An anonymous reader shares a report: Seagate has announced a new 4TB version of its storage expansion card for the Xbox Series X and S consoles. It's the first time the company has introduced a new capacity since launching 2TB and 512GB versions of the expansion card in late 2021. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple today introduced Liquid Glass, a new design language that brings transparency and glass shine effects across macOS, iPadOS, iOS, and its other software platforms. Alan Dye, Apple's VP of human interface, described the update as the company's "broadest design update, ever" and "the first time we're introducing a universal design across our platforms." ... [ Read it >> ]

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United Natural Foods (UNFI), a major distributor of groceries to Whole Foods and other retailers, said on Monday that it was hit by a cyberattack, warning of disruptions to its ability to fulfill and distribute customer orders. From a report: UNFI said in a Monday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it became aware of unauthorized access to its IT systems last Thursday, and began shutting down portions of its network. The filing added that the company has "implemented workarounds for certain operations in order to continue servicing its customers where possible," but noted that the intrusion has caused ongoing disruptions to its business operations. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The world's oceans are in worse health than realised, scientists have said today, as they warn that a key measurement shows we are "running out of time" to protect marine ecosystems. From a report: Ocean acidification, often called the "evil twin" of the climate crisis, is caused when carbon dioxide is rapidly absorbed by the ocean, where it reacts with water molecules leading to a fall in the pH level of the seawater. It damages coral reefs and other ocean habitats and, in extreme cases, can dissolve the shells of marine creatures. ... [ Read it >> ]

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A cybersecurity researcher was able to figure out the phone number linked to any Google account, information that is usually not public and is often sensitive, according to the researcher, Google, and 404 Media's own tests. From a report: The issue has since been fixed but at the time presented a privacy issue in which even hackers with relatively few resources could have brute forced their way to peoples' personal information. "I think this exploit is pretty bad since it's basically a gold mine for SIM swappers," the independent security researcher who found the issue, who goes by the handle brutecat, wrote in an email. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Meta is in talks to make a multibillion-dollar investment into AI startup Scale AI, according to people familiar with the matter. The financing could exceed $10 billion in value, some of the people said, making it one of the largest private company funding events of all time. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple researchers have found that state-of-the-art "reasoning" AI models like OpenAI's o3-mini, Gemini (with thinking mode-enabled), Claude 3.7, DeepSeek-R1 face complete performance collapse [PDF] beyond certain complexity thresholds when tested on controllable puzzle environments. The finding raises questions about the true reasoning capabilities of large language models. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Vox publishes a story about "the quiet revolutions that have prevented millions of cancer deaths....

"The age-adjusted death rate in the US for cancer has declined by about a third since 1991, meaning people of a given age have about a third lower risk of dying from cancer than people of the same age more than three decades ago... "... [ Read it >> ]

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The Atlantic makes that case that "the foundation of the AI industry is a scam" and that AI "is not what its developers are selling it as: a new class of thinking — and, soon, feeling — machines."

[OpenAI CEO Sam] Altman brags about ChatGPT-4.5's improved "emotional intelligence," which he says makes users feel like they're "talking to a thoughtful person." Dario Amodei, the CEO of the AI company Anthropic, argued last year that the next generation of artificial intelligence will be "smarter than a Nobel Prize winner." Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google's DeepMind, said the goal is to create "models that are able to understand the world around us." These statements betray a conceptual error: Large language models do not, cannot, and will not "understand" anything at all. They are not emotionally intelligent or smart in any meaningful or recognizably human sense of the word. LLMs are impressive probability gadgets that have been fed nearly the entire internet, and produce writing not by thinking but by making statistically informed guesses about which lexical item is likely to follow another. ... [ Read it >> ]

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"Replanting forests can help cool the planet even more than some scientists once believed, especially in the tropics," according to a recent announcement from the University of California, Riverside.

