An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Sony is making an effort to appease customers who will lose their entire Funimation digital libraries when the anime streaming service merges into Crunchyroll. Currently, though, the company's plan for giving disappointed customers "an appropriate value" for their erased digital copies isn't very accessible or clear. Earlier this month, Sony-owned Funimation announced that customers' digital libraries would be unavailable starting on April 2. At that time, Funimation accounts will become Crunchyroll accounts. Sony acquired Crunchyroll in 2021, so some sort of merging of the services was expected. However, less expected was customers' lost access to online copies of beloved anime that they acquired through digital codes provided in purchased Funimation DVDs or Blu-rays. Funimation for years claimed that customers would be able to stream these copies "forever, but there are some restrictions." Rahul Purini, Crunchyroll's president, explained the decision while speaking to The Verge's latest Decoder podcast, noting that the feature was incorporated into the Funimation platform. "As we look at usage of that and the number of people who were redeeming those and using them, it was just not a feature that was available in Crunchyroll and isn't in our road map," Purini said. The executive claimed that Funimation is "working really hard directly" with each affected customer to "ensure that they have an appropriate value for what they got in the digital copy initially." When asked what "appropriate value" means, Purini responded: "It could be that they get access to a digital copy on any of the existing other services where they might be able to access it. It could be a discount access to our subscription service so they can get access to the same shows through our subscription service. So we are trying to make it right based on each user's preference." It could be that they get access to a digital copy on any of the existing other services where they might be able to access it. It could be a discount access to our subscription service so they can get access to the same shows through our subscription service. So we are trying to make it right based on each user's preference. Clarifying further, Purini confirmed that this means that Sony is willing to provide affected customers with a new digital copy via a streaming service other than Crunchyroll. The executive said that the company is handling subscribers' requests as they reach out to customer service. Notably, this approach to compensating customers for removing access to something that they feel like they purchased (digital copies are considered a free addition to the physical copies, but some people might not have bought the discs if they didn't come with a free digital copy) puts the responsibility on customers to reach out. Ahead of Purini's interview, Sony didn't publicly announce that it would offer customers compensation. And since Funimation's terms of use include caveats that content may be removed at any time, customers might have thought that they have no path for recourse.

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During a briefing at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Meghana Patwardhan, VP of Commercial Mobility at Dell Technology, told The Register that while the immediate future would consist of two worlds -- one with AI hardware and one without -- "every PC is going to be an AI PC in the longer term." From the report: In terms of new hardware, Dell used the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona to show off new versions of its Surface-baiting Latitude 7350 convertible -- "the world's most serviceable commercial detachable," according to the company -- and its workstation-class Precision 3680 tower. Other devices in the Precision range include mobile workstations and the 3280 Compact Form Factor PC. Dell was also determined to present itself as a leader in hybrid working with the Premier Wireless ANC headset, replete with AI-based noise cancellation. Duringt our talk, AI was never far from the lips of Dell's spokespeople as the company talked up the energy efficiency and future-proofing it saw in dedicated AI hardware, such as Neural Processing Units (NPUs) that are increasingly cropping up in CPUs. To illustrate the point, Dell boatsed about how much more efficient background blurring is on video calls when AI hardware is running compared to when it isn't. Hopefully, Microsoft will soon deliver a version of Windows capable of demonstrating a use for AI hardware that is more than hiding distractions in the background. Further reading: AI PCs To Account for Nearly 60% of All PC Shipments by 2027, IDC Says

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Almost 3 years after launching the first OnePlus Watch, the Chinese smartphone company is launching a successor -- this time powered by Wear OS 4. Utilizing a "hybrid interface," the OnePlus Watch 2 is able to offer 100 hours of battery life, or just over four full days of use. 9to5Google reports: To achieve that goal, the OnePlus Watch 2 actually runs two separate operating systems. Wear OS handles things like apps and watchfaces, while a RTOS powered by a secondary chipset handles more lightweight tasks. A "smart mode" on the watch allows the watch swap back and forth between its two operating systems and two chipsets. Wear OS is powered by the Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 and it is Wear OS 4. The RTOS is powered by a BES 2700 MCU Efficiency chipset. Switching between the two OS's is something you're likely to not even notice, OnePlus claims: "The BES2700 Efficiency Chipset runs RTOS and handles background activity and simple tasks, while the Snapdragon W5 handles more demanding tasks, like running your favorite Google apps. This optimized approach, enabled by the Wear OS hybrid interface seamlessly managing the transition between chips, means users will experience a smartwatch that effortlessly does it all while extending the time between charges." Powering the Watch 2 is a 500 mAh battery which features 7.5W charging with a special charger that connects to a typical USB-C cable. The charger is magnetic, of course, and OnePlus claims a full charge in 60 minutes or less. The 1.43-inch AMOLED display of the OnePlus Watch 2 is covered in a slightly curved sapphire glass, while the watch chassis is built from stainless steel. You'll have the choice of black or silver colors with either black or green bands, respectively. The whole package is also 5ATM water resistant. Rounding out the main specs you'll find 32GB of storage and 2GB of RAM. The OnePlus Watch 2 goes on sale today at $299.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In recent months, Movie-Web has quickly gained popularity among a particular group of movie aficionados. The open source software, which is still available on GitHub, allows anyone to set up a movie search engine capable of streaming content from third-party sources. These external sources tend to have large libraries of pirated entertainment. Movie-web's developers are not oblivious to the legal ramifications but since they don't host any files, they hoped to avoid legal trouble. The software just provides a search engine for third-party content, they argued. [...] Yesterday, the movie-web.app domain was suddenly taken down. According to a message posted on the official Discord server, this is the result of a "court action" from several movie companies including Warner Bros. Netflix, Paramount, Universal, and Disney. [I]t appears that action was taken against the movie-web.app domain. It seems likely that registrar Namecheap suspended the domain after receiving a legal complaint from the aforementioned Hollywood companies. [Update: After publishing the article we learned that there is a legal action that requires registrars to take action against several 'pirate' domains. We're looking into the matter and will follow this up later.] Namecheap updated the domain's status to clientHold, which effectively rendered the domain inaccessible. The measure is often used to suspend pirate site domains following copyright holder complaints. The surprise takedown only affects movie-web's publicly hosted 'demo' instance. On Discord, the movie-web team says that it has no plans to bring this website back in any shape or form. "As a team, we always said that if we were taken down, we would go down without a fight and we have decided to stick to that. We have zero interest in getting involved with legal matters, and so we will not be trying to circumvent this takedown in any way," developer 'BinaryOverload' writes.

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Landscaping tech company Husqvarna has partnered with Bethesda to bring the original 1993 Doom to its $2,000+ robotic lawnmowers. Kotaku reports: This new way to play Doom arrives in April on all Nera robotic lawnmower models. You don't have to pay for the game, either, just a $2,000+ lawnmower. Instead, just download it and play the shooter via the robo-mower's built-in screen. To rotate your view, you turn the knob and to shoot demons, you press it down. You hold the start button to move forward. A few caveats to mention. First, this isn't available in the United States. Why? I don't know. Perhaps we can't be trusted with video games on lawnmowers? Secondly, this isn't all of Doom. Instead, it's just the first episode -- Knee Deep In The Dead -- which is arguably its most famous one, sure, but just keep in mind you won't be able to play the rest of the beloved shooter in the middle of your backyard on a tiny LCD screen. Sorry. Sadly, this won't be a permanent feature that you can show off to family and friends for years to come. Instead, Doom and all its demons and guns will be removed from lawnmowers on September 9. So enjoy it while you can.

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Maker Roni Bandini developed a Raspberry Pi project to address his neighbors' loud reggaeton music by creating an AI-driven system that distorts audio on nearby Bluetooth speakers when reggaeton is detected. Tom's Hardware reports: Powering this Bluetooth jamming device is a Raspberry Pi 3 B+. It's connected to a DFRobot OLED display panel, which has a resolution of 128 x 32px. Audio is observed using a USB microphone, while a push button handles when the system will perform a check to listen for any potential reggaeton. According to Bandini, the Pi is running Raspberry Pi OS. The AI system driving the machine learning aspects of the design is Edge Impulse. With this, Bandini was able to train the Pi to listen for music and more specifically identify whether the song playing is classifiable as reggaeton or not. The official project page is available at Hackster.

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According to a new study, almost half of America's new college graduates are winding up in jobs they didn't need to go to college to get. CBS News reports: If a graduate's first job is in a low-paying field or out-of-line with a worker's interests, it could pigeonhole them into an undesirable role or industry that's hard to escape, according to a new study (PDF) from The Burning Glass Institute and the Strada Institute for the Future of Work. Another study from the HEA Group found that a decade after enrolling in college, attendees of 1 in 4 higher education programs are earning less than $32,000 -- the median annual income for high school graduates. A college degree, in itself, is not a ticket to a higher-paying job, the study shows. "Getting a college degree is viewed as the ticket to the American dream," said [Burning Glass CEO Matt Sigelman], "and it turns out that it's a bust for half of students." The single greatest determinant of post-graduation employment prospects, according to the study, is a college student's major, or primary focus of study. It can be even more important than the type of institution one attends. Choosing a career-oriented major like nursing, as opposed to criminal justice, gives graduates a better shot at actually using, and getting compensated for the skills they acquire. Just 23% of nursing students are underemployed, versus 68% of criminal justice majors. However, focusing on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects is not a guarantee of college-level employment and high wages, the study found. [...] Many college graduates remain underemployed even 10 years after college, the study found. That may be because employers seeking college-level skills also tend to focus on job candidates' recent work experience, placing more emphasis on the latest jobs held by candidates who have spent years in the workforce, versus a degree that was earned a decade prior. "If you come out of school and work for a couple of years as waiter in a restaurant and apply for a college-level job, the employer will look at that work experience and not see relevance," Sigelman said.

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According to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), Canada has proposed new rules that would compel digital platforms to remove online content that features the sexual exploitation of children or intimate images without consent of the individuals involved. From a report: The rules were years in the making, and represent the third and possibly final installment of measures aimed at regulating digital platforms. Measures introduced since 2022 aim to increase the amount of domestic, Canadian-made content on streaming services, such as Netflix, and require digital platforms to help Canadian news-media outlets finance their newsroom operations. The legislation needs to be approved by Canada's Parliament before it takes effect. Canada said its rules are based on concepts introduced by the European Union, the U.K. and Australia. Canadian officials say the proposed measures would apply to social-media platforms, adult-entertainment sites where users can upload content, and live-streaming services. These services, officials said, are expected to expeditiously remove two categories of content: That which sexually exploits a child or an abuse survivor, and intimate content broadcast without an individual's consent. The latter incorporates so-called revenge porn, or the nonconsensual posting or dissemination of intimate images, often after the end of a romantic relationship. Officials said private and encrypted messaging services are excluded from the proposed regulations. Canadian officials said platforms will have a duty to either ensure the material is not published, or take it down once notified. Canada also intends to set up a new agency, the Digital Safety Commission, to enforce the rules, order harmful content taken down, and hold digital services accountable. Platforms that violate the rules could face a maximum penalty of up to 25 million Canadian dollars, or the equivalent of $18.5 million, officials said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A global coalition of democracies is being formed to protect their societies from disinformation campaigns by foreign governments, the