Today, Raspberry Pi introduced a new kit that adds AI functionality to the Raspberry Pi 5. ZDNet reports: The Raspberry Pi AI kit combines an M.2-format Hailo 8L AI accelerator with the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ to create a powerful yet power-efficient solution. The Hailo-8L NPU (Neural Processing Unit) chip, capable of 13 trillion operations per second (TOPS), is built into an M.2 2242 form factor module that attaches to the M.2 HAT+. When connected to a Raspberry Pi 5 board running the latest Raspberry Pi OS, the NPU is automatically available for AI computing tasks. The AI module also has direct access to the Raspberry Pi's camera software stack and works with both first-party and third-party cameras. The NPU allows the Raspberry Pi 5 to perform AI tasks such as object and facial recognition, human pose analysis, and more. Using an NPU frees up the Raspberry Pi 5's CPU, allowing it to focus on other tasks, making your projects more efficient and powerful. The Raspberry Pi AI kit is also compatible with the Raspberry Pi Active Cooler, ensuring optimal performance without overheating. Additionally, you can purchase a clear protective layer to prevent damage to the board, giving you peace of mind while working on your projects. The AI kit is priced at $70. It's available from Raspberry Pi Approved Resellers, including PiHut, PiShop.us, and CanaKit.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Maps has introduced a new layer to help individuals find public restrooms in New York City. The Verge reports: As part of a new program called "Ur in Luck," the city has introduced a Maps view dotted with 1,000 public restrooms across the five boroughs. Users can view the map on their phones and locate the closest restroom that's accessible to the public. "Everyone -- seniors, parents wi

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A popular GitHub repo and over 120 forks containing Switch emulation tutorials have been targeted by Nintendo. While most forks are now disabled, the main repository has managed to survive after being given the opportunity to put things right. Whether Nintendo appreciated the irony is unclear, but it appears that use of encoding as a protection measure to obfuscate links, was no match for the video game company's circumvention skills. [...] The Switch Emulators Guide was presented in the context of piracy, something made clear by a note on the main page of the original repo which stated that the tutorial was made, in part, for use on the /r/NewYuzuPiracy subreddit. Since the actions of Yuzu and its eventual demise are part of the unwritten framework for similar takedowns, that sets the tone (although not the legal basis) in favor of takedown. When asked to provide a description and URL pointing to the copyrighted content allegedly infringed by the repos, Nintendo states that the works are the 'Nintendo Switch firmware" and various games protected by technological protection measures (TPM) which prevent users from unlawfully copying and playing pirated games. The notice states the repos 'provide access' to keys that enable circumvention of its technical measures. "The reported repositories offer and provide access to unauthorized copies of cryptographic keys that are used to circumvent Nintendo's Technological Measures and infringe Nintendo's intellectual property rights. Specifically, the reported repositories provide to users unauthorized copies of cryptographic keys (prod.keys) extracted from the Nintendo Switch firmware," Nintendo writes. "The prod.keys allow users to bypass Nintendo's Technological Measures for digital games; specifically, prod.keys allow users to decrypt and play Nintendo Switch games in unauthorized ways. Distribution of keys without the copyright owner's authorization is a violation of Section 1201 of the DMCA." Nintendo further notes that unauthorized distribution of prod.keys "facilitates copyright infringement by permitting users to play pirated versions of Nintendo's copyright-protected game software on systems without the Nintendo Technological Measures or systems on which Nintendo's Technological Measures have been disabled." Since the prod.keys are extracted from the Nintendo Switch firmware, which is also protected by copyright, distribution amounts to "infringement of Nintendo Switch firmware itself." Given that the repo's stated purpose was to provide information on how to circumvent Nintendo's technical protection measures, it's fairly ironic that it appears to have used technical measures itself to hinder detection. "The reported repositories attempt to evade detection of their illegal activities by providing access to prod.keys and unauthorized copies of Nintendo's firmware and video games via encoded links that direct users to third-party websites to download the infringing content," Nintendo explains in its notice. "The repositories provide strings of letters and numbers and then instruct users to 'use [private] to decode the lines of strings given here to get an actual link.' The decoded links take users to sites where they can access the prod.keys and unauthorized copies of Nintendo's copyright-protected material." The image below shows the encoded links (partially redacted) that allegedly link to the content in question on third-party sites. To hide their nature, regular URLs are encoded using Base64, a binary-to-text encoding scheme that transforms them into a sequence of characters. Those characters can be decoded to reveal the original URL using online tools.