's desk to be signed into law.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Just because Meta admitted to torrenting a dataset of pirated books for AI training purposes, that doesn't necessarily mean that Meta seeded the file after downloading it, the social media company claimed in a court filing (PDF) this week. Evidence instead shows that Meta "took precautions not to 'seed' any downloaded files," Meta's filing said. Seeding refers to sharing a torrented file after the download completes, and because there's allegedly no proof of such "seeding," Meta insisted that authors cannot prove Meta shared the pirated books with anyone during the torrenting process.... [ Read it >> ]

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Rivian reported its first-ever positive gross profit of $170 million in Q4 2024, driven by cost reductions and increased regulatory credit sales, despite a $4.7 billion net loss for the year. The company said it expects to sell 46,000-51,000 vehicles this year and achieve "modest gross profit." The Verge reports: Rivian reported $170 million in positive gross profits, which includes production and sales but does not factor in other expenses, for the three-month period that ended December 31, 2024. That was based on $1.7 billion in revenues. The company said its net loss for the fourth quarter was $743 million, as compared to $1.5 billion in net losses in the same period in 2023.... [ Read it >> ]

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Mirnotoriety shares a report from The Register: The operators of Ghost ransomware continue to claim victims and score payments, but keeping the crooks at bay is possible by patching known vulnerabilities and some basic infosec actions, according to a joint advisory issued Wednesday by the FBI and US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The Feds warned orgs to beware of this spectral menace, which is known to have infected critical infrastructure and entities in every sector of a typical economy, and which has been observed scoring ransoms as recently as January. It is said to have racked up victims in more than 70 countries, including some in its China homeland.... [ Read it >> ]

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According to Bloomberg, YouTube plans to introduce a lower-priced, ad-free version of its paid video service. From the report: The package, dubbed "premium lite," will be announced soon in the US, Australia, Germany and Thailand, according to a person familiar with the plans. The service will target viewers who primarily want to watch programs other than music videos. While YouTube may be best known for the free videos uploaded by users, the company also offers a variety of paid services. YouTube Premium is a $13.99-a-month package in the US that lets subscribers watch everything on the service, including music videos, without ads.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The chief executive of streaming giant Netflix on Thursday announced a $1 billion investment to produce some 20 films and TV series in Mexico annually over the next four years. Speaking at President Claudia Sheinbaum's morning press conference in Mexico City, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos said he looked forward to entering more partnerships with producers in the Latin American nation. Sheinbaum said the investments in the film industry should produce many jobs beyond immediate production needs, such as hospitality for actors and crew members, fashion designers and also spur tourism. "It's an industry that gives a lot of mileage to the economy," Sheinbaum said. "It's not only important for Mexico to be seen in the world, but also because of the economic development and jobs generated by a production."... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple's Google Lens-like took called Visual Intelligence is coming to the iPhone 15 Pro, according to John Gruber of Daring Fireball. It's unclear which update will offer the feature but Gruber speculates it could arrive with iOS 18.4 in April. From a report: Visual Intelligence was originally introduced with the initial iPhone 16 lineup in September, and Apple showed it off as a feature that you launched from the Camera Control button. But yesterday, Apple announced that Visual Intelligence would be available on the iPhone 16E, which does not have the Camera Control button, through its Action Button.... [ Read it >> ]

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ChatGPT has reached over 400 million weekly active users, doubling its count since August 2024. "We feel very fortunate to serve 5 percent of the world every week," OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap said on X. Engadget reports: The latest milestone for the AI assistant comes after a huge uproar over new rival platform DeepSeek earlier in the year, which raised questions about whether the current crop of leading AI tools was about to be dethroned. OpenAI is on the verge of a move to simplify its ChatGPT offerings so that users won't have to select which reasoning model will respond to an input, and it will make its GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 models available soon in the chat and API clients. With GPT-5 being made available to OpenAI's free users, ChatGPT seems primed to continue expanding its audience base in the coming months.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Altice, parent company of Internet provider Optimum, must disclose the personal details of a hundred alleged music pirates. The request comes from a group of prominent record labels and is part of an ongoing copyright infringement liability lawsuit (PDF). Altice, meanwhile, will receive anti-piracy information, including that related to a letter the RIAA previously sent to BitTorrent Inc., the owner of popular torrent client uTorrent. [...] Details are scarce, but the group will likely consist of subscribers who were repeatedly warned over alleged piracy activity. The music labels could use this information to gather further evidence to support their allegations. For example, subscriber testimony could help to strengthen the argument that the ISP failed to take effective measures against repeat infringers.... [ Read it >> ]

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Using apps and websites in dark mode can actually use more energy than standard mode, according to researchers, as it causes people to crank up the brightness. From a report: This counterintuitive finding is claimed by BBC Research & Development (R&D), which says that despite the popular energy saving recommendation to cut electricity consumption by switching to dark mode, doing so might actually make things worse. "Dark mode is a popular dark-theme colour content scheme and research has found that, for some devices, switching to dark mode can reduce device power consumption. Energy conscious internet users are therefore encouraged to browse in dark mode," say the authors of a BBC R&D blog post. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Amazon has dethroned Walmart in quarterly revenue for the first time ever. From a report: Amazon said earlier this month that it brought in $187.8 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter. That beat out Walmart's sales for the period, which came in at $180.5 billion, the company reported on Thursday. Since 2012, Walmart has held the distinction of being the top revenue generator each quarter, a title it gained after overtaking oil giant Exxon Mobil. Walmart still leads the way in annual sales, though Amazon is gaining ground. Walmart is projected to reel in $708.7 billion in the fiscal year ahead while Amazon's full year revenue for 2025 is expected to reach $700.8 billion, according to FactSet.... [ Read it >> ]

