Leading AI companies including Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI are discovering significant inconsistencies in how their AI reasoning models operate, according to company researchers. The companies have deployed "chain-of-thought" techniques that ask AI models to solve problems step-by-step while showing their reasoning process, but are finding examples of "misbehaviour" where chatbots provide final responses that contradict their displayed reasoning.

METR, a non-profit research group, identified an instance where Anthropic's Claude chatbot disagreed with a coding technique in its chain-of-thought but ultimately recommended it as "elegant." OpenAI research found that when models were trained to hide unwanted thoughts, they would conceal misbehaviour from users while continuing problematic actions, such as cheating on software engineering tests by accessing forbidden databases.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/1359202/anthropic-openai-and-others-discover-ai-models-give-answers-that-contradict-their-own-reasoning?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Amazon today announced its intention to bring same-day and next-day delivery to "tens of millions" of people who live in live in smaller towns by the end of 2026. From a report: Speedier deliveries will be available to residents "in more than 4,000 smaller cities, towns, and rural communities," the company said in a press release Tuesday.

Items categorized as "everyday essentials," including groceries, beauty products, household goods, or pet food, will now be available to small town or rural customers for same-day or next-day delivery. If they are Prime subscribers (currently $14.99 a month or $139 annually), they get unlimited free same-day delivery when spending over $25 at checkout.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/1440237/amazon-bringing-same-day-delivery-to-millions-of-rural-customers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Состоялся релиз web-браузера Firefox 140 и сформированы обновления прошлых веток с длительным сроком поддержки - 115.25.0 и 128.12.0. На стадию бета-тестирования переведена ветка Firefox 141, релиз которой намечен на 22 июля.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63457

A federal judge has ruled that Anthropic's use of copyrighted books to train its Claude AI models constitutes fair use, but rejected the startup's defense for downloading millions of pirated books to build a permanent digital library.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted partial summary judgment to Anthropic in the copyright lawsuit filed by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson. The court found that training large language models on copyrighted works was "exceedingly transformative" under Section 107 of the Copyright Act. Anthropic downloaded over seven million books from pirate sites, according to court documents. The startup also purchased millions of print books, destroyed the bindings, scanned every page, and stored them digitally.

Both sets of books were used to train various versions of Claude, which generates over $1 billion in annual revenue. While the judge approved using books for AI training purposes, he ruled that downloading pirated copies to create what Anthropic called a "central library of all the books in the world" was not protected fair use. The case will proceed to trial on damages related to the pirated library copies.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/1519209/anthropic-bags-key-fair-use-win-for-ai-platforms-but-faces-trial-over-damages-for-millions-of-pirated-works?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

China's advantages in developing AI are about to unleash a wave of innovation that will generate more than 100 DeepSeek-like breakthroughs in the coming 18 months, according to a former top official. From a report: The new software products "will fundamentally change the nature and the tech nature of the whole Chinese economy," Zhu Min, who was previously a deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, said during the World Economic Forum in Tianjin on Tuesday.

Zhu, who also served as the deputy managing director at the International Monetary Fund, sees a transformation made possible by harnessing China's pool of engineers, massive consumer base and supportive government policies. The bullish take on China's AI future promises no letup in the competition for dominance in cutting-edge technologies with the US, just as the world's two biggest economies are also locked in a trade war.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/1536213/china-on-cusp-of-seeing-over-100-deepseeks-ex-top-official-says?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

OpenAI has designed features that would allow people to collaborate on documents and communicate via chat within ChatGPT, The Information reported Tuesday. The features would pit OpenAI directly against Microsoft, its biggest shareholder and business partner, and Google, whose search engine has already lost traffic to people using ChatGPT for web searches.

Whether OpenAI will actually release the collaboration features remains unclear, the report cautioned. The designs would target the core of Microsoft's dominant productivity suite and could strain the companies' already complicated relationship as OpenAI seeks Microsoft's approval for restructuring its for-profit unit. Product chief Kevin Weil first discussed and showed off designs for document collaboration nearly a year ago, but OpenAI lacked sufficient staff to develop the product due to other priorities.

OpenAI launched Canvas in October, a ChatGPT feature that makes drafting documents and code easier with AI assistance, as a possible first step toward full collaboration tools. More recently, OpenAI developed but has not launched software allowing multiple ChatGPT customers to communicate about shared work within the application.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/1613242/openai-quietly-designed-a-rival-to-google-workspace-microsoft-office?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Microsoft will offer free Windows 10 security updates through October 2026 to consumers who enable Windows Backup or spend 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, the company said today. The move provides alternatives to the previously announced $30-per-PC Extended Security Update program for individuals wanting to continue using Windows 10 past its October 14, 2025 end-of-support date.

The company will notify Windows 10 users about the ESU program through the Settings app and notifications starting in July, with full rollout by mid-August. Both free options require a Microsoft Account, which the company has increasingly pushed in Windows 11. Business and organizational customers can still purchase up to three years of ESU updates but must pay for the service.

Windows 10 remains installed on 53% of Windows PCs worldwide, according to Statcounter data.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/1722247/microsoft-extends-free-windows-10-security-updates-into-2026-with-strings-attached?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Philips Hue will raise prices across its smart lighting and security products for US customers starting July 1st, with parent company Signify attributing the increases directly to tariffs.

The company initially notified customers that prices would "go up" through a promotional message before confirming the tariff-related reasoning in a statement. Signify has not provided specific pricing details or identified which products will be affected, though the company's statement suggests changes may impact the entire Hue lineup.

Some products already reflect higher US pricing, including the new $219.99 Hue Play Wall Washer light, which costs approximately 10% more than the European price when currencies are converted. The latest $32.99 Smart Button also exceeds the $24.99 launch price of its predecessor, while European pricing remained at 21.99 euro ($25.50) for both generations.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/1732228/philips-hue-is-raising-prices-in-the-us?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple customers aren't thrilled they're getting an ad from the Apple Wallet app promoting the tech giant's Original Film, "F1 the Movie." Across social media, iPhone owners are complaining that their Wallet app sent out a push notification offering a $10 discount at Fandango for anyone buying two or more tickets to the film.

