"Does a levitating robot train on the moon sound far-fetched?" asks LiveScience. "NASA doesn't seem to think so, as the agency has just greenlit further funding for a study looking into the concept." The project, called "Flexible Levitation on a Track" (FLOAT), has been moved to phase two of NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program (NIAC) , which aims to develop "science fiction-like" projects for future space exploration. The FLOAT project could result in materials being transported across the moon's surface as soon as the 2030s, according to the agency... According to NASA's initial design, FLOAT will consist of magnetic robots levitating over a three-layer film track to reduce abrasion from dust on the lunar surface. Carts will be mounted on these robots and will move at roughly 1 mph (1.61 km/h). They could transport roughly 100 tons (90 metric tons) of material a day to and from NASA's future lunar base. "A durable, long-life robotic transport system will be critical to the daily operations of a sustainable lunar base in the 2030's," according to NASA's blog post, arguing it could be used to Transport moon materials mined to produce on-site resources like water, liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen, or construction materials Transport payloads around the lunar base and to and from landing zones or other outposts Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the article.

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Thursday CNN reported: The Oscar-winning team behind the nearly $6 billion blockbuster "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" trilogies is reuniting to produce two new films. The first of the new projects from Sir Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens is tentatively titled "Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum," Warner Bros. Discovery announced Thursday. It will be directed by "LOTR" alum Andy Serkis. But "amid the news," TMZ reports, "a famous short film about it got yanked ... only to be revived on YouTube a day later." A viral short film called "The Hunt for Gollum" — which got uploaded to YouTube about 15 years ago — has been praised among Tolkien fans for years as a stellar piece of fan fiction and art, which while not sanctioned by Warner Bros., still held its own and looked damn good. On Thursday, WB announced they were making a brand new installment to their film franchise with the same title — which led to the short being taken down on a copyright claim ... but it seems Warner has backed off, 'cause about 12 hours or so later, it's up again...! Sources with direct knowledge tell us the copyright claim got applied in error ... and the studio realized that, so they removed it and YouTube did their thing. The director of the short, Chris Bouchard, uploaded an email he got from YT saying the copyright claim had been released ... confirming WB retreated all on their own. He tells TMZ ... "We're just happy to hear folks remembered our film somewhat fondly, low-fi effort that it is. And grateful as of course fan films are in strange legal territory."

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What happened when OpenAI ran out of English-language training data in 2021? They just created a speech recognition tool that could transcribe the audio from YouTube videos, reports The New York Times, as part of an investigation arguing that tech companies "including OpenAI, Google and Meta have cut corners, ignored corporate policies and debated bending the law" in their search for AI training data. [Alternate URL here.] Some OpenAI employees discussed how such a move might go against YouTube's rules, three people with knowledge of the conversations said. YouTube, which is owned by Google, prohibits use of its videos for applications that are "independent" of the video platform. Ultimately, an OpenAI team transcribed more than 1 million hours of YouTube videos, the people said. The team included Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president, who personally helped collect the videos, two of the people said. The texts were then fed into a system called GPT-4... At Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, managers, lawyers and engineers last year discussed buying the publishing house Simon & Schuster to procure long works, according to recordings of internal meetings obtained by the Times. They also conferred on gathering copyrighted data from across the internet, even if that meant facing lawsuits. Negotiating licenses with publishers, artists, musicians and the news industry would take too long, they said. Like OpenAI, Google transcribed YouTube videos to harvest text for its AI models, five people with knowledge of the company's practices said. That potentially violated the copyrights to the videos, which belong to their creators. Last year, Google also broadened its terms of service. One motivation for the change, according to members of the company's privacy team and an internal message viewed by the Times, was to allow Google to be able to tap publicly available Google Docs, restaurant reviews on Google Maps and other online material for more of its AI products... Some Google employees were aware that OpenAI had harvested YouTube videos for data, two people with knowledge of the companies said. But they didn't stop OpenAI because Google had also used transcripts of YouTube videos to train its AI models, the people said. That practice may have violated the copyrights of YouTube creators. So if Google made a fuss about OpenAI, there might be a public outcry against its own methods, the people said. The article adds that some tech companies are now even developing "synthetic" information to train AI. "This is not organic data created by humans, but text, images and code that AI models produce — in other words, the systems learn from what they themselves generate."

