A portal linking New York City to Dublin via a livestream has been temporarily shut down after inappropriate behavior ensued, according to the Dublin City Council. From a report: Less than a week after the 24/7 visual art installation was put in place, officials have opted to close it down temporarily after people began to flash each other, grind on the portal, and one person even shared pictures of the twin tower attack to people in New York City. Alternatively, the portal had also been the site of reunions with old friends and even a proposal, with many documenting their experience with the installation online. The Dublin City Council said that although those engaged in the inappropriate behavior were few and far between, videos of said behavior went viral online. "While we cannot control all of these actions, we are implementing some technical solutions to address this and these will go live in the next 24 hours," the council said in a Monday statement. "We will continue to monitor the situation over the coming days with our partners in New York to ensure that portals continue to deliver a positive experience for both cities and the world."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google's Gemini AI often just feels like a chatbot built into a text-input field, but you can really start to do special things when you give it access to a ton of data. Gemini in Gmail will soon be able to search through your entire backlog of emails and show a summary in a sidebar. That's simple to describe but solves a huge problem with email: even searching brings up a list of email subjects, and you have to click-through to each one just to read it. Having an AI sift through a bunch of emails and provide a summary sounds like a huge time saver and something you can't do with any other interface. Google's one-minute demo of this feature showed a big blue Gemini button at the top right of the Gmail web app. Tapping it opens the normal chatbot sidebar you can type in. Asking for a summary of emails from a certain contact will get you a bullet-point list of what has been happening, with a list of "sources" at the bottom that will jump you right to a certain email. In the last second of the demo, the user types, "Reply saying I want to volunteer for the parent's group event," hits "enter," and then the chatbot instantly, without confirmation, sends an email.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Marc Whitten, Unity Create's chief product and technology officer, is stepping down on June 1, 2024, following the company's contentious Runtime Fee policy. Whitten will assist with the transition until December 31, 2024. The now-discarded Runtime Fee, announced in September 2023, faced severe backlash from developers who viewed it as a punitive per-install tariff. Unity reworked the fee and acknowledged its lack of communication with developers. CEO John Riccitiello also departed in October 2023, succeeded by Matthew Bromberg. Upon resignation, Whitten will receive a total of $814,801 in various payouts and benefits.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Among Google's swath of new AI models and tools announced today, the company is also expanding its AI content watermarking and detection technology to work across two new mediums. The Verge: Google's DeepMind CEO, Demis Hassabis, took the stage for the first time at the Google I/O developer conference on Tuesday to talk not only about the team's new AI tools, like the Veo video generator, but also about the new upgraded SynthID watermark imprinting system. It can now mark video that was digitally generated, as well as AI-generated text. [...] Google had also enabled SynthID to inject inaudible watermarks into AI-generated music that was made using DeepMind's Lyria model. SynthID is just one of several AI safeguards in development to combat misuse by the tech, safeguards that the Biden administration is directing federal agencies to build guidelines around.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

samleecole writes: For the last decade, farmers have been warning that John Deere, a company celebrated by farmers, country musicians, and politicians, has been doing something else very American: Concentrating power, stripping away the ownership rights of people who buy their products, and adding a bevy of artificial, software-based repair restrictions that have effectively created a regime in which farmers can no longer fix their own tractors, combines, harvesters, and other agricultural equipment. Farmers have resorted to pirating John Deere's software and firmware on underground forums and torrent sites, and have used software cracked by Ukrainian pirates in order to simply fix the things they own. Farmers often have to wait days or weeks for an "authorized" John Deere dealership to come to their farms to repair their equipment, meanwhile their crops die on the vine. For years, very little happened to slow down John Deere's march toward total control of the repair market. But interviews with farmers, activists, and lawyers, and a review of court records reveal a turn in the story: There is increased scrutiny on Deere's repair practices not just in this class action lawsuit, but from state legislators, the White House, and a series of federal agencies. The walls on Deere's repair monopoly may finally be closing in.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is shaking up Search. On Tuesday, the company announced big new AI-powered changes to the world's dominant search engine at I/O, Google's annual conference for developers. From a report: With the new features, Google is positioning Search as more than a way to simply find websites. Instead, the company wants people to use its search engine to directly get answers and help them with planning events and brainstorming ideas. "[With] generative AI, Search can do more than you ever imagined," wrote Liz Reid, vice president and head of Google Search, in a blog post. "So you can ask whatever's on your mind or whatever you need to get done -- from researching to planning to brainstorming -- and Google will take care of the legwork." Google's changes to Search, the primary way that the company makes money, are a response to the explosion of generative AI ever since OpenAI's ChatGPT released at the end of 2022. [...] Starting today, Google will show complete AI-generated answers in response to most search queries at the top of the results page in the US. Google first unveiled the feature a year ago at Google I/O in 2023, but so far, anyone who wanted to use the feature had to sign up for it as part of the company's Search Labs platform that lets people try out upcoming features ahead of their general release. Google is now making AI Overviews available to hundreds of millions of Americans, and says that it expects it to be available in more countries to over a billion people by the end of the year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: At a privately held event, Google recently demonstrated a special build of Chromium OS -- code-named "ferrochrome" -- running in a virtual machine on a Pixel 8. However, Chromium OS wasn't shown running on the phone's screen itself. Rather, it was projected to an external display, which is possible because Google recently enabled display output on its Pixel 8 series. Time will tell if Google is thinking of positioning Chrome OS as a platform for its desktop mode ambitions and Samsung DeX rival.