The feature film, starring Brad Pitt, explores the world of Formula 1 and was shot at actual Grand Prix races. It also showcases the use of Apple technology, from the custom-made cameras made of iPhone parts used to film inside the cars, to the AirPods Max that Pitt's character, F1 driver Sonny Hayes, sleeps in. However well-received the film may be, iPhone users don't necessarily want their built-in utilities, like their digital wallet, marketing to them.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/1829225/iphone-customers-upset-by-apple-wallet-ad-pushing-f1-movie?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Компания SUSE объявила об открытии под лицензией Apache 2.0 большой языковой модели Cavil-Qwen3-4B, применяемой в проектах SUSE и openSUSE в инструментарии Cavil для анализа лицензионной частоты кода. Опубликованная модель охватывает 4 миллиардов параметров и основана на модели Qwen3-4B, дополнительно оптимизированной для классификации текста.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63454

Western Digital has succeeded in having the sum it owed from a patent infringement case reduced from $553 million down to just $1 in post-trial motions, when the judge found the plaintiff's claims had shifted during the course of the litigation. From a report: The storage biz was held by a California jury to have infringed on data encryption patents owned by SPEX Technologies Inc in October, relating to several of its self-encrypting hard drive products.

WD was initially told to pay $316 million in damages, but District Judge James Selna ruled the company owed a further $237 million in interest charges earlier this year, bringing the total to more than half a billion dollars. In February, WD was given a week to file a bond or stump up the entire damages payment. Selna granted Western Digital's post-trial motion to reduce damages, writing that "SPEX's damages theory changed as certain evidence and theories became unavailable" and there was "insufficient evidence from which the Court could determine a reasonable royalty."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/1925240/wd-escapes-half-a-billion-in-patent-damages-as-judge-trims-award-to-1?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Google has begun rolling out a feature that allows Chrome users on Android to move the browser's address bar to the bottom of the screen. This capability has been available to iOS Chrome users since 2023 and aims to improve accessibility for users with larger devices.

Users can relocate the address bar by pressing and holding on it and selecting the move option, or by adjusting the setting through Chrome's settings menu. The feature addresses usability concerns for users of phones with bigger screens, where reaching the top of the display can prove difficult during one-handed operation.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/2012231/android-chrome-users-can-now-move-address-bar-to-bottom-of-screen?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Опубликован первый выпуск новой основной ветки nginx 1.29.0, в рамках которой будет продолжено развитие новых возможностей. В параллельно поддерживаемой стабильной ветке 1.28.x вносятся только изменения, связанные с устранением серьёзных ошибок и уязвимостей. В следующем году на базе основной ветки 1.29.x будет сформирована стабильная ветка 1.30. Код проекта написан на языке Си и распространяется под лицензией BSD.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63459

More than 110 million people across Europe suffer high levels of health-damaging noise pollution, according to a report. The resulting physiological stress and sleep disturbance leads to 66,000 early deaths a year and many cases of heart disease, diabetes and depression. The Guardian: The report, from the European Environment Agency (EEA), focuses on noise from cars, trains and aeroplanes and found that 20% of the population of the European Economic Area (EEA) were affected. Separate research, using a slightly lower threshold for dangerous noise pollution, found that 40% of the UK population were exposed to harmful transport noise.

Seventeen million people endure particularly high noise pollution -- "long-term, high-annoyance" -- and almost 5 million suffer "severe" sleep disturbance. Fifteen million children live in areas of harmful noise. The harm to health from noise is greater than that from higher-profile risks including secondhand tobacco smoke or lead exposure, and incurs an economic cost of almost $116bn a year, the analysis found.

The damage to health is likely to be an underestimate, the researchers said. Using the World Health Organization's stricter threshold for risky noise pollution gives an estimate of 150 million people across Europe exposed. The EU's target to cut the number of people chronically disturbed by transport noise by 30% by 2030 will not be met without further action, the researchers said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/2031242/noise-pollution-harms-health-of-millions-across-europe-report-finds?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Transport Topics: A ship that caught fire in the Pacific Ocean earlier this month has sunk. The vessel was abandoned in the middle of the pacific -- about 360 miles from land -- after a blaze. It was carrying about 3,000 vehicles of which about 800 were EVs. Damage caused by the fire was compounded by heavy weather, causing the ship to take on water and ultimately sink on June 23, the vessel's manager, Zodiac Maritime, said in a statement on June 24.

Smoke was initially seen emanating from a deck carrying electric vehicles, Zodiac said when the incident first happened. While the ship's relative distance from land means that it will sink into ocean that is approximately 5,000 meters deep, it also made a rapid response trickier. The second of three specialist vessels that were due to assist the ship arrived on June 15, more than a week after the fire first broke out. The vessel was carrying cars from a range of manufacturers including Chery Automobile Co. and Great Wall Motor Co. to Mexico, people familiar with the matter said at the time.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/2032250/ev-carrying-ship-sinks-in-pacific-ocean-after-catching-fire?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Microsoft has released a modern, open-source version of its classic MS-DOS Editor -- built with Rust and compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux. It's now simple called "Edit." Ars Technica reports:
Aside from ease of use, Microsoft's main reason for creating the new version of Edit stems from a peculiar gap in modern Windows. "What motivated us to build Edit was the need for a default CLI text editor in 64-bit versions of Windows," writes [Christopher Nguyen, a product manager on Microsoft's Windows Terminal team] while referring to the command-line interface, or CLI. "32-bit versions of Windows ship with the MS-DOS editor, but 64-bit versions do not have a CLI editor installed inbox." [...]