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apollo Global announced today that it will acquire a 49% equity interest in Intel's manufacturing facility in Ireland for $11 billion, in a deal expected to close in the second quarter. The deal "would allow Intel to redeploy parts of its investment in the project to other parts of its business," reports Reuters. "Intel has invested $18.4 billion in the facility till date." From the report: Apollo will acquire the stake in the Fab 34 facility in Leixlip, Ireland, the U.S. chipmaker's first high-volume location for its Intel 4 manufacturing process using extreme ultraviolet lithography machines. The company announced plans in 2022 to build chip factories in Ireland and France as it seeks to benefit from easier European Commission funding rules and subsidies as the bloc looks to cut its dependence on U.S. and Asian supply. Intel will retain full ownership and operational control of Fab 34 and its assets.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Google contractor used admin privileges to access private information from Nintendo's YouTube account about an upcoming Yoshi game in 2017, which later made its way to Reddit before Nintendo announced the game, according to a copy of an internal Google database detailing potential privacy and security incidents obtained by 404 Media. From the report: The news provides more clarity on how exactly a Redditor, who teased news of the new Yoshi game, which was later released as Yoshi's Crafted World in 2019, originally obtained their information. A screenshot in the Reddit post shows a URL that starts with www.admin.youtube.com, which is a Google corporate login page. "Google employee deliberately leaked private Nintendo information," the entry in the database reads. The database obtained by 404 Media includes privacy and security issues that Google's own employees reported internally.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC News: Online streaming services operating in Canada will be required to contribute five percent of their Canadian revenues to support the domestic broadcasting system, the country's telecoms regulator said on Tuesday. The money will be used to boost funding for local and Indigenous broadcasting, officials from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said in a briefing. "Today's decision will help ensure that online streaming services make meaningful contributions to Canadian and Indigenous content," wrote CRTC chief executive and chair Vicky Eatrides in a statement. The measure was introduced under the auspices of a law passed last year designed to make sure that companies like Netflix make a more significant contribution to Canadian culture. The government says the legislation will ensure that online streaming services promote Canadian music and stories, and support Canadian jobs. Funding will also be directed to French-language content and content created by official language minority communities, as well as content created by equity-deserving groups and Canadians of diverse backgrounds. The release also said that online streaming services will "have some flexibility" to send their revenues to support Canadian television directly. [...] The measure, which will start in the 2024-2025 broadcasting year, would raise roughly $200 million annually, CRTC officials said. It will only apply to services that are not already affiliated with Canadian broadcasters. The CMPA was among 20 screen organizations from around the world that signed a statement in January asking governments to impose stronger regulations on streaming companies operating in local markets. One of the demands was a measure that would force companies profiting from their presence in those markets to contribute financially to the creation of new local content."We are disappointed by today's decision and concerned by the negative impact it will have on Canadian consumers. We are assessing the decision in full, but this onerous and inflexible financial levy will be harmful to consumer choice," a spokesperson for Prime Video wrote to CBC News in a statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sarah Perez reports via TechCrunch: After a multi-hour outage that took place in the early hours of the morning, OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot went down again -- but this time, it wasn't the only AI provider affected. On Tuesday morning, both Anthropic's Claude and Perplexity began seeing issues, too, but these were more quickly resolved. Google's Gemini appears to be operating at present, though it may have also briefly gone offline, according to some user reports. It's unusual for three major AI providers to all be down at the same time, which could signal a broader infrastructure issue or internet-scale problem, such as those that affect multiple social media sites simultaneously, for example. It's also possible that Claude and Perplexity's issues were not due to bugs or other issues, but from receiving too much traffic in a short period of time due to ChatGPT's outage.