"Google is going to court to help put an end to, or at least limit, the prevalence of phishing scams over text message," reports BGR: Google said it's bringing suit against Lighthouse, an impressively large operation that allegedly provides tools customers can buy to set up their own specialized phishing scams. All told, Google estimates that Lighthouse-affiliated scams in the U.S. have stolen anywhere between 12.7 million and 115 million credit cards. "Bad actors built Lighthouse as a phishing-as-a-service kit to generate and deploy massive SMS phishing attacks," Google notes. "These attacks exploit established brands like E-Z Pass to steal people's financial information." Google's legal action is comprehensive and is intent on completely dismantling Lighthouse's operations. The search giant is bringing claims under RICO, the Lanham Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). RICO, which often comes up in movies and television shows, allows authorities to treat Lighthouse's phishing operation as a broad criminal enterprise as opposed to isolated scams. By using RICO, Google also expands the list of individuals who can be found liable, whether it be the people who started Lighthouse, the people who run it, or even unaffiliated customers who used the company's services. The Lanham Act, for those unaware, targets malicious actors who misappropriate well-known company trademarks in order to confuse consumers. This Lanham Act comes into play because many phishing scams masquerade as legitimate messages from companies like Amazon and FedEx. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, meanwhile, is relevant because scammers typically use stolen credentials to gain unauthorized access to financial systems, something the CFAA is designed to target... The fact that Google is invoking all three of the acts above underscores how serious the company is about putting a stop to SMS-based scams. By using all three, Google's legal attack is more potent and also expands the range of available remedies to include civil damages and criminal penalties. In short, Google isn't merely trying to win a legal case; it's aiming to emphatically and permanently stop Lighthouse in its tracks. Getting even more aggressive, Google says it's also working with the U.S. Congress to pass new anti-scammer legislation, and endorsed these three new bipartisan bills: The Scam Compound Accountability and Mobilization (SCAM) Act "would develop a national strategy to counter scam compounds, enhance sanctions and support survivors of human trafficking within these compounds." The Foreign Robocall Elimination Act "would establish a taskforce focused on how to best block foreign-originated illegal robocalls before they ever reach American consumers." The Guarding Unprotected Aging Retirees from Deception (GUARD) Act "would empower state and local law enforcement by enabling them to utilize federal grant funding to investigate financial fraud and scams specifically targeting retirees. " Thanks to Slashdot reader anderzole for sharing the article.

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The dream of quantum computers has been hampered by the challenge of error correction, writes the Harvard Gazette, since qubits "are inherently susceptible to slipping out of their quantum states and losing their encoded information." But in a newly-published paper, a research team "combined various methods to create complex circuits with dozens of error correction layers" that "suppresses errors below a critical threshold — the point where adding qubits further reduces errors rather than increasing them." "For the first time, we combined all essential elements for a scalable, error-corrected quantum computation in an integrated architecture," said Mikhail Lukin, co-director of the Quantum Science and Engineering Initiative, Joshua and Beth Friedman University Professor, and senior author of the new paper. "These experiments — by several measures the most advanced that have been done on any quantum platform to date — create the scientific foundation for practical large-scale quantum computation..." "There are still a lot of technical challenges remaining to get to very large-scale computer with millions of qubits, but this is the first time we have an architecture that is conceptually scalable," said lead author Dolev Bluvstein, Ph.D. '25, who did the research during his graduate studies at Harvard and is now an assistant professor at Caltech. "It's going to take a lot of effort and technical development, but it's becoming clear that we can build fault-tolerant quantum computers...." Hartmut Neven, vice president of engineering at the Google Quantum AI team, said the new paper came amid an "incredibly exciting" race between qubit platforms. "This work represents a significant advance toward our shared goal of building a large-scale, useful quantum computer," he said... With recent advances, Lukin believes the core elements for building quantum computers are falling into place. "This big dream that many of us had for several decades, for the first time, is really in direct sight," he said. "In theory, a system of 300 quantum bits can store more information than the number of particles in the known universe..." the article points out. "The new paper represents an important advance in a three-decade pursuit of quantum error correction." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

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A new "cold war" between America and China is "pushing leaders to sideline concerns about the dangers of powerful AI models," reports the Wall Street Journal, "including the spread of disinformation and other harmful content, and the development of superintelligent AI systems misaligned with human values..." "Both countries are driven as much by fear as by hope of progress. " In Washington and Silicon Valley, warnings abound that China's "authoritarