Buy-now-pay-later lender Klarna said its AI assistant, powered by OpenAI, is doing the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents and has had 2.3 million conversations, equal to two-thirds of the company's customer service chats, within the first month of being deployed. The AI tool resolved errands much faster and matched human levels on customer satisfaction, Klarna said.

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President Joe Biden will issue an executive order on Wednesday aimed at curbing foreign governments' ability to buy Americans' sensitive personal information such as heath and geolocation data, according to senior US officials. From a report: The move marks a rare policy effort to address a longstanding US national security concern: the ease with which anyone, including a foreign intelligence services, can legally buy Americans' data and then use the information for espionage, hacking and blackmail. The issue, a senior Justice Department official told reporters this week, is a "growing threat to our national security." The executive order will give the Justice Department the authority to regulate commercial transactions that "pose an unacceptable risk" to national security by, for example, giving a foreign power large-scale access to Americans' personal data, the Justice Department official said. The department will also issue regulations that require better protection of sensitive government information, including geolocation data on US military members, according to US officials. A lot of the online trade in personal information runs through so-called data brokers, which buy information on people's Social Security numbers, names, addresses, income, employment history and criminal background, as well as other items. "Countries of concern, such as China and Russia, are buying Americans' sensitive personal data from data brokers," a separate senior administration official told reporters. In addition to health and location data, the executive order is expected to cover other sensitive information like genomic and financial data. Administration officials told reporters the new executive order would be applied narrowly so as not to hurt business transactions that do not pose a national security risk. The White House's press release.

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San Francisco will vote next week on a divisive ballot measure that would authorize police to use surveillance cameras, drones and AI-powered facial recognition as the city struggles to restore a reputation tarnished by street crime and drugs. From a report: The Safer San Francisco initiative, formally called Proposition E, is championed by Mayor London Breed who believes disgruntled citizens will approve the proposal on Tuesday. Although technology fueled the Silicon Valley-adjacent city's decades-long boom, residents have a history of being deeply suspicious. In 2019, San Francisco, known for its progressive politics, became the first large U.S. city to ban government use of facial recognition due to concerns about privacy and misuse. Breed, who is running for re-election in November, played down the potential for abuse under the ballot measure, saying safeguards are in place. "I get that people are concerned about privacy rights and other things, but technology is all around us," she said in an interview. "It's coming whether we want it to or not. And everyone is walking around with AI in their hands with their phones, recording, videotaping," Breed said. Critics of the proposal contend it could hurt disadvantaged communities and lead to false arrests, arguing surveillance technology requires greater oversight.

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EU lawmakers on Wednesday approved draft rules governing patents key to technologies for telecom equipment and connected cars in the face of criticism from Nokia, Ericsson and other patent holders. From a report: The draft rules proposed by the European Commission in April last year seek to end costly and lengthy litigation over patents used in technologies for telecom equipment, mobile phones, computers, connected cars and smart devices. The European Parliament will now have to thrash out the details of the proposed rules with EU countries before it can become law. Nokia, Ericsson and Siemens in a letter to EU lawmakers in January, highlighted concerns from the European Patent Office, standard-setting body ETSI and other bodies on the draft rules. Lobbying group IP Europe, which counts Nokia, Ericsson and Qualcomm as its members, reiterated its opposition to the draft rules. "The beneficiaries would not be SMEs as claimed but big tech," IP Europe's managing director Patrick McCutcheon said ahead of the lawmakers' vote.

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Intel's previously-unannounced Intel 10A (analogous to 1nm) will enter production/development in late 2027, marking the arrival of the company's first 1nm node, and its 14A (1.4nm) node will enter production in 2026. The company is also working to create fully autonomous AI-powered fabs in the future. Tom's Hardware: Intel's Keyvan Esfarjani, the company's EVP and GM and Foundry Manufacturing and Supply, held a very insightful session that covered the company's latest developments and showed how the roadmap unfolds over the coming years. Here, we can see two charts, with the first outlining the company's K-WSPW (thousands of wafer starts per week) capacity for Intel's various process nodes. Notably, capacity typically indicates how many wafers can be started, but not the total output -- output varies based on yields. You'll notice there isn't a label for the Y-axis, which would give us a direct read on Intel's production volumes. However, this does give us a solid idea of the proportionality of Intel's planned node production over the next several years. Intel did not specify the arrival date of its coming 14A node in its previous announcements, but here, the company indicates it will begin production of the Intel 14A node in 2026. Even more importantly, Intel will begin production/development of its as-yet-unannounced 10A node in late 2027, filling out its roster of nodes produced with EUV technology. Intel's 'A' suffix in its node naming convention represents Angstroms, and 10 Angstroms converts to 1nm, meaning this is the company's first 1nm-class node. Intel hasn't shared any details about the 10A/1nm node but has told us that it classifies a new node as at least having a double-digit power/performance improvement. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has told us the cutoff for a new node is around a 14% to 15% improvement, so we can expect that 10A will have at least that level of improvement over the 14A node. (For example, the difference between Intel 7 and Intel 4 was a 15% improvement.)

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Michael Larabel, reporting at Phoronix: One of the limitations of AMD's open-source Linux graphics driver has been the inability to implement HDMI 2.1+ functionality on the basis of legal requirements by the HDMI Forum. AMD engineers had been working to come up with a solution in conjunction with the HDMI Forum for being able to provide HDMI 2.1+ capabilities with their open-source Linux kernel driver, but it looks like those efforts for now have concluded and failed. For three years there has been a bug report around 4K@120Hz being unavailable via HDMI 2.1 on the AMD Linux driver. Similarly, there have been bug reports like 5K @ 240Hz not possible either with the AMD graphics driver on Linux. As covered back in 2021, the HDMI Forum closing public specification access is hurting open-source support. AMD as well as the X.Org Foundation have been engaged with the HDMI Forum to try to come up with a solution to be able to provide open-source implementations of the now-private HDMI specs. AMD Linux engineers have spent months working with their legal team and evaluating all HDMI features to determine if/how they can be exposed in their open-source driver. AMD had code working internally and then the past few months were waiting on approval from the HDMI Forum. Sadly, the HDMI Forum has turned down AMD's request for open-source driver support.

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Adobe has announced a new prototype tool called Project Music GenAI Control that allows users to create original music by inputting text prompts, then edit the audio without switching to separate software. Users can specify musical styles in their prompts to produce tracks like "happy dance" or "sad jazz." Adobe says integrated editing controls let users tweak patterns, tempo, intensity and structure of the AI-generated music. Sections can be remixed and looped as backing tracks or background music. The tool can also adjust audio "based on a reference melody" and extend clip length for set animations or podcasts. Details on editing interface and upload options for custom reference tracks are unclear.

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Citing potential national security risks, the Biden administration says it will investigate Chinese-made "smart cars" that can gather sensitive information about Americans driving them. From a report: The probe could lead to new regulations aimed at preventing China from using sophisticated technology in electric cars and other so-called connected vehicles to track drivers and their personal information. Officials are concerned that features such as driver assistance technology could be used to effectively spy on Americans. While the action stops short of a ban on Chinese imports, President Joe Biden said he is taking unprecedented steps to safeguard Americans' data. "China is determined to dominate the future of the auto market, including by using unfair practices," Biden said in a statement Thursday. "China's policies could flood our market with its vehicles, posing risks to our national security. I'm not going to let that happen on my watch." Biden and other officials noted that China has imposed wide-ranging restrictions on American autos and other foreign vehicles. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said connected cars "are like smart phones on wheels" and pose a serious national security risk.

