Salesforce is cutting jobs as its latest fiscal year gets underway, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing a person familiar with the matter, even as the company simultaneously hires workers to sell new artificial intelligence products. From the report: More than 1,000 roles will be affected, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Displaced workers will be able to apply for other jobs internally, the person added. Salesforce had nearly 73,000 workers as of January 2024, when that fiscal year ended.

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AI systems that pose "unacceptable risk" or harm can now be banned in the European Union. Some of the unacceptable AI activities include social scoring, deceptive manipulation, exploiting personal vulnerabilities, predictive policing based on appearance, biometric-based profiling, real-time biometric surveillance, emotion inference in workplaces or schools, and unauthorized facial recognition database expansion. TechCrunch reports: Under the bloc's approach, there are four broad risk levels: (1) Minimal risk (e.g., email spam filters) will face no regulatory oversight; (2) limited risk, which includes customer service chatbots, will have a light-touch regulatory oversight; (3) high risk -- AI for healthcare recommendations is one example -- will face heavy regulatory oversight; and (4) unacceptable risk applications -- the focus of this month's compliance requirements -- will be prohibited entirely.

Companies that are found to be using any of the above AI applications in the EU will be subject to fines, regardless of where they are headquartered. They could be on the hook for up to ~$36 million, or 7% of their annual revenue from the prior fiscal year, whichever is greater. The fines won't kick in for some time, noted Rob Sumroy, head of technology at the British law firm Slaughter and May, in an interview with TechCrunch. "Organizations are expected to be fully compliant by February 2, but ... the next big deadline that companies need to be aware of is in August," Sumroy said. "By then, we'll know who the competent authorities are, and the fines and enforcement provisions will take effect."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/0124248/ai-systems-with-unacceptable-risk-are-now-banned-in-the-eu?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In what is becoming a sadly regular occurrence, two popular free software projects, X.org/Freedesktop.org and Alpine Linux, need to rally some of their millions of users so that they can continue operating. Both services have largely depended on free server resources provided by Equinix (formerly Packet.net) and its Metal division for the past few years. Equinix announced recently that it was sunsetting its bare-metal sales and services, or renting out physically distinct single computers rather than virtualized and shared hardware. As reported by the Phoronix blog, both free software organizations have until the end of April to find and fund new hosting, with some fairly demanding bandwidth and development needs.

An issue ticket on Freedesktop.org's GitLab repository provides the story and the nitty-gritty needs of that project. Both the X.org foundation (home of the 40-year-old window system) and Freedesktop.org (a shared base of specifications and technology for free software desktops, including Wayland and many more) used Equinix's donated space. [...] Alpine Linux, a small, security-minded distribution used in many containers and embedded devices, also needs a new home quickly. As detailed in its blog, Alpine Linux uses about 800TB of bandwidth each month and also needs continuous integration runners (or separate job agents), as well as a development box. Alpine states it is seeking co-location space and bare-metal servers near the Netherlands, though it will consider virtual machines if bare metal is not feasible.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/0044210/popular-linux-orgs-freedesktop-alpine-linux-are-scrambling-for-new-web-hosting?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

China said Tuesday it has launched an antitrust investigation into Google, part of a swift retaliation after the U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese goods. From a report: The probe by China's State Administration for Market Regulation will examine alleged monopolistic practices by the U.S. tech giant, which has had its search and internet services blocked in China since 2010 but maintains operations there primarily focused on advertising.

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New submitter mastazi writes: In his latest post, veteran Microsoft developer Raymond Chen reflects on what it means living in a world where you might need to reboot your toothbrush, or perform a firmware update to your shoes!

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/133247/microsoft-veteran-ponders-world-where-toothbrushes-need-reboots?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Chris Anderson, who transformed TED from a small conference into a global platform for sharing ideas, announced today he's stepping down after 25 years at the helm. The nonprofit's leader is seeking new ownership through an unusual open call for proposals. Anderson told WIRED he wants potential buyers -- whether universities, philanthropic organizations, media companies or tech firms -- to demonstrate both vision and financial capacity.

The organization, which charges $12,500 for its flagship conference seats, maintains $25 million in cash reserves and reports a $100 million break-even balance sheet. The future owner must commit to keeping the conference running and maintaining TED's practice of sharing talks for free.

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The proportion of people being diagnosed with lung cancer who have never smoked is increasing, with air pollution an "important factor," the World Health Organization's cancer agency has said. From a report: Lung cancer in people who have never smoked cigarettes or tobacco is now estimated to be the fifth highest cause of cancer deaths worldwide, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Lung cancer in never-smokers is also occurring almost exclusively as adenocarcinoma, which has become the most dominant of the four main subtypes of the disease in both men and women globally, the IARC said.

About 200,000 cases of adenocarcinoma were associated with exposure to air pollution in 2022, according to the IARC study published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal. The largest burden of adenocarcinoma attributable to air pollution was found in east Asia, particularly China, the study found.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/1453255/lung-cancer-diagnoses-on-the-rise-among-never-smokers-worldwide?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Microsoft has intensified efforts to block unsupported Windows 11 installations, removing documentation about bypassing system requirements and flagging third-party workaround tools as potential malware. The move comes as Windows 10 approaches end of support in October 2025, when users must either continue without updates, upgrade to Windows 11, or purchase new hardware compatible with Windows 11's TPM 2.0 requirement.

Microsoft Defender now identifies Flyby11, a popular tool for installing Windows 11 on incompatible devices, as "PUA:Win32/Patcher." Users are also reporting that unsupported Windows 11 installations are already facing restrictions, with some machines unable to receive major updates. Microsoft has also removed text from its "Ways to install Windows 11" page that had provided instructions for bypassing TPM 2.0 requirements through registry key modifications. The removed section included technical details for users who acknowledged and accepted the risks of installing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/161234/microsoft-quietly-makes-it-harder-to-install-windows-11-on-old-pcs-ahead-of-windows-10s-end-of-support?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Americans quit 39.6 million jobs in 2024, an 11% drop from 2023 and 22% below the 2022 peak, Labor Department data showed Tuesday, signaling an end to the post-pandemic job-switching frenzy. The monthly quit rate fell below pre-pandemic levels as workers faced diminishing options in a cooling labor market. Available positions per unemployed worker dropped to 1.1 from 2 in March 2022, while hiring declined to a monthly average of 3.5% in 2024 from 4.4% in 2021.

Total hiring fell to 66 million in 2024 from 71 million in 2023, though the job market remained stable. The unemployment rate held at 4.1%, with economists expecting steady job growth in Friday's upcoming labor report. The Conference Board's latest survey showed fewer respondents viewing jobs as plentiful compared to the early 2020s, with more reporting difficulties finding work.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/1720223/americans-kiss-job-hopping-goodbye?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Panasonic will cut its costs, restructure underperforming units and revamp its workforce as it pivots toward AI data centers and away from its consumer electronics roots, the company said on Tuesday. The Japanese conglomerate aims to boost profits by 300 billion yen ($1.93 billion) by March 2029, partly by consolidating production and logistics operations.

Bloomberg reports that CEO Yuki Kusumi has declined to confirm if the company would divest its TV business but said alternatives were being considered. The Tesla battery supplier plans to integrate AI across operations through a partnership with Anthropic, targeting growth in components for data centers.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/1738246/panasonic-to-cut-costs-to-support-shift-into-ai?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Autonomous vehicle company Cruise will lay off about half of its 2,100 employees and remove several top executives, including CEO Marc Whitten, as parent company General Motors shifts away from robotaxi development to focus on personal autonomous vehicles.

The cuts come two months after GM said it would stop funding Cruise's robotaxi program to save $1 billion annually. Affected workers will receive severance packages including eight weeks of pay and benefits through April. The restructuring follows an October incident where a Cruise vehicle dragged a pedestrian, leading to the suspension of its permits.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/1825220/cruise-to-slash-workforce-by-nearly-50-after-gm-cuts-funding-to-robotaxi-operations?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Amazon's brick-and-mortar expansion has faltered, WSJ reported Tuesday, as the e-commerce giant plans to close its Amazon Go store in Woodland Hills, California, shrinking the cashierless convenience store chain to 16 locations across four states, down from roughly twice that number in early 2023.

The company is pivoting to license its "Just Walk Out" technology, now used by more than 200 retailers including colleges and airports, while focusing its physical retail strategy on grocery stores through Whole Foods Market and Amazon Fresh locations. Amazon's other physical retail experiments, including bookstores and "4-star" locations selling popular website items, have also struggled.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/1830249/amazon-king-of-online-retail-cant-seem-to-make-its-physical-stores-work?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

In his post about the future of Fedora Workstation, Christian F.K. Schaller discusses how the Red Hat team plans to integrate AI with IBM's open-source Granite engine to enhance developer tools, such as IDEs, and create an AI-powered Code Assistant. He says the team is also working on streamlining AI acceleration in Toolbx and ensuring Fedora users have access to tools like RamaLama. From the post: One big item on our list for the year is looking at ways Fedora Workstation can make use of artificial intelligence. Thanks to IBMs Granite effort we know have an AI engine that is available under proper open source licensing terms and which can be extended for many different usecases. Also the IBM Granite team has an aggressive plan for releasing updated versions of Granite, incorporating new features of special interest to developers, like making Granite a great engine to power IDEs and similar tools. We been brainstorming various ideas in the team for how we can make use of AI to provide improved or new features to users of GNOME and Fedora Workstation. This includes making sure Fedora Workstation users have access to great tools like RamaLama, that we make sure setting up accelerated AI inside Toolbx is simple, that we offer a good Code Assistant based on Granite and that we come up with other cool integration points. "I'm still not sure how I feel about this approach," writes designer/developer and blogger, Bradley Taunt. "While IBM Granite is an open source model, I still don't enjoy so much artificial 'intelligence' creeping into core OS development. This also isn't something optional on the end-users side, like a desktop feature or package. This sounds like it's going to be built directly into the core system."

"Red Hat has been pushing hard towards AI and my main concern is having this influence other operating system dev teams. Luckily things seems AI-free in BSD land. For now, at least."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has been demanding an overhaul of a $42.45 billion broadband deployment program, and now his telecom policy director has been chosen to lead the federal agency in charge of the grant money. "Congratulations to my Telecom Policy Director, Arielle Roth, for being nominated to lead NTIA," Cruz wrote last night, referring to President Trump's pick to lead the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Roth's nomination is pending Senate approval. Roth works for the Senate Commerce Committee, which is chaired by Cruz. "Arielle led my legislative and oversight efforts on communications and broadband policy with integrity, creativity, and dedication," Cruz wrote.

Shortly after Trump's election win, Cruz called for an overhaul of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, which was created by Congress in November 2021 and is being implemented by the NTIA. Biden-era leaders of the NTIA developed rules for the program and approved initial funding plans submitted by every state and territory, but a major change in approach could delay the distribution of funds. Cruz previously accused the NTIA of "technology bias" because the agency prioritized fiber over other types of technology. He said Congress would review BEAD for "imposition of statutorily-prohibited rate regulation; unionized workforce and DEI labor requirements; climate change assessments; excessive per-location costs; and other central planning mandates."

Roth criticized the BEAD implementation at a Federalist Society event in June 2024. "Instead of prioritizing connecting all Americans who are currently unserved to broadband, the NTIA has been preoccupied with attaching all kinds of extralegal requirements on BEAD and, to be honest, a woke social agenda, loading up all kinds of burdens that deter participation in the program and drive up costs," she said. Municipal broadband networks and fiber networks in general could get less funding under the new plans. Roth is "expected to change the funding conditions that currently include priority access for government-owned networks" and "could revisit decisions like the current preference for fiber," Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Congress defined priority broadband projects under BEAD as those that "ensure that the network built by the project can easily scale speeds over time to meet the evolving connectivity needs of households and businesses; and support the deployment of 5G, successor wireless technologies, and other advanced services."

The Biden NTIA determined that only end-to-end fiber-optic architecture meet these criteria. "End-to-end fiber networks can be updated by replacing equipment attached to the ends of the fiber-optic facilities, allowing for quick and relatively inexpensive network scaling as compared to other technologies. Moreover, new fiber deployments will facilitate the deployment and growth of 5G and other advanced wireless services, which rely extensively on fiber for essential backhaul," the Biden NTIA said (PDF).

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/2059206/42-billion-broadband-grant-program-may-scrap-biden-admins-preference-for-fiber?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The DeepComputing RISC-V Mainboard that Framework announced last year for its 13-inch laptops is now available for $199. Liliputing reports: If you already have a Framework Laptop 13 with an Intel or AMD motherboard, the new board is a drop-in replacement. But if you don't have a Framework Laptop you can also use the mainboard as a standalone computer: Framework sells a $39 Cooler Master case that effectively turns its mainboards into mini desktop computers. The RISC-V Mainboard comes from a partnership between Framework and DeepComputing, the Chinese company behind the DC-ROMA laptops, which were some of the first notebook computers to ship with RISC-V processors.

The board features a StarFive JH7110 processor, which is a 1.5 GHz quad-core chip featuring SiFive U74 RISC-V CPU cores and Imagination BXE-4-32 graphics, 8GB of onboard RAM, and a a 64GB SD card for storage (there's also support for an optional eMMC module, but you'll need to bring your own). Since the board is designed to fit in existing laptop frames, it's the same size and shape as AMD or Intel models and has four USB ports in the same locations. But these ports are a little less versatile than the ones you might find on other Framework Laptop 13 Mainboards [...]. There's also a 3.5mm audio jack. You can check out the new board via the Framework Marketplace.