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The person who claimed to have stolen the physical addresses of 49 million Dell customers appears to have taken more data from a different Dell portal, TechCrunch reported Tuesday. From the report: The newly compromised data includes names, phone numbers and email addresses of Dell customers. This personal data is contained in customer "service reports," which also include information on replacement hardware and parts, comments from on-site engineers, dispatch numbers, and in some cases diagnostic logs uploaded from the customer's computer. Several reports seen by TechCrunch contain pictures apparently taken by customers and uploaded to Dell for seeking technical support. Some of these pictures contain metadata revealing the precise GPS coordinates of the location where the customer took the photos, according to a sample of the scraped data obtained by TechCrunch.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta is shutting down Workplace, the tool it sold to businesses that combined social and productivity features, according to messages to customers obtained by Axios and confirmed by Meta. From the report:Meta has been cutting jobs and winnowing its product line for the last few years while investing billions first in the metaverse and now in AI. Micah Collins, Meta's senior director of product management, sent a message to customers alerting them of the shutdown. Collins said customers can use Workplace through September 2025, when it will become available only to download or read existing data. The service will shut down completely in 2026. Workplace was formerly Facebook at Work, and launched in its current form in 2016. In 2021 the company reported it had 7 million paid subscribers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The developers of team-based shooter Marvel Rivals have apologized for a contract clause that made creators promise not to provide "subjective negative reviews of the game" in exchange for early access to a closed alpha test. From a report: The controversial early access contract gained widespread attention over the weekend when streamer Brandon Larned shared a portion on social media. In the "non-disparagement" clause shared by Larned, creators who are provided with an early download code are asked not to "make any public statements or engage in discussions that are detrimental to the reputation of the game." In addition to the "subjective negative review" example above, the clause also specifically prohibits "making disparaging or satirical comments about any game-related material" and "engaging in malicious comparisons with competitors or belittling the gameplay or differences of Marvel Rivals."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A panel of judges in the Netherlands has found Alexey Pertsev, one of the developers behind crypto anonymizing tool Tornado Cash, guilty of money laundering. Wired: Over the course of two days in March, the Russian national was tried on the allegation that the tool he developed had allowed criminals -- among them hackers with ties to North Korea -- to freely launder $1.2 billion in stolen cryptocurrency. "The management of Tornado Cash welcomed the bank robbers with open arms," the prosecutors wrote in a March court filing. Dutch judges sentenced Pertsev to five years and four months in prison on Tuesday, which was the term requested by prosecutors in the case. "With Tornado Cash, the defendant created a shortcut for financing crimes and terrorism," said the court in a statement, translated from Dutch. "He chose to look away from the abuse and did not take any responsibility." The purpose of tools like Tornado Cash, known as crypto mixers or tumblers, is to mask the origin and destination of users' coins. Funds belonging to many parties are pooled, jumbled up, and spat out into brand-new wallets, by which time it is no longer clear whose crypto is whose. These services are promoted as a way to improve the level of privacy available to crypto users, but have been readily co-opted for the purpose of money laundering. On August 8, 2022, Tornado Cash was sanctioned in the United States, making it illegal for US citizens to use the service. Any product that "indiscriminately facilitates anonymous transactions," wrote the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, represents a "threat to US national security." Two days later, Pertsev was arrested in the Netherlands, where he resided. Money laundering activity, the Dutch prosecutors claim, accounted for more than 30 percent of the funds that passed through Tornado Cash between 2019 and 2022. [...] Pertsev built his defense on the argument that Tornado Cash, which remains in operation, is under nobody's control -- including his own -- as a piece of software that runs on the Ethereum blockchain, a distributed network of computers. Further reading: Coinbase Employees and Ethereum Backers Sue US Treasury Over Tornado Cash Sanctions (September 2022).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AWS CEO Adam Selipsky is stepping down, effective June 3, according to an email from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Matt Garman, SVP of AWS sales, marketing, and global services at Amazon, will replace Selipsky as CEO.