Linux users can download Edit from the project's GitHub releases page or install it through an unofficial snap package. Oh, and if you're a fan of the vintage editor and crave a 16-bit text-mode for your retro machine that actually runs MS-DOS, you can download a copy on the Internet Archive. [...]

At 250KB, the new Edit maintains the lightweight philosophy of its predecessor while adding features the original couldn't dream of: Unicode support, regular expressions, and the ability to handle gigabyte-sized files. The original editor was limited to files smaller than 300KB depending on available conventional memory -- a constraint that seems quaint in an era of terabyte storage. But the web publication OMG! Ubuntu found that the modern Edit not only "works great on Ubuntu" but noted its speed when handling gigabyte-sized documents.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/2039231/microsoft-releases-classic-ms-dos-editor-for-linux?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Waymo and Uber have launched a robotaxi service in Atlanta, allowing users to book autonomous rides through the Uber app across a 65-square-mile area. They will not yet travel on highways or to the airport. CNBC reports: The vehicles feature Waymo's driverless technology, known as the Waymo Driver, integrated into battery electric Jaguar I-PACE SUVs. [...] In Atlanta and Austin, Waymo rides are only available through Uber's app, while in San Francisco and Los Angeles, passengers book through the Waymo One app.

Waymo said it would start with dozens of robotaxis live in Atlanta. The company says it currently has more than 1,500 autonomous vehicles in its U.S. fleet. The Waymo-Uber partnership only covers passenger rides, not Uber Eats deliveries.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/2044244/uber-waymo-robotaxi-service-opens-to-passengers-in-atlanta?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft is planning to cut jobs in the company's Xbox gaming business, as early as next week. I first reported in Notepad earlier this month that Microsoft was planning Xbox layoffs "potentially by the end of the month," and now Bloomberg says a round of "major layoffs" is due next week.

I understand managers at Microsoft have been briefed about Xbox cuts and wider layoffs in other parts of Microsoft's businesses. The upcoming cuts are also expected to hit Microsoft's sales organization, just at the start of a new financial year. Microsoft is planning to restructure parts of its Xbox business as it looks ahead to its next generation of consoles. One source tells me Microsoft is restructuring Xbox distribution across central Europe, resulting in some Xbox operations ceasing in some regions. The expected layoffs will be in addition to the 6,000 cuts Microsoft already made in May, and on top of the more than 300 job cuts earlier this month.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/2049205/microsoft-planning-major-xbox-layoffs-next-week?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Google DeepMind has launched Gemini Robotics On-Device, a new language model that enables robots to perform complex tasks locally without internet connectivity. TechCrunch reports: Building on the company's previous Gemini Robotics model that was released in March, Gemini Robotics On-Device can control a robot's movements. Developers can control and fine-tune the model to suit various needs using natural language prompts. In benchmarks, Google claims the model performs at a level close to the cloud-based Gemini Robotics model. The company says it outperforms other on-device models in general benchmarks, though it didn't name those models.

In a demo, the company showed robots running this local model doing things like unzipping bags and folding clothes. Google says that while the model was trained for ALOHA robots, it later adapted it to work on a bi-arm Franka FR3 robot and the Apollo humanoid robot by Apptronik. Google claims the bi-arm Franka FR3 was successful in tackling scenarios and objects it hadn't "seen" before, like doing assembly on an industrial belt. Google DeepMind is also releasing a Gemini Robotics SDK. The company said developers can show robots 50 to 100 demonstrations of tasks to train them on new tasks using these models on the MuJoCo physics simulator.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/2150256/google-rolls-out-new-gemini-model-that-can-run-on-robots-locally?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader williamyf writes: Firefox 140 just landed. Some user-facing features include: Vertical Tabs: You can now keep more -- or fewer -- pinned tabs in view for quicker access to important windows. Just drag the divider to resize your pinned tabs section.
Unload Tabs: You can now unload tabs by right-clicking on a tab (or multiple selected tabs) and selecting "Unload Tab." This can speed up performance by reducing Firefox's memory and CPU usage.

But the most important feature? This release is an Extended Support Release (ESR). Why are ESRs so important? ESR is the Firefox version that ships as the default with many Linux distributions. Some downstream projects (like Waterfox) depend on the ESR version. Many enterprise software systems are tested only against ESR. When features are dropped -- like support for older operating systems or Flash -- ESR keeps that functionality around for longer.

And speaking of old operating systems: If you are using Windows 7, 8.1, or macOS 10.12~10.15, note that FireFox ESR 115 (the last version supporting these OSs) will continue to receive patches until at least September 2025. So one can see why ESR is very important for some people. The release notes are available here.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/2210239/firefox-140-arrives-with-esr-status?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

[ Доступна ]( https://download-installer.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/firefox/releases/140.0/ ) финальная версия Firefox 140, а также новая ветка с долгосрочной поддержкой ( [ ESR) ]( https://download-installer.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/firefox/releases/140.0esr/ ) .

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/mozilla/18010181#cut0 ) )

The Register's Simon Sharwood reports: Huawei's chairman Xu Zhijun -- aka Eric Xu -- has called out China's enormous lead in fiber-to-the-room (FTTR) installations. Speaking at last week's Mobile World Congress event in Shanghai, Xu shared his views on the telecommunications industry's future growth opportunities and said by the end of 2025 China will be home to 75 million FTTR installations -- but just 500,000 exist outside the Middle Kingdom. Xu said FTTR will benefit businesses by increasing their internet connection speeds, helping them address spotty Wi-Fi coverage, allowing them to deploy tech in more places, and therefore creating more opportunities to adopt productivity-boosting devices and services. FTTR will also help carriers to sell more expensive packages, he said. Xu also urged telecom carriers to target high-growth user groups like delivery riders and livestream influencers, citing their above-average data consumption and revenue potential. Delivery riders, who will make up 5% of the global workforce by 2030, use four times more voice minutes and double the data of average users, while influencers generate five times the data usage and four times the revenue.