Further reading: Late last year, Framework CEO Nirav Patel delivered one of the best live demos we've ever seen at a tech conference -- modifying a Framework Laptop from x86 to RISC-V live on stage.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/217248/risc-v-mainboard-for-the-framework-laptop-13-is-now-available?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: Low quality books that appear to be AI generated are making their way into public libraries via their digital catalogs, forcing librarians who are already understaffed to either sort through a functionally infinite number of books to determine what is written by humans and what is generated by AI, or to spend taxpayer dollars to provide patrons with information they don't realize is AI-generated.

Public libraries primarily use two companies to manage and lend ebooks: Hoopla and OverDrive, the latter of which people may know from its borrowing app, Libby. Both companies have a variety of payment options for libraries, but generally libraries get access to the companies' catalog of books and pay for customers to be able to borrow that book, with different books having different licenses and prices. A key difference is that with OverDrive, librarians can pick and choose which books in OverDrive's catalog they want to give their customers the option of borrowing. With Hoopla, librarians have to opt into Hoopla's entire catalog, then pay for whatever their customers choose to borrow from that catalog. The only way librarians can limit what Hoopla books their customers can borrow is by setting a limit on the price of books. For example, a library can use Hoopla but make it so their customers can only borrow books that cost the library $5 per use.

On one hand, Hoopla's gigantic catalog, which includes ebooks, audio books, and movies, is a selling point because it gives librarians access to more for cheaper price. On the other hand, making librarians buy into the entire catalog means that a customer looking for a book about how to diet for a healthier liver might end up borrowing Fatty Liver Diet Cookbook: 2000 Days of Simple and Flavorful Recipes for a Revitalized Liver. The book was authored by Magda Tangy, who has no online footprint, and who has an AI-generated profile picture on Amazon, where her books are also for sale. Note the earring that is only on one ear and seems slightly deformed. A spokesperson for deepfake detection company Reality Defender said that according to their platform, the headshot is 85 percent likely to be AI-generated. [...] It is impossible to say exactly how many AI-generated books are included in Hoopla's catalog, but books that appeared to be AI-generated were not hard to find for most of the search terms I tried on the platform.
"This type of low quality, AI generated content, is what we at 404 Media and others have come to call AI slop," writes Emanuel Maiberg. "Librarians, whose job it is in part to curate what books their community can access, have been dealing with similar problems in the publishing industry for years, and have a different name for it: vendor slurry."

"None of the librarians I talked to suggested the AI-generated content needed to be banned from Hoopla and libraries only because it is AI-generated. It might have its place, but it needs to be clearly labeled, and more importantly, provide borrowers with quality information."

Sarah Lamdan, deputy director of the American Library Association, told 404 Media: "Platforms like Hoopla should offer libraries the option to select or omit materials, including AI materials, in their collections. AI books should be well-identified in library catalogs, so it is clear to readers that the books were not written by human authors. If library visitors choose to read AI eBooks, they should do so with the knowledge that the books are AI-generated."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/2119257/ai-generated-slop-is-already-in-your-public-library?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Google has updated its public AI principles page to remove a pledge to not build AI for weapons or surveillance. TechCrunch reports: Asked for comment, the company pointed TechCrunch to a new blog post on "responsible AI." It notes, in part, "we believe that companies, governments, and organizations sharing these values should work together to create AI that protects people, promotes global growth, and supports national security." Google's newly updated AI principles note the company will work to "mitigate unintended or harmful outcomes and avoid unfair bias," as well as align the company with "widely accepted principles of international law and human rights." Further reading: Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code of Conduct

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/2217224/google-removes-pledge-to-not-use-ai-for-weapons-from-website?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Apple has announced Apple Invites, a new iPhone app designed to help you manage your social life. Engadget reports: The idea behind Apple Invites is that you can create and share custom invitations for any event or occasion. You can use your own photos or backgrounds in the app as an image for the invite. Image Playground is built into Invites and you can use that to generate an images for the invitation instead. Other Apple Intelligence features such as Writing Tools are baked in as well, in case you need a hand to craft the right message for your invitation. The tech giant also said it was increasing AppleCare+ subscription prices for the iPhone, "raising the cost by 50 cents for all models in the United States," according to MacRumors. From the report: Standard AppleCare+ for the iPhone 16 models is now priced at $10.49 per month, for example, up from the prior $9.99 per month price. The 50 cent price increase applies to all available AppleCare+ plans for Apple's current iPhone lineup, and it includes both the standard plan and the Theft and Loss plan. The two-year AppleCare+ subscription prices have not changed, nor have the service fees and deductibles. The increased prices are only applicable when paying for AppleCare+ on a monthly basis. Apple has not raised the prices of AppleCare+ subscription plans for the iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/2226224/apple-announces-invites-app-raises-applecare-subscription-prices-for-iphone?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

OpenAI is partnering with the California State University (CSU) system to bring ChatGPT Edu to the 23-campus community of 500,000 students, calling it the "largest implementation of ChatGPT by any single organization or company anywhere in the world." Fortune reports: As part of ChatGPT Edu, members of the CSU community will get special access to ChatGPT-4o and advanced research and analysis capabilities. The partnership allows schools to create customizable AI chatbots for any project, like a campus IT help desk bot, financial aid assistant, chemistry tutor, or orientation buddy. CSU also plans to introduce free AI skills training for its students, faculty, and staff as well as connect students with AI-related apprenticeship programs. CSU joins a number of other schools with ChatGPT Edu partnerships, including Arizona State University (AS), The University of Texas, Austin, University of Oxford, Columbia University, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/2235222/openai-partners-with-california-state-university-system?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: For all motorists, but perhaps the Ferrari-collecting rocker Rod Stewart in particular, it will be music to the ears: researchers have developed a road surface that heals when it cracks, preventing potholes without a need for human intervention. The international team devised a self-healing bitumen that mends cracks as they form by fusing the asphalt back together. In laboratory tests, pieces of the material repaired small fractures within an hour of them first appearing. "When you close the cracks you prevent potholes forming in the future and extend the lifespan of the road," said Dr Jose Norambuena-Contreras, a researcher on the project at Swansea University. "We can extend the surface lifespan by 30%."