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SiliconANGLE looks at how starting in 2021, Microsoft and Red Hat have formed "an unlikely partnership set to reshape the landscape of cloud computing..." First, their collective open-source capabilities will lead to co-developed solutions to simplify the modernization and migration of Red Hat technologies to the cloud, seamlessly integrating them with Microsoft's Azure platform, according to João Couto, EMEA VP and COO of cloud commercial solutions at Microsoft. "We have acquired GitHub, which is also one of the largest repositories of open source worldwide," he said. "In that context, it makes a lot of sense to work together with Red Hat." Transcribed from their interview: What we have been doing so far is making sure that we are co-developing solutions together with Red Hat. And making these solutions available to our customers — making it easy for customers to transform, to modernize [their] Red Hat technology running on-prem, and moving them into cloud using our own Microsoft cloud technology, but Red Hat solutions, in a very, very seamless, integrated way. And also leveraging all the entire portfolio of Red Hat automation tools, so that they can make it easier for customers not just to do the migration, but also to do management, run the operation, and all the troubleshooting also from the customer-care perspective. So that's basically an end-to-end partnership approach that we are taking... "[Customers] get an integrated support experience from Red Hat technical teams and Microsoft technical teams. And this means that these two technical teams are often colocated, so whenever a customer has a challenge, they are being answered by Microsoft and Red Hat technical teams, all working together to solve this challenge from the customer. So this brings also an increased level of confidence to customers to move to cloud... "We have both engineering teams from both sides working together to achieve this level of integration between the two solutions. So when you talk about Red Hat Enterprise Linux or when you have the Azure Red Hat OpenShift, which is a new solution that we have recently launched — these are solutions that using open source, are bringing in an additional level of integration, flexibility, automation to customers. So that they can migrate, and manage, their solutions in a more seamless way, and in a more easy way. So we are embedding this kind of overlying partnership from an open source perspective to bring these innovations live to customers."

