Dell is making sure its employees follow the company's updated return-to-office policy through a series of new tracking techniques. According to The Register, Dell will track employees' badge swipes and VPN connections and include a color-coded attendance grading system that summarizes employee presence. "In the latest Jeff Clarke return-to-grade-school initiative, HR will be keeping an attendance report card on employees, grading them at four levels based on how well they meet the goal of being in the office 39 days a quarter," a source familiar with Dell told The Register, referring to the IT giant's chief operating officer. "Employees who do not meet the attendance requirement will have their status escalated up the ladder to Jeff Clarke, who apparently believes that being a hall monitor trumps growing revenue." From the report: Starting next Monday, May 13, the enterprise hardware slinger plans to make weekly site visit data from its badge tracking available to employees through the corporation's human capital management software and to give them color-coded ratings that summarize their status. Those ratings are: Blue flag indicates "consistent onsite presence"; Green flag indicates "regular onsite presence"; Yellow flag indicates "some onsite presence"; Red flag indicates "limited onsite presence". A second Dell source explained managers aren't on the same page about the consequences of the color tiers, with some bosses suggesting employees want to remain Blue at all times and others indicating there's more leeway and they could put up with a few red flags. "It's a shit show here," we're told. [...] "Dell is tracking badge-ins and VPN connections to ensure employees are onsite when they claim they are (to deter 'coffee badging' or scanning your badge then going immediately home)," a third source told us. "This is likely in response to the official numbers about how many of our staff members chose to remain remote after the RTO mandate." [...] We're told that the goal of the worker tracking appears to be workforce attrition. "The problem is the market is soft right now for tech," our second source, pointing to recent AWS job cuts. "Everyone is laying off." This person anticipates further Dell layoffs over the summer, though no dates have been set. Our third source indicated that the onsite tracking policy seems unusually aggressive for Dell. "Even pre-pandemic, they never pushed or pressured folks to be in the office," this person said. "A common phrase used to be 'Work happens where you make it,' with the office often being a ghost town multiple times a week, or after lunch, or pre-holidays." Dell in February reported fiscal year 2024 revenue of $88.4 billion, down 14 percent from 2023, and profits of $3.2 billion.

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Google announced on Tuesday that it will be exiting One Market Plaza, a prominent office complex in San Francisco that it had been occupying since 2018. The company's lease for the 300,000-square-foot-office will expire next April. The San Francisco Chronicle reports: Many of Google's employees are already working outside of the giant waterfront office, in light of the company's flexible approach to office attendance. As one of the city's largest office properties and a prominent feature on its skyline, the 1.6-million-square-foot One Market Plaza complex features two high-rise towers and a 11-story office annex building known as the Landmark." Ryan Lamont, a spokesperson for Google, said the company will be moving out of One Market's Spear Tower, but will continue to occupy the smaller Landmark building. He declined to comment on how long Google plans to remain in the latter." As we've said before, we're focused on investing in real estate efficiently to meet the current and future needs of our hybrid workforce," Lamont said in an email to the Chronicle. "We remain committed to our long-term presence in San Francisco." Real estate market participants who spoke with the Chronicle indicated that Google plans to consolidate much of its operations from One Market to nearby 345 Spear St., where the company leases about 400,000 square feet. These individuals said that Google will likely renew its lease at that property once it expires next year.

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A new national survey (PDF) from CNBC/Generation Lab of 1,033 people aged 18 to 34 found that an overwhelming 81% of respondents believe a four-day workweek would boost their company's productivity, while 19% said productivity would decline. CNBC reports: Those results from the "Youth & Money in the USA" survey come amid discussions around the potential benefits of switching from the standard five-day U.S. workweek to a four-day cadence without a pay cut. Some companies have begun testing the arrangement, and say it has mitigated employee burnout and strengthened business performance. Exos, a U.S. coaching company that trains top athletes and leads corporate wellness programs, recently reported results from the first six months of an ongoing four-day workweek experiment. The company said the shortened workweek increased efficiency along with revenue and retention. Although respondents to the CNBC/Generation Lab survey largely agreed on workweek length, they were less unified when asked about work setting. A 60% majority said they do their best work in the office, while the other 40% said they do so at home. Further reading: 32-Hour Workweek for America Proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Ransomware infections have morphed into "a psychological attack against the victim organization," as criminals use increasingly personal and aggressive tactics to force victims to pay up, according to Google-owned Mandiant. "We saw situations where threat actors essentially SIM swap the phones of children of executives, and start making phone calls to executives, from the phone numbers of their children," Charles Carmakal, Mandiant's CTO, recounted during a Google Security Threat Intelligence Panel at this year's RSA Conference in San Francisco on Monday. "Think about the psychological dilemma that the executive goes through – seeing a phone call from the children, picking up the phone and hearing that it's somebody else's voice? Sometimes, it's caller ID spoofing. Other times, we see demonstrated SIM swapping family members." Either way, it's horrifying. It's the next step in the evolution of ransomware tactics, which have now moved far beyond simply encrypting victims' files and even stealing their data. "There are a few threat actors that really have no rules of engagement in terms of how far [they] try to coerce victims," Carmakal noted, recalling ransomware incidents in which the criminals have directly contacted executives, their family members, and board members at their homes. The criminals have moved from just staging an attack against a company, its customers and their data, and becomes "more against the people," he added. It changes the calculation involved in deciding whether to pay the extortion demand, Carmakal said. "It's less about 'do I need to protect my customers?' But more about 'how do I better protect my employees and protect the families of employees?' That's a pretty scary shift."