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A donation by former Google chief Eric Schmidt to Europe's top particle physics lab heralds a new way to fund frontier research just as the West's technological race with China quickens. From a report: The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, will use the previously unreported gift of $48 million [non-paywalled link] from the Eric & Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation to develop AI algorithms to analyze raw data from the lab's Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful energy particle accelerator. In 2012, it discovered the Higgs Boson, a particle that's key to understanding how the universe is built. Now, CERN needs to reinvest to stay at the cutting edge of particle physics research. By the late 2030s, the LHC is expected to reach the end of its useful life and CERN needs $17 billion from European nations to fund the construction of a much bigger accelerator, known as the Future Circular Collider. But that funding has yet to be secured and, in the meantime, China has proposed its own collider. raditionally, CERN has relied on contributions from its 23 member states and observer partners like the US for funding pure research, while private investors focus on applied research, according to Charlotte Warakaulle, CERN's director of international relations. That makes the Schmidts' donation to pure research a private-sector first and may herald a different approach to funding the next collider, she says. "We're looking at all sorts of potential partners," Warakaulle said in an interview with Bloomberg last week. "How we could partner with the EU, private investments potentially."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Several broadband industry lobby groups have filed lawsuits against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in an attempt to overturn the recently approved net neutrality rules. The regulations, which prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization, are scheduled to take effect on July 22. The lawsuits were filed in various US appeals courts by groups representing cable, telecom, and mobile Internet service providers, including NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, USTelecom, CTIA-The Wireless Association, and several state-level associations. The groups argue that the FCC lacks the authority to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 without explicit instructions from Congress. In addition to the lawsuits, the industry groups have also petitioned the FCC for a stay of the rules, claiming that their members will suffer irreparable harm if the regulations take effect while litigation is pending. The FCC is expected to reject the petition, but the groups can then seek an injunction from appeals court judges to prevent enforcement. The industry's legal challenge is based on the Supreme Court's evolving approach to the "major questions" doctrine, which limits federal agencies' ability to make decisions on significant issues without clear congressional authorization. However, FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks maintains that the agency's authority to regulate broadband as a telecommunications service is "clear as day."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jd writes: There aren't many details yet, but a private company used by the National Health Service in London was hit by a ransomware attack today, leading to cancelled operations and cancelled tests. The provider has been hit multiple times this year and is obviously not bothering with making any improvements in cybersecurity. There really should be legal requirements when it comes to maintaining what is de-facto critical infrastructure. From the article: "Major NHS hospitals in London have been hit by a cyber-attack, which is seriously disrupting their services, including blood tests and transfusions. The ransomware attack is having a "major impact" on the care provided by Guy's and St Thomas' NHS trust, its chief executive has told staff in a letter. The attack is understood to affect other hospitals, including King's College hospital, and has left them unable to connect to the servers of the private firm that provides their pathology services. Synnovis, an outsourced provider of lab services to NHS trusts across south-east London, was the target of the attack, believed to be a form of ransomware, a piece of software which locks up a computer system to extort a payment for restoring access. According to one healthcare worker, the labs were still functional, but communication with them was limited to paper only, imposing a huge bottleneck and forcing cancellation or reassignment of all but the most urgent bloodwork. Direct connections with Synnovis' servers were cut to limit the risk of the infection spreading. ...This is the third attack in the last year to hit part of the Synlab group, a German medical services provider with subsidiaries across Europe. In June 2023, ransomware gang Clop hacked and stole data from the French branch of the company just days after it hit headlines for bringing down a payroll provider for companies including BA, Boots and the BBC. Clop published the stolen data later that summer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger took the stage at the Computex show in Taiwan to talk about new products he expects will help turn back the tide of share losses to peers, including AI leader Nvidia. From a report: Intel showed its new Xeon 6 data center processors with more efficient