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"Atmospheric levels of planet-warming carbon dioxide aren't just on their way to yet another record high this year," reports the Washington Post. "They're rising faster than ever, according to the latest in a 66-year-long series of observations." Carbon dioxide levels were 4.7 parts per million higher in March than they were a year earlier, the largest annual leap ever measured at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration laboratory atop a volcano on Hawaii's Big Island. And from January through April, CO2 concentrations increased faster than they have in the first four months of any other year... For decades, CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa in the month of May have broken previous records. But the recent acceleration in atmospheric CO2, surpassing a record-setting increase observed in 2016, is perhaps a more ominous signal of failing efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and the damage they cause to Earth's climate. "Not only is CO2 still rising in the atmosphere — it's increasing faster and faster," said Arlyn Andrews, a climate scientist at NOAA's Global Monitoring Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. A historically strong El Niño climate pattern that developed last year is a big reason for the spike. But the weather pattern only punctuated an existing trend in which global carbon emissions are rising even as U.S. emissions have declined and the growth in global emissions has slowed. The spike is "not surprising," said Ralph Keeling, director of the CO2 Program at Scripps Institution, "because we're also burning more fossil fuel than ever...." El Niño-linked droughts in tropical areas including Indonesia and northern South America mean less carbon storage within plants, Keeling said. Land-based ecosystems around the world tend to give off more carbon dioxide during El Niño because of the changes in precipitation and temperature the weather pattern brings, Andrews added. And for CO2 concentrations to fall back below 400 parts per million, it would take more than two centuries even if emissions dropped close to zero by the end of this century, she added. This year's reading "is more than 50 percent above preindustrial levels and the highest in at least 4.3 million years, according to NOAA."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: There's a fundamental flaw in current car safety tech: It's limited to line of sight. Or, perhaps, line of "sensing" is more accurate, because the way cameras and lidar work is to inspect the perimeter of a vehicle and use predictive algorithms to understand the motion of an object in relation to the motion of the vehicle itself. Which is good, because as carmakers have added elements such as pedestrian and cyclist detection, they're trying to prevent drivers from hurting the most vulnerable road users. And unfortunately this is necessary, because even though 2023 saw a slight reduction in drivers striking cyclists and pedestrians, according to the most recent data from the Governor's Highway Safety Association, since 2019 pedestrian fatalities are still up 14 percent -- and cyclist deaths are up 50 percent since 2010. That doesn't mean lidar and cameras have "failed," but because they rely on what the sensors can pick up, they cannot necessarily ID hazards (and alert drivers) as quickly as we need them to, particularly if that's a cyclist in your lane 300 feet down the road, just over the next rise. Yes, current sensing works well now with figuring out the pace of a traffic jam, and automatic emergency braking can step in to stop your car if you fail to. But for non-automotive obstacles, they're still limited. For that, we need better tech, which is emerging and is called Connected Vehicle to Everything (C-V2X). The idea isn't that complicated. Boiled down, it's a chipset that operates on a portion of the cellular bandwidth, and vehicles with this tech embedded (say in an e-bike or car) monitor anything with a C-V2X chip as well as broadcast their own location at a pulse of 10 times a second. This precision location system would then warn a driver of a cyclist on the road ahead, even beyond line of sight, and in an emergency -- possibly because a cyclist was right in a car's path -- could prevent a collision. [W]ith C-V2X, you don't need Verizon or ATT or anything like that," explains Audi's Kamal Kapadia. Because it isn't using the cellular network -- it's using a portion of cellular bandwidth to allow direct object, or vehicle-to-vehicle, communication. Audi has been working on C-V2X for nearly a decade, and it's part of a group in the US called the Coalition for Cyclist Safety, which also includes suppliers like Bosch, a tech startup in the space called Spoke Safety, and bike brands such as massive Trek, parts supplier Shimano, more niche bikemakers like Switzerland's Stromer, as well as mega telco suppliers and networks such as Qualcomm, Deutsche Telekom, and TELUS. [...] Mio Suzuki is Trek Bicycle's director of embedded systems, "and we are exploring all sorts of safety," she says. For instance, Trek recently introduced its own radar tail light, which warns riders of a car approaching rapidly -- Garmin has had similar systems for several years. But Suzuki is intrigued by C-V2X because it offers more advanced warning than rear-facing radar. "And unlike cars, we have a very vulnerable road user so we need to augment our senses and the rider's awareness of the riding environment, because we don't have a big metal shield around us." What Suzuki envisions this direct communication might enable is an e-bike where the rider has a display that would warn a rider "of an imminent danger that's approaching; a car might be coming from the side, but the view of the car is obstructed by a building, so the rider can't see." Franz Reindl is CTO of Stromer, a high-end Swiss brand that only makes e-bikes with very top tech, including ABS brakes. Reindl says they're also studying C-V2X. "Safety is one of our biggest promises, and we need to do everything we can with products and technologies to make it more safe for customers." Right now, only Audi and the VW Group have openly talked about using the tech. "Trek's Suzuki thinks that together, the Coalition and so many bike brands within it do have a strong voice," reports Ars. "She also envisions municipalities deploying the technology, especially around work crews and EMS, which should build broader momentum and pressure on automakers."

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The Russia-linked ransomware group Black Basta is responsible for Wednesday's cyberattack on St. Louis-based Ascension health system, according to sources reported by CNN. The attack disrupted access to electronic health records, some phone systems and "various systems utilized to order certain tests, procedures and medications," the company said in a statement. From a report: On Friday, the nonprofit group Health-ISAC (Information Sharing and Analysis Center) issued an alert about the group, saying that Black Basta has "recently accelerated attacks against the healthcare sector." HHS said that Black Basta was initially spotted in early 2022, known for its double extortion attack. The group not only executes ransomware but also exfiltrates sensitive data, operating a cybercrime marketplace to publicly release it should a victim fail to pay a ransom. "The level of sophistication by its proficient ransomware operators, and reluctance to recruit or advertise on Dark Web forums, supports why many suspect the nascent Black Basta may even be a rebrand of the Russian-speaking RaaS threat group Conti, or also linked to other Russian-speaking cyber threat groups," the alert from HHS said. According to one report from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic and cybersecurity risk-focused Corvus Insurance, Black Basta in less than two years has won itself more than $100 million via ransomware schemes from 329 organizations. Previous victims of its attacks include Dish Network, the American Dental Association, business process services firm Capita and tech firm ABB.