He also pushed for greater collaboration between carriers and platforms to deliver more high-res video content, and called for improved efficiency in networking equipment and device power use. "Xu said Huawei is here to help carriers deliver any of the scenarios he mentioned," concludes Sharwood. "And of course it is, because the Chinese giant has a thriving business selling to telcos -- or at least to telcos beyond the liberal democracies that have largely decided Huawei's close ties with Beijing mean the company and its products represent an unacceptable threat to the operation of critical infrastructure."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/2224236/huawei-chair-says-the-future-of-comms-is-fiber-to-the-room?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: A massive data center for Meta's AI will likely lead to rate hikes for Louisiana customers, but Meta wants to keep the details under wraps. Holly Ridge is a rural community bisected by US Highway 80, gridded with farmland, with a big creek -- it is literally named Big Creek -- running through it. It is home to rice and grain mills and an elementary school and a few houses. Soon, it will also be home to Meta's massive, 4 million square foot AI data center hosting thousands of perpetually humming servers that require billions of watts of energy to power. And that energy-guzzling infrastructure will be partially paid for by Louisiana residents.

The plan is part of what Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said would be "a defining year for AI." On Threads, Zuckerberg boasted that his company was "building a 2GW+ datacenter that is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan," posting a map of Manhattan along with the data center overlaid. Zuckerberg went on to say that over the coming years, AI "will drive our core products and business, unlock historic innovation, and extend American technology leadership. Let's go build! " What Zuckerberg did not mention is that "Let's go build" refers not only to the massive data center but also three new Meta-subsidized, gas power plants and a transmission line to fuel it serviced by Entergy Louisiana, the region's energy monopoly.

Key details about Meta's investments with the data center remain vague, and Meta's contracts with Entergy are largely cloaked from public scrutiny. But what is known is the $10 billion data center has been positioned as an enormous economic boon for the area -- one that politicians bent over backward to facilitate -- and Meta said it will invest $200 million into "local roads and water infrastructure." A January report from NOLA.com said that the the state had rewritten zoning laws, promised to change a law so that it no longer had to put state property up for public bidding, and rewrote what was supposed to be a tax incentive for broadband internet meant to bridge the digital divide so that it was only an incentive for data centers, all with the goal of luring in Meta. But Entergy Louisiana's residential customers, who live in one of the poorest regions of the state, will see their utility bills increase to pay for Meta's energy infrastructure, according to Entergy's application. Entergy estimates that amount will be small and will only cover a transmission line, but advocates for energy affordability say the costs could balloon depending on whether Meta agrees to finish paying for its three gas plants 15 years from now. The short-term rate increases will be debated in a public hearing before state regulators that has not yet been scheduled. The Alliance for Affordable Energy called it a "black hole of energy use," and said "to give perspective on how much electricity the Meta project will use: Meta's energy needs are roughly 2.3x the power needs of Orleans Parish ... it's like building the power impact of a large city overnight in the middle of nowhere."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/221211/metas-massive-ai-data-center-is-stressing-out-a-louisiana-community?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Компания Mozilla представила обновлённые правила размещения дополнений в каталоге AMO (addons.mozilla.org), которые начнут действовать 4 августа. Наиболее заметным изменением стало снятие запрета на ограничение доступа к дополнениям - авторы дополнений теперь могут на своё усмотрение ограничивать доступ к дополнениям, размещаемым в AMO. Например, допускается размещения дополнений только для внутреннего использования или для закрытых групп пользователей.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63462

alternative_right shares a report from Phys.Org: In new research published by scientists studying fission yeastâ"a single-celled organism surprisingly similar to human cellsâ"researchers found that caffeine affects aging by tapping into an ancient cellular energy system. A few years ago, the same research team found that caffeine helps cells live longer by acting on a growth regulator called TOR (target of rapamycin). TOR is a biological switch that tells cells when to grow, based on how much food and energy is available. This switch has been controlling energy and stress responses in living things for over 500 million years. But in their latest study, the scientists made a surprising discovery: Caffeine doesn't act on this growth switch directly. Instead, it works by activating another important system called AMPK, a cellular fuel gauge that is evolutionarily conserved in yeast and humans.

"When your cells are low on energy, AMPK kicks in to help them cope," explains Dr. Charalampos (Babis) Rallis, Reader in Genetics, Genomics and Fundamental Cell Biology at Queen Mary University of London, the study's senior author. "And our results show that caffeine helps flip that switch." Interestingly, AMPK is also the target of metformin, a common diabetes drug that's being studied for its potential to extend human lifespan together with rapamycin. Using their yeast model, the researchers showed that caffeine's effect on AMPK influences how cells grow, repair their DNA, and respond to stress -- all of which are tied to aging and disease. The study has been published in the journal Microbial Cell.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/0112252/researchers-discover-how-caffeine-could-slow-cellular-aging?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Состоялся выпуск дистрибутива OpenWrt 24.10.2, развиваемого для сетевых устройств, таких как маршрутизаторы, коммутаторы и точки доступа. OpenWrt поддерживает 2771 устройство и предлагает систему сборки, упрощающую кросс-компиляцию и создание собственных сборок. Подобные сборки позволяют формировать готовые прошивки с желаемым набором предустановленных пакетов, оптимизированные под конкретные задачи. Готовые сборки опубликованы для 39 целевых платформ.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63463

В платформе совместной разработки Gogs выявлена уязвимость, которой присвоен критический уровень опасности (10 из 10). Уязвимость позволяет непривилегированному пользователю Gogs изменить исходный код других пользователей сервиса, а также выполнить произвольные команды на сервере с правами пользователя, указанного через параметр RUN_USER в конфигурации Gogs. Уязвимость устранена в обновлении Gogs 0.13.3. Проблема является следствием неполного исправления уязвимости CVE-2024-39931, раскрытой в декабре. Уязвимость не затрагивает платформы Forgejo и Gitea, продолжающие развитие форка Gogs, созданного в 2016 году.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63460