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Librarians are fighting a nationwide battle against high e-book prices, which so far has yielded minimal results. Despite efforts and temporary legislative victories, strict renewal and loan policies imposed by publishers keep e-book costs high, limiting the number of popular titles libraries can offer and leading to frustration among patrons. Axios reports: Publishers typically require libraries to renew the license to each e-book every two years, or after 26 loans -- policies that libraries call prohibitively expensive. This restricts the number of e-books -- particularly popular bestsellers -- that they can lend out to patrons, who are angry and baffled by the limitations. Readers love the free (to them) apps that allow them to borrow countless e-books and audiobooks: Libby (the dominant one, run by OverDrive) and hoopla. But some libraries say that the cost of renewing their contracts with OverDrive and hoopla are prohibitive, so they're dropping the apps -- hoopla in particular. The Association of American Publishers argues that it must protect the rights of copyright owners -- that is, authors -- to be fairly compensated for their work. hoopla and Libby say they're just the middlemen. "It's really not up to us, to be honest," Ann Ford, a vice president at hoopla, tells Axios. "It's the publishers that make the rules." Libraries have a "unique and determinative public mission" that should entitle them to more favorable e-book purchasing terms when using public funds, says Kyle Courtney, a lawyer and Harvard librarian who drafted model e-book legislation for states. "These are nonnegotiable contracts, and the libraries have been trying to get a deal for years. We need the coercive power of the state sitting behind us at the table saying, 'We need a special slice of the pie.'"

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Following the release of ROCm 6.1 just under one month ago, ROCm 6.1.1 was published today as the newest point release to deliver various bug fixes and other minor improvements to this open-source GPU compute stack...

As LPCAMM2 adoption begins, the first retail memory modules are finally starting to hit the retail market, courtesy of Micron. The memory manufacturer has begun selling their LPDDR5X-based LPCAMM2 memory modules under their in-house Crucial brand, making them available on the latter's storefront. Timed to coincide with the release of Lenovo's ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 laptop – the first retail laptop designed to use the memory modules – this marks the de facto start of the eagerly-awaited modular LPDDR5X memory era.

Micron's Low Power Compression Attached Memory Module 2 (LPCAMM2) modules are available in capacities of 32 GB and 64 GB. These are dual-channel modules that feature a 128-bit wide interface, and are based around LPDDR5X memory running at data rates up to 7500 MT/s. This gives a single LPCAMM2 a peak bandwidth of 120 GB/s. Micron is not disclosing the latencies of its LPCAMM2 memory modules, but it says that high data transfer rates of LPDDR5X compensate for the extended timings.

Micron says that LPDDR5X memory offers significantly lower power consumption, with active power per 64-bit bus being 43-58% lower than DDR5 at the same speed, and standby power up to 80% lower. Meanwhile, similar to DDR5 modules, LPCAMM2 modules include a power management IC and voltage regulating circuitry, which provides module manufacturers additional opportunities to reduce power consumption of their products.

Source: Micron LPDDR5X LPCAMM2 Technical Brief

It's worth noting, however, that at least for the first generation of LPCAMM2 modules, system vendors will need to pick between modularity and performance. While soldered-down LPDDR5X memory is available at speeds up to 8533 MT/sec – and with 9600 MT/sec on the horizon – the fastest LPCAMM2 modules planned for this year by both Micron and rival Samsung will be running at 7500 MT/sec. So vendors will have to choose between the flexibility of offering modular LPDDR5X, or the higher bandwidth (and space savings) offered by soldering down their memory.

Micron, for its part, is projecting that 9600 MT/sec LPCAMM2 modules will be available by 2026. Though it's all but certain that faster memory will also be avaialble in the same timeframe.

