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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/11/sam-altman-officially-back-as-openai-ceo-we-didnt-lose-a-single-employee/

On Wednesday, OpenAI announced that Sam Altman has officially returned to the ChatGPT-maker as CEO—accompanied by Mira Murati as CTO and Greg Brockman as president—resuming their roles from before the shocking firing of Altman that threw the company into turmoil two weeks ago. Altman says the company did not lose a single employee or customer throughout the crisis.

"I have never been more excited about the future. I am extremely grateful for everyone's hard work in an unclear and unprecedented situation, and I believe our resilience and spirit set us apart in the industry," wrote Altman in an official OpenAI news release. "I feel so, so good about our probability of success for achieving our mission."

Previously:
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Purged, President Brockman Quits, but Maybe They'll All Come Back After All - 20231119

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A report from Canalys forecasts that the nearly two-year-long decline in PC shipments will finally end in Q4 of this year, flipping to a projected 5% growth. More growth is also projected to arrive next year, which will supposedly see 8% higher PC shipments than in 2023. Canalys expects the surging interest in AI and the arrival of ARM-equipped PCs to fuel this growth.

[...] A key assumption of this forecast is that new AI software and hardware will re-spark consumer interest in PCs. Canalys predicts that AI-powered PCs will account for 19% of all PCs shipped in 2024, a figure that includes M-series Macs and presumably PCs equipped with Ryzen 7000 or some of Intel's latest CPUs like Meteor Lake.

PCs with ARM chips are also expected to play an important role in the recovery of the PC market. Although Apple's M CPUs use the ARM architecture, Canalys pointed out Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite CPU as the primary driver of growth for ARM-based PCs. The firm previously predicted ARM chips would grab 30% share of the PC market by 2026.

Of course, the health of the global economy is perhaps the biggest factor in whether consumers buy PCs. The decline of shipments in 2022 and 2023 was precipitated largely on potential buyers being more frugal with their money. The report only touches on this and merely mentions there is "an improving macroeconomic environment." Assuming this recovery of the economy persists into 2024, then it could carry the PC market along.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

NASA is addressing an issue with a Hubble Space Telescope gyroscope that prompted the observatory to enter safe mode on November 23. Science operations have been suspended as a result, but the space agency doesn’t seem too worried.

[...] NASA is not sounding any kind of serious alarm on the matter, saying Hubble’s instruments remain stable and the telescope is in overall good health. The space telescope has a history of stressing out its operations team, but it’s managed to bounce back each time. The telescope experienced similar safe mode events in 2008, 2018, and 2019. Most recently, Hubble overcame a major computer glitch in June 2021 and another software issue earlier that year.

[...] The team at NASA is currently running tests to better understand the issue and develop possible solutions. If necessary, the spacecraft can be reconfigured to operate with just one gyroscope. This flexibility stems from the installation of six new gyroscopes during Hubble’s fifth and final space shuttle servicing mission in 2009. Out of these, three remain operational, including the one currently exhibiting fluctuations. While Hubble operates most efficiently using three gyroscopes, it can continue its scientific observations with only one if required.

NASA anticipates that the telescope will not only recover from this setback but also continue to work in tandem with other observatories, such as the James Webb Space Telescope. This collaboration is expected to extend throughout this decade and possibly into the next, ensuring Hubble’s ongoing contribution to our understanding of the cosmos.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/11/hackers-spent-2-years-looting-secrets-of-chipmaker-nxp-before-being-detected/

A prolific espionage hacking group with ties to China spent over two years looting the corporate network of NXP, the Netherlands-based chipmaker whose silicon powers security-sensitive components found in smartphones, smartcards, and electric vehicles, a news outlet has reported.

The intrusion, by a group tracked under names including "Chimera" and "G0114," lasted from late 2017 to the beginning of 2020, according to Netherlands national news outlet NRC Handelsblad, which cited "several sources" familiar with the incident.
[...]
NRC cited a report published (and later deleted) by security firm Fox-IT, titled Abusing Cloud Services to Fly Under the Radar. It documented Chimera using cloud services from companies including Microsoft and Dropbox to receive data stolen from the networks of semiconductor makers, including one in Europe that was hit in "early Q4 2017." Some of the intrusions lasted as long as three years before coming to light. NRC said the unidentified victim was NXP.
[...]
NXP did not alert customers or shareholders to the intrusion, other than a brief reference in a 2019 annual report.
[...]
Some security researchers said it was surprising that NXP officials didn't inform customers of the two-year intrusion by threat actors, often abbreviated as TAs.