US special envoy on the issue has said. James Rubin, the special envoy for non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts at the US state department's global engagement centre (GEC), said the coalition hoped to agree on "definitions for information manipulation versus plain old opinions that other governments are entitled to have even if we disagree with them." The US, UK and Canada have already signed up to a formal framework agreement, and Washington hopes more countries will join. The GEC focuses solely on disinformation by foreign powers. Apart from trying to develop global strategies, it works to expose specific covert disinformation operations, such as a Russian operation in Africa to discredit US health services. The US, UK and Canada signed the framework to counter foreign state manipulation this month with the aim of addressing disinformation as a national security threat that requires coordinated government and civil society responses. "Now is the time for a collective approach to the foreign information manipulation threat that builds a coalition of like-minded countries committed to strengthening resilience and response to information manipulation," the framework says. It also encourages information-sharing and joint data analysis tools to identify covert foreign disinformation. A hugely experienced US official and journalist who has worked with diplomats such as Madeleine Albright in the past, Rubin admitted his first year as special envoy had been one of his most intellectually taxing because of the complex definitions surrounding disinformation. In the continuum between hostile opinion and disinformation, he has tried to identify where and how governments can intervene without limiting free speech. The principle on which he has alighted is deception by foreign powers. "In principle every government should be free to convey their views, but they should have to admit who they are," he said an interview. "We want to promote more fact-based information, but at the same time find ways to label those information operations that are generated by the Chinese government or the Kremlin but to which they don't admit. "In the end that is all I know we can do right now without interfering with a free press. We are not asking for such covert disinformation to be taken down but a way to be found for the source to be labelled."

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Robin George Andrews writes via The New York Times: In 2022, when NASA's $325 million spacecraft crashed into an asteroid named Dimorphos at 14,000 miles per hour, cheers and applause erupted back on Earth. NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission deliberately targeted Dimorphos to change its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos as a dress rehearsal of sorts for thwarting a deadly space rock that might someday head toward Earth. The world's first-ever planetary defense experiment was deemed a triumph: The asteroid's orbit shrank by 33 minutes, far above the minimum threshold of 73 seconds. But what the DART team didn't realize then was just how bizarrely Dimorphos responded to that punch. A new study, published on Monday in Nature Astronomy, has concluded that DART hit Dimorphos so hard that the asteroid changed shape. Simulations of the impact suggest that the spacecraft's death did not excavate a normal, bowl-shaped crater. Instead, it left behind something that resembles a dent. And although the artificial impact blasted millions of tons of rock into space, plenty splashed back onto its sides like tremendous tidal waves. It widened Dimorphos, transforming it from a squat orb into a flat-topped oval -- like an M&M candy. That the asteroid acted like a fluid comes down to its peculiar composition. It's not a solid contiguous rock, but more like "a pile of sand," said Sabina Raducan, a planetary scientist at the University of Bern in Switzerland and the study's lead author. And a low-density asteroid barely held together by its own gravity was never going to respond in a straightforward manner when a van-size spacecraft flew into its face. Dimorphos's response is "completely outside of the realm of physics as we understand it" in our day-to-day lives, said Cristina Thomas, the lead of the mission's observations working group at Northern Arizona University who was not involved with the study. And "this has overarching implications for planetary defense." DART showed that a tiny spacecraft can deflect an asteroid. But the study indicates that crashing a similarly disjointed space rock too forcefully risks fragmenting it, which, in a real asteroid emergency, could create multiple Earthbound asteroids. Planetary defense, as a concept, clearly works. "We know we can do it," said Federica Spoto, an asteroid dynamics researcher at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian, who was not involved with the new study. "But we have to do it right."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: A law firm acting on behalf of the Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford has asked a state court to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) denying minors access to encrypted communication in Meta's Messenger application. The motion for a TRO follows AG's Ford announcement of civil lawsuits on January 30, 2024 against five social media companies, including Meta [PDF], alleging the companies deceptively marketed their services to young people through algorithms that were designed to promote addiction. Nevada was not a party to the two multi-district lawsuits filed against Meta last October by 42 State Attorney General over claims that the social media company knowingly ignored evidence that its Facebook and Instagram services contribute to the mental harm of children and teens. Meta, which lately has been investing in virtual reality and large language models, is also being sued by hundreds of school districts around the US. The Nevada court filing to obtain a TRO follows from AG Ford's initial complaint. The legal claim cites a statement from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that argues Meta's provision of end-to-end encryption in Messenger "without exceptions for child sexual abuse material placed millions of children in grave danger." The initial complaint's presumably supporting claims, however, have been redacted in the publicly viewable copy of the document. The motion for a TRO, which also contains redactions, contends that Meta -- by encrypting Messenger -- has thwarted state officials from enforcing the Nevada Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act. "With this Motion, the State seeks to enjoin Meta from using end-to-end encryption (also called 'E2EE') on Young Users' Messenger communications within the State of Nevada," the court filing says. "This conduct -- which renders it impossible for anyone other than a private message's sender and recipient to know what information the message contains -- serves as an essential tool of child predators and drastically impedes law enforcement efforts to protect children from heinous online crimes, including human trafficking, predation, and other forms of dangerous exploitation." Meta enabled E2EE by default for all users of Messenger in December 2023. But according to the motion for a TRO, "Meta's end-to-end-encryption stymies efforts by Nevada law enforcement, causing needless delay and even risking the spoliation of critical pieces of necessary evidence in criminal prosecutions." The injunction, if granted, would require Meta to disable E2EE for all Messenger users under 18 in Nevada. Presumably that would also affect minors using Messenger who are visiting the Silver State.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Meta will soon begin "collecting anonymized data" from users of its Quest headsets, a move that could see the company aggregating information about hand, body, and eye tracking; camera information; "information about your physical environment"; and information about "the virtual reality events you attend." In an email sent to Quest users Monday, Meta notes that it currently collects "the data required for your Meta Quest to work properly." Starting with the next software update, though, the company will begin collecting and aggregating "anonymized data about... device usage" from Quest users. That anonymized data will be used "for things like building better experiences and improving Meta Quest products for everyone," the company writes. A linked help page on data sharing clarifies that Meta can collect anonymized versions of any of the usage data included in the "Supplemental Meta Platforms Technologies Privacy Policy," which was last updated in October. That document lists a host of personal information that Meta can collect from your headset, including: - "Your audio data, when your microphone preferences are enabled, to animate your avatar's lip and face movement" - "Certain data" about hand, body, and eye tracking, "such as tracking quality and the amount of time it takes to detect your hands and body" - Fitness-related information such as the "number of calories you burned, how long you've been physically active, [and] your fitness goals and achievements" - "Information about your physical environment and its dimensions" such as "the size of walls, surfaces, and objects in your room and the distances between them and your headset" - "Voice interactions" used when making audio commands or dictations, including audio recordings and transcripts that might include "any background sound that happens when you use those services" (these recordings and transcriptions are deleted "immediately" in most cases, Meta writes) - Information about "your activity in virtual reality," including "the virtual reality events you attend" The anonymized collection data is used in part to "analyz[e] device performance and reliability" to "improve the hardware and software that powers your experiences with Meta VR Products." Meta's help page also lists a small subset of "additional data" that headset users can opt out of sharing with Meta. But there's no indication that Quest users can opt out of the new anonymized data collection policies entirely. These policies only seem to apply to users who make use of a Meta account to access their Quest headsets, and those users are also subject to Meta's wider data-collection policies. Those who use a legacy Oculus account are subject to a separate privacy policy that describes a similar but more limited set of data-collection practices.

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Apple has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for refusing to grant trademarks covering the company's augmented-reality software development tools "Reality Composer" and "Reality Converter." Reuters reports: Apple, whose augmented-reality technology is a centerpiece of its newly released Vision Pro headset, asked the court (PDF) on Friday to reverse the USPTO's decision that the phrases were not distinctive enough to receive federal trademark protection. "Consumers must exercise imagination to understand how the nonsensical phrases 'reality composer' and 'reality converter' -- which sound like science fiction impossibilities -- relate to Apple's products," the complaint said. "They are suggestive, just as Burger King is a fast-food chain, not an actual monarch." Apple's Reality Composer and Reality Converter allow developers to create and alter 3-D augmented-reality content for Apple apps. The content is compatible with Apple devices including the Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, which the tech giant began selling earlier this month. Turkish visual-effects company ZeroDensity challenged Apple's trademark applications at the USPTO, arguing that the phrases could not receive federal trademarks because they merely describe what the software does. ZeroDensity also said Apple's trademarks would cause confusion with its own "Reality"-related marks. ZeroDensity, the named defendant in the case, said in a statement on Monday that it was "surprised and concerned by [Apple's] misinterpretation and misrepresentation of our company" and is "resolute in defending our 'Reality' trademarks." A USPTO tribunal agreed with ZeroDensity that Apple's marks were descriptive without addressing whether they would confuse consumers. Apple said in Friday's complaint that its phrases were "made-up terms coined by Apple that do not describe the underlying software development tools." "In contrast, descriptive terms like Raisin Bran or American Airlines straightforwardly describe the goods and services offered under the brand name," Apple said. "As innovative as Apple is, it cannot 'compose' or 'convert' reality." Apple argued that its marks would not cause consumer confusion and accused ZeroDensity of trying to "claim broad rights in the word 'reality,' which no one entity can monopolize."

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Emanuel Maiberg reports via 404 Media: Dozens of Ghost kitchens, restaurants that serve food exclusively by delivery on apps like DoorDash and Grubhub, are selling food that they promote to customers with AI-generated images. It's common for advertisements to stage or edit pictures of food to make it look more enticing, but in these cases the ghost kitchens are showing people pictures of food that literally doesn't exist, and looks nothing like the actual items they're selling, sometimes because the faulty AI is producing physically impossible food items. [...] Some ghost kitchens exist as unmarked commercial kitchens with no actual restaurant you can visit that simply fulfill orders for a variety of brands that only exist on the food delivery services. Other ghost kitchens piggyback on existing, real restaurant kitchens to fulfill orders for those brands that exist only on food delivery apps. [The food from a business on DoorDash called Pasta Lovers] actually comes from Tony's Pizzeria in North Brooklyn, which also fulfills orders for a cheesesteak brand called Philly Cheez, a hero sandwich brand called Hero Mania, and a wrap brand called That's A Wrap. All of these brands deliver food from different ghost kitchens across the country, and all of them feature the same type of AI-generated images to promote their food, some of which looks ridiculous. [...] "We don't allow the use of AI-generated images and if we find a merchant is using any, we will remove those images from their menu," Grubhub, which also operates Seamless, told me in an email. However, at the time of writing the AI-generated images on Seamless I sent the company are still live on its site. "We know how important it is for diners to have realistic expectations of what they are ordering and should expect to receive, which is why we share image guidelines with our partners and our system reviews image submissions before they're allowed on our platform." "DoorDash is committed to showcasing realistic representations of meals that customers would receive when ordering online," DoorDash told me in an email. "Showcasing high-quality, accurate, and realistic menu images is crucial for maintaining customer trust and generating sales through DoorDash Marketplace." "This is all incredibly depressing," concludes Maiberg. "A local pizzeria can't get by unless it makes sandwiches for ghost kitchen brands, the people who make a living taking photographs of food are being displaced by AI tools, and gigantic food delivery apps are still making money by taking a cut from restaurants and screwing over gig delivery drivers." "AI-generated images of food that people can order and eat finally brings us to a shockingly literal manifestation of Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra. Baudrillard would say the Spicy Philly Cheese from Philly Cheez is "never that which conceals the truth -- it is the truth which conceals that there is none."