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Jacob Kaplan-Moss, one of the lead developers of Django, writes in a long post that he says has come from a place of frustration: [...] Instead, every time a maintainer finds a way to get paid, people show up to criticize and complain. Non-OSI licenses "don"t count" as open source. Someone employed by Microsoft is "beholden to corporate interests" and not to be trusted. Patreon is "asking for handouts." Raising money through GitHub sponsors is "supporting Microsoft's rent-seeking." VC funding means we're being set up for a "rug pull" or "enshitification." Open Core is "bait and switch." None of this is hypothetical; each of these examples are actual things I've seen said about maintainers who take money for their work. One maintainer even told me he got criticized for selling t-shirts! Look. There are absolutely problems with every tactic we have to support maintainers. It's true that VC investment comes with strings attached that often lead to problems down the line. It sucks that Patreon or GitHub (and Stripe) take a cut of sponsor money. The additional restrictions imposed by PolyForm or the BSL really do go against the Freedom 0 ideal. I myself am often frustrated by discovering that some key feature I want out of an open core tool is only available to paid licensees. But you can criticize these systems while still supporting and celebrating the maintainers! Yell at A16Z all you like, I don't care. (Neither do they.) But yelling at a maintainer because they took money from a VC is directing that anger in the wrong direction. The structural and societal problems that make all these different funding models problematic aren't the fault of the people trying to make a living doing open source. It's like yelling at someone for shopping at Dollar General when it's the only store they have access to. Dollar General's predatory business model absolutely sucks, as do the governmental policies that lead to food deserts, but none of that is on the shoulders of the person who needs milk and doesn't have alternatives.

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Journalist Eric Newcomer, writing at The Free Press: There was a time when I believed that self-driving cars should be held to the standard of airplanes. Every mistake needed to be rigorously understood and any human death was unforgivable. But my view has evolved over time as human drivers have continued to kill tens of thousands of people a year. We need a solution that's meaningfully better than human drivers, yes, but we shouldn't wait for perfection before we start getting dangerous human drivers off the streets. Lost in all the fulminating about automation and big-tech tyranny is the fact that self-driving cars are an attempt to solve a very serious problem. Traffic fatalities are a leading cause of death in the United States for anyone between the ages of 1 and 54. About 40,000 people die in car crashes a year in the U.S., with about one-third involving drunk drivers. There's a natural, though irrational, human bias toward the status quo. We tend to believe that things are the way they are for a good reason. But of course, technology has drastically improved human lives and human life spans already. Why stop now that more powerful computer chips and sophisticated artificial intelligence models open up new possibilities? [...] Leaving aside seething hostility toward tech and private capital, and worries over job losses, the most credible objection to self-driving cars from the left is the fear that deploying them means doubling down on roads and sprawl, and undermining support for public transportation projects. But there's no reason self-driving cars and public transportation need to be at odds. They can fulfill different needs. Autonomous vehicles are being deployed in San Francisco in fleets through ride-hailing programs, reducing the need for personal car ownership. If we can get self-driving cars working, self-driving buses on regular routes should be even easier. And contrary to the view that driverless cars are being deployed unilaterally by tech billionaires, the people's representatives -- government officials -- gave Alphabet-owned Waymo a license to operate. Our roads and motor vehicles are tightly regulated. Single incidents have derailed self-driving car projects, from Uber and more recently, GM-owned Cruise, while human drivers kill tens of thousands a year unimpeded.

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Angie Byron, a long-time member of the Drupal community, offers guidance on avoiding common mistakes and general good-practices for those new to contributing to open-source projects: [...] You might not know it yet, but as a newcomer to an open source project, you have this AMAZING superpower: you are often-times the only one in that whole project capable of reading the documentation through new eyes. Because I can guarantee, the people who wrote that documentation are not new. :-) So take time to read the docs and file issues (or better yet, pull requests) for anything that was unclear. This lets you get a "feel" for contributing in a project/community without needing to go way down the deep end of learning coding standards and unit tests and commit signing and whatever other bananas things they're about to make you do. :) Also, people are more likely to take time to help you, if you've helped them first!