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a major federal campaign to promote wearable health tech, aiming for every American to adopt a device within four years as part of a broader effort to "Make America Healthy Again." Gizmodo reports: RFK Jr. announced the initiative Tuesday afternoon during a House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee meeting to discuss the HHS' budget request for the upcoming fiscal year. In response to a question from representative Troy Balderson (R-Ohio) about wearables, Kennedy revealed that HHS will soon conduct one of the agency's largest ever advertising campaigns to promote their use. He added that in his ideal future, every American will be donning a wearable within the next four years. "It's a key part of our mission to Make America Healthy Again," RFK Jr. stated in an X post following the question.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/0121227/health-secretary-wants-every-american-to-be-sporting-a-wearable-within-four-years?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

В пакетных менеджерах GNU Guix, Nix и Lix выявлены уязвимиости (Nix, Guix, Lix), позволяющие выполнить код с правами пользователей, под которыми запускаются сборочные задания (например, nixbld* в Nix/Lix), что может использоваться для записи своих данных в сборочное окружение и внесения изменений в сборочный процесс. Проблемы присутствуют в фоновых процессах guix-daemon и nix-daemon, применяемых для организации доступа непривилегированных пользователей к сборочным операциям.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63464

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After 20 years, being able to look at any corner of the planet in Google Earth doesn't seem that impressive, but it was a revolution in 2005. Google Earth has gone through a lot of changes in that time, and Google has some more lined up for the service's 20th anniversary. Soon, Google Earth will help you travel back in time with historic Street View integration, and pro users will get some new "AI-driven insights" -- of course Google can't update a product without adding at least a little AI. [...] While this part isn't new, Google is also using the 20th anniversary as an opportunity to surface its 3D timelapse feature. These animations use satellite data to show how an area has changed from a higher vantage point. They're just as cool as when they were announced in 2021.

The AI layers are launching in the coming weeks in Google Earth web and mobile as part of Google's Professional Advanced offering. If you use that version of Earth, you should have access to a collection of so-called "AI-driven insights." For instance, you can find the average surface temperature or tree canopy coverage in a given area. This could be of help in urban planning or construction, but it's unclear how many of these insights the app will have. Google says the AI angle here is that the new layers use machine learning to categorize pixels. It's possible Google has just reached the "AI as a buzzword" stage.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/0127214/google-rolls-out-street-view-time-travel-to-celebrate-20-years-of-google-earth?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Консорциум W3C опубликовал третью редакцию спецификации формата изображений PNG, которая получила статус рекомендованного стандарта. Новый вариант полностью обратно совместим со второй редакцией спецификации PNG, выпущенной в 2003 году, и отличается включением таких дополнительных возможностей, как поддержка расширенного динамического диапазона (HDR), анимированных изображений (APNG), интеграции метаданных EXIF и свойств CICP (Coding-Independent Code Points) для определения цветовых пространств.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63466

Intel is shutting down its small automotive division and laying off most of its staff in that group as part of broader cost -cutting efforts to refocus on core businesses like client computing and data centers. Oregon Live reports: "Intel plans to wind down the Intel architecture automotive business," the company told employees Tuesday morning in a message viewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive. The company said it will fulfill existing commitments to customers but will lay off "most" employees working in Intel's automotive group. "As we have said previously, we are refocusing on our core client and data center portfolio to strengthen our product offerings and meet the needs of our customers," Intel said in a written statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive. "As part of this work, we have decided to wind down the automotive business within our client computing group. We are committed to ensuring a smooth transition for our customers."

Automotive technology isn't one of Intel's major businesses and the company doesn't report the segment's revenue or employment. But online, the company boasts that 50 million vehicles use Intel processors. Intel says its chips can help enable electric vehicles, provide information to drivers and optimize vehicles' performance. Intel also owns a majority stake in the Israeli company Mobileye, which develops technology for self-driving cars. It doesn't appear the closure of Intel's automotive group will directly affect Mobileye's operations.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/0135219/intel-will-shut-down-its-automotive-business-lay-off-most-of-the-departments-employees?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Окружной суд Калифорнии вынес решение в разбирательстве против компании Anthropic, которая обвинялась в нарушении авторских прав при использовании легально купленных книг и нелегальных коллекций книг с пиратских сайтов для обучения большой языковой модели Claude. Суд постановил, что использование для обучения модели легально купленных книг соответствует принципу добросовестного использования и получение разрешения у авторов в этом случае не требуется, так как книги используются для анализа и генерации нового текста, а не для прямого копирования оригиналов.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63467

Australia's eSafety Commissioner has urged the government to deny YouTube an exemption from upcoming child safety regulations, citing research showing it exposes more children to harmful content than any other platform. YouTube pushed back, calling the commissioner's stance inconsistent with government data and parental feedback. "The quarrel adds an element of uncertainty to the December rollout of a law being watched by governments and tech leaders around the world as Australia seeks to become the first country to fine social media firms if they fail to block users aged under 16," reports Reuters. From the report: The centre-left Labor government of Anthony Albanese has previously said it would give YouTube a waiver, citing the platform's use for education and health. Other social media companies such as Meta's Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok have argued such an exemption would be unfair. eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said she wrote to the government last week to say there should be no exemptions when the law takes effect. She added that the regulator's research found 37% of children aged 10 to 15 reported seeing harmful content on YouTube -- the most of any social media site. [...]

YouTube, in a blog post, accused Inman Grant of giving inconsistent and contradictory advice, which discounted the government's own research which found 69% of parents considered the video platform suitable for people under 15. "The eSafety commissioner chose to ignore this data, the decision of the Australian Government and other clear evidence from teachers and parents that YouTube is suitable for younger users," wrote Rachel Lord, YouTube's public policy manager for Australia and New Zealand.