"NXP chips are in a lot of products," Jake Williams, a former hacker for the National Security Agency, wrote on Mastodon. "It's likely the TA knows of specific flaws reported to NXP that can be leveraged to exploit devices the chips are embedded in, and that's assuming they didn't implement backdoors themselves. Over 2.5 years (at least), that's not unrealistic."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

If you've got an old Google account that you have not used for a couple of years then it could soon be deleted:

The tech giant is going to be getting rid of them, starting from Friday, under its inactive account policy.

The company said it would take a phased approach, starting with accounts that "were created and never used again".

Simply signing into an account or sending an email should be enough to keep it active.

Google said the change was because of security reasons, highlighting that forgotten and unused accounts are more likely to be compromised.

A Google account gives users access to most Google products, such as email service Gmail and video sharing site YouTube, using the same username and password.

In a blog post in May, the tech giant said the reason old accounts are more vulnerable is because they tend to rely on old or re-used passwords and largely have not had two-factor authentication set up.

Once an account has been abused, it can be used for anything from identity theft to malicious content and spam.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Every Bitcoin transaction uses, on average, enough water to fill "a back yard swimming pool", a new study suggests:

That's around six million times more than is used in a typical credit card swipe, Alex de Vries of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, calculates.

The figure is due to the water used to power and cool the millions of computers worldwide Bitcoin relies on.

It comes as many regions struggle with fresh water shortages.

[...] In total, bitcoin consumed nearly 1,600 billion litres - also known as gigalitres (GL) - of water in 2021, the study, published in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability, suggests.

It says the 2023 figure could be more than 2,200 GL.

The main reason Bitcoin uses so much water is because it relies on an enormous amount of computing power, which in turn needs huge amounts of electricity.

[...] Mr de Vries argues that Bitcoin does not need to use this much water - singling out the power hungry process at its heart, which is known as "Bitcoin mining."

[...] This method is known as "proof of work". But a change to the way Bitcoin works could cut the electricity use and hence water consumption dramatically.

The major cryptocurrency Ethereum did this in Sep 2022, moving to a system called "proof of stake", reducing its power-use by more than 99% in the process.

That may not be straightforward though, according to Prof James Davenport, of the University of Bath.

"[It was] only possible because the management of Ethereum is significantly more centralised than that of Bitcoin," he told the BBC.

Nonetheless, others say the findings of this research are worrying.

Dr Larisa Yarovaya, associate professor of finance at the University of Southampton, she said the use of freshwater for Bitcoin mining, particularly in regions already grappling with water scarcity, "should be a cause for concern among regulators and the public".

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Modern day parenting pressures and expectations are leading to the death knell for children enjoying spontaneous play:

Whilst parents have always felt some responsibility for their children's development, the heightened intensity of parenting in recent years now means parents are expected to spend more time exhaustively watching, noticing and responding to their children's desires and behaviours.

This, the research suggests, is leaving less time for children to play independently where they learn for themselves the risks and dangers of outdoor play.

[...] "Until around the 1990s, parents were not expected to endlessly entertain and monitor their children in the same way they are today, so children had greater freedom to play independently," explained the study's author Dr John Day. "But since those children have become parents themselves, society has changed so there is a heightened feeling of responsibility for their children's development.

"One aspect of the problem is increased fears around stranger danger and more traffic on the roads which means opportunities for children to be physically active through spontaneous play have become limited."

So, today's youngsters are spending less time playing together away from adult care and more time under parental supervision and participating in structured health-focused physical activity settings such as holiday clubs.

[...] Growing concerns around child health meant many parents born after the late 1960s, who started parenting in the early 1990s, felt as though they should intervene to make sure their children were active, which restricted the possibility for more spontaneous forms of play.