cores that will allow operators to cut down the space required for a given task to a third of prior-generation hardware. Like rivals, from Advanced Micro Devices to Qualcomm, Intel touted benchmarks that showed its new silicon is significantly better than its existing options. AMD and Qualcomm's CEOs, in earlier Computex keynotes, used Intel's laptop and desktop processors to show how far ahead they are in certain aspects of technology. Gelsinger took a direct shot at Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's claim that traditional processors like Intel's are running out of steam in the age of artificial intelligence. "Unlike what Jensen would have you believe, Moore's Law is alive and well," he said, stressing that Intel will have a major role to play in the proliferation of AI as the leading provider of PC chips. "I think of it like the internet 25 years ago, it's that big," Gelsinger said. "We see this as the fuel that's driving the semiconductor industry to reach $1 trillion by the end of the decade."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese people know their country's internet is different. There is no Google, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. They use euphemisms online to communicate the things they are not supposed to mention. When their posts and accounts are censored, they accept it with resignation. They live in a parallel online universe. They know it and even joke about it. Now they are discovering that, beneath a facade bustling with short videos, livestreaming and e-commerce, their internet -- and collective online memory -- is disappearing in chunks. A post on WeChat on May 22 that was widely shared reported that nearly all information posted on Chinese news portals, blogs, forums, social media sites between 1995 and 2005 was no longer available. "The Chinese internet is collapsing at an accelerating pace," the headline said. Predictably, the post itself was soon censored. It's impossible to determine exactly how much and what content has disappeared. [...] In addition to disappearing content, there's a broader problem: China's internet is shrinking. There were 3.9 million websites in China in 2023, down more than a third from 5.3 million in 2017, according to the country's internet regulator.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A group of current and former employees from OpenAI and Google DeepMind are calling for protection from retaliation for sharing concerns about the "serious risks" of the technologies these and other companies are building. From a report: "So long as there is no effective government oversight of these corporations, current and former employees are among the few people who can hold them accountable to the public," according to a public letter, which was signed by 13 people who've worked at the companies, seven of whom included their names. "Yet broad confidentiality agreements block us from voicing our concerns, except to the very companies that may be failing to address these issues." In recent weeks, OpenAI has faced controversy about its approach to safeguarding artificial intelligence after dissolving one of its most high-profile safety teams and being hit by a series of staff departures. OpenAI employees have also raised concerns that staffers were asked to sign nondisparagement agreements tied to their shares in the company, potentially causing them to lose out on lucrative equity deals if they speak out against the AI startup. After some pushback, OpenAI said it would release past employees from the agreements.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AmiMoJo shares a report: The world is off track to meet the goal of tripling renewable electricity generation by 2030, a target viewed as vital to enable a swift global transition away from fossil fuels, but there are promising signs that the pace of progress may be picking up. Countries agreed last December on a tripling of renewable power by the end of this decade. But few have yet taken concrete steps to meet this requirement and on current policies and trends global renewable generation capacity would only roughly double in developed countries, and slightly more than double globally by 2030, according to an analysis by the International Energy Agency. Governments should include targets and policies on renewables in their national action plans for the climate (called nationally determined contributions, or NDCs), which are a requirement under the Paris agreement, the IEA found. Many currently fail to do so, even though vast increases in renewable power are essential to meeting the treaty's aspiration of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. The IEA, the gold standard for global energy research, analysed the domestic policies and targets of nearly 150 countries, and found they would result in about 8,000GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030. That amount is about 70% of what is necessary to reach 11,000GW of capacity, the amount needed for the tripling goal agreed at the Cop28 UN climate summit in Dubai last year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