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Eating ultraprocessed foods raises the risk of developing or dying from dozens of adverse health conditions, according to a new review of 45 meta-analyses on almost 10 million people. From a report: "We found consistent evidence linking higher intakes of ultra-processed foods with over 70% of the 45 different health outcomes we assessed," said senior author Wolfgang Marx, a senior research fellow at the Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University in Geelong, Australia, in an email. A higher intake was considered about one serving or about 10% more ultraprocessed foods per day, said Heinz Freisling, a scientist in the nutrition and metabolism branch of the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer, in an email. "This proportion can be regarded as 'baseline' and for people consuming more than this baseline, the risk might increase," said Freisling, who was not involved in the study. Researchers graded each study as having credible or strong, highly suggestive, suggestive, weak or no evidence. All the studies in the review were published in the past three years, and none was funded by companies involved in the production of ultraprocessed foods, the authors said. "Strong evidence shows that a higher intake of ultra-processed foods was associated with approximately 50% higher risk of cardiovascular disease-related death and common mental disorders," said lead author Dr. Melissa Lane, a postdoctoral research fellow at Deakin, in an email. Cardiovascular disease encompasses heart attacks, stroke, clogged arteries and peripheral artery disease. The study: Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses (BMJ)

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Microsoft has outlined a new Windows API designed to offer a seamless way for game developers to integrate super resolution AI-upscaling features from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel. From a report: In a new blog post, program manager Joshua Tucker describes Microsoft's new DirectSR API as the "missing link" between games and super resolution technologies, and says it should provide "a smoother, more efficient experience that scales across hardware." "This API enables multi-vendor SR [super resolution] through a common set of inputs and outputs, allowing a single code path to activate a variety of solutions including Nvidia DLSS Super Resolution, AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution, and Intel XeSS," the post reads. The pitch seems to be that developers will be able to support this DirectSR API, rather than having to write code for each and every upscaling technology. The blog post comes a couple of weeks after an "Automatic Super Resolution" feature was spotted in a test version of Windows 11, which promised to "use AI to make supported games play more smoothly with enhanced details." Now, it seems the feature will plug into existing super resolution technologies like DLSS, FSR, and XeSS rather than offering a Windows-level alternative.

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Apple plans to disclose more about its plans to put generative AI to use later this year, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said during the company's annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday. From a report: Cook said that the iPhone maker sees "incredible breakthrough potential for generative AI, which is why we're currently investing significantly in this area. We believe that will unlock transformative opportunities for users when it comes to productivity, problem solving and more." Apple has been slower in rolling out generative AI, which can generate human-like responses to written prompts, than rivals such as Microsoftand Alphabet's Google, which are weaving them into products. On Wednesday, Cook argued that AI is already at work behind the scenes in Apple's products but said there would be more news on explicit AI features later this year. Bloomberg previously reported Apple plans to use AI to improve the ability to search through data stored on Apple devices. "Every Mac that is powered by Apple silicon is an extraordinarily capable AI machine. In fact, there's no better computer for AI on the market today," Cook said.

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Rockstar Games, a division of Take-Two Interactive Software, will ask employees to return to the office five days a week beginning in April as the video-game maker enters the final stages of development on its next game, the hotly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI. Bloomberg: In an email to staff on Wednesday reviewed by Bloomberg, Rockstar Head of Publishing Jenn Kolbe said the decision was made for productivity and security reasons. The company has faced several security breaches including a massive dump of early footage from the new Grand Theft Auto and an early trailer that leaked in December. Kolbe wrote that the company also found "tangible benefits" from in-person work. "Making these changes now puts us in the best position to deliver the next Grand Theft Auto at the level of quality and polish we know it requires, along with a publishing roadmap that matches the scale and ambition of the game," she wrote.