"Society today positions parents as the sole engineers in their children's development which represents an unrealistic burden that brings with it unjust pressure and expectation," added Dr Day.To help address this trend, Dr Day says there needs to be a culture shift where health policy makers ensure children are encouraged to learn about the risks of physically active play, independent of adult supervision."Parenting is no longer simply an aspect of who someone is but a role one is expected to extensively perform. Parents and their children are trapped together in this scenario and so we need policymakers to recognise this and work with parents and children to change this for future generations," he said.

Journal Reference:
John Day, The intensification of parenting and generational fracturing of spontaneous physical activity from childhood play in the United Kingdom, Sociology of Health & Illness, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13701

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Tim O'Reilly, Mariana Mazzucato, and Ilan Strauss have three working papers focusing on Amazon's ability to extract unusual profits from its customers nowadays:

The papers are:

• Algorithmic Attention Rents: A theory of digital platform market power
• Amazon's Algorithmic Rents: The economics of information on Amazon
• Behind the Clicks: Can Amazon allocate user attention as it pleases?

The core idea in all three is that Amazon has become the default place to shop online for many. So, when Amazon changes their site in ways that make Amazon higher profits but hurt consumers, it takes work for people to figure that out and shop elsewhere.

The papers criticize the common assumption that people will quickly switch to shopping elsewhere if the Amazon customer experience deteriorates. Realistically, people are busy. People have imperfect information, limited time, and it is effortful to find another place to shop. At least up to some limit, people may tolerate a familiar but substantially deteroriated experience for some time.

[...] I think one model of customer attrition is that every time customers notice a bad experience, they have some probability of using Amazon less in the future. The more bad experiences they have, the faster the damage to long-term revenue. Under this model, even the level of ads Amazon has now is causing slow damage to Amazon. Amazon execs may not notice because the damage is over long periods of time and hard to attribute directly back to the poor quality search results, but the damage is there. This is the model I've seen used by some others, such as Google Research in their "Focus on the Long-term" paper.

Another model might be that consumers are captured by dominant companies such as Amazon and will not pay the costs to switch until they hit some threshold. That is, most customers will refuse to try alternatives until it is completely obvious that it is worth the effort. This assumes that Amazon can exploit customers for a very long time, and that customers will not stop using Amazon no matter what they do. There is some extreme where that breaks, but only at the threshold, not before.

The difference between these two models matters a lot. If Amazon is experiencing substantial but slow costs from what they are doing right now, there's much more hope for them changing their behavior on their own than if Amazon is experiencing no costs from their bad behavior unless regulators impose costs externally. The solutions you get in the two scenarios are likely to be different.

Related:

• Amazon And Meta To Stop Using Third-Party Data From Rivals
• Amazon's Smart Speakers Collecting Kids Data May Lead to Government Lawsuit
• Amazon Offering Customers $2 Per Month for Letting the Company Monitor the Traffic on Their Phone

Original Submission

Rich writes:

The Sovereign Tech Fund (https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/), a subsidiary of Germany's Ministry for Economic affairs, will issue a one million dollar grant to the GNOME foundation (https://www.gnome.org/). Most reports are in German, but OMGUbuntu has a summary at https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/11/gnome-sovereign-tech-fund. The foundation already has supported several open source infrastructure projects, from FORTRAN to cURL, but this is the first time that it directly supports the Linux desktop.

This grant acknowledges GNOME a part of critical infrastructure and therefore worthy of this public support. Most of the spent money will go into improving accessibility, but some points also address security and the general software infrastructure.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is getting tough on website design, insisting that opting out of cookies must be as simple as opting in.

At question are advertising cookies, where users should be able to "Accept All" advertising cookies or reject them. Users will still see adverts regardless of their selection, but rejecting advertising cookies means ads must not be tailored to the person browsing.

However, the ICO noted that: "Some websites do not give users fair choices over whether or not to be tracked for personalized advertising." This is despite guidance issued in August regarding harmful designs that can trick users into giving up more personal information than intended.

A few months on, the ICO has upped the ante. It has now given 30 days' notice to companies running many of the UK's most visited sites that they must comply with data protection regulations or face enforcement action.

[...] The ICO calls out cookie consent banners as a clear example of often harmful design. Its guidance says: "A website's cookie banner should make it as easy to reject non-essential cookies as it is to accept them.

"Users should be able to make an informed choice on whether they want to give consent for their personal information to be used, for example, to profile them for targeted advertising."