Inman Grant, asked about surveys supporting a YouTube exemption, said she was more concerned "about the safety of children and that's always going to surpass any concerns I have about politics or being liked or bringing the public onside". A spokesperson for Communications Minister Anika Wells said the minister was considering the online regulator's advice and her "top priority is making sure the draft rules fulfil the objective of the Act and protect children from the harms of social media."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/0146212/australia-regulator-and-youtube-spar-over-under-16s-social-media-ban?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

19 и 25 июня, после более трёх месяцев разработки, состоялись выпуски 2.5.0 и 2.5.1 библиотеки и консольной утилиты [ pkgconf ]( http://pkgconf.org ) – кроссплатформенной замены [ pkg-config ]( https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config ) от freedesktop.org.

Проект написан на языке C и распространяется по лицензии ISC.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/development/18010668#cut ) )

A groundbreaking stem cell treatment developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals has allowed 10 out of 12 patients with severe type 1 diabetes to stop insulin therapy after one year. While the trial included some side effects and two unrelated deaths, the results mark a major step forward and have progressed to phase 3 clinical testing. ScienceAlert reports: The pancreas's islet cells are responsible for maintaining most of our bodies' insulin levels. Donor transplants of healthy versions of these cells have shown promise in treating type 1 diabetes in the past, but multiple donors are required, and donors are rare. So University of Toronto surgeon Trevor Reichman and colleagues infused 12 patients with islet cells derived from human stem cells in a treatment known as zimislecel. The patients also received immunosuppressive treatment before and after their zimislecel infusion. The islets not only produced insulin inside their bodies, but they did so at safe levels, reducing the patients' dependence on costly doses of insulin. "These findings showed that zimislecel islet cells were functional and self-regulated appropriately," the researchers write in their paper.

The mild to moderate side-effects, including decreased kidney function and the anticipated drop in immune cells, were all linked with the immunosuppressive therapy. Sadly, two additional participants died during the trial; one from an infection arising from surgery and the other from complications due to an unrelated condition. As there were no serious adverse events attributed to the new islet cell therapy, the clinical trials are have progressed into phase 3. "These findings provide evidence that pancreatic islets can be effectively produced from pluripotent stem cells and used to treat type 1 diabetes," Reichman and team conclude. The research has been published in the journal NEJM.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/026238/stem-cell-treatment-may-cure-severe-type-1-diabetes-study-finds?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The HDMI Forum has officially finalized HDMI 2.2, doubling bandwidth from 48 GB/s to 96 GB/s compared to the current HDMI 2.1 standard. The specification enables 16K resolution at 60 Hz and 12K at 120 Hz with chroma subsampling, while supporting uncompressed 4K at 240 Hz with 12-bit color depth and uncompressed 8K at 60 Hz.

The new standard requires "Ultra96" certified cables with clear HDMI Forum branding to achieve full bandwidth capabilities. HDMI 2.2's 96 GB/s throughput surpasses DisplayPort 2.1b UHBR20's 80 GB/s maximum. The specification maintains backwards compatibility with existing devices and cables, operating at the lowest common denominator when mixed with older hardware. HDMI 2.2 introduces a Latency Indication Protocol to improve audio-video synchronization in complex home theater setups.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/156239/hdmi-22-finalized-with-96-gbs-bandwidth-16k-resolution-support?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

U.S. banks have failed to prevent mass-scale money laundering in the face of approximately $44 billion per year in pig-butchering scams conducted by Asian crime syndicates, according to a ProPublica investigation.

Chinese-language Telegram channels openly advertise rental of U.S. bank accounts to scammers who use them to move victims' cash into cryptocurrency. Bank of America allowed hundreds of unverified customers to open accounts, prosecutors alleged, including 176 customers who claimed the same small home as their address.

Major financial institutions whose accounts pig-butchering scammers have exploited include Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, HSBC and Wells Fargo. The scams typically involve fake cryptocurrency trading platforms that convince victims to wire money to seemingly legitimate business accounts. Banks are reluctant to share account information with each other even after identifying suspicious activity, and "no real standards" exist for what banks must do to detect fraud or money laundering.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/1619215/how-foreign-scammers-use-us-banks-to-fleece-americans?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

theodp writes: The job of the future might already be past its prime," writes The Atlantic's Rose Horowitch in The Computer-Science Bubble Is Bursting. "For years, young people seeking a lucrative career were urged to go all in on computer science. From 2005 to 2023, the number of comp-sci majors in the United States quadrupled. All of which makes the latest batch of numbers so startling. This year, enrollment grew by only 0.2 percent nationally, and at many programs, it appears to already be in decline, according to interviews with professors and department chairs. At Stanford, widely considered one of the country's top programs, the number of comp-sci majors has stalled after years of blistering growth. Szymon Rusinkiewicz, the chair of Princeton's computer-science department, told me that, if current trends hold, the cohort of graduating comp-sci majors at Princeton is set to be 25 percent smaller in two years than it is today. The number of Duke students enrolled in introductory computer-science courses has dropped about 20 percent over the past year."

"But if the decline is surprising, the reason for it is fairly straightforward: Young people are responding to a grim job outlook for entry-level coders. In recent years, the tech industry has been roiled by layoffs and hiring freezes. The leading culprit for the slowdown is technology itself. Artificial intelligence has proved to be even more valuable as a writer of computer code than as a writer of words. This means it is ideally suited to replacing the very type of person who built it. A recent Pew study found that Americans think software engineers will be most affected by generative AI. Many young people aren't waiting to find out whether that's true."