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Several internet-connected doorbell cameras have a security flaw that allows hackers to take over the camera by just holding down a button, among other issues, according to research by Consumer Reports. From a report: On Thursday, the non-profit Consumer Reports published research that detailed four security and privacy flaws in cameras made by EKEN, a company based in Shenzhen, China, which makes cameras branded as EKEN, but also, apparently, Tuck and other brands. These relatively cheap doorbell cameras were available on online marketplaces like Walmart and Temu, which removed them from sale after Consumer Reports reached out to the companies to flag the problems. These doorbell cameras are, however, still available elsewhere. According to Consumer Reports, the most impactful issue is that if someone is in close proximity to a EKEN doorbell camera, they can take "full control" of it by simply downloading its official app -- called Aiwit -- and putting the camera in pairing mode by simply holding down the doorbell's button for eight seconds. Aiwit's app has more than a million downloads on Google Play, suggesting it is widely used. At that point, the malicious user can create their own account on the app, scan the QR code generated by the app by putting it in front of the doorbell's camera.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Google is introducing improvements to search suggestions in Chrome, the company announced today. As part of the changes, users will start to get more helpful search suggestions in Chrome based on what others are searching for, see more images for suggested searches and find search suggestions even with a poor connection. Search suggestions are the drop-down list of suggested completions that appear before you finish typing out your query in Google. The feature generates predictions to help users save time and speed up their search. With these new updates, Google is expanding the availability of search suggestions and using them to boost inspiration. When users are signed into Chrome on desktop and open a new tab, they will now start to see suggestions in the search box related to their previous searches based on what other people are searching for.

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Elon Musk has sued OpenAI, its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman and affiliated entities, alleging the ChatGPT makers have breached their original contractual agreements by pursuing profits instead of the non-profit's founding mission to develop AI that benefits humanity. TechCrunch: Musk, a co-founder and early backer of OpenAI, claims Altman and Brockman convinced him to help found and bankroll the startup in 2015 with promises it would be a non-profit focused on countering the competitive threat from Google. The founding agreement required OpenAI to make its technology "freely available" to the public, the lawsuit alleges. The lawsuit, filed in a court in San Francisco late Thursday, says that OpenAI, the world's most valuable AI startup, has shifted to a for-profit model focused on commercializing its AGI research after partnering with Microsoft, the world's most valuable company that has invested about $13 billion into the startup. "In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft. Under its new board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity," the lawsuit adds. "This was a stark betrayal of the Founding Agreement."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Google pulled more than a dozen popular Indian apps including recruitment platform Naukri, matrimony service Shaadi, audio storytelling platforms Kuku FM and Stage and real-estate manager 99acres from Play Store on Friday after warning that it will be taking actions against developers who have persistently not complied with its billing policies, escalating a three-year dispute in what is the company's largest market by users. Google said that 10 companies in the country, including "many well-established" names it did not disclose, had avoided paying fees despite benefiting from the platform. The Android-maker, owned by Alphabet, said a small group of developers in India had more than three years to prepare and comply with Play Store's payments policy but opted against it. These firms continue to comply with payment policies of other app stores, Google said. Some Android apps of matrimony platforms Shaadi, Matrimony.com and Bharat Matrimony were pulled from the Play Store Friday. Info Edge's Naukri and 99acres, audio storytelling apps Kuku FM and Stage, Alt Balaji's Altt, dating service Quack Quack were also axed from the store. Murugavel Janakiraman, chief executive of Bharat Matrimony, said Google had pulled about 10 of the Indian firm's apps from the store. Bharat Matrimony is evaluating legal options, he told TechCrunch, adding that he believes Google has violated an Indian antitrust watchdog's order in its removal of the apps today. It's a "dark day for the India internet," he added. Lal Chand Bisu, co-founder and chief executive of Kuku FM lambasted at Google, saying the Android-maker had turned "the most evil" partner to do business with and the Indian startup ecosystem was "completely" in its control.

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