HP plans to cut 4,000-6,000 jobs by 2028 "as part of a plan to streamline operations and adopt artificial intelligence," reports Reuters. From the report: HP's teams focused on product development, internal operations and customer support will be impacted by the job cuts, CEO Enrique Lores said during a media briefing call. "We expect this initiative will create $1 billion in gross run rate savings over three years," Lores added. The company laid off an additional 1,000 to 2,000 employees in February, as part of a previously announced restructuring plan. Demand for AI-enabled PCs has continued to ramp externally, reaching over 30% of HP's shipments in the fourth quarter ended October 31.

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FreeBSD 15.0-RC3 shipped just a few days ago as what was expected to be the final release candidate before FreeBSD 15.0 stable is officially unveiled next week. But squeezing out today is FreeBSD 15.0-RC4 to address last minute issues...

Warner Music Group has reached a licensing deal with Suno that will let users create AI-generated music using the voices and likenesses of artists who opt in. WMG says participating artists will have "full control" over how their likeness and music are used. "These will be new creation experiences from artists who do opt in, which will open up new revenue streams for them and allow you to interact with them in new ways," Suno says, adding that users will be able to "build around" an artist's sounds "and ensure they get compensated." WMG is also dropping its previous lawsuit accusing Suno of scraping copyrighted material. "Along with the licensing agreement, Suno is planning to use licensed music from WMG to build next-gen music generation models that it claims will surpass its flagship v5 model," adds The Verge. "It will also start requiring users to have a paid account to download songs starting next year, with each tier providing a specific number of downloads each month." Further reading: First 'AI Music Creator' Signed by Record Label. More Ahead, or Just a Copyright Quandry?

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCMag: Four new features are coming to Google Maps, including a way to hide your identity in reviews. Maps will soon let you use a nickname and select an alternative profile picture for online reviews, so you can rate a business without linking it to full name and Google profile photo. Google says it will monitor for "suspicious and fake reviews," and every review is still associated with an account on Google's backend, which it believes will discourage bad actors. Look for a new option under Your Profile that says Use a custom name & picture for posting. You'll then be able to pick an illustration to represent you and add a nickname. Google didn't explain why it is introducing anonymous reviews; it pitched the idea as a way to be a business's "Secret Santa." Some users are nervous to publicly post reviews for local businesses as it may be used to track their location or movements. It may encourage more people to contribute honest feedback to its platform, for better or worse. Further reading: Gemini AI To Transform Google Maps Into a More Conversational Experience

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Poland has launched a new antitrust investigation into Apple's App Tracking Transparency rules, questioning whether Apple misled users about privacy while giving its own apps a competitive advantage over third-party developers. AppleInsider reports: On November 25, Poland's UOKiK has started another investigation into App Tracking Transparency, and whether Apple had restricted competition in mobile advertising. Reuters reports that, to the anti-monopoly regulator, ATT may have limited advertisers' ability to collect user data for advertising purposes while simultaneously favoring Apple's ad program. On November 25, Poland's UOKiK has started another investigation into App Tracking Transparency, and whether Apple had restricted competition in mobile advertising. Reuters reports that, to the anti-monopoly regulator, ATT may have limited advertisers' ability to collect user data for advertising purposes while simultaneously favoring Apple's ad program. This is not the first time that Poland has looked into ATT rules. In December 2021, the regulator held a similar probe following criticism from advertisers. It's not clear what that complaint determined, or if it is still ongoing. Regardless, in the new complaint, the logic is that Apple had a competitive advantage since its own apps were not subject to ATT rules, but third-party apps did have to deal with ATT. Since Apple didn't visibly ask for consent for its first-party apps in the same way, there is a presumption that Apple's rules only applied to other companies. This is despite Apple's repeated insistence that it doesn't use the same kinds of collected data in its own apps and services for marketing purposes, as well as its stance on privacy in general. In short, Apple apps don't use the data, so it doesn't pop up a dialog box asking the user if the app can use the data. There is also the argument that, in setting up an account with Apple, users are providing blanket consent to the company. Implementing ATT on its own apps would therefore be a waste of time, since that consent was already granted. Apple said that it will work with the regulator on the matter, but warned that it could force them to withdraw the feature "to the detriment of European consumers."