Meanwhile, writing in the Communications of the ACM, Orit Hazzan and Avi Salmon ask: Should Universities Raise or Lower Admission Requirements for CS Programs in the Age of GenAI? "This debate raises a key dilemma: should universities raise admission standards for computer science programs to ensure that only highly skilled problem-solvers enter the field, lower them to fill the gaps left by those who now see computer science as obsolete due to GenAI, or restructure them to attract excellent candidates with diverse skill sets who may not have considered computer science prior to the rise of GenAI, but who now, with the intensive GenAI and vibe coding tools supporting programming tasks, may consider entering the field?

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/1730250/the-computer-science-bubble-is-bursting?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

A Gallup and Walton Family Foundation poll found 6 in 10 US teachers in K-12 public schools used AI tools for work during the past school year, with higher adoption rates among high school educators and early-career teachers. The survey of more than 2,000 teachers nationwide conducted in April found that those using AI tools weekly estimate saving about six hours per week.

About 8 in 10 teachers using AI tools report time savings on creating worksheets, assessments, quizzes and administrative work. About 6 in 10 said AI improves their work quality when modifying student materials or providing feedback. However, approximately half of teachers worry student AI use will diminish teens' critical thinking abilities and independent problem-solving persistence.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/1648236/majority-of-us-k-12-teachers-now-using-ai-for-lesson-planning-grading?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The City of Lyon will replace Microsoft's office suite with free office software, including OnlyOffice for office work and Linux and PostgreSQL for systems and databases. The city aims to "no longer be dependent on American software solutions and acquire true digital sovereignty," according to an official statement.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/1757229/lyon-abandons-microsoft-office-to-strengthen-digital-sovereignty?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Senator Bernie Sanders called for a four-day work week during a recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, arguing that AI productivity gains should benefit workers rather than just technology companies and corporate executives. Sanders proposed reducing the standard work week to 32 hours when AI tools increase worker productivity, rather than eliminating jobs entirely.

"Technology is gonna work to improve us, not just the people who own the technology and the CEOs of large corporations," Sanders said. "You are a worker, your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, right? Instead of throwing you out on the street, I'm gonna reduce your work week to 32 hours."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/194207/bernie-sanders-says-if-ai-makes-us-so-productive-we-should-get-a-4-day-work-week?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: One of the interesting projects engaged in by Mozilla that directly wasn't related to their web browser efforts was DeepSpeech, an embedded/offline speech-to-text engine. To not much surprise given the lack of activity in recent years, last week they finally and formally discontinued the open-source project.

Mozilla DeepSpeech was a promising speech-to-text engine with great performance for real-time communication even when running on Raspberry Pi SBCs and other low-power systems.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/1851201/mozilla-formally-discontinues-its-deepspeech-project?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Компания Google опубликовала релиз web-браузера Chrome 138. Одновременно доступен стабильный выпуск свободного проекта Chromium, выступающего основой Chrome. Браузер Chrome отличается от Chromium использованием логотипов Google, наличием системы отправки уведомлений в случае краха, модулями для воспроизведения защищённого от копирования видеоконтента (DRM), системой автоматической установки обновлений, постоянным включением Sandbox-изоляции, поставкой ключей к Google API и передачей RLZ-параметров при поиске. Для тех, кому необходимо больше времени на обновление, отдельно поддерживается ветка Extended Stable, сопровождаемая 8 недель. Следующий выпуск Chrome 139 запланирован на 5 августа.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63468

Компания Mozilla перевела в архивных режим репозиторий с открытым движком распознавания речи DeepSpeech. Последним изменением в кодовой базе стало исправление файла README, в который была добавлена информация о прекращении разработки проекта. До этого последний коммит был датирован 2021 годом.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=63469

Overfishing has led to a collapse in the eastern Baltic cod population, but over the past three decades the size of the fish themselves has also been dramatically and mysteriously shrinking. From a report: Now scientists have uncovered genomic evidence that intensive fishing has driven rapid evolutionary changes that have contributed to these fish roughly halving in average body length since the 1990s. The "shrinking" of cod, from a median mature body length of 40cm in 1996 to 20cm in 2019, has a genetic basis and human activities have left a profound mark on the population's DNA, the study concluded.

[...] The dramatic shrinking of cod has been a source of concern for several decades, but it was not clear to what extent the phenomenon has been driven by environmental factors such as hypoxic conditions caused by algal blooms, pollution and more extreme marine seasonal temperature changes. [...] The study used an archive of tiny ear bones, called otoliths, of 152 cod, caught in the Bornholm Basin between 1996 and 2019. Otoliths -- a bit like tree rings -- record annual growth, making them valuable biological timekeepers.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/1842223/overfishing-has-caused-cod-to-halve-in-body-size-since-1990s-study-finds?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nearly a decade ago, Ars testing found that Valve's "Steam Machines"-era version of SteamOS performed significantly worse than Windows when SteamOS's Linux game ports were tested on the same hardware as their Windows counterparts. Today, though, Ars testing on the Lenovo Legion Go S finds recent games generally run at higher frame rates on SteamOS 3.7 than on Windows 11. [...]

As you can see in the included charts, SteamOS showed noticeable frame rate improvements in four of the five games tested. Only Borderlands 3 showed comparable performance across both operating systems, with Windows eking out ever-so-slightly higher frame rates in that game's benchmarks. For the other four tested games, the stock Lenovo Windows drivers were sometimes significantly worse than those included with SteamOS. When playing Returnal at "High" graphics presets and 1920x1200 resolution, for instance, changing from Lenovo's Windows drivers to SteamOS meant the difference between a hard-to-take 18 FPS average and a downright decent 33 FPS average. Sideloading the updated Asus drivers showed a noticeable improvement in Windows performance across all tested games and even brought Homeworld 3's "Low" graphics benchmark test to practical parity with SteamOS. In all other cases, though, even these updated drivers resulted in benchmark frame rates anywhere from 8 percent to 36 percent lower than those same benchmarks on SteamOS.