Potholes typically start from small surface cracks that form under the weight of traffic. These allow water to seep into the road surface, where it causes more damage through cycles of freezing and thawing. Bitumen, the sticky black substance used in asphalt, becomes susceptible to cracking when it hardens through oxidation. To make the self-healing bitumen, the researchers mixed in tiny porous plant spores soaked in recycled oils. When the road surface is compressed by passing traffic, it squeezes the spores, which release their oil into any nearby cracks. The oils soften the bitumen enough for it to flow and seal the cracks. Working with researchers at King's College London and Google Cloud, the scientists used machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to model the movement of organic molecules in bitumen and simulate the behaviour of the self-healing material to see how it responded to newly formed cracks. The material could be scaled up for use on British roads in a couple of years, the researchers believe. Google published a blog post with more information about the "self-healing" asphalt.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/2243225/uk-team-invents-self-healing-road-surface-to-prevent-potholes?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The United States Postal Service has suspended all package shipments from China and Hong Kong following President Donald Trump's decision to eliminate the de minimis exemption, which previously allowed small packages under $800 to enter the U.S. without import duties. "The move could potentially create chaos and confusion across the online shopping industry, as well as make purchases more expensive for consumers, especially because many global manufacturers and internet sellers are located in China," reports Wired. "Shoppers are now on the hook not only for the additional 10 percent tariff, but also whatever original tax rate their products were exempted from until Tuesday." From the report: Cindy Allen, who has worked in international trade for over 30 years and is the CEO of the consulting firm Trade Force Multiplier, gave WIRED an example of how much additional cost the tariff will incur: A woman's dress made of synthetic fiber shipped from China through de minimis will now be subject to a regular 16 percent tariff, a 7.5 percent Section 301 duty specifically for goods from China, the new 10 percent tariff required by Trump, additional processing fees and customs brokerage fees, and perhaps increased brokering and handling costs due to the sudden change in rules. "Will the dress that was $5 now cost $5.50 or $15?" says Allen. "That we don't know. It depends on how those retailers react and change their business models."

In the immediate term, clearing customs will become a challenge for most ecommerce companies. Their long-term concern, though, is the potential impact on profitability. The appeal of Temu and Shein and similar Chinese ecommerce companies is how affordable their products are. If that changes, the ecommerce landscape and consumer behavior in the US may change significantly as well. While the USPS has announced the suspension of accepting any parcels from China and Hong Kong, CBP hasn't elaborated on how the agency will enforce Trump's new tariffs other than saying in an announcement that it will reject de minimis exemption requests from China starting today.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/055207/usps-halts-all-packages-from-china-sending-the-ecommerce-industry-into-chaos?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Scientists have demonstrated control over a newly theorized type of magnetism, known as altermagnetism, by manipulating nanoscale magnetic whirlpools in an ultra-thin wafer of manganese telluride. "Our experimental work has provided a bridge between theoretical concepts and real-life realization, which hopefully illuminates a path to developing altermagnetic materials for practical applications," says University of Nottingham physicist Oliver Amin, who led the research with PhD student Alfred Dal Din. From the report: Using a device that accelerates electrons to blinding speeds, a team led by researchers from the University of Nottingham showered an ultra-thin wafer of manganese telluride with X-rays of different polarizations, revealing changes on a nanometer scale reflecting magnetic activity unlike anything seen before. [...] More recently, a third configuration of particles in ferromagnetic materials was theorized.

In what's referred to as altermagnetism, particles are arranged in a canceling fashion like antiferromagnetism, yet rotated just enough to allow for confined forces on a nanoscale -- not enough to pin a grocery list to your freezer, but with discrete properties that engineers are keen to manipulate into storing data or channeling energy. "Altermagnets consist of magnetic moments that point antiparallel to their neighbors," explains University of Nottingham physicist Peter Wadley. "However, each part of the crystal hosting these tiny moments is rotated with respect to its neighbors. This is like antiferromagnetism with a twist! But this subtle difference has huge ramifications."

Experiments have since confirmed the existence of this in-between 'alter' magnetism. However, none had directly demonstrated it was possible to manipulate its tiny magnetic vortices in ways that might prove useful. Wadley and his colleagues demonstrated that a sheet of manganese telluride just a few nanometers thick could be distorted in ways that intentionally created distinct magnetic whirlpools on the wafer's surface. "Our experimental work has provided a bridge between theoretical concepts and real-life realization, which hopefully illuminates a path to developing altermagnetic materials for practical applications," says University of Nottingham physicist Oliver Amin.
This research was published in the journal Nature.

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Meta's metaverse ambitions face a decisive year in 2025, with Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth warning employees that the project could become either "a legendary misadventure" or prove visionary, Business Insider is reporting, citing an internal memo. Bosworth called for increased sales and user engagement for Meta's mixed reality products, noting the company plans to launch several AI-powered wearable devices.

The tech giant's Reality Labs division, which develops virtual and augmented reality products, reported record revenue of $1.08 billion in the fourth quarter but posted its largest-ever quarterly loss of $4.97 billion. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff the company's AI-powered smart glasses, which sold over 1 million units in 2024, marked a "great start" but would not significantly impact the business. The Reality Labs unit has accumulated losses of approximately $60 billion since 2020.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/038254/meta-cto-2025-make-or-break-year-for-metaverse?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, according to renowned climate scientist Prof James Hansen, who said the international 2C target is "dead." A new analysis by Hansen and colleagues concludes that both the impact of recent cuts in sun-blocking shipping pollution, which has raised temperatures, and the sensitivity of the climate to increasing fossil fuels emissions are greater than thought. The group's results are at the high end of estimates from mainstream climate science but cannot be ruled out, independent experts said. If correct, they mean even worse extreme weather will come sooner and there is a greater risk of passing global tipping points, such as the collapse of the critical Atlantic ocean currents.

Hansen, at Columbia University in the US, sounded the alarm to the general public about climate breakdown in testimony he gave to a UN congressional committee in 1988. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) defined a scenario which gives a 50% chance to keep warming under 2C -- that scenario is now impossible," he said. "The 2C target is dead, because the global energy use is rising, and it will continue to rise." The new analysis said global heating is likely to reach 2C by 2045, unless solar geoengineering is deployed. [...] In the new study, published in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, Hansen's team said: "Failure to be realistic in climate assessment and failure to call out the fecklessness of current policies to stem global warming is not helpful to young people."

[...] Hansen said the point of no return could be avoided, based on the growing conviction of young people that they should follow the science. He called for a carbon fee and dividend policy, where all fossil fuels are taxed and the revenue returned to the public. "The basic problem is that the waste products of fossil fuels are still dumped in the air free of charge," he said. He also backed the rapid development of nuclear power. Hansen also supported research on cooling the Earth using controversial geoengineering techniques to block sunlight, which he prefers to call "purposeful global cooling." He said: "We do not recommend implementing climate interventions, but we suggest that young people not be prohibited from having knowledge of the potential and limitations of purposeful global cooling in their toolbox." Political change is needed to achieve all these measures, Hansen said: "Special interests have assumed far too much power in our political systems. In democratic countries the power should be with the voter, not with the people who have the money. That requires fixing some of our democracies, including the US."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/0557256/climate-change-target-of-2c-is-dead?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Thailand cut power supply, fuel and internet to some border areas with Myanmar on Wednesday. It's an attempt to choke scam syndicates operating out of there that have become a growing security concern. Reuters: Scam compounds in Southeast Asia are suspected to have entrapped hundreds of thousands of people in illegal online and telecom operations, generating billions of dollars annually, according to a 2023 U.N. report. Thai Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul visited the Provincial Electricity Authority headquarters in Bangkok on Wednesday to oversee the effort to fight the crime rings. "They may turn to other sources of power supply or generate their own electricity. In the Thai Security Council orders, it also includes the halt in supplying oil and internet to them, which means that from now on any damage that occurs will have no connection to any resources in Thailand."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/1348250/thailand-cuts-internet-and-power-supply-to-some-areas-in-myanmar-in-blow-to-scam-centers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

China's antitrust watchdog is laying the groundwork for a potential probe into Apple's policies and the fees it charges app developers, part of a broader push by Beijing that risks becoming another flashpoint in the country's trade war with the US. From a report: The State Administration for Market Regulation is examining Apple's policies, which include taking a cut of as much as 30% on in-app spending and barring external payment services and stores, people familiar with the matter said. Agency officials have spoken with Apple executives and app developers since last year, said the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive moves.