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In an essay published in The Verge, Benjamin Riley argues that today's AI boom is built on a fundamental misunderstanding: language modeling is not the same as intelligence. "The problem is that according to current neuroscience, human thinking is largely independent of human language -- and we have little reason to believe ever more sophisticated modeling of language will create a form of intelligence that meets or surpasses our own," writes Riley. Slashdot reader RossCWilliams shares the report, writing: The article goes on to point out that we use language to communicate. We use it to create metaphors to describe our reasoning. That people who have lost their language ability can still show reasoning. That human beings create knowledge when they become dissatisfied with the current metaphor. Einstein's theory of relativity was not based on scientific research. He developed it as thought experiment because he was dissatisfied with the existing metaphor. It quotes someone who said, "common sense is a collection of dead metaphors." And that AI, at best, can rearrange those dead metaphors in interesting ways. But it will never be dissatisfied with the data it has or an existing metaphor. A different critique (PDF) has pointed out that even as a language model AI is flawed by its reliance on the internet. The languages used on the internet are unrepresentative of the languages in the world. And other languages contain unique descriptions/metaphors that are not found on the internet. My metaphor for what was discussed was the descriptions of the kinds of snow that exist in Inuit languages that describe qualities nowhere found in European languages. If those metaphors aren't found on the internet, AI will never be able create them. This does not mean that AI isn't useful. But it is not remotely human intelligence. That is just a poor metaphor. We need a better one. Benjamin Riley is the founder of Cognitive Resonance, a new venture to improve understanding of human cognition and generative AI.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Several U.S. banking giants and mortgage lenders are reportedly scrambling to assess how much of their customers' data was stolen during a cyberattack on a New York financial technology company earlier this month. SitusAMC, which provides technology for over a thousand commercial and real estate financiers, confirmed in a statement over the weekend that it had identified a data breach on November 12. The company said that unspecified hackers had stolen corporate data associated with its banking customers' relationship with SitusAMC, as well as "accounting records and legal agreements" during the cyberattack. The statement added that the scope and nature of the cyberattack "remains under investigation." SitusAMC said that the incident is "now contained," and that its systems are operational. The company said that no encrypting malware was used, suggesting that the hackers were focused on exfiltrating data from the company's systems rather than causing destruction. According to Bloomberg and CNN, citing sources, SitusAMC sent data breach notifications to several financial giants, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley. SitusAMC also counts pension funds and state governments as customers, according to its website. It's unclear how much data was taken, or how many U.S. banking consumers may be affected by the breach. Companies like SitusAMC may not be widely known outside of the financial world, but provide the mechanisms and technologies for its banking and real estate customers to comply with state and federal rules and regulations. In its role as a middleman for financial clients, the company handles vast amounts of non-public banking information on behalf of its customers. According to SitusAMC's website, the company processes billions of documents related to loans annually.

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Up to 3 million low-skilled jobs could disappear in the UK by 2035 because of automation and AI, according to a report by a leading educational research charity. The Guardian: The jobs most at risk are those in occupations such as trades, machine operations and administrative roles, the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) said. Highly skilled professionals, on the other hand, were forecast to be more in demand as AI and technological advances increase workloads "at least in the short to medium term." Overall, the report expects the UK economy to add 2.3 million jobs by 2035, but unevenly distributed. The findings stand in contrast to other recent research suggesting AI will affect highly skilled, technical occupations such as software engineering and management consultancy more than trades and manual work.

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Those following Phoronix and the open-source AMD Linux kernel graphics driver know that the HDMI Forum has prevented AMD from implementing HDMI 2.1 support in their open-source "AMDGPU" driver as due the driver implementation would run afoul to the organization's licensing requirements. It's been pointed out online this week that the AMD-Xilinx DRM driver though does have some HDMI 2.1 support albeit different hardware...

Chinese automakers may not be able to sell their electric vehicles in the United States due to steep tariffs and software restrictions, but they have found an alternative path to American eyeballs through a coordinated campaign targeting car influencers on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. The effort, the Verge reports, is largely organized by DCar Studio, a platform that invites US-based creators to Los Angeles to test-drive vehicles from brands like BYD, Geely and Xiaomi. DCar is actually Dongchedi, a car trading platform owned by TikTok parent ByteDance that raised $600 million on a $3 billion valuation in 2024. The strategy appears aimed at building global brand awareness rather than direct US sales. Mark Greeven, professor at IMD Business School, told The Verge that American influencers still shape opinions across the Western world. "The charm offensive is to work with American influencers about Chinese EV cars because we still have a dominant opinion in the Western world, which is formed by English-speaking influential figures on social media," he said. Several creators told The Verge they have heard rumors of undisclosed payments for positive coverage.

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The Justice Department has reached an agreement to settle an antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, a real estate software company that the government accused of enabling landlords to collude to raise rents. From a report: Using RealPage software, landlords shared information about their rents and occupancy rates with the company, after which an algorithm suggested what to charge renters. The government's suit, which was joined by several state attorneys general, accused RealPage of taking the confidential information and suggesting rents higher than those in a free market. Under the settlement proposal, which requires approval by a federal judge overseeing the case in the Middle District of North Carolina, RealPage's software could no longer use information about current leases to train its algorithm. Nonpublic data from competing landlords would also be excluded when suggesting rents. "Competing companies must make independent pricing decisions, and with the rise of algorithmic and artificial intelligence tools, we will remain at the forefront of vigorous antitrust enforcement," said Gail Slater, who leads the antitrust division at the Department of Justice, in a news release.

