Discord Discloses Data Breach After Support Agent Got Hacked
Discord has informed users of a data breach that occurred after a third-party support agent’s account was compromised, exposing user email addresses, messages exchanged with Discord support, and any attachments sent as part of the tickets. Discord immediately disabled the account and worked with the customer service partner to prevent similar incidents in … ⌘ Read more

Metaverse Could Contribute Up To 2.4% of US GDP By 2035, Study Shows
A study commissioned by Meta has found that the metaverse could contribute around 2.4% to U.S. annual GDP by 2035, equating to as much as $760 billion. Reuters reports: The concept of the metaverse includes augmented and virtual reality technologies that allow users to immerse themselves in a virtual world or overlay information digitally on … ⌘ Read more

Cryptocurrencies Add Nothing Useful To Society, Says Nvidia
The US chip-maker Nvidia has said cryptocurrencies do not “bring anything useful for society” despite the company’s powerful processors selling in huge quantities to the sector. From a report: Michael Kagan, its chief technology officer, said other uses of processing power such as the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT were more worthwhile than mining crypto … ⌘ Read more

Germany Urges Loophole for EU Ban on Fossil-Fuel Cars: Synthetic Carbon-Captured Fuels
CNN reports:
When EU lawmakers voted to ban the sale of new combustion engine cars in the bloc by 2035, it was a landmark victory for climate. In February, the European Parliament approved the law. All that was needed was a rubber stamp from the bloc’s political leaders.

Then Germany changed its mind.
… ⌘ Read more

Meta To End News Access For Canadians if Online News Act Becomes Law
Facebook-parent Meta Platforms said on Saturday that it would end availability of news content for Canadians on its platforms if the country’s Online News Act passes in its current form. From a report: The “Online News Act,” or House of Commons bill C-18, introduced in April last year laid out rules to force platforms like Meta and Alphab … ⌘ Read more

Meta is Building a Decentralized, Text-Based Social Network
Twitter’s decline is paving the way for other platforms to build next-generation replacements. And now the biggest player in the game is getting involved: Meta is in the early stages of building a dedicated app for people to post text-based updates. From a report: “We’re exploring a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text updates,” the compa … ⌘ Read more

FBI Chief Says TikTok ‘Screams’ of US National Security Concerns
China’s government could use TikTok to control data on millions of American users, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a U.S. Senate hearing on Wednesday, saying the Chinese-owned video app “screams” of security concerns. Reuters reports: Wray told a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats to U.S. security that the Chinese governme … ⌘ Read more

Google Expands VPN Access To All Google One Members, Rolls Out New ‘Dark Web Report’ Feature
Google is expanding VPN access to all Google One members on all plans and rolling out a new dark web report feature for all subscribers. From a report: VPN by Google One was previously only available to members on the Premium 2TB plan, but will now be available to all Google One members, includi … ⌘ Read more

Nearly 40% of Software Engineers Will Only Work Remotely
dcblogs writes: Despite the demand of employers like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, AT&T and others, nearly 40% of software engineers preferred only remote roles, and if their employers mandated a return to the office, 21% indicated they would quit immediately, while another 49% said they would start looking for another job, according to Hired’s 2023 State of Software En … ⌘ Read more

You Can Watch Pluto TV in VLC, and the MPA Considers This Piracy
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) issued a DMCA notice to a GitHub repo that contained a playlist that let viewers watch Pluto TVs streams on their own apps, such as VLC, MPV, and Tvheadend. From a report: The move was first noticed by TorrentFreak, and GitHub has complied and removed the repo, which ultimately does nothing. If you still have a … ⌘ Read more

Visa, Mastercard Pause Crypto Push in Wake of Industry Meltdown
U.S. payment giants Visa and Mastercard are slamming the brakes on plans to forge new partnerships with crypto firms after a string of high-profile collapses shook faith in the industry, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Both Visa and Mastercard have decided to push back the launch of certain products and s … ⌘ Read more

5th Person Confirmed To Be Cured of HIV
Researchers are announcing that a 53-year-old man in Germany has been cured of HIV. From a report: Referred to as “the Dusseldorf patient” to protect his privacy, researchers said he is the fifth confirmed case of an HIV cure. Although the details of his successful treatment were first announced at a conference in 2019, researchers could not confirm he had been officially cured at that time. … ⌘ Read more

No, a Piece of the Sun Didn’t Just ‘Break Off’
The CBC reports:

You may have seen stories over the past week or so with headlines like, “Part of the sun breaks free and forms a strange vortex, baffling scientists,” or “Unbelievable moment a piece of the sun BREAKS OFF baffles scientists” or even “NASA captures piece of sun breaking off, baffles scientists.” It all started with a harmless, informative tweet. Tamitha Skov, a spac … ⌘ Read more

Australians Able To Opt Out of Targeted Ads, Erase Their Data Under Proposed Privacy Reforms
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Australians would gain greater control of their personal information, including the ability to opt out of targeted ads, erase their data and sue for serious breaches of privacy, under a proposal to the Albanese government. On Thursday the … ⌘ Read more

A Developer is Reimplementing GNU’s Core Utilities in Rust
A Rust-based re-implementation of GNU core utilities like cp and mv is “reaching closer to parity with the widely-used GNU upstream and becoming capable of taking on more real-world uses,” reports Phoronix:

Debian developer Sylvestre Ledru [also an engineering director at Mozilla] began working on uutils during the COVID-19 pandemic and presented last week … ⌘ Read more

Zoom To Lay Off 1,300 Employees, Or About 15% of Its Workforce
Zoom on Tuesday announced plans to cut about 1,300 workers, or 15% of its workforce, according to a blog post on the company’s website. CNBC reports: CEO Eric Yuan wrote in the blog post that as the world continues to adjust to life after the Covid pandemic, the company needs to adapt to the “uncertainty of the global economy” as well as “its effect on our c … ⌘ Read more

Carbonyl: a New Graphical Web Browser in Your Linux Terminal
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Someone made a Chromium fork… for your terminal. The terminal-based browser Carbonyl “adheres to, and is compatible with modern standards,” writes MUO, “meaning that pages behave as they should, and you can even watch streaming video, within the Linux terminal!”

But best of all, “Pages connect and render i … ⌘ Read more

Bing Users Claim a ChatGPT-assisted Bing Temporarily Appeared Friday
Several Bing users say a ChatGPT-assisted version of Bing “mysteriously appeared (and disappeared) earlier today,” the Verge reported Friday:

Student and designer Owen Yin reported seeing the “new Bing” on Twitter this morning. He told The Verge via Twitter DM that he has Bing set as his homepage on Microsoft’s Edge browser and the new UI jus … ⌘ Read more

Netflix Says Strict New Password Sharing Rules Were Posted in Error
New Netflix rules that would have enforced a limitation on users’ sharing passwords are reportedly a mistake and don’t apply in the US – for now. From a report: Netflix has long been planning to cut down on password sharing, or letting friends share one paid account. The company appeared to go further, however, with the inclusion in its help … ⌘ Read more

Decentralized Social Media Project Nostr’s Damus Gets Listed On Apple App Store
Nostr, a startup decentralized social network, got its Twitter-like Damus application listed on Apple’s App Store. CoinDesk reports: Nostr is an open protocol that aims to create a censorship-resistant global social network. Media commentators have described it as a possible alternative to Elon Musk’s Twitter. Accordi … ⌘ Read more

UK Scientists Discover Method To Reduce Steelmaking’s CO2 Emissions By 90%
Researchers from the University of Birmingham have developed an innovative method for existing furnaces that could reduce steelmaking’s CO2 emission by nearly 90%. The Next Web reports: The iron and steel industry is a major cause of greenhouse gasses, accounting for 9% of global emissions. That’s because of the inherent carbon- … ⌘ Read more

US and EU To Launch First-Of-Its-Kind AI Agreement
The United States and European Union on Friday announced an agreement to speed up and enhance the use of artificial intelligence to improve agriculture, healthcare, emergency response, climate forecasting and the electric grid. Reuters reports: A senior U.S. administration official, discussing the initiative shortly before the official announcement, called it the first swee … ⌘ Read more

A Robot Was Scheduled To Argue In Court, Then Came the Jail Threats
schwit1 shares a report from NPR: A British man who planned to have a “robot lawyer” help a defendant fight a traffic ticket has dropped the effort after receiving threats of possible prosecution and jail time. […] The first-ever AI-powered legal defense was set to take place in California on Feb. 22, but not anymore. As word got out, an un … ⌘ Read more

Even Reality TV Hosts Are Being Replaced By Robots
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard, written by Katie Way: MILF Manor is a reality TV show made to be dissected on the internet. Everything, from its ripped-from-30-Rock title to the Oedipal set-up of mothers and their sons thrown into the same “dating pool,” is so patently outrageous that it boomerangs back into normalcy – of course these mothers need … ⌘ Read more

Human Waste Safe for Growing Vegetables, Researchers Say
As farmers in Europe and across the world grapple with increases in the cost of fertilizers, researchers suggest a solution may be closer to home in what people flush down the toilet. From a report: A peer-reviewed paper by scientists in Europe published Monday in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science found that fertilizer made from human feces and ur … ⌘ Read more

Basecamp Details ‘Obscene’ $3.2 Million Bill That Prompted It To Quit the Cloud
An anonymous reader shares a report: David Heinemeier Hansson, CTO of 37Signals – which operates project management platform Basecamp and other products – has detailed the colossal cloud bills that saw the outfit quit the cloud in October 2022. The CTO and creator of Ruby On Rails did all the sums and came up with an e … ⌘ Read more

Replika Users Say the AI Chatbot Has Gotten Way Too Horny
samleecole shares a report from Motherboard: Replika began as an “AI companion who cares.” First launched five years ago, the chatbot app was originally meant to function like a conversational mirror: the more users talked to it, in theory, the more it would learn how to talk back. It uses its own GPT-3 model – the viral AI language generator by OpenAI – and scri … ⌘ Read more

Native Americans Ask Apache Foundation To Change Name
Natives in Tech, a US-based non-profit organization, has called upon the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) to change its name, out of respect for indigenous American peoples and to live up to its own code of conduct. The Register reports: In a blog post, Natives in Tech members Adam Recvlohe, Holly Grimm, and Desiree Kane have accused the ASF of appropriating Indigen … ⌘ Read more

Roomba Testers Feel Misled After Intimate Images Ended Up on Facebook
An investigation recently revealed how images of a minor and a tester on the toilet ended up on social media. iRobot said it had consent to collect this kind of data from inside homes – but participants say otherwise. From a report: When Greg unboxed a new Roomba robot vacuum cleaner in December 2019, he thought he knew what he was gett … ⌘ Read more

BMW Doubles Up On Paid Subscriptions In the US, Charges $105 A Year For Remote Engine Start
An anonymous reader shares a report: BMW is expanding the number of feature subscriptions it is offering in the United States. The marque has revealed that five vehicle features are now available through its subscription service, consisting of Remote Engine Start, Drive Recorder, Traffic Camera, … ⌘ Read more

Artists Worry Adobe Could Track Their Design Processes to Train AI
“A recent viral moment highlights just how nervous the artist community is about artificial intelligence,” reports Fast Company:
It started earlier this week, when French comic book author Claire Wendling posted a screenshot of a curious passage in Adobe’s privacy and personal data settings to Instagram. It was quickly reposted on Twitter by anoth … ⌘ Read more

Cryonics Company Charges a Monthly Subscription Fee (Plus Your Life Insurance Payout)
“To date, about 500 people have been put in cryogenic stasis after legal death,” writes a Bloomberg Opinion technology columnist, “with the majority of them in the U.S.

“But a few thousand more, including Emil Kendziorra, are on waiting lists, wearing bracelets or necklaces with instructions for emergenc … ⌘ Read more

France Fines Apple for Illegally Harvesting iPhone Owners’ Data for Ads
“France’s data protection authority, CNIL, fined Apple €8 million (about $8.5 million) Wednesday,” reports Gizmodo, “for illegally harvesting iPhone owners’ data for targeted ads without proper consent.”

It’s an unusual sanction for the iPhone maker, which has faced fewer legal penalties over privacy than its Big Tech competitors. … ⌘ Read more

Apple Books Quietly Launches AI-Narrated Audiobooks
Audiobooks narrated by a text-to-speech AI are now available via Apple’s Books service, in a move with potentially huge implications for the multi-billion dollar audiobook industry. From a report: Apple describes the new “digital narration” feature on its website as making “the creation of audiobooks more accessible to all,” by reducing “the cost and complexity” of produ … ⌘ Read more

Another Crypto Investment Firm Shuts Down, Taking Over 55% of Customers’ Funds
JustAnotherOldGuy shares a report from KITCO: Midas Investments, the hybrid centralized/decentralized (CeDeFi) cryptocurrency platform, announced Tuesday that they will shut down operations as of Dec. 27 and will deduct 55% from most customer accounts to “balance assets and liabilities.” This morning, Midas’ CEO shut down his … ⌘ Read more

Twitter Rival Mastodon Rejects Funding To Preserve Nonprofit Status
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Twitter rivalMastodon has rejected more than five investment offers from Silicon Valley venture capital firms in recent months, as its founder pledged to protect the fast-growing social media platform’s non-profit status. Mastodon, an open-source microblogging site founded in 2016 by Ge … ⌘ Read more

A Startup Wants To Pay You To Share Your Data For Advertising
®Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang (through his AME Cloud Ventures) contributed to $6 million in seed funding in November for startup Caden, which plans to pay users to share their personal data – including what they buy or watch on mobile apps.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The startup, Caden Inc., operates an app by the same name that helps users download … ⌘ Read more

A Modest Robot Levy Could Help Combat Effects of Automation On Income Inequality In US, Study Suggests
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT News: What if the U.S. placed a tax on robots? The concept has been publicly discussed by policy analysts, scholars, and Bill Gates (who favors the notion). Because robots can replace jobs, the idea goes, a stiff tax on them … ⌘ Read more

Core Scientific Declares Bankruptcy as Crypto Winter Lingers
Core Scientific, one of the largest miners of Bitcoin, became the latest crypto company to file for bankruptcy as the industry reckons with a plunge in digital-asset prices. From a report: The Austin, Texas-based company listed $1.4 billion of assets against $1.33 billion of liabilities in its Chapter 11 petition, which was filed in the Southern District of Te … ⌘ Read more

Jack Dorsey Says He Will Give $1 Million Per Year To Signal App
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey said in a blog post on Tuesday that he will give a grant of $1 million per year to encrypted messaging app Signal, the first in a series of grants he plans to make to support “open internet development.” Reuters reports: Social media should not be “owned by a single company or group of companies,” and needs to be “resi … ⌘ Read more

FBI Calls Apple’s Expansion of End-To-End Encryption ‘Deeply Concerning’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple yesterday announced that end-to-end encryption is coming to even more sensitive types of iCloud data, including device backups, messages, photos, and more, meeting the longstanding demand of both users and privacy groups who have rallied for the company to take the significant s … ⌘ Read more

Australia Says Law Making Facebook and Google Pay For News Has Worked
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: An Australian law giving the government power to make internet giants Facebook owner Meta and Alphabet’s Google negotiate content supply deals with media outlets has largely worked, a government report said. But the law, which took effect in March 2021 after talks with the big tech firms … ⌘ Read more

San Francisco Supervisors Vote To Allow Police To Use Robots To Kill
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 Tuesday night to approve a controversial policy that would allow police to deploy robots capable of using lethal force in extraordinary circumstances, according to multiple reports. From a report: The Washington Post reports the vote came after a heated debate on a policy that would allo … ⌘ Read more

Dropbox Acquires Boxcryptor Assets To Bring Zero-Knowledge Encryption To File Storage
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Dropbox has announced plans to bring end-to-end encryption to its business users, and it’s doing so through acquiring “key assets” from Germany-based cloud security company Boxcryptor. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Dropbox is well-known for its cl … ⌘ Read more

Google’s Secret New Project Teaches AI To Write and Fix Code
Google is working on a secretive project that uses machine learning to train code to write, fix, and update itself. From a report: This project is part of a broader push by Google into so-called generative artificial intelligence, which uses algorithms to create images, videos, code, and more. It could have profound implications for the company’s fu … ⌘ Read more

San Francisco Police Seek Permission For Its Robots To Use Deadly Force
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The San Francisco Police Department is currently petitioning the city’s Board of Supervisors for permission to deploy robots to kill suspects that law enforcement deems a sufficient threat that the “risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outwei … ⌘ Read more

Mercedes Locks Faster Acceleration Behind a $1,200 Annual Paywall
Mercedes is the latest manufacturer to lock auto features behind a subscription fee, with an upcoming “Acceleration Increase” add-on that lets drivers pay to access motor performance their vehicle is already capable of. From a report: The $1,200 yearly subscription improves performance by boosting output from the motors by 20-24 percent, increasi … ⌘ Read more

Epic Says Google Paid Activision Millions Not To Launch Rival App Store
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Fortnite developer Epic Games said Google paid the equivalent of $360 million to Call of Duty developer Activision Blizzard as part of a broad agreement that included a promise the gaming giant would not create a rival app store. The move, Epic said, helped solidify Google’s hold on phon … ⌘ Read more

Cows Fed Hemp Produced Milk With THC, Researchers Say
Dairy cows fed industrial hemp produced milk with detectable levels of the buzz-inducing molecular compound THC, according to a new study from Germany that could influence the potential uses of hemp as an ingredient in animal feed. The dairy cows also showed behavioral changes – yawning and salivating a lot, moving a little unsteadily on their hoofs, standing in on … ⌘ Read more

A New Website Backed By Al Gore Tracks Big Polluters By Name
A new global tracker created by the nonprofit Climate Trace is helping to make clear exactly where major greenhouse gas emissions are originating. According to NPR, the interactive map “uses a combination of satellites, sensors and machine learning to measure the top polluters worldwide.” From the report: It observes how much greenhouse gases – carbon d … ⌘ Read more