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A tokamak in France achieved a new record in fusion plasma by using tungsten to encase its reaction, which enabled the sustainment of hotter and denser plasma for longer periods than previous carbon-based designs. Quartz reports: A tokamak is a torus- (doughnut-) shaped fusion device that confines plasma using magnetic fields, allowing scientists to fiddle with the superheated material and induce fusion reactions. The recent achievement was made in WEST (tungsten (W) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak), a tokamak operated by the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). WEST was injected with 1.15 gigajoules of power and sustained a plasma of about 50 million degrees Celsius for six minutes. It achieved this record after scientists encased the tokamak's interior in tungsten, a metal with an extraordinarily high melting point. Researchers from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory used an X-ray detector inside the tokamak to measure aspects of the plasma and the conditions that made it possible. "These are beautiful results," said Xavier Litaudon, a scientist with CEA and chair of the Coordination on International Challenges on Long duration OPeration (CICLOP), in a PPPL release. "We have reached a stationary regime despite being in a challenging environment due to this tungsten wall."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A British toddler has had her hearing restored after becoming the first person in the world to take part in a pioneering gene therapy trial, in a development that doctors say marks a new era in treating deafness. Opal Sandy was born unable to hear anything due to auditory neuropathy, a condition that disrupts nerve impulses traveling from the inner ear to the brain and can be caused by a faulty gene. But after receiving an infusion containing a working copy of the gene during groundbreaking surgery that took just 16 minutes, the 18-month-old can hear almost perfectly and enjoys playing with toy drums. [...] The girl, from Oxfordshire, was treated at Addenbrooke's hospital, part of Cambridge university hospitals NHS foundation trust, which is running the Chord trial. More deaf children from the UK, Spain and the US are being recruited to the trial and will all be followed up for five years. [...] Auditory neuropathy can be caused by a fault in the OTOF gene, which makes a protein called otoferlin. This enables cells in the ear to communicate with the hearing nerve. To overcome the fault, the new therapy from biotech firm Regeneron sends a working copy of the gene to the ear. A second child has also recently received the gene therapy treatment at Cambridge university hospitals, with positive results. The overall Chord trial consists of three parts, with three deaf children including Opal receiving a low dose of gene therapy in one ear only. A different set of three children will get a high dose on one side. Then, if that is shown to be safe, more children will receive a dose in both ears at the same time. In total, 18 children worldwide will be recruited to the trial. The gene therapy -- DB-OTO -- is specifically for children with OTOF mutations. A harmless virus is used to carry the working gene into the patient.