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schwit1 writes: Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, tops a ranking that is increasingly dominated by Asia: the world's most populated city. It edged out Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, and Japan's Tokyo to earn the title in a new United Nations report. [PDF] With an estimated population of nearly 42 million residents, Jakarta soared from 33rd place in the previous rankings, in 2018, that were topped by Tokyo. It's followed by Dhaka, with 36 million, which the report says is "expected to become the world's largest city by mid-century."

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Over the past two months I have been publishing a number of fresh benchmarks of the Intel Xeon 6980P "Granite Rapids" flagship processor performance under Linux. All of those new Xeon 6900 series benchmarks on Phoronix have been from the Giga Computing R284-A92-AAL1 2U rack server that has proven to be a very robust and reliable server platform.

An anonymous reader shares a report: CISA has warned that state-backed snoops and cyber-mercenaries are actively abusing commercial spyware to break into Signal and WhatsApp accounts, hijack devices, and quietly rummage through the phones of what the agency calls "high-value" users. In an alert published Monday, the US government's cyber agency said it's tracking multiple miscreants that are using a mix of phishing, bogus QR codes, malicious app impersonation, and, in some cases, full-blown zero-click exploits to compromise messaging apps which most people assume are safe. The agency says the activity it's seeing suggests an increasing focus on "high-value" individuals -- everyone from current and former senior government, military, and political officials to civil society groups across the US, the Middle East, and Europe. In many of the campaigns, attackers delivered spyware first and asked questions later, using the foothold to deploy more payloads and deepen their access.

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Two coal plants in Mumbai (in India) that were scheduled to close last year continue operating after the state government of Maharashtra reversed shutdown decisions in late 2023 and extended the life of at least one facility by five years. The largest single factor the Indian conglomerate Tata cited in its petition for an extension was increased energy demand from data centers. The Guardian reports that Amazon operated 16 data centers in Mumbai last year. The company's official website lists three "availability zones" for the city. Amazon's Mumbai colocation data centers consumed 624,518 megawatt hours of electricity in 2023. That amount could power over 400,000 Indian households for a year. Residents of Mahul live a few hundred metres from one coal plant. Earlier this year doctors found three tumours in the brain of a resident's 54-year-old mother. Studies show people who live near coal plants are much more likely to develop cancer. By 2030 data centers will consume a third of Mumbai's energy, according to Ankit Saraiya, chief executive of Techno & Electric Engineering. Amazon's colocation data centers in Mumbai bought 41 diesel generators as backup. A report in August by the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy identified diesel generators as a major source of air pollution in the region.

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Nvidia pushed back against investor concerns about Google's competitive positioning in AI on Tuesday after the chipmaker's shares tumbled 4.4% and erased nearly $200 billion in market cap on fears that Alphabet's tensor processing units were gaining ground against its dominance in AI computing. The company said it was "delighted by Google's success" but asserted that it continues to supply chips to Google. Nvidia said it remains "a generation ahead of the industry" as the only platform that runs every AI model and operates everywhere computing is done. The statement came after investors reacted to the release of Google's Gemini 3 large language model last week. The model was trained using TPUs rather than Nvidia chips. A report in The Information on Monday said Google was pitching potential clients including Meta on using TPUs in their data centers rather than Nvidia's chips. Nvidia said its platform offers "greater performance, versatility, and fungibility than ASICs," referring to application-specific integrated circuits like Google's TPUs that are designed for specific AI frameworks or functions. Google's TPUs have until now only been available for customers to rent through its cloud computing service. Nvidia has lost more than $800 billion in market value since it peaked above $5 trillion less than a month ago.

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Announced last month was the NTFSPLUS driver as a new NTFS file-system driver for the Linux kernel with better write performance and more features compared to the existing NTFS options. A second iteration of that driver was recently queued into "ntfs-next" raising prospects that this NTFSPLUS driver could soon attempt to land in the mainline Linux kernel...

The abstract of a paper on NBER: This paper examines a large-scale randomized evaluation of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program in 531 Peruvian rural primary schools. We use administrative data on academic performance and grade progression over 10 years to estimate the long-run effects of increased computer access on (i) school performance over time and (ii) students' educational trajectories. Following schools over time, we find no significant effects on academic performance but some evidence of negative effects on grade progression. Following students over time, we find no significant effects on primary and secondary completion, academic performance in secondary school, or university enrollment. Survey data indicate that computer access significantly improved students' computer skills but not their cognitive skills; treated teachers received some training but did not improve their digital skills and showed limited use of technology in classrooms, suggesting the need for additional pedagogical support.

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