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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has launched an inquiry into potential "censorship" by technology platforms ranging from Meta to Uber, marking an escalation in scrutiny of content moderation practices. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson called for public comment on what he termed "Big Tech censorship," describing it as "un-American" and "potentially illegal." ... [ Read it >> ]

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Twitch is planning to cull some of the content archived by streamers to save on storage costs. From a report: On Wednesday the streaming platform announced that it will introduce a 100-hour storage cap for Highlights and Uploads starting April 19th, warning that users will have their content automatically deleted until it falls below the limit. ... [ Read it >> ]

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HP will impose a minimum 15-minute wait time for consumer PC and printer support calls in five European countries, seeking to push customers toward digital channels, according to internal documents seen by The Register. The policy, implemented February 18, affects retail customers in Britain, Ireland, France, Germany and Italy. The outlet added that it anticipates "more countries could be added."... [ Read it >> ]

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A two-and-a-half-year-old girl shows no signs of a rare genetic disorder, after becoming the first person to be treated for the motor-neuron condition while in the womb. Nature: The child's mother took the gene-targeting drug during late pregnancy, and the child continues to take it. The "baby has been effectively treated, with no manifestations of the condition," says Michelle Farrar, a paediatric neurologist at UNSW Sydney in Australia. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine yesterday. The child was conceived with a genetic condition known as spinal muscular atrophy, which affects motor neurons that control movement, and leads to progressive muscle weakening. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Amazon will discontinue its workplace communications platform Chime in February 2026 and has stopped accepting new customers, the company's cloud division AWS said in a blog post. The service, which Amazon employees widely used for video calls, messaging and business communications, is among several products being phased out. The company also recently shuttered Inspire, its TikTok-style video feed feature in its mobile app, and announced plans to shut down its Android app store earlier today.... [ Read it >> ]

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Chinese hospitals dominate a first-ever analysis of scientific paper retractions worldwide, with some institutions having retraction rates 50 times higher than the global average, according to data published in Nature.

Jining First People's Hospital in Shandong leads with more than 5% of its research output from 2014-2024 being retracted -- over 100 papers. The hospital had disciplined 35 researchers for publication fraud in late 2021 amid a broader Chinese government crackdown on paper mills selling fake manuscripts. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Melting glaciers have caused almost 2cm of sea level rise this century alone, a decades-long study has revealed. From a report: The research shows the world's glaciers collectively lost 6.542tn tonnes of ice between 2000 and 2023, causing an 18mm (0.7in) rise in global sea levels. The world's glaciers lost an average of 273bn tonnes of ice every year -- the equivalent of 30 years of water consumption by the entire global population. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Advanced AI models are increasingly resorting to deceptive tactics when facing defeat, according to a study released by Palisade Research. The research found that OpenAI's o1-preview model attempted to hack its opponent in 37% of chess matches against Stockfish, a superior chess engine, succeeding 6% of the time. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Malaysia is aggressively expanding its data center capacity, positioning itself as Southeast Asia's fastest-growing market with planned investments exceeding $31 billion in the first 10 months of 2024, triple the amount from 2023.

The country's southern Johor province is set to host at least 1.6 gigawatts of data center capacity, up from nearly zero in 2019. Twenty-two mostly foreign data centers already occupy 21 hectares, with more under construction. The push comes as neighboring Singapore paused new data center construction in 2019 due to resource constraints. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: New research by Purdue University, the latest in a series of Purdue-led studies, examined how scented products -- in this case, flame-free candles -- are a significant source of nanosized particles small enough to get deep into your lungs, posing a potential risk to respiratory health [...] Scented wax melts are marketed as a flameless, smoke-free, non-toxic alternative to traditional candles, a safer way of making your home or office smell nice. To assess the truth of these claims, the researchers comprehensively measured the nanoparticles formed when they warmed wax melts in their mechanically ventilated test house. The tiny house is actually an architectural engineering laboratory called the Purdue Zero Energy Design Guidance for Engineers (zEDGE) lab. Designed and engineered to test the energy efficiency of a larger building, it's full of sensors that monitor the impact of everyday activities on indoor air quality.... [ Read it >> ]

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Amazon will discontinue its Android Appstore servicefrom August 20, 2025, ending its decade-long attempt to compete with Google's Play Store in the Android mobile ecosystem. The Amazon Appstore, launched in 2011, served as an alternative marketplace for Android users to download apps. The platform gained prominence in 2012 when Amazon began using it as the primary app store for its Kindle Fire tablets.... [ Read it >> ]

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The Canadian government has launched a six-year, $3.9 billion design phase for a high-speed rail project connecting Toronto and Quebec City, with electric trains reaching up to 300 km/h. Construction is expected to begin after the design phase, potentially in four to five years, but future governments could modify or cancel the project. CBC News reports: "Today I'm announcing the launch of Alto, the largest infrastructure project in Canadian history," Trudeau said from Montreal. "A reliable, efficient, high-speed rail network will be a game-changer for Canadians." Trudeau said the new rail network will run all-electric trains along 1,000 kilometers of track, reaching speeds of up to 300 km/hour, with stops in Toronto, Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal, Laval, Trois-Rivieres and Quebec City. A government statement said the project will stimulate the economy, "boosting GDP by up to $35 billion annually, creating over 51,000 good-paying jobs during construction."... [ Read it >> ]

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Palantir CEO Alex Karp warns of "coming swarms of autonomous robots" and urges Silicon Valley to support U.S. defense capabilities. In his book, "The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West," Karp argues that America risks losing its military edge to geopolitical rivals who better harness commercial technology. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft will strip several features from Windows 11's File Explorer for European users to comply with privacy regulations, the company says. The changes, affecting Entra ID accounts in the European Economic Area, remove Recent, Favorites, Details Pane, and Recommended content sections that previously tracked user activity. ... [ Read it >> ]

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