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Jon Brodkin reports via Ars Technica: T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T will pay a combined $10.2 million in a settlement with US states that alleged the carriers falsely advertised wireless plans as "unlimited" and phones as "free." The deal was announced yesterday by New York Attorney General Letitia James. "A multistate investigation found that the companies made false claims in advertisements in New York and across the nation, including misrepresentations about 'unlimited' data plans that were in fact limited and had reduced quality and speed after a certain limit was reached by the user," the announcement said. T-Mobile and Verizon agreed to pay $4.1 million each while AT&T agreed to pay a little over $2 million. The settlement includes AT&T subsidiary Cricket Wireless and Verizon subsidiary TracFone. The settlement involves 49 of the 50 US states (Florida did not participate) and the District of Columbia. The states' investigation found that the three major carriers "made several misleading claims in their advertising, including misrepresenting 'unlimited' data plans that were actually limited, offering 'free' phones that came at a cost, and making false promises about switching to different wireless carrier plans." "AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile lied to millions of consumers, making false promises of free phones and 'unlimited' data plans that were simply untrue," James said. "Big companies are not excused from following the law and cannot trick consumers into paying for services they will never receive." The carriers denied any illegal conduct despite agreeing to the settlement. In addition to payments to each state, the carriers agreed to changes in their advertising practices. It's unclear whether consumers will get any refunds out of the settlement, however. These are the following changes the three carriers agreed upon, as highlighted by the NY attorney general's office: - "Unlimited" mobile data plans can only be marketed if there are no limits on the quantity of data allowed during a billing cycle. - Offers to pay for consumers to switch to a different wireless carrier must clearly disclose how much a consumer will be paid, how consumers will be paid, when consumers can expect payment, and any additional requirements consumers have to meet to get paid. - Offers of "free" wireless devices or services must clearly state everything a consumer must do to receive the "free" devices or services. - Offers to lease wireless devices must clearly state that the consumer will be entering into a lease agreement. - All "savings" claims must have a reasonable basis. If a wireless carrier claims that consumers will save using its services compared to another wireless carrier, the claim must be based on similar goods or services or differences must be clearly explained to the consumer. The advertising restrictions are to be in place for five years.

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Longtime Slashdot reader davidwr shares a report from Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC): On Thursday, May 9, 2024, the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center issued a Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch. At least five earth-directed coronal mass ejections (CMEs) were observed and expected to arrive as early as midday Friday, May 10, 2024, and persist through Sunday, May 12, 2024. Several strong flares have been observed over the past few days and were associated with a large and magnetically complex sunspot cluster (NOAA region 3664), which is 16 times the diameter of Earth. [The agency notes this is the first time it's issued a G4 watch since January, 2005.] "Geomagnetic storms can impact infrastructure in near-Earth orbit and on Earth's surface, potentially disrupting communications, the electric power grid, navigation, radio and satellite operations," NOAA said. "[The Space Weather Prediction Center] has notified the operators of these systems so they can take protective action." The agency said it will continue to monitor the ongoing storm and "provide additional warnings as necessary." A visual byproduct of the storm will be "spectacular displays of aurora," also known as the Northern Lights, that could be seen for much of the northern half of the country "as far south as Alabama to northern California," said the NOAA. "Northern Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin and the majority of North Dakota appear to have the best chances to see it," reports Axios, citing the SWPC's aurora viewline. "Forecast models Friday showed the activity will likely be the strongest from Friday night to Saturday morning Eastern time." UPDATE 6:54 P.M. EDT: G5 conditions have been observed -- the first time since 2003, says Broadcast Meteorologist James Spann. This is a developing story. More information is available at spaceweather.gov, Google News, and the NOAA.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Apple's top software executives decided early last year that Siri, the company's virtual assistant, needed a brain transplant. The decision came after the executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea spent weeks testing OpenAI's new chatbot, ChatGPT. The product's use of generative artificial intelligence, which can write poetry, create computer code and answer complex questions, made Siri look antiquated, said two people familiar with the company's work, who didn't have permission to speak publicly. Introduced in 2011 as the original virtual assistant in every iPhone, Siri had been limited for years to individual requests and had never been able to follow a conversation. It often misunderstood questions. ChatGPT, on the other hand, knew that if someone asked for the weather in San Francisco and then said, "What about New York?" that user wanted another forecast. The realization that new technology had leapfrogged Siri set in motion the tech giant's most significant reorganization in more than a decade. Determined to catch up in the tech industry's A.I. race, Apple has made generative A.I. a tent pole project -- the company's special, internal label that it uses to organize employees around once-in-a-decade initiatives. Apple is expected to show off its A.I. work at its annual developers conference on June 10 when it releases an improved Siri that is more conversational and versatile, according to three people familiar with the company's work, who didn't have permission to speak publicly. Siri's underlying technology will include a new generative A.I. system that will allow it to chat rather than respond to questions one at a time. The update to Siri is at the forefront of a broader effort to embrace generative A.I. across Apple's business. The company is also increasing the memory in this year's iPhones to support its new Siri capabilities. And it has discussed licensing complementary A.I. models that power chatbots from several companies, including Google, Cohere and OpenAI. Further reading: Apple Might Bring AI Transcription To Voice Memos and Notes