The conversations stem from long-running disputes between Apple and developers such as Tencent and ByteDance over iOS store policies -- a source of tension between the US company and regulators worldwide. While Beijing has since 2024 targeted the practices of US tech firms from Nvidia to most recently Alphabet's Google, regulators may not formally move against Apple if the current conversations go well.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/127253/china-weighs-probe-into-apples-app-store-fees-practices?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Temperatures at the north pole soared more than 20C above average on Sunday, crossing the threshold for ice to melt. From a report: Temperatures north of Svalbard in Norway had already risen to 18C hotter than the 1991-2020 average on Saturday, according to models from weather agencies in Europe and the US, with actual temperatures close to ice's melting point of 0C.

By Sunday, the temperature anomaly had risen to more than 20C. "This was a very extreme winter warming event," said Mika Rantanen, a scientist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute. "Probably not the most extreme ever observed, but still at the upper edge of what can happen in the Arctic." Burning fossil fuels has heated the planet by about 1.3C since preindustrial times, but the poles are warming much faster as reflective sea ice melts. The increase in average temperatures has driven an increase in fiercely hot summers and unsettlingly mild winters.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/1213210/temperatures-at-north-pole-20c-above-average-and-beyond-ice-melting-point?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

A developer has successfully run the classic video game Doom on Apple's $50 Lightning to HDMI adapter, exploiting the device's built-in system-on-chip that runs a simplified iOS version.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/1314221/developer-runs-doom-on-50-apple-lightning-to-hdmi-adapter?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Google parent Alphabet plans to spend $75 billion on capital expenditures in 2025, up from $52.5 billion last year, as it races to compete with Microsoft and Meta in AI infrastructure. CNBC: On its earnings call, Alphabet said it expects $16 billion to $18 billion of those expenses to come in the first quarter. Overall, the expenditures will go toward "technical infrastructure, primarily for servers, followed by data centers and networking," finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said.

[...] Alphabet and its megacap tech rivals are rushing to build out their data centers with next-generation AI infrastructure, packed with Nvidia's graphics processing units, or GPUs. Last month, Meta said it plans to invest $60 billion to $65 billion this year as part of its AI push. Microsoft has committed to $80 billion in AI-related capital expenditures in its current fiscal year.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/1156248/google-to-spend-75-billion-on-ai-push?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Since November, British telecom O2 has deployed an AI chatbot masquerading as a 78-year-old grandmother to waste scammers' time. The bot, named Daisy, engages fraudsters by discussing knitting patterns, recipes, and asking about tea preferences while feigning computer illiteracy. The Guardian has an update this week: In tests over several weeks, Daisy has kept individual scammers occupied for up to 40 minutes, with one case showing her being passed between four different callers. An excerpt from the story: "When a third scammer tries to get her to download the Google Play Store, she replies: 'Dear, did you say pastry? I'm not really on the right page.' She then complains that her screen has gone blank, saying it has 'gone black like the night sky'."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/1426220/ai-granny-driving-scammers-up-the-wall?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Microsoft will charge commercial customers $61 per device in the first year to continue receiving Windows 10 security updates after support ends, The Register wrote in a PSA note Wednesday, citing text, with costs doubling each subsequent year for up to three years.

Organizations can't skip initial years to save money, as the updates are cumulative. Some users may avoid fees if they connect Windows 10 endpoints to Windows 365 Cloud PCs. The program also covers Windows 10 virtual machines running on Windows 365 or Azure Virtual Desktop for three years with an active Windows 365 subscription.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/1436238/microsofts-windows-10-extended-security-updates-will-start-at-61-per-pc-for-businesses?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Scientists are making significant advances in developing artificial blood substitutes, with two promising approaches emerging in 2025, the New Yorker reports. At the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Center for Blood Oxygen Transport and Hemostasis, researchers are testing ErythroMer, a synthetic nanoparticle that mimics red blood cells' oxygen-carrying capabilities. Simultaneously, the UK's National Health Service is conducting the first human trials of lab-grown blood cells.

These developments address critical blood shortages - of the 38% of Americans eligible to donate, less than 3% do so regularly. Traditional donated blood also has significant limitations: platelets last only 5 days, red blood cells 42 days, and all require careful refrigeration and blood-type matching. DARPA awarded $46 million in early 2023 to develop ErythroMer, seeing potential for battlefield medicine where traditional blood storage isn't feasible.

The synthetic blood can be stored as a powder and reconstituted when needed. There are still a lot of challenges, the report adds. The lab-grown blood currently costs about $75,000 per syringe compared to around $200 for a pint of donated blood, and production is limited to small quantities.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/1448222/the-long-quest-for-artificial-blood?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Nissan looks set to step back from merger talks with rival Honda, two sources said on Wednesday, calling into question a $60 billion tie-up to create the world's no.3 automaker and potentially leaving Nissan to drive its turnaround alone.

Talks between the two Japanese automakers have been complicated by growing differences, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Reuters reported earlier that Nissan could call off talks after Honda sounded it out about becoming a subsidiary. Nissan baulked as this was a departure from what was originally framed as a merger of equals, one of the people said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/1458211/nissan-set-to-step-back-from-merger-with-honda?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Software developer and prolific blogger Herman Ounapuu, writing in a blog post: I liked Ubuntu. For a very long time, it was the sensible default option. Around 2016, I used the Ubuntu GNOME flavor, and after they ditched the Unity desktop environment, GNOME became the default option.

I was really happy with it, both for work and personal computing needs. Estonian ID card software was also officially supported on Ubuntu, which made Ubuntu a good choice for family members.

But then something changed. Ounapuu recounts how Ubuntu's bi-annual long-term support releases consistently broke functionality, from minor interface glitches to catastrophic system failures that left computers unresponsive. His breaking point came after multiple problematic upgrades affecting family members' computers, including one that rendered a laptop completely unusable during an upgrade from Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04. Another incident left a relative's system with broken Firefox shortcuts and duplicate status bar icons after updating Lubuntu 18.04.