By 2050, 61% of U.S. adults will have cardiovascular disease, driven mainly by high blood pressure, according to new American Heart Association research. High blood pressure significantly increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and other dangerous cardiovascular problems. The findings also point to ongoing challenges with arrhythmias, heart failure, and congenital heart disease. CNN: In the research published Tuesday, the association predicts that 45 million adults will have some form of cardiovascular disease -- excluding high blood pressure -- or will have a stroke in 2050, up from 28 million in 2020. An aging population will be another force behind these trends, as the older you get, the more likely you are to have heart problems. By 2050, 22% of the US will be over the age of 65, whereas seniors made up just 13% of the population 10 years ago, studies say. The median age in the US is projected to increase from 37 in 2010 to 41 in 2050, other research shows. The American population is also becoming more diverse, and communities of color tend to have a disproportionate number of heart problems. By 2050, people who identify as Hispanic will make up about a quarter of the US population, vs. about 20% today, and people who identify as Black will be 14.4% of the country, up from 13.6% today. The number of people who identify as Asian will also increase, from 6.2% of the population to 8.6%, according to US Census predictions.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A Ticketmaster data breach that allegedly includes details for 560 million accounts and another one affecting Santander have been linked to their accounts at Snowflake, a cloud storage provider. However, Snowflake says there's no evidence its platform is at fault. A joint statement to that effect made last night with CrowdStrike and Mandiant, two third-party security companies investigating the incident, lends additional credibility to the claim. Also, an earlier third-party report saying bad actors generated session tokens and may have compromised "hundreds" of Snowflake accounts has now been removed. Hudson Rock, the security firm behind that report, posted a statement of its own today on LinkedIn: "In accordance to a letter we received from Snowflake's legal counsel, we have decided to take down all content related to our report." A post from Snowflake says, "To date, we do not believe this activity is caused by any vulnerability, misconfiguration, or malicious activity within the Snowflake product. Throughout the course of our ongoing investigation, we have promptly informed the limited number of customers who we believe may have been impacted."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR and Anduril, has launched the ModRetro Chromatic, a retro gaming handheld that plays original Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges. The device boasts a magnesium alloy case, sapphire crystal screen, and a pixel-perfect IPS display. It comes bundled with a licensed copy of Tetris and supports Link Cable multiplayer. Luckey suggested that the Chromatic is the most authentic way to play Game Boy games, with custom components designed to provide the ultimate gaming experience. The handheld is available for preorder and will ship during the 2024 holiday season.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCMag: Justin Long, the actor known for playing the Mac guy in Apple's mid-2000s ad campaign is once again switching sides -- this time to promote new Windows laptops from Qualcomm. Long appeared in a video that Qualcomm showed during its Computex keynote. To introduce the segment, CEO Cristiano Amon said Qualcomm captured video of a "very special person" preordering a Windows Copilot+ laptop built with a Snapdragon X Elite chip. In the clip, we see Long typing on an Apple MacBook at home and getting annoyed by all the incoming notifications, which include warnings that his laptop only has a 1% battery life and is running out of disk space. Long types in a search for "Where can I find a Snapdragon-powered PC?" and then stares at the camera, looking a bit ashamed, before saying: "What? Things change." Amon then returned to the stage to tell the Computex audience: "Yes, things change." In 2021, Long starred in an Intel ad campaign to promote the company's Windows PCs. Further reading: Arm Targets 50% of Windows PC Market Share in Five Years, CEO Says

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The PlayStation VR2's PC adapter is arriving on August 7th, allowing PC support for the PS5-exclusive headset. It'll cost $59.99. The Verge reports: Sony says the device will support all Steam VR games, including big-name titles like Half-Life: Alyx. In addition to the new adapter, Sony says players will need a DisplayPort cable to work with Steam titles on PC. (As well as a Steam account, obviously.) You can check out the minimum system requirements right here. In a blog post, Sony explains that there will be some feature differences depending on whether you're playing on PS5 or PC: "PS VR2 was designed from the ground up specifically for PS5 -- so you'll notice that some key features, like HDR, headset feedback, eye tracking, adaptive triggers, and haptic feedback (other than rumble), are not available when playing on PC. However, other high-fidelity and sensory immersion features of PS VR2 are supported, including 4K visuals (2000 x 2040 per eye), 110-degree field of view, finger touch detection, and see-through view, as well as foveated rendering (without eye tracking) and 3D Audio in supported games."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.