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The FBI and partners from 10 other countries are urging owners of Ubiquiti EdgeRouters to check their gear for signs they've been hacked and are being used to conceal ongoing malicious operations by Russian state hackers. The Ubiquiti EdgeRouters make an ideal hideout for hackers. The inexpensive gear, used in homes and small offices, runs a version of Linux that can host malware that surreptitiously runs behind the scenes. The hackers then use the routers to conduct their malicious activities. Rather than using infrastructure and IP addresses that are known to be hostile, the connections come from benign-appearing devices hosted by addresses with trustworthy reputations, allowing them to receive a green light from security defenses. "In summary, with root access to compromised Ubiquiti EdgeRouters, APT28 actors have unfettered access to Linux-based operating systems to install tooling and to obfuscate their identity while conducting malicious campaigns," FBI officials wrote in an advisory Tuesday. APT28 -- one of the names used to track a group backed by the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate known as GRU -- has been doing just for at least the past four years, the FBI has alleged. Earlier this month, the FBI revealed that it had quietly removed Russian malware from routers in US homes and businesses. The operation, which received prior court authorization, went on to add firewall rules that would prevent APT28 -- also tracked under names including Sofacy Group, Forest Blizzard, Pawn Storm, Fancy Bear, and Sednit -- from being able to regain control of the devices. On Tuesday, FBI officials noted that the operation only removed the malware used by APT28 and temporarily blocked the group using its infrastructure from reinfecting them. The move did nothing to patch any vulnerabilities in the routers or to remove weak or default credentials hackers could exploit to once again use the devices to surreptitiously host their malware. "The US Department of Justice, including the FBI, and international partners recently disrupted a GRU botnet consisting of such routers," they warned. "However, owners of relevant devices should take the remedial actions described below to ensure the long-term success of the disruption effort and to identify and remediate any similar compromises." Those actions include: - Perform a hardware factory reset to remove all malicious files - Upgrade to the latest firmware version - Change any default usernames and passwords - Implement firewall rules to restrict outside access to remote management services

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Fast food chain Wendy's announced it's adopting a similar approach to Uber's Surge Pricing policy by dynamically adjusting the prices of its menu items during peak demand periods at certain locations. The controversial strategy seeks to leverage real-time data to align pricing and demand, enhancing efficiency and potentially improving customer satisfaction. From a report: During a conference call earlier this month, Wendy's CEO Kirk Tanner said the fast-food chain would experiment with dynamic pricing as early as next year. "Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and daypart offerings, along with AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling," he said. "As we continue to show the benefit of this technology in our company-operated restaurants, franchisee interest in digital menu boards should increase, further supporting sales and profit growth across the system." Prices seesaw all the time on the sites of online retailers like Amazon that use algorithms and artificial intelligence to monitor competitors and glean insights into individual shoppers, adjusting prices depending on interest in the product or in the brand, said Timothy Webb, an assistant professor at the University of Delaware's hospitality and sport business management program. Coupons and other offers are also routinely dangled in mobile apps to encourage people to make purchases. "A lot of this stuff is already happening even if you don't realize that it is happening. If you have the Starbucks app and I have the Starbucks app, we probably have different offers," Webb said. "We might not be in the drive-through and they just increased the prices, but we are already paying different prices for the same products." But, he says, Wendy's fans will likely see moderate, not massive, price swings during periods of peak demand. "It's not like $200 or $300 on a flight. This is a hypercompetitive industry. If Wendy's goes up $2 to $3 on a burger at dinner time, I would be shocked. People have too many options. They will just walk down the street and eat at Burger King instead," Webb said. "There will just be little price changes here."

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"Documentation authors at Canonical have launched the Open Documentation Academy to offer an easy way to get started contributing to open-source projects," writes longtime Slashdot reader tykev. From the blog post: Open and inclusive collaboration, and the sharing of ideas, remains the best way to develop software (and to do many other things!), but we also recognise that this "getting involved" step can be difficult. Where do you start? Who do you ask? What needs to be done? We all very much want to help people become open source contributors by building an on-ramp process. It may take some time, and we will need to adapt, but this is exactly why we've started our Open Documentation Academy. To help you get involved, the Open Documentation Academy provides a curated list of documentation tasks. Choose one, let us know, and get started. Tasks include testing and fixing tutorials, updating the outdated, restructuring large documents, and anything else you may want to suggest. Our list is growing, and a big part of the Documentation Academy will be ensuring there's always a wide range of tasks available, across as many projects and technologies as possible. And of course, we're here to help. We'll guide you through your first contributions, provide advice on approaches, and help you build your confidence.

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A federal judge in Texas has granted a temporary order blocking the U.S. government from monitoring the energy usage of cryptocurrency mining operations, stating that the industry had shown it would suffer "irreparable injury" if it was made to comply. The Guardian reports: The US Department of Energy had launched an "eemergency" initiative last month aimed at surveying the energy use of mining operations, which typically use vast amounts of computing power to solve various mathematical puzzles to add new tokens to an online network known as a blockchain, allowing the mining of currency such as bitcoin. The growth of cryptocurrency, and the associated mining of it, has been blamed for a surge in electricity use as data centers have sprung up across the US, even reviving, in some cases, ailing coal plants to help power the mining. [...] "The massive energy consumption of cryptocurrency mining and its rapid growth in the United States threaten to undermine progress towards achieving climate goals, and threaten grids, communities and ratepayers," said Mandy DeRoche, deputy managing attorney of the clean energy program at Earthjustice. Until now, a lack of publicly available information has only benefited an "industry that has thrived in the shadows," DeRoche added. The crypto mining industry, however, has claimed it is the victim of a "politically motivated campaign" by Joe Biden's administration and has, for now, succeeded in averting a survey that it contends is unfairly onerous. "This is an attack against legitimate American businesses with the administration feigning an emergency to score political points," said Lee Bratcher, president the Texas Blockchain Council, one of the groups that sued to stop the survey. "The White House has been clear that they desire to 'to limit or eliminate' bitcoin miners from operating in the United States. "Although bitcoin is resilient and cannot be banned, the administration is seeking to make the lives of bitcoin miners, their employees, and their communities too difficult to bear operating in the United States. This is deeply concerning."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Microplastics have been found in every human placenta tested in a study, leaving the researchers worried about the potential health impacts on developing fetuses. The scientists analyzed 62 placental tissue samples and found the most common plastic detected was polyethylene, which is used to make plastic bags and bottles. A second study revealed microplastics in all 17 human arteries tested and suggested the particles may be linked to clogging of the blood vessels. [...] Prof Matthew Campen, at the University of New Mexico, US, who led the research, said: "If we are seeing effects on placentas, then all mammalian life on this planet could be impacted. That's not good." He said the growing concentration of microplastics in human tissue could explain puzzling increases in some health problems, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), colon cancer in people under 50, and declining sperm counts. A 2021 study found people with IBD had 50% more microplastics in their feces. Campen said he was deeply concerned by the growing global production of plastics because it meant the problem of microplastics in the environment "is only getting worse." The research, published in the Toxicological Sciences journal, found microplastics in all the placenta samples tested, with concentrations ranging from 6.5 to 790 micrograms per gram of tissue. PVC and nylon were the most common plastics detected, after polyethylene. The microplastics were analyzed by using chemicals and a centrifuge to separate them from the tissue, then heating them and analyzing the characteristic chemical signature of each plastic. The same technique was used by scientists at the Capital Medical University in Beijing, China, to detect microplastics in human artery samples. The concentration of microplastics in placentas was especially troubling, Campen said. The tissue grows for only eight months, as it starts to form about a month into pregnancy. "Other organs of your body are accumulating over much longer periods of time," he added.

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