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A "one-of-a-kind" Google Cloud "misconfiguration" resulted in the deletion of UniSuper's account last week, disrupting the financial services provider's more than half a million members. "Services began being restored for UniSuper customers on Thursday, more than a week after the system went offline," reports The Guardian. "Investment account balances would reflect last week's figures and UniSuper said those would be updated as quickly as possible." From the report: The UniSuper CEO, Peter Chun, wrote to the fund's 620,000 members on Wednesday night, explaining the outage was not the result of a cyber-attack, and no personal data had been exposed as a result of the outage. Chun pinpointed Google's cloud service as the issue. In an extraordinary joint statement from Chun and the global CEO for Google Cloud, Thomas Kurian, the pair apologized to members for the outage, and said it had been "extremely frustrating and disappointing." They said the outage was caused by a misconfiguration that resulted in UniSuper's cloud account being deleted, something that had never happened to Google Cloud before. While UniSuper normally has duplication in place in two geographies, to ensure that if one service goes down or is lost then it can be easily restored, because the fund's cloud subscription was deleted, it caused the deletion across both geographies. UniSuper was able to eventually restore services because the fund had backups in place with another provider. "Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian has confirmed that the disruption arose from an unprecedented sequence of events whereby an inadvertent misconfiguration during provisioning of UniSuper's Private Cloud services ultimately resulted in the deletion of UniSuper's Private Cloud subscription," the pair said. "This is an isolated, 'one-of-a-kind occurrence' that has never before occurred with any of Google Cloud's clients globally. This should not have happened. Google Cloud has identified the events that led to this disruption and taken measures to ensure this does not happen again."