Micron's Crucial LPDDR5X 32 GB module costs $174.99, whereas a 64 GB module costs $329.99.

Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: Building off the recent release of Fedora 40, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 is now available for this downstream of Fedora Linux that's optimized to run on Apple Silicon ARM systems. Fedora Asahi Remix continues to be one of the best ways of enjoying a Linux experience atop recent Apple Macs making use of their in-house M1/M2/M3 SoCs. With the Fedora Asahi Remix 40 release there is now conformant OpenGL 4.6 support thanks to the upgraded Mesa. There is also improved device compatibility with its newer kernel. Fedora Asahi Remix continues to cater to using the KDE Plasma desktop by default. With the upgrade to Fedora Asahi Remix 40 this also means now transitioning to the KDE Plasma 6.0 desktop environment for their flagship desktop experience. A GNOME variant using GNOME 46 is also available. You can learn more about the release via FedoraMagazine.org. Installation options are available at FedoraProject.org.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission clarified its net neutrality rules to prohibit more kinds of fast lanes. While the FCC voted to restore net neutrality rules on April 25, it didn't release the final text of the order until yesterday. The final text (PDF) has some changes compared to the draft version released a few weeks before the vote. Both the draft and final rules ban paid prioritization, or fast lanes that application providers have to pay Internet service providers for. But some net neutrality proponents raised concerns about the draft text because it would have let ISPs speed up certain types of applications as long as the application providers don't have to pay for special treatment. The advocates wanted the FCC to clarify its no-throttling rule to explicitly prohibit ISPs from speeding up applications instead of only forbidding the slowing of applications down. Without such a provision, they argued that ISPs could charge consumers more for plans that speed up specific types of content. [...] "We clarify that a BIAS [Broadband Internet Access Service] provider's decision to speed up 'on the basis of Internet content, applications, or services' would 'impair or degrade' other content, applications, or services which are not given the same treatment," the FCC's final order said. The "impair or degrade" clarification means that speeding up is banned because the no-throttling rule says that ISPs "shall not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of Internet content, application, or service." The updated language in the final order "clearly prohibits ISPs from limiting fast lanes to apps or categories of apps they select," leaving no question as to whether the practice is prohibited, said Stanford Law professor Barbara van Schewick. Under the original plan, "there was no way to predict which kinds of fast lanes the FCC might ultimately find to violate the no-throttling rule," she wrote. "This would have given ISPs cover to flood the market with various fast-lane offerings, arguing that their version does not violate the no-throttling rule and daring the FCC to enforce its rule. The final order prevents this from happening."

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Smart home device maker Brilliant has laid off most of its staff and is seeking a buyer after failing to secure funding, CEO Aaron Emigh told The Verge. The company has shut down its support center and halted sales of its smart light switches and controllers, which integrate with various smart home platforms. Emigh said existing devices will continue to function, but their long-term functionality remains uncertain. Founded in 2016, Brilliant aimed to simplify smart home control but struggled with high prices, interoperability issues, and slower-than-expected market growth. The company raised $60 million in funding over eight years.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: One Raspberry Pi often leads to another. Soon enough, you're running out of spots in your free RealVNC account for your tiny boards and "real" computers. Even if you go the hardened route of SSH or an X connection, you have to keep track of where they all are. All of this is not the easiest thing to tackle if you're new to single-board computers or just eager to get started. Enter Raspberry Pi Connect, a new built-in way to access a Raspberry Pi from nearly anywhere you can open a browser, whether to control yourself or provide remote assistance. On a Raspberry Pi 4, 5, or Pi 400 kit, you install Pi connect with a single terminal line, reboot the Pi, and then click a new tray icon to connect the Pi to a Raspberry Pi ID (and then enable two-factor authentication, of course). From then on, visiting connect.raspberrypi.com gives you an encrypted connection to your desktop. It's a direct connection if possible, and if not, it runs through relay servers in London, encrypting it with DTLS and keeping only the metadata needed for the service to work. The Pi will show a notification in its tray that somebody has connected, and you can manage screen sharing from there.