Canonical's aggressive push of Snap packages has drawn particular criticism. The forced migration of system components from traditional Debian packages to Snaps resulted in compatibility issues, broken desktop shortcuts, and government ID card authentication failures. In one instance, he writes, a Snap-related bug in the GNOME desktop environment severely disrupted workplace productivity, requiring multiple system restarts to resolve. The author has since switched to Fedora, praising its implementation of Flatpak as a superior alternative to Snaps.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/1819218/im-done-with-ubuntu?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Kaspersky researchers have discovered malware hiding in both Google Play and Apple's App Store that uses optical character recognition to steal cryptocurrency wallet recovery phrases from users' photo galleries. Dubbed "SparkCat" by security firm ESET, the malware was embedded in several messaging and food delivery apps, with the infected Google Play apps accumulating over 242,000 downloads combined.

This marks the first known instance of such OCR-based spyware making it into Apple's App Store. The malware, active since March 2024, masquerades as an analytics SDK called "Spark" and leverages Google's ML Kit library to scan users' photos for wallet recovery phrases in multiple languages. It requests gallery access under the guise of allowing users to attach images to support chat messages. When granted access, it searches for specific keywords related to crypto wallets and uploads matching images to attacker-controlled servers.

The researchers found both Android and iOS variants using similar techniques, with the iOS version being particularly notable as it circumvented Apple's typically stringent app review process. The malware's creators appear to be Chinese-speaking actors based on code comments and server error messages, though definitive attribution remains unclear.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/1826259/first-ocr-spyware-breaches-both-apple-and-google-app-stores-to-steal-crypto-wallet-phrases?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Workday is cutting about 8.5% of its workforce, making it the latest technology company to begin 2025 with headcount reductions. From a report: The cuts will amount to about 1,750 workers, Chief Executive Officer Carl Eschenbach wrote in a note to employees Wednesday. "The environment we're operating in today demands a new approach, particularly given our size and scale," he wrote. Workday intends to hire in strategic areas such as AI, allow faster decision-making, and take on more people overseas, Eschenbach wrote. This will advance the company's "ongoing focus on durable growth," Workday said in a filing Wednesday. Shares of Workday jumped more than 5% on the news.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/1830205/workday-to-cut-nearly-2000-workers-on-profitability-focus?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Robocallers posing as employees of the Federal Communications Commission made the mistake of trying to scam real employees of the FCC, the FCC announced yesterday. "On the night of February 6, 2024, and continuing into the morning of February 7, 2024, over a dozen FCC staff and some of their family members reported receiving calls on their personal and work telephone numbers," the FCC said. The calls used an artificial voice that said, "Hello [first name of recipient] you are receiving an automated call from the Federal Communications Commission notifying you the Fraud Prevention Team would like to speak with you. If you are available to speak now please press one. If you prefer to schedule a call back please press two."

You may not be surprised to learn that the FCC does not have any "Fraud Prevention Team" like the one mentioned in the robocalls, and especially not one that demands Google gift cards in lieu of jail time. "The FCC's Enforcement Bureau believes the purpose of the calls was to threaten, intimidate, and defraud," the agency said. "One recipient of an imposter call reported that they were ultimately connected to someone who 'demand[ed] that [they] pay the FCC $1,000 in Google gift cards to avoid jail time for [their] crimes against the state.'" The FCC said it does not "publish or otherwise share staff personal phone numbers" and that it "remains unclear how these individuals were targeted." Obviously, robocallers posing as FCC employees probably wouldn't intentionally place scam calls to real FCC employees. But FCC employees are just as likely to get robocalls as anyone else. This set of schemers apparently only made about 1,800 calls before their calling accounts were terminated.

The FCC described the scheme yesterday when it announced a proposed fine of $4,492,500 against Telnyx, the voice service provider accused of carrying the robocalls. The FCC alleges that Telnyx violated "Know Your Customer (KYC)" rules by providing access to calling services without verifying the customers' identities. When contacted by Ars today, Telnyx denied the FCC's allegations and said it will contest the proposed fine.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/200253/robocallers-posing-as-fcc-staff-blocked-after-robocalling-real-fcc-staff?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: Banning phones in schools is not linked to pupils getting higher grades or having better mental wellbeing, the first study of its kind suggests. Students' sleep, classroom behavior, exercise or how long they spend on their phones overall also seems to be no different for schools with phone bans and schools without, the academics found. But they did find that spending longer on smartphones and social media in general was linked with worse results for all of those measures.

The first study in the world to look at school phone rules alongside measures of pupil health and education feeds into a fierce debate that has played out in homes and schools in recent years. [...] The University of Birmingham's findings, peer-reviewed and published by the Lancet's journal for European health policy, compared 1,227 students and the rules their 30 different secondary schools had for smartphone use at break and lunchtimes. The schools were chosen from a sample of 1,341 mainstream state schools in England.

The paper says schools restricting smartphone use did not seem to be seeing their intended improvements on health, wellbeing and focus in lessons. However, the research did find a link between more time on phones and social media, and worse mental wellbeing and mental health, less physical activity, poorer sleep, lower grades and more disruptive classroom behavior. The study used the internationally recognized Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scales to determine participants' wellbeing. It also looked at students' anxiety and depression levels. Dr Victoria Goodyear, the study's lead author, told the BBC the findings were not "against" smartphone bans in schools, but "what we're suggesting is that those bans in isolation are not enough to tackle the negative impacts."

She said the "focus" now needed to be on reducing how much time students spent on their phones, adding: "We need to do more than just ban phones in schools."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/205231/mobile-ban-in-schools-not-improving-grades-or-behavior-study-suggests?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Kaspersky has discovered the "SparkCat" malware in multiple iOS and Android apps, marking the first known case of malicious screenshot-reading code making it into Apple's App Store. The malware was found in the AI chat apps WeTink and AnyGPT, as well as the food delivery app ComeCome. The Verge reports: On iOS and in some Android instances, the malware works by triggering a request to access users' photo galleries when they attempt to use chat support within the infected app. Once permission is granted, it uses Google OCR tech, which lets it decipher text found in photos, to look for things like screenshots of crypto wallet passwords or recovery phrases. The software then sends any images it finds back to the attackers, who can then use the info to access the wallets and steal crypto.

Kaspersky says it can't "confirm with certainty the infection was a result of a supply chain attack or deliberate action by the developers."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/2010251/ios-app-store-apps-with-screenshot-reading-malware-found-for-the-first-time?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Google aims to release commercial quantum computing applications within five years, challenging Nvidia's prediction of a 20-year timeline. "We're optimistic that within five years we'll see real-world applications that are possible only on quantum computers," founder and lead of Google Quantum AI Hartmut Neven said in a statement. Reuters reports: Real-world applications Google has discussed are related to materials science - applications such as building superior batteries for electric cars - creating new drugs and potentially new energy alternatives. [...] Google has been working on its quantum computing program since 2012 and has designed and built several quantum chips. By using quantum processors, Google said it had managed to solve a computing problem in minutes that would take a classical computer more time than the history of the universe.