In a new modeling study published in Communications Earth & Environment, researchers at the University of California, Riverside, showed that restoring forests to their preindustrial extent could lower global average temperatures by 0.34 degrees Celsius. That is roughly one-quarter of the warming the Earth has already experienced. The study is based on an increase in tree area of about 12 million square kilometers, which is 135% of the area of the United States, and similar to estimates of the global tree restoration potential of 1 trillion trees. It is believed the planet has lost nearly half of its trees (about 3 trillion) since the onset of industrialized society. ... [ Read it >> ]

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A new study "adds a whole extra level of detail to our understanding of caffeine's impact on the brain during sleep," reports ScienceAlert:

Caffeine was shown to increase brain signal complexity, and shift the brain closer to a state of 'criticality', in tests run by researchers from the University of Montreal in Canada. This criticality refers to the brain being balanced between structure and flexibility, thought to be the most efficient state for processing information, learning, and making decisions. However, this state might prevent restful sleep, the researchers suggest. The caffeine isn't just keeping us alert, but actually changing how the brain is operating. What's more, they found younger adults aged 20 to 27 were more greatly affected in this way... ... [ Read it >> ]

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The U.K. electricity grid "was built to deliver power generated by coal and gas plants near the country's major cities and towns," reports the BBC, "and doesn't always have sufficient capacity in the wires that carry electricity around the country to get the new renewable electricity generated way out in the wild seas and rural areas. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Nintendo's new Switch 2 console sold a record 3 million units after its launch Thursday. But then today Microsoft announced their own upcoming handheld gaming device that's Xbox-branded (and Windows-powered).

Working with ASUS' ROG division, they build a device that weighs more than the Nintendo Switch 2, and "is marginally heavier than the Steam Deck," reports Engadget. But "at least those grips look more ergonomic than those on the Nintendo Switch 2 (which is already cramping my hands) or even the Steam Deck."... [ Read it >> ]

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"NASA engineers have spent the past decade developing a rugged, partially autonomous lander designed to explore Europa, one of Jupiter's most intriguing moons," reports Gizmodo.

But though NASA "got cold feet over the project," the engineers behind the project are now suggesting the probe could instead explore Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn:... [ Read it >> ]

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In late April Meta introduced its Meta AI app, which included something called a Discover feed. ("You can see the best prompts people are sharing, or remix them to make them your own.")
But while Meta insisted "you're in control: nothing is shared to your feed unless you choose to post it" — just two days later Business Insider noticed that "clearly, some people don't realize they're sharing personal stuff."... [ Read it >> ]

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Last month, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn "shared on LinkedIn an email he had sent to all staff announcing Duolingo was going 'AI-first'," remembers the Financial Times.

"I did not expect the amount of blowback," he admits....

He attributes this anger to a general "anxiety" about technology replacing jobs. "I should have been more clear to the external world," he reflects on a video call from his office in Pittsburgh. "Every tech company is doing similar things [but] we were open about it...." ... [ Read it >> ]

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The New York Times reports:
California State University announced this year that it was making ChatGPT available to more than 460,000 students across its 23 campuses to help prepare them for "California's future A.I.-driven economy." Cal State said the effort would help make the school "the nation's first and largest A.I.-empowered university system..." Some faculty members have already built custom chatbots for their students by uploading course materials like their lecture notes, slides, videos and quizzes into ChatGPT. ... [ Read it >> ]

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It's no longer a hypothetical question, writes the Washington Post. "In recent years, scientists have devised powerful genetic tools that may be able to eradicate mosquitoes and other pests once and for all."

But along with the ability to fight malaria, dengue, West Nile virus and other serious diseases, "the development of this technology also raises a profound ethical question: When, if ever, is it okay to intentionally drive a species out of existence...?"... [ Read it >> ]

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The Associated Press reports that on Friday, U.K. High Court justice Victoria Sharp and fellow judge Jeremy Johnson ruled on the possibility of false information being submitted to the court. Concerns had been raised by lower-court judges about "suspected use by lawyers of generative AI tools to produce written legal arguments or witness statements which are not then checked."... [ Read it >> ]

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Last year's Pentagon report reviewing UFO reports "left out the truth behind some of the foundational myths about UFOs," reports the Wall Street Journal.
"The Pentagon itself sometimes deliberately fanned the flames, in what amounted to the U.S. government targeting its own citizens with disinformation."... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shared this report from The New York Times:

Russian counterintelligence agents are analyzing data from the popular Chinese messaging and social media app WeChat to monitor people who might be in contact with Chinese spies, according to a Russian intelligence document obtained by The New York Times. The disclosure highlights the rising level of concern about Chinese influence in Russia as the two countries deepen their relationship. As Russia has become isolated from the West over its war in Ukraine, it has become increasingly reliant on Chinese money, companies and technology. But it has also faced what the document describes as increased Chinese espionage efforts. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shared this report from SFGate about a lawsuit alleging a "warrantless drone surveillance program" that's "trampling residents' right to privacy":