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Tim Levin reports via InsideEVs: Two things of note in the electric vehicle world happened today around the same time. First, the Geely Group-owned Chinese EV brand Zeekr debuted on the New York Stock Exchange today at a valuation of around $5.2 billion. Then, around 250 miles south in Washington, D.C., news emerged that the Biden Administration is set to quadruple tariffs on Chinese-made electric cars if they hit American roads. The timing may be purely coincidental. But after this week, one thing feels clearer than ever: the automotive Cold War between China and the West is fully underway, and EVs specifically are at the center of it all. The Wall Street Journal got the scoop that the White House plans to announce higher tariffs on Chinese clean-energy imports in the coming days. Under the reported new policies, tariffs on Chinese EVs are set to quadruple, rising from the current 25% to a whopping 100%, anonymous sources told the outlet. In theory, that would substantially increase the cost of any Chinese-made EVs on our market, including, potentially, ones sold by known Western and other Asian brands. It's no secret why the U.S. is attempting to push back on Chinese EVs, to say nothing of other clean energy imports from that country like solar panels. China has spent years aggressively building up its capacity to manufacture electric cars. It's developed a stranglehold on the supply chains for lithium-ion batteries and the critical minerals they contain. It has lavished state incentives on both EV production and purchasing. In recent years, the country has emerged as a global EV powerhouse -- and, for the first time ever, an exporter on par with leaders like Japan and Germany. Many still believe that China's cars are cheap and technologically subpar. But the truth is China has learned to build cars very, very well, as InsideEVs' own Kevin Williams discovered during a recent trip to the Beijing auto show. China's homegrown electrified vehicles range from the inexpensive -- some, like the BYD Seagull, cost less than $10,000 in their home market -- to higher-end, luxury-focused offerings like the Yangwang U8, a kind of plug-in hybrid competitor to the Mercedes G-Class that can "float" on water. From batteries to software, most are incredibly advanced. Car companies and policymakers in the U.S. (and Europe) say these cars pose a real threat to our nascent EV market, where many options still remain unaffordable and things like batteries and software are works in progress. In response, European Union officials have also launched investigations into Chinese imports that could lead to stronger tariffs. "In effect, the tariffs may end up buying the U.S. some time, rather than being a permanent solution here," concludes Levin. "After all, as Kevin Williams pointed out after going to Beijing: all of these crackdowns aren't guaranteed to yield better cars from Ford, General Motors and the rest." According to the WSJ, the new tariffs on Chinese goods will also apply to solar panels, batteries and critical battery minerals. They're expected to be announced as soon as next week.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Imagine this: you've "dated" 600 people in San Fransisco without having typed a word to any of them. Instead, a busy little bot has completed the mindless 'getting-to-know-you' chatter on your behalf, and has told you which people you should actually get off the couch to meet. That's the future of dating, according to Whitney Wolfe Herd -- and she'd know. Wolfe Herd is the founder and executive chair of Bumble, a meeting and networking platform that prompted women to make the first move. While the platform has now changed this aspect of its algorithm, Wolfe Herd said the company would always keep its "North Star" in mind: "A safer, kinder digital platform for more healthy and more equitable relationships. "Always putting women in the driver's seat -- not to put men down -- but to actually recalibrate the way we all treat each other." Like any platform, Bumble is now navigating itself in a world of AI -- which means rethinking how humans will interact with each other in an increasing age of chatbots. Wolfe Herd toldBloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco this week it could streamline the matching process. "If you want to get really out there, there is a world where your [AI] dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierge," she told host Emily Chang. "Truly. And then you don't have to talk to 600 people. It will scan all of San Fransisco for you and say: 'These are the three people you really outta meet.'" And forget catch-ups with friends, swapping notes on your love life -- AI can be that metaphorical shoulder to cry on. Artificial intelligence -- which has seen massive amounts of investment since OpenAI disrupted the market with its ChatGPT large language model -- can help coach individuals on how to date and present themselves in the best light to potential partners. "So, for example, you could in the near future be talking to your AI dating concierge and you could share your insecurities,"Wolfe Herd explained. "'I've just come out of a break-up, I've got commitment issues,' and it could help you train yourself into a better way of thinking about yourself." "Then it could give you productive tips for communicating with other people," she added. If these features do indeed come to Bumble in the future, they will impact the experience of millions.

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Search giant Baidu fires its head of public relations after she outraged Gen Z workers. From a report [non-paywalled link]: The head of public relations at a major Chinese tech firm gained hundreds of thousands of followers seemingly overnight after posting a series of viral videos laying out her unapologetically tyrannical management style. The videos also earned her a pink slip from her employer after they set off an explosion of criticism among Gen Z Chinese fed up with the intense work culture that prevails in their country's tech industry. "I'm not your mother-in-law. I'm not your mom," Qu Jing, a vice president at Chinese search giant Baidu, said in one widely excoriated clip, referring to a colleague who was struggling with a recent breakup. "I only care about your results." In other videos, she criticized employees who didn't want to work weekends and dismissed complaints from one subordinate that messages she sent to a group chat late at night had kept a crying child awake. "Why should it be my business that your child was crying?" she said. On Thursday, as public outrage soared, Qu removed the videos from her account on Douyin, TikTok's sister platform in China, and replaced them with an apology. She said she had tried to do a good job but had been too impatient and hadn't adopted "a proper approach." Baidu Chief Executive Robin Li was furious at Qu and fired her on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter. A top Baidu executive told employees that Qu's comments were "inappropriate and didn't represent and reflect the real culture and values of Baidu," the people said. The management also promised to review the company's corporate culture and working systems, they said. China's hard-charging tech industry relies heavily on a Darwinian work culture that demands near-total devotion to the workplace. Tech workers coined the term "996" to describe the typical schedule: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. Half a decade ago, videos like Qu's were just as likely to garner a shrug as generate controversy. But younger Chinese, much like their counterparts in the U.S., are increasingly skeptical of the pressure to work themselves ragged in pursuit of financial success. They have coined their own terms -- "lying flat" and "letting it rot" -- to describe their antipathy to the grinding ethos of 996.