[...] Cookie consent remains a hot topic for UK and EU lawmakers alike. The EU, for example, has a relatively clear stance on cookie consent – users should be offered a clear and unambiguous choice: yes or no. The ICO requires a similar approach.

However, the waters were muddied somewhat in 2022 by proposals to adopt an opt-out system in the UK.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/11/stability-ai-releases-stable-video-diffusion-which-turns-pictures-into-short-videos/

On Tuesday, Stability AI released Stable Video Diffusion, a new free AI research tool that can turn any still image into a short video—with mixed results. It's an open-weights preview of two AI models that use a technique called image-to-video, and it can run locally on a machine with an Nvidia GPU.

Last year, Stability AI made waves with the release of Stable Diffusion, an "open weights" image synthesis model that kick started a wave of open image synthesis and inspired a large community of hobbyists that have built off the technology with their own custom fine-tunings. Now Stability wants to do the same with AI video synthesis, although the tech is still in its infancy.
[...]
In our local testing, a 14-frame generation took about 30 minutes to create on an Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics card, but users can experiment with running the models much faster on the cloud through services like Hugging Face and Replicate (some of which you may need to pay for). In our experiments, the generated animation typically keeps a portion of the scene static and adds panning and zooming effects or animates smoke or fire. People depicted in photos often do not move, although we did get one Getty image of Steve Wozniak to slightly come to life.

Previously on SoylentNews:
Search: Stable Diffusion on SoylentNews.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://newatlas.com/medical/traffic-triggers-blood-pressure-surge/

Inching forward bumper to bumper on a highway when you're on the way to an appointment, or worse, the airport, is enough to spike anyone's blood pressure (BP). But researchers have found that a BP surge occurs independent of external stressors, and it could be due to the poor air flowing into the car from surrounding traffic.

The University of Washington (UW) researchers undertook a randomized crossover trial and were surprised to see that sitting in traffic and breathing unfiltered air was linked to a 4.5 mm Hg surge in blood pressure, which peaked at around 60 minutes of exposure but lingered for up to 24 hours following the event.

"The body has a complex set of systems to try to keep blood pressure to your brain the same all the time," said lead researcher Joel Kaufman, a physician and professor at UW. "It's a very complex, tightly regulated system, and it appears that somewhere, in one of those mechanisms, traffic-related air pollution interferes with blood pressure."

In the study, 16 participants aged 22-45 years were driven as passengers through peak-hour traffic in Seattle for periods across three days, to measure the impact of traffic pollution on blood pressure. For two days, the air flowed into the vehicle normally, to mirror how most of us drive, and on another day the car was fitted with a high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter, which blocked 86% of particulate pollution.

Blood pressure readings were taken a day before, during and after the drive, with 14 three-minute tests collected. Image-based central retinal arteriolar equivalents (CRAEs) were also measured before and after. Brachial artery diameter and gene expression were also taken.

The mean adjusted systolic blood pressure reading of 4.5 mm Hg higher than baseline is comparable to the effect of a high-sodium diet.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A data-destroying bug has been discovered in a new feature of OpenZFS 2.2.0, as found in FreeBSD 14 among other OSes.

OpenZFS 2.2.0 was released just last month with a new feature called block cloning, as we reported when we looked at release candidate 3. Unfortunately, there's a bug in that code somewhere, as found by Gentoo-toting Terin Stock, who reported bug #15526. As a result, OpenZFS 2.2.1 is already out, which disables the new feature.

This is a bit of an embarrassment for OpenZFS, a project with an enviable reputation for data integrity. It's also less than ideal for fixed-release-cycle OSes that have the new version of OpenZFS, including the newly released FreeBSD 14. Fortunately for FreeBSD, though, version 14.0 ships with the feature disabled by default.

We have mentioned the work of BSD boffin Colin Percival before, but anyone brave enough to have already installed this point-zero release should heed his warning on Twitter X: "FreeBSD 14's ZFS code supports 'block cloning'. This is turned off by default. DO NOT ENABLE THIS FEATURE UNLESS YOU WANT TO LOSE DATA."