Sonoma County has been accused of deploying hundreds of drone flights over residents in a "runaway spying operation"... according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union. The North Bay county of Sonoma initially started the 6-year-old drone program to track illegal cannabis cultivation, but the lawsuit alleges that officials have since turned it into a widespread program to catch unrelated code violations at residential properties and levy millions of dollars in fines. The program has captured 5,600 images during more than 700 flights, the lawsuit said... ... [ Read it >> ]

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AppleInsider reports:

The engineer behind much of the Mac's early graphical user interfaces, QuickDraw, MacPaint, Hypercard and much more, William D. "Bill" Atkinson, died on June 5 of complications from pancreatic cancer...
Atkinson, who built a post-Apple career as a noted nature photographer, worked at Apple from 1978 to 1990. Among his lasting contributions to Apple's computers were the invention of the menubar, the selection lasso, the "marching ants" item selection animation, and the discovery of a midpoint circle algorithm that enabled the rapid drawing of circles on-screen. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Is copyrighted material a requirement for training AI? asks the Washington Post. That's what top AI companies are arguing, and "Few AI developers have tried the more ethical route — until now.

"A group of more than two dozen AI researchers have found that they could build a massive eight-terabyte dataset using only text that was openly licensed or in public domain. They tested the dataset quality by using it to train a 7 billion parameter language model, which performed about as well as comparable industry efforts, such as Llama 2-7B, which Meta released in 2023."... [ Read it >> ]

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TweakTown writes that the Switch 2 "has reportedly beaten the record for the most-sold console within 24 hours and is on track to shatter the two-month record," selling over 3 million units and tripling the PlayStation 4's previous launch day sales.
So Nintendo's first console in 8 years becomes "one of the most successful hardware releases of all time," writes Barron's, raising hopes for the future:... [ Read it >> ]

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Mike Judge always seemed to have secret geek sympathies. He co-created the HBO series Silicon Valley, as well as the movie Office Space (reviewed in 1999 by Slashdot contributor Jon Katz).

Now comes the word that besides rebooting Buffy the Vampire Slayer — and an animated scifi/action/horror film called Predator: Killer of Killers — Hulu is also relaunching Judge's animated series King of the Hill on August 4th. And Cinemablend notes they took great pains to ensure the inclusion of internet-loving neighbor Dale Gribble despite the death of voice actor Johnny Hardwick:... [ Read it >> ]

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LSD "is used to treat conditions like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction," notes Science Daily. And now a microbiology student "has found a long sought-after fungus that produces effects similar to the semisynthetic drug..."

Morning glory plants live in symbiosis with fungi that produce the same ergot alkaloids the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann modified when he invented LSD in the late 1930s. Hofmann hypothesized that a fungus in morning glories produced alkaloids similar to those in LSD, but the species remained a mystery... ... [ Read it >> ]

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Once upon a time, long-time Slashdot reader tgibson learned how to type on a manual typewriter, back in an 8th grade classroom.
And to this day, they write, "my bias is to nod approvingly at touch typists and roll my eyes at those who need to stare at the keyboard while typing..." But how true is that for computer professionals today?... [ Read it >> ]

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MIT comp-sci professor Ryan Williams suspected that a small amount of memory "would be as helpful as a lot of time in all conceivable computations..." writes Quanta magazine.

"In February, he finally posted his proof online, to widespread acclaim..."

Every algorithm takes some time to run, and requires some space to store data while it's running. Until now, the only known algorithms for accomplishing certain tasks required an amount of space roughly proportional to their runtime, and researchers had long assumed there's no way to do better. Williams' proof established a mathematical procedure for transforming any algorithm — no matter what it does — into a form that uses much less space. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Meta's Facebook and Instagram apps "were siphoning people's data through a digital back door for months," writes a Washington Post tech columnist, citing researchers who found no privacy setting could've stopped what Meta and Yandex were doing, since those two companies "circumvented privacy and security protections that Google set up for Android devices. ... [ Read it >> ]

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"Everyone has a blog these days, even Claude," Anthropic wrote this week on a page titled "Claude Explains."

"Welcome to the small corner of the Anthropic universe where Claude is writing on every topic under the sun".

Not any more. After blog posts titled "Improve code maintainability with Claude" and "Rapidly develop web applications with Claude" — Anthropic suddenly removed the whole page sometime after Wednesday. But TechCrunch explains the whole thing was always less than it seemed, and "One might be easily misled into thinking that Claude is responsible for the blog's copy end-to-end."... [ Read it >> ]

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Cybercriminals have been increasingly turning to "residential proxy" services over the past two to three years to disguise malicious web traffic as everyday online activity, according to research presented at the Sleuthcon cybercrime conference. The shift represents a response to law enforcement's growing success in targeting traditional "bulletproof" hosting services, which previously allowed criminals to maintain anonymous web infrastructure. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Britain is moving toward major nuclear power commitments after years of delays, as government officials acknowledge they can no longer postpone critical energy infrastructure decisions. The U.K. Treasury has exhausted options for delaying nuclear power choices, Politico reported this week, citing sources within Whitehall and the nuclear industry. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Startup Nord Quantique has demonstrated that a single piece of hardware can host an error-detecting logical qubit by using two quantum frequencies within one resonator. The breakthrough has the potential to slash the hardware demands for quantum error correction and deliver more compact and efficient quantum computing architectures. Ars Technica reports: The company did two experiments with this new hardware. First, it ran multiple rounds of error detection on data stored in the logical qubit, essentially testing its ability to act like a quantum memory and retain the information stored there. Without correcting errors, the system rapidly decayed, with an error probability in each round of measurement of about 12 percent. By the time the system reached the 25th measurement, almost every instance had already encountered an error. The second time through, the company repeated the process, discarding any instances in which an error occurred. In almost every instance, that meant the results were discarded long before they got through two dozen rounds of measurement. But at these later stages, none of the remaining instances were in an erroneous state. That indicates that a successful correction of the errors -- something the team didn't try -- would be able to fix all the detected problems.... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple has urged Australia not to follow the European Union in mandating iPhone app sideloading, warning that such policies pose serious privacy and security risks. "This communication comes as the Australian federal government considers new rules that could force Apple to open up its iOS ecosystem, much like what happened in Europe with recent legislation," notes Neowin. Apple claims that allowing alternative app stores has led to increased exposure to malware, scams, and harmful content. From the report: Apple, in its response to this Australian paper (PDF), stated that Australia should not use the EU's Digital Markets Act "as a blueprint". The company's core argument is that the changes mandated by the EU's DMA, which came into full effect in March 2024, introduce serious security and privacy risks for users. Apple claims that allowing sideloading and alternative app stores effectively opens the door for malware, fraud, scams, and other harmful content. The tech company also highlighted specific concerns from its European experience, alleging that its compliance there has led to users being able to install pornography apps and apps that facilitate copyright infringement, things its curated App Store aims to prevent. Apple maintains that its current review process is vital for user protection, and that its often criticized 30% commission applies mainly to the highest earning apps, with most developers paying a lower 15% rate or nothing.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In 2019, we told you about a new interactive digital "murder map" of London compiled by University of Cambridge criminologist Manuel Eisner. Drawing on data catalogued in the city coroners' rolls, the map showed the approximate location of 142 homicide cases in late medieval London. The Medieval Murder Maps project has since expanded to include maps of York and Oxford homicides, as well as podcast episodes focusing on individual cases. It's easy to lose oneself down the rabbit hole of medieval murder for hours, filtering the killings by year, choice of weapon, and location. Think of it as a kind of 14th-century version of Clue: It was the noblewoman's hired assassins armed with daggers in the streets of Cheapside near St. Paul's Cathedral. And that's just the juiciest of the various cases described in a new paper published in the journal Criminal Law Forum.... [ Read it >> ]

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Physicists at Loughborough University have created what they believe is the world's smallest violin, measuring just 35 microns long and 13 microns wide -- smaller than the width of a human hair, which typically ranges from 17 to 180 microns in diameter. The microscopic instrument, created using the university's new nanolithography system, serves as a demonstration of precision manufacturing capabilities that researchers will apply to studies of computing efficiency and energy harvesting methods. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Longtime Slashdot reader sinij shares a report from Car and Driver: [Volvo] is debuting a new version of the three-point seatbelt that it believes is a major improvement over the original. The new design will be a smart belt that adapts to each occupant's body and adjusts the belt load accordingly. It uses data from interior and exterior sensors to customize protection based on the road conditions and the specific occupants. The technology will debut on the upcoming EX60 crossover.... [ Read it >> ]