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Eight years ago, a coalition of retail banks in India built a mobile payments system called the UPI. The system is interoperable, allowing users to make instant peer-to-peer transactions between them -- across all participating banks -- and to merchants at zero cost. Today, it processes more than 12 billion transactions each month -- more than all card payments combined in India -- and has become the most popular way Indians transact online. Many U.S. giants have cited UPI as an example that other countries should also explore developing. We have also covered UPI several times over the years. NPCI, a quasi-regulator founded by India's central bank, oversees UPI. Four years ago, it announced plans to enforce a market share cap on each participating player. The quasi-regulator didn't want few players to become too powerful and any single participant to process more than 30% of all UPI transactions in a month. It later postponed the deadline to January 1, 2025. Walmart-owned PhonePe and Google Pay command more than 86% of the UPI market. Now, the NPCI is reportedly planning to extend the deadline again by up to two years. The reason? TechCrunch reports: The NPCI had initially planned to enforce the market share cap in January 2021, but postponed the deadline to January 1, 2025. TechCrunch had previously reported that the regulator was moving towards extending the deadline further after concluding that there is no practical solution to address the issue. One can argue that the NPCI shouldn't be interfering with free market forces and let people decide which apps they wish to use. TechCrunch adds: However, several UPI providers admit that an incentive plan that unfairly differentiates [one of the proposed solutions by some industry players] against PhonePe and Google Pay will be a bad look for the ecosystem and could send wrong signals to the investor community. U.S.-based investors, including Accel, Lightspeed, Tiger Global, Insight Partners, Invesco, Vanguard, BlackRock and Fidelity, are among some of the most prolific investors in Indian public firms and startups. Some of the choices made by the RBI [India's central bank] and other regulators have already spooked many investors.

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Zitchas writes: The practice of having games require a connection to a publisher's server -- whether it is to check for a license or to access plug-ins and DLC -- is an increasingly common thing in computer software; and many people are concerned that at some point in the future the publisher will shut down their server, and effectively render the person who paid for the game left with something that no longer functions. This has already happened to some games and software Concerned citizens in Canada are taking the issue to their Parliament in order to push for a law that will mandate that when the server-side support for software is discontinued, companies must leave it in a functional state and remove mandatory connections to servers -- services that no longer exist. Perhaps even more importantly, the petition also asks government to pass a law prohibiting EULA's from forcing users to agree to waiving their right to this. Unfortunately, the petition is only open to citizens of Canada, so the rest of us are out of luck. Considering the potential benefits to the rest of the world if they enact legislation that does this, though, it might be worth suggesting to any of your Canadian friends to go sign the petition.

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The number of tornadoes so far in the United States this year is just above average. But their distribution is changing. From a report: Tornadoes tend to travel in packs these days, often with a dozen or more forming in the same region on the same day. On the worst days, hundreds can form at once. More than a dozen tornadoes were reported on both Monday and Tuesday this week across the Great Plains and the Midwest, according to the Storm Prediction Center run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Two weeks ago, on the most active day in April, 105 tornadoes were reported. While outbreaks like these have always happened, they have become more common in recent decades. The total number of tornadoes in the United States each year has stayed relatively consistent over the last several decades, but they now happen in more concentrated bursts over fewer days during the year. In the 1950s through the 1970s, on average about 69 percent of tornadoes in the United States happened on days with fewer than 10 tornadoes, and about 11 percent happened on days with 20 or more tornadoes. These percentages have shifted significantly in recent decades, according to a 2019 study. The researchers found that since 2000, on average only about 49 percent of tornadoes have happened on less busy days and about 29 percent have happened on days with 20 or more tornadoes. "Now when tornadoes happen, they often happen in an outbreak environment," said Tyler Fricker, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Louisiana Monroe and one of the authors of the study. While the timing of this trend lines up with the planet's rising temperatures, scientists are hesitant to definitively attribute tornadoes' clustering behavior to human-caused climate change.

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