These results might seem a bit counterintuitive, considering that games running on SteamOS must go through a Proton translation layer for every native Windows instruction in a game's code. But Valve has put in consistent work over the years to make Proton as efficient and cross-compatible as possible; not to mention its continued work on Linux's Mesa graphics drivers seems to be paying dividends for SteamOS graphics performance. Running SteamOS also means eliminating a lot of operating system overhead that the more generalist Windows uses by default. Microsoft seems aware of this issue for gamers and has recently announced that the upcoming "Xbox Experience for Handheld" will "minimize background activity and defer non-essential tasks" to allow for "more [and] higher framerates" in games.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/2034243/games-run-faster-on-steamos-than-windows-11-ars-testing-finds?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

If Fedora drops 32-bit support, the gaming-focused Bazzite project would be forced to shut down, according to its founder Kyle Gospodnetich. "As much as I'd like this change to happen, it's too soon," said Gospodneitch in a post. "This change would kill off projects like Bazzite entirely right as Fedora is starting to make major headway in the gaming space. Neal Gompa already pointed out basic use cases that would be broken even if someone built the packages Steam itself needs to function."

He continued: "It's also causing irreparable damage to Fedora from a PR standpoint. I have been inundated all day with people sharing news articles and being genuinely concerned Steam is gong to stop working on their Fedora/Bazzite machines. I would argue not only should this change be rejected, the proposal should be rescinded to limit further damage to Fedora as a project. Perhaps open a separate one to talk about changing build architecture to build fewer 32-bit packages?"

When pushed further, Gospodnetich said: "I'm speaking as it's founder, if this change is actually made as it is written the best option for us is to just go ahead and disband the project."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/2042242/bazzite-would-shut-down-if-fedora-goes-ahead-with-removing-32-bit?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Psylo, a new privacy-focused iOS browser by Mysk, aims to defeat digital fingerprinting by isolating each browser tab with its own IP address, unique fingerprinting defenses, and proxy-based encryption. "Psylo stands out as it is the only WebKit-based iOS browser that truly isolates tabs," Tommy Mysk told The Register. "It's not only about separate storage and cookies. Psylo goes beyond that."

"This is why we call tabs 'silos.' It applies unique anti-fingerprinting measures per silo, such as canvas randomization. This way two Psylo tabs opening the same website would appear as though they originated on two different devices to the opened website." From the report: The company claims Psylo therefore offers better privacy than a VPN because the virtual networks mask the user's IP address but generally don't alter the data used for fingerprinting. Psylo, for example, will adjust the browser's time zone and browser language to match the geolocation of each proxy, resulting in more entropy that means fingerprints created by gathering data from silos will appear to be different.

The Mysk devs' post states that some privacy-focused browsers like Brave also implement anti-fingerprinting measures like canvas randomization, but those are more effective on the desktop macOS app due to Apple's iOS restrictions. They claim that they were able to achieve better results on iOS by using a client-side JavaScript solution. Mysk designed Psylo to minimize the information available to its maker. It doesn't log personally identifiable information or browsing data that the curious could use to identify the user, the company claims, noting that it also doesn't have customer payment information, which is handled by Apple. There are no user accounts, only randomized identifiers to indicate active subscriptions. According to Tommy Mysk, the only subscriber data kept is bandwidth usage, which is necessary to prevent abuse.

"We aggregate bandwidth usage based on a randomly generated ID that is created when a subscription is made," Mysk said. "The randomly generated ID is associated with the Apple subscription transaction. Apple doesn't share the identity of users making App Store purchases with developers." Asked whether Apple could identify users, Mysk said, "Theoretically and given a court order, Apple can figure out the randomly generated ID of the user in question. If we were to hand out the data associated with the randomly generated ID, it would only be the bandwidth usage of that user in the current month, and two months in the past. Older data is automatically deleted. "We don't associate any identifiable information with the randomly generated ID. We don't store IP addresses at all in every component of our system. We don't store websites visited by our users at all." The browser is only available on iOS and iPadOS, but Mysk says an Android version could be developed if there's enough interest. It costs $9.99 per month or $99 per year in the U.S.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/2050258/psylo-browser-obscures-digital-fingerprints-by-giving-every-tab-its-own-ip-address?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

U.S. lawmakers have reintroduced the bipartisan Open App Markets Act, aiming to curb Apple and Google's control over mobile app stores by promoting competition, supporting third-party marketplaces and sideloading, and safeguarding developer rights. AppleInsider reports: The Open App Markets Act seeks to do a number of things, including:
- Protect developers' rights to tell consumers about lower prices and offer competitive pricing;
- Protect sideloading of apps;
- Promote competition by opening the market to third-party app stores, startup apps, and alternative payment systems;
- Make it possible for developers to offer new experiences that take advantage of consumer device features;
- Give consumers greater control over their devices;
- Prevent app stores from disadvantaging developers; and
- Establish safeguards to preserve consumer privacy, security, and safety.

This isn't the first time we've seen this bill, either. In 2021, Senators Blumenthal, Klobuchar, and Blackburn had attempted to put forth the original version of the Open App Markets Act.However, the initial bill never made it to the floor for an office vote. Thanks to last-minute efforts by lobbying groups and appearances from chief executives, the bill eventually stalled out.

While the two bills are largely similar, the revised version introduces several key differences. Notably, the new version includes new carve-outs aimed at protecting intellectual property and addressing potential national security concerns.There's also a new clause that would prohibit punitive actions against developers for enabling remote access to other apps. The clause addition harkens back to the debacle between Apple and most game streaming services -- though in 2024, Apple loosened its App Store guidelines to allow cloud gaming and emulation.

There are a few new platform-protective clauses added, too. For instance, it would significantly lower the burden of proof for either Apple or Google to block platform access to a third-party app.Additionally, it reinforces the fact that companies like Apple or Google will not need to provide support or refunds for third-party apps installed outside of first-party app marketplaces.
The full bill can be found here.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/214209/us-senators-push-for-american-version-of-eus-digital-markets-act?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.