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Several large-scale, human-driven changes to the planet -- including climate change, the loss of biodiversity and the spread of invasive species -- are making infectious diseases more dangerous to people, animals and plants, according to a new study. From a report: Scientists have documented these effects before in more targeted studies that have focused on specific diseases and ecosystems. For instance, they have found that a warming climate may be helping malaria expand in Africa and that a decline in wildlife diversity may be boosting Lyme disease cases in North America. But the new research, a meta-analysis of nearly 1,000 previous studies, suggests that these patterns are relatively consistent around the globe and across the tree of life. "It's a big step forward in the science," said Colin Carlson, a biologist at Georgetown University, who was not an author of the new analysis. "This paper is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that I think has been published that shows how important it is health systems start getting ready to exist in a world with climate change, with biodiversity loss." In what is likely to come as a more surprising finding, the researchers also found that urbanization decreased the risk of infectious disease. The new analysis, which was published in Nature on Wednesday, focused on five "global change drivers" that are altering ecosystems across the planet: biodiversity change, climate change, chemical pollution, the introduction of nonnative species and habitat loss or change.

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Ongoing Mesa release manager Eric Engestrom continues carrying out a splendid job with the on-time releases of new bi-weekly Mesa point releases and the weekly release candidates heading toward the next feature release of these open-source predominantly OpenGL and Vulkan drivers...

Researchers should not be using tools like ChatGPT to automatically peer review papers, warned organizers of top AI conferences and academic publishers worried about maintaining intellectual integrity. From a report: With recent advances in large language models, researchers have been increasingly using them to write peer reviews -- a time-honored academic tradition that examines new research and assesses its merits, showing a person's work has been vetted by other experts in the field. That's why asking ChatGPT to analyze manuscripts and critique the research, without having read the papers, would undermine the peer review process. To tackle the problem, AI and machine learning conferences are now thinking about updating their policies, as some guidelines don't explicitly ban the use of AI to process manuscripts, and the language can be fuzzy. The Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) is considering setting up a committee to determine whether it should update its policies around using LLMs for peer review, a spokesperson told Semafor. At NeurIPS, researchers should not "share submissions with anyone without prior approval" for example, while the ethics code at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), whose annual confab kicked off Tuesday, states that "LLMs are not eligible for authorship." Representatives from NeurIPS and ICLR said "anyone" includes AI, and that authorship covers both papers and peer review comments. A spokesperson for Springer Nature, an academic publishing company best known for its top research journal Nature, said that experts are required to evaluate research and leaving it to AI is risky.

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Stack Overflow's new deal giving OpenAI access to its API as a source of data has users who've posted their questions and answers about coding problems in conversations with other humans rankled. From a report: Users say that when they attempt to alter their posts in protest, the site is retaliating by reversing the alterations and suspending the users who carried them out. A programmer named Ben posted a screenshot yesterday of the change history for a post seeking programming advice, which they'd updated to say that they had removed the question to protest the OpenAI deal. "The move steals the labour of everyone who contributed to Stack Overflow with no way to opt-out," read the updated post. The text was reverted less than an hour later. A moderator message Ben also included says that Stack Overflow posts become "part of the collective efforts" of other contributors once made and that they should only be removed "under extraordinary circumstances." The moderation team then said it was suspending his account for a week while it reached out "to avoid any further misunderstandings."

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Back in January the Zed editor was open-sourced for this new code editor from the creators of the Atom editor and Tree-sitter syntax parsing framework. This high performance code editor has been initially focused on macOS support while the Linux support has begun coming together...

Researchers have hailed another "leap forward" for AI after Google DeepMind unveiled the latest version of its AlphaFold program, which can predict how proteins behave in the complex symphony of life. From a report: The breakthrough promises to shed fresh light on the biological machinery that underpins living organisms and drive breakthroughs in fields from antibiotics and cancer therapy to new materials and resilient crops. "It's a big milestone for us," said Demis Hassabis, the chief executive of Google DeepMind and the spin-off, Isomorphic Labs, which co-developed AlphaFold3. "Biology is a dynamic system and you have to understand how properties of biology emerge through the interactions between different molecules." Earlier versions of AlphaFold focused on predicting the 3D structures of 200m proteins, the building blocks of life, from their chemical constituents. Knowing what shape a protein takes is crucial because it determines how the protein will function -- or malfunction -- inside a living organism. AlphaFold3 was trained on a global database of 3D molecular structures and goes a step further by predicting how proteins will interact with the other molecules and ions they encounter. When asked to make a prediction, the program starts with a cloud of atoms and steadily reshapes it into the most accurate predicted structure. Writing in Nature, the researchers describe how AlphaFold3 can predict how proteins interact with other proteins, ions, strands of genetic code, and smaller molecules, such as those developed for medicines. In tests, the program's accuracy varied from 62% to 76%.

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Since last year Intel's open-source software engineers have been working on a PCIe bandwidth controller driver for the Linux kernel to avoid thermal issues by being able to automatically reduce the PCIe link speed when needed. This driver still isn't over the finish line but today brought the fifth iteration of these patches...