The bug manifests as corruption of the contents of files when they're copied; instead of their expected contents, there are stretches of zeroes, mixed with blocks of what looks like Base64-encoded data. It showed up when using Gentoo's portage command, the distro's package-management tool – an operation that typically involves copying lots of data. Worse still is that the file system's own health checks don't detect any problem. For now, release 2.2.1 simply disables the feature.

It seems very likely that OpenZFS 2.2.1, which simply turns off block-cloning, will quickly be followed by a 2.2.2 release to fix the underlying dnode handling.

fliptop writes:

They were asked about it, and they deleted everything:

There was nothing in Drew Ortiz's author biography at Sports Illustrated to suggest that he was anything other than human.

"Drew has spent much of his life outdoors, and is excited to guide you through his never-ending list of the best products to keep you from falling to the perils of nature," it read. "Nowadays, there is rarely a weekend that goes by where Drew isn't out camping, hiking, or just back on his parents' farm."

The only problem? Outside of Sports Illustrated, Drew Ortiz doesn't seem to exist. He has no social media presence and no publishing history. And even more strangely, his profile photo on Sports Illustrated is for sale on a website that sells AI-generated headshots, where he's described as "neutral white young-adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes."

Ortiz isn't the only AI-generated author published by Sports Illustrated, according to a person involved with the creation of the content who asked to be kept anonymous to protect them from professional repercussions.

"There's a lot," they told us of the fake authors. "I was like, what are they? This is ridiculous. This person does not exist."

[...] The AI content marks a staggering fall from grace for Sports Illustrated, which in past decades won numerous National Magazine Awards for its sports journalism and published work by literary giants ranging from William Faulkner to John Updike.

But now that it's under the management of The Arena Group, parts of the magazine seem to have devolved into a Potemkin Village in which phony writers are cooked up out of thin air, outfitted with equally bogus biographies and expertise to win readers' trust, and used to pump out AI-generated buying guides that are monetized by affiliate links to products that provide a financial kickback when readers click them.

What's next? Six-fingered AI-generated models for the swimsuit edition?

Related:

• The AI Hype Bubble is the New Crypto Hype Bubble
• OpenAI Has Released the Largest Version Yet of its Fake-News-Spewing AI
• Inside the Secret List of Websites That Make AI Like ChatGPT Sound Smart

Original Submission

hubie writes:

The analysis compares innovations and policies related to plant-based and lab-grown alternatives to animal meat and dairy in the U.S. and European Union:

The summertime barbecue – an American tradition synonymous with celebrating freedom – may be tainted by a decidedly unfree market. A new Stanford study reveals how meat and dairy industry lobbying has influenced government regulations and funding to stifle competition from alternative meat products with smaller climate and environmental impacts. The analysis, published Aug. 18 in One Earth, compares innovations and policies related to plant-based meat alternatives and lab-grown meat in the U.S. and European Union. Its findings could help ensure legislation, such as the $428 billion U.S. Farm Bill set to expire Sept. 30, levels the food industry playing field.

"The lack of policies focused on reducing our reliance on animal-derived products and the lack of sufficient support to alternative technologies to make them competitive are symptomatic of a system still resisting fundamental changes," said study lead author Simona Vallone, an Earth system science research associate in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability at the time of the research.

[...] The researchers reviewed major agricultural policies from 2014 to 2020 that supported either the animal food product system or alternative technologies, and compared government spending on both systems. They also looked at related lobbying trends.

They found that governments consistently devoted most of their agricultural funding to livestock and feed production systems, avoided highlighting food production sustainability dimensions in nutrition guidelines, and attempted to introduce regulatory hurdles, such as narrow labeling standards, to the commercialization of meat alternatives. Major U.S. meat and dairy companies actively lobbied against environmental issues and regulations to tip the scales in their favor.

[...] To ensure a fair marketplace for alternative meat products, policymakers should craft legislation that ensures meat's price reflects its environmental costs, increases research on alternative meat and dairy products, and informs consumers on alternatives to meat via dietary guidelines, according to the researchers.

"It's clear that powerful vested interests have exerted political influence to maintain the animal-farming system status quo," said study senior author Eric Lambin, the George and Setsuko Ishiyama Provostial Professor at Stanford and senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "A significant policy shift is required to reduce the food system impact on climate, land use, and biodiversity."

The press release comes with a 2-minute video for those who prefer the spoken word.

Original Submission