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI is hitting the global labour market "like a tsunami" International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Monday. AI is likely to impact 60% of jobs in advanced economies and 40% of jobs around the world in the next two years, Georgieva told an event in Zurich. From a report: "We have very little time to get people ready for it, businesses ready for it," she told the event organised by the Swiss Institute of International Studies, associated to the University of Zurich. "It could bring tremendous increase in productivity if we manage it well, but it can also lead to more misinformation and, of course, more inequality in our society."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple and Google have launched a new industry standard called "Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers" to combat the misuse of Bluetooth trackers for stalking. Starting Monday, iPhone and Android users will receive alerts when an unknown Bluetooth device is detected moving with them. The move comes after numerous cases of trackers like Apple's AirTags being used for malicious purposes. Several Bluetooth tag companies have committed to making their future products compatible with the new standard. Apple and Google said they will continue collaborating with the Internet Engineering Task Force to further develop this technology and address the issue of unwanted tracking.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is attempting to solve the hassle of coordinating with colleagues on when everyone will be in the office. It's a problem that emerged with the increase in hybrid and flexible work after the recent covid-19 pandemic, with workers spending less time in the office. Microsoft Places is an AI-powered app that goes into preview today and should help businesses that rely on Outlook and Microsoft Teams to better coordinate in-office time together. "When employees get to the office, they don't want to be greeted by a sea of empty desks -- they want face-time with their manager and the coworkers they collaborate with most frequently," says Microsoft's corporate vice president of AI at work, Jared Spataro, in a blog post. "With Places, you can more easily coordinate across coworkers and spaces in the office."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Meta Platforms is exploring developing AI-powered earphones with cameras, which the company hopes could be used to identify objects and translate foreign languages, according to three current employees. Meta's work on a new AI device comes as several tech companies look to develop AI wearables, and after Meta added an AI assistant to its Ray-Ban smart glasses. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has seen several possible designs for the device but has not been satisfied with them, one of the employees said. It's unclear if the final design will be in-ear earbuds or over-the-ear headphones. Internally, the project goes by the name Camerabuds. The timeline is also unclear. Company leaders had expected a design to be approved in the first quarter, one of the people said. But employees have identified multiple potential problems with the project, including that long hair may cover the cameras on the earbuds. Also, putting a camera and batteries into tiny devices could make the earbuds bulky and risk making them uncomfortably hot. Attaching discreet cameras to a wearable device may also raise privacy concerns, as Google learned with Google Glass.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The default pasting behavior of Microsoft Word is a nightmare, and has been forever. If you want to add a text or image using the standard option, you can easily mess up the entire formatting in the text if a completely different font suddenly appears. After many years of complaints, Microsoft is finally listening to user feedback and changing the default behavior when pasting in Word. From now on, the source's formatting will no longer be automatically retained. Instead, "Merge formatting" will be the new default for everyone, as Microsoft explained in a blog post this week. This means that after the update, newly pasted text will take on the font size, font type, and color of the text written in Word. However, special features such as lists or italicized elements will be retained. If you want these elements to be automatically adapted to the Word text, you must select the option "Keep text only."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI unveiled its latest foundation model, GPT-4o, and a ChatGPT desktop app at its Spring Updates event on Monday. GPT-4o, which will be available to all free users, boasts the ability to reason across voice, text, and vision, according to OpenAI's chief technology officer Mira Murati. The model can respond in real-time, detect emotion, and adjust its voice accordingly. Developers will have access to GPT-4o through OpenAI's API at half the price and twice the speed of its predecessor, GPT-4 Turbo. Further reading: VentureBeat.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mspohr shares a report: The solar storm that brought the aurora borealis to large parts of the United States this weekend also broke critical GPS and precision farming functionality in tractors and agricultural equipment during a critical point of the planting season, 404 Media has learned. These outages caused many farmers to fully stop their planting operations for the moment. One chain of John Deere dealerships warned farmers that the accuracy of some of the systems used by tractors are "extremely compromised," and that farmers who planted crops during periods of inaccuracy are going to face problems when they go to harvest, according to text messages obtained by 404 Media and an update posted by the dealership. The outages highlight how vulnerable modern tractors are to satellite disruptions, which experts have been warning about for years. "All the tractors are sitting at the ends of the field right now shut down because of the solar storm," Kevin Kenney, a farmer in Nebraska, told me. "No GPS. We're right in the middle of corn planting. I'll bet the commodity markets spike Monday." Specifically, some GPS systems were temporarily knocked offline. This caused intermittent connections and accuracy problems with "Real-Time Kinematic" (RTK) systems, which connect to John Deere "StarFire" receivers that are in modern tractors and agricultural equipment. RTK systems use GPS plus a stream of constantly-updating "correction" data from a fixed point on the ground to achieve centimeter-level positional accuracy for planting crops, tilling fields, spraying fertilizer and herbicide, etc.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.