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The Register's Thomas Claburn reports: The Linux Foundation on Friday introduced a new method to distribute WordPress updates and plugins that's not controlled by any one party, in a bid to "stabilize the WordPress ecosystem" after months of infighting. The FAIR Package Manager project is a response to the legal brawl that erupted last year, pitting WordPress co-creator Matthew Mullenweg, his for-profit hosting firm Automattic, and the WordPress Foundation that he controls, against WP Engine, a rival commercial WordPress hosting firm. [...]... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference 25 (WWDC) kicks off next week, June 9th, showcasing the company's latest software and new technologies. That includes the next version of iOS, which is rumored to have the most significant design overhaul since the introduction of iOS 7. Here's an overview of what to expect: ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from OregonLive: Together, the four founders of Beaverton startup AheadComputing spent nearly a century at Intel. They were among Intel's top chip architects, working years in advance to develop new generations of microprocessors to power the computers of the future. Now they're on their own, flying without a net, building a new class of microprocessor on an entirely different architecture from Intel's. Founded a year ago, AheadComputing is trying to prove there's a better way to design computer chips.... [ Read it >> ]

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alternative_right shares a report: New York state lawmakers voted to stop the NYPD's attempt to block its radio communications from the public Thursday, with the bill expected to head to Gov. Kathy Hochul's desk. The "Keep Police Radio Public Act" passed both the state Senate and state Assembly, with a sponsor of the legislation arguing the proposal strikes the "proper balance" in the battle between transparency and sensitive information.... [ Read it >> ]

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Mirnotoriety shares a report from the Independent: Downing Street is exploring a proposal to introduce digital ID cards for every adult in Britain in a move to tackle the UK's illegal migration crisis, according to reports. The new "BritCard" would be used to check on an individual's right to live and work in Britain, with senior No 10 figures examining the proposal, The Times has reported.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: The FBI is warning that the BADBOX 2.0 malware campaign has infected over 1 million home Internet-connected devices, converting consumer electronics into residential proxies that are used for malicious activity. The BADBOX botnet is commonly found on Chinese Android-based smart TVs, streaming boxes, projectors, tablets, and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices. "The BADBOX 2.0 botnet consists of millions of infected devices and maintains numerous backdoors to proxy services that cyber criminal actors exploit by either selling or providing free access to compromised home networks to be used for various criminal activity," warns the FBI.... [ Read it >> ]

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Chinese student enrollment at American universities has dropped to 277,000 in the 2023-24 academic year, down from a peak of 372,000 in 2019-20, according to data in a new report examining shifting global education patterns. The decline accelerated following the State Department's May 28th announcement of an "aggressive" campaign to revoke visas for Chinese students in "critical fields" of science and engineering, as well as those with unspecified Communist Party "connections." ... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple will lose the ability to collect commissions on external iOS purchases in Europe starting June 23, following a European Commission ruling that hinges on the grammatical interpretation of a single comma in the Digital Markets Act. The dispute centers on Article 5.4, which requires gatekeepers to allow business users "free of charge, to communicate and promote offers, including under different conditions [...], and to conclude contracts with those end users." ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: There are more than 1,000 technology unicorns, meaning venture-backed companies worth $1 billion or more, but at least one in 5 are likely to fail, said Rich Wong, a partner at venture capital firm Accel Partners. "I think maybe out of that thousand, 20% fully die. The end," Wong said on Thursday at the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco. ... [ Read it >> ]

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David Sacks, President Trump's AI policy advisor, has dismissed the prospect of implementing a universal basic income program, declaring "it's not going to happen" during his tenure. He said: The future of AI has become a Rorschach test where everyone sees what they want. The Left envisions a post-economic order in which people stop working and instead receive government benefits. In other words, everyone on welfare. This is their fantasy; it's not going to happen."... [ Read it >> ]

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YouTube pulled a popular tutorial video from tech creator Jeff Geerling this week, claiming his guide to installing LibreELEC on a Raspberry Pi 5 violated policies against "harmful content." The video, which showed viewers how to set up their own home media servers, had been live for over a year and racked up more than 500,000 views. YouTube's automated systems flagged the content for allegedly teaching people "how to get unauthorized or free access to audio or audiovisual content." ... [ Read it >> ]

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Nearly a quarter of consumers using buy-now-pay-later loans now finance their grocery purchases, representing a significant increase from 14% a year ago, according to a recent LendingTree survey. The shift marks a departure from the traditional use of these short-term financing services for big-ticket items like electronics and furniture toward everyday essentials including groceries, utility bills, and streaming services. ... [ Read it >> ]

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