Google's quantum computing scientists announced another step on the path to real world applications within five years on Wednesday. In a paper published in the scientific journal Nature, the scientists said they had discovered a new approach to quantum simulation, which is a step on the path to achieving Google's objective.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/2336200/google-says-commercial-quantum-computing-applications-arriving-within-5-years?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The website of the Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek, whose chatbot became the most downloaded app in the United States, has computer code that could send some user login information to a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company that has been barred from operating in the United States, security researchers say. The web login page of DeepSeek's chatbot contains heavily obfuscated computer script that when deciphered shows connections to computer infrastructure owned by China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company. The code appears to be part of the account creation and user login process for DeepSeek.

In its privacy policy, DeepSeek acknowledged storing data on servers inside the People's Republic of China. But its chatbot appears more directly tied to the Chinese state than previously known through the link revealed by researchers to China Mobile. The U.S. has claimed there are close ties between China Mobile and the Chinese military as justification for placing limited sanctions on the company. [...] The code linking DeepSeek to one of China's leading mobile phone providers was first discovered by Feroot Security, a Canadian cybersecurity company, which shared its findings with The Associated Press. The AP took Feroot's findings to a second set of computer experts, who independently confirmed that China Mobile code is present. Neither Feroot nor the other researchers observed data transferred to China Mobile when testing logins in North America, but they could not rule out that data for some users was being transferred to the Chinese telecom.

The analysis only applies to the web version of DeepSeek. They did not analyze the mobile version, which remains one of the most downloaded pieces of software on both the Apple and the Google app stores. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission unanimously denied China Mobile authority to operate in the United States in 2019, citing "substantial" national security concerns about links between the company and the Chinese state. In 2021, the Biden administration also issued sanctions limiting the ability of Americans to invest in China Mobile after the Pentagon linked it to the Chinese military. "It's mindboggling that we are unknowingly allowing China to survey Americans and we're doing nothing about it," said Ivan Tsarynny, CEO of Feroot. "It's hard to believe that something like this was accidental. There are so many unusual things to this. You know that saying 'Where there's smoke, there's fire'? In this instance, there's a lot of smoke," Tsarynny said.

Further reading: Senator Hawley Proposes Jail Time For People Who Download DeepSeek

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/2019200/researchers-link-deepseek-to-chinese-telecom-banned-in-us?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

During the fourth quarter of 2024, AMD surpassed Intel in datacenter sales for the first time in history -- despite weaker-than-expected sales of its datacenter GPUs. Tom's Hardware reports: AMD's revenue in Q4 2024 totaled $7.658 billion, up 24% year-over-year. The company's gross margin hit 51%, whereas net income was $482 million. On the year basis, 2024 was AMD's best year ever as the company's revenue reached $25.8 billion, up 14% year-over-year. The company earned net income of $1.641 billion as its gross margin hit 49%. But while the company's annual results are impressive, there is something about Q4 results that AMD should be proud of.

Datacenter business was the company's primary source of earnings, with net revenue reaching record $3.86 billion in Q4, marking a 69% year-over-year (YoY) increase and a 9% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) rise. Operating income also saw substantial improvement, surging 74% YoY to $1.16 billion. By contrast, Intel's datacenter and AI business unit posted $3.4 billion revenue, while its operating income reached $200 million. But while the quarter marked a milestone for AMD, market analysts expected AMD to sell more of its Instinct MI300-series GPUs for AI and HPC. You can view AMD's 2024 financial results here.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/2327252/amd-outsells-intel-in-the-datacenter-for-the-first-time?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The Register's Thomas Claburn reports: Oracle this week asked the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to partially dismiss a challenge to its JavaScript trademark. The move has been criticized as an attempt to either stall or water down legal action against the database goliath over the programming language's name. Deno Land, the outfit behind the Deno JavaScript runtime, filed a petition with the USPTO back in November in an effort to make the trademarked term available to the JavaScript community. This legal effort is led by Node.js creator and Deno Land CEO Ryan Dahl, summarized on the JavaScript.tm website, and supported by more than 16,000 members of the JavaScript community. It aims to remove the fear of an Oracle lawsuit for using the term "JavaScript" in a conference title or business venture.

"Programmers working with JavaScript have formed innumerable community organizations," the website explains. "These organizations, like the standards bodies, have been forced to painstakingly avoid naming the programming language they are built around -- for example, JSConf. Sadly, without risking a legal trademark challenge against Oracle, there can be no 'JavaScript Conference' nor a 'JavaScript Specification.' The world's most popular programming language cannot even have a conference in its name." [...] In the initial trademark complaint, Deno Land makes three arguments to invalidate Oracle's ownership of "JavaScript." The biz claims that JavaScript has become a generic term; that Oracle committed fraud in 2019 when it applied to renew its trademark; and that Oracle has abandoned its trademark because it does not offer JavaScript products or services.

Oracle's motion on Monday focuses on the dismissal of the fraud claim, while arguing that it expects to prevail on the other two claims, citing corporate use of the trademarked term "in connection with a variety of offerings, including its JavaScript Extension Toolkit as well as developer's guides and educational resources, and also that relevant consumers do not perceive JavaScript as a generic term." The fraud claim follows from Deno Land's assertion that the material Oracle submitted in support of its trademark renewal application has nothing to do with any Oracle product. "Oracle, through its attorney, submitted specimens showing screen captures of the Node.js website, a project created by Ryan Dahl, Petitioner's Chief Executive Officer," the trademark cancellation petition says. "Node.js is not affiliated with Oracle, and the use of screen captures of the 'nodejs.org' website as a specimen did not show any use of the mark by Oracle or on behalf of Oracle."

Oracle contends that in fact it submitted two specimens to the USPTO -- a screenshot from the Node.js website and another from its own Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit. And this, among other reasons, invalidates the fraud claim, Big Red's attorneys contend. "Where, as here, Registrant 'provided the USPTO with [two specimens]' at least one of which shows use of the mark in commerce, Petitioner cannot plausibly allege that the inclusion of a second, purportedly defective specimen, was material," Oracle's motion argues, adding that no evidence of fraudulent intent has been presented. Beyond asking the court to toss the fraud claim, Oracle has requested an additional thirty days to respond to the other two claims.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/02/05/2345236/oracle-starts-laying-mines-in-javascript-trademark-battle?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Disney+ lost 700,000 subscribers in the last quarter of 2024, largely due to price hikes and expiring promotions. Despite the decline, Disney's overall streaming business remained profitable, boosted by strong box office results from Moana 2 and Hulu's 1.6 million added subscribers. IndieWire reports: Not counting Disney+ Hotstar, the cheap Disney+ service in India, Disney+ now has 124.6 million subs. ESPN+ also lost 700,000 subs in the period. Hulu was the streaming highlight, adding 1.6 million subscribers; it now has 53.6 million. All told, the company's streaming business was profitable for its third-straight quarter. So it wasn't all bad -- or unexpected. "Our results this quarter demonstrate Disney's creative and financial strength as we advanced the strategic initiatives set in motion over the past two years," said Disney CEO Bob Iger. "In fiscal Q1 we saw outstanding box office performance from our studios, which had the top three movies of 2024; we further improved the profitability of our Entertainment DTC streaming businesses; we took an important step to advance ESPN's digital strategy by adding an ESPN tile on Disney+; and our Experiences segment demonstrated its enduring appeal as we continue investing strategically across the globe. Overall, this quarter proved to be a strong start to the fiscal year, and we remain confident in our strategy for continued growth."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/02/06/0038245/disney-lost-700000-subscribers-from-october-december-2024?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Let's Encrypt will stop sending expiration notice emails for its free HTTPS certificates starting June 4, 2025. From the report: Let's Encrypt is ending automated emails for four stated reasons, and all of them are pretty sensible. For one thing, lots of customers have been able to automate their certificate renewal. For another, providing the expiration notices costs "tens of thousands of dollars per year" and adds complexity to the nonprofit's infrastructure as they are looking to add new and more useful services.

If those were not enough, there is this particularly notable reason: "Providing expiration notification emails means that we have to retain millions of email addresses connected to issuance records. As an organization that values privacy, removing this requirement is important to us." Let's Encrypt recommends using Red Sift Certificates Lite to monitor certificate expirations, a service that is free for up to 250 certificates. The service also points to other options, including Datadog SSL monitoring and TrackSSL.

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A new study reveals that two Grand Canyon-sized valleys were formed in less than 10 minutes by "floods of rocks traveling as fast as bullets," reports Space.com. From the report: Scientists analyzed the lunar canyons, named Vallis Schrodinger and Vallis Planck, to find that these huge valleys measure 167 miles long (270 kilometers) and nearly 1.7 miles (2.7 km) deep, and 174 miles long (280 km) and nearly 2.2 miles deep (3.5 km), respectively. In comparison, the Grand Canyon is 277 miles long (446 km) and is, at most, about 1.2 miles deep (1.9 km), the researchers noted. [...] This pair of lunar canyons represents two of many valleys radiating out from Schrodinger basin, a crater about 200 miles wide (320 km) that was blasted out of the lunar crust by a cosmic impact about 3.81 billion years ago. This structure is located in the outer margin of the moon's largest and oldest remaining impact crater, the South Pole-Aitken basin, which measures about 1,490 miles wide (2,400 km) and dates about 4.2 billion to 4.3 billion years old.

[...] The scientists estimate that rocky debris flew out from the impact at speeds between 2,125 to 2,860 miles per hour (3,420 to 4,600 km/h). In comparison, a bullet from a 9mm Luger handgun might fly at speeds of about 1,360 mph (2,200 km/h). The researchers suggest the energy needed to create both of these canyons would have been more than 130 times the energy in the current global inventory of nuclear weapons. "The lunar canyons we describe are produced by streams of rock, whereas the Grand Canyon was produced by a river of water," [said David Kring, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute of the Universities Space Research Association]. "The streams of rock were far more energetic than the river of water, which is why the lunar canyons were produced in minutes and the Grand Canyon produced over millions of years."

The findings have been published in the journal Nature.

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In 2022, writer and activist Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" to describe the gradual deterioration of a service or product. The term's prevalence has increased to the point that it was the National Dictionary of Australia's word of the year last year. The editors at Ars Technica, having "covered a lot of things that have been enshittified," decided to highlight some of the worst examples the've come across. Here's a summary of each thing mentioned in their report: Smart TVs: Evolved into data-collecting billboards, prioritizing advertising and user tracking over user experience and privacy. Features like convenient input buttons are sacrificed for pushing ads and webOS apps. "This is all likely to get worse as TV companies target software, tracking, and ad sales as ways to monetize customers after their TV purchases -- even at the cost of customer convenience and privacy," writes Scharon Harding. "When budget brands like Roku are selling TV sets at a loss, you know something's up."

Google's Voice Assistant (e.g., Nest Hubs): Functionality has degraded over time, with previously working features becoming unreliable. Users report frequent misunderstandings and unresponsiveness. "I'm fine just saying it now: Google Assistant is worse now than it was soon after it started," writes Kevin Purdy. "Even if Google is turning its entire supertanker toward AI now, it's not clear why 'Start my morning routine,' 'Turn on the garage lights,' and 'Set an alarm for 8 pm' had to suffer."

Portable Document Format (PDF): While initially useful for cross-platform document sharing and preserving formatting, PDFs have become bloated and problematic. Copying text, especially from academic journals, is often garbled or impossible. "Apple, which had given the PDF a reprieve, has now killed its main selling point," writes John Timmer. "Because Apple has added OCR to the MacOS image display system, I can get more reliable results by screenshotting the PDF and then copying the text out of that. This is the true mark of its enshittification: I now wish the journals would just give me a giant PNG."

Televised Sports (specifically cycling and Formula 1): Streaming services have consolidated, leading to significantly increased costs for viewers. Previously affordable and comprehensive options have been replaced by expensive bundles across multiple platforms. "Formula 1 racing has largely gone behind paywalls, and viewership is down significantly over the last 15 years," writes Eric Berger. "Major US sports such as professional and college football had largely been exempt, but even that is now changing, with NFL games being shown on Peacock, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. None of this helps viewers. It enshittifies the experience for us in the name of corporate greed."

Google Search: AI overviews often bury relevant search results under lengthy, sometimes inaccurate AI-generated content. This makes finding specific information, especially primary source documents, more difficult. "Google, like many big tech companies, expects AI to revolutionize search and is seemingly intent on ignoring any criticism of that idea," writes Ashley Belanger.

Email AI Tools (e.g., Gemini in Gmail): Intrusive and difficult to disable, these tools offer questionable value due to their potential for factual inaccuracies. Users report being unable to fully opt-out. "Gmail won't take no for an answer," writes Dan Goodin. "It keeps asking me if I want to use Google's Gemini AI tool to summarize emails or draft responses. As the disclaimer at the bottom of the Gemini tool indicates, I can't count on the output being factual, so no, I definitely don't want it."

Windows: While many complaints about Windows 11 originated with Windows 10, the newer version continues the trend of unwanted features, forced updates, and telemetry data collection. Bugs and performance issues also plague the operating system. "... it sure is easy to resent Windows 11 these days, between the well-documented annoyances, the constant drumbeat of AI stuff (some of it gated to pricey new PCs), and a batch of weird bugs that mostly seem to be related to the under-the-hood overhauls in October's Windows 11 24H2 update," writes Andrew Cunningham. "That list includes broken updates for some users, inoperable scanners, and a few unplayable games. With every release, the list of things you need to do to get rid of and turn off the most annoying stuff gets a little longer."

Web Discourse: The rapid spread of memes, trends, and corporate jargon on social media has led to a homogenization of online communication, making it difficult to distinguish original content and creating a sense of constant noise. "[T]he enshittifcation of social media, particularly due to its speed and virality, has led to millions vying for their moment in the sun, and all I see is a constant glare that makes everything look indistinguishable," writes Jacob May. "No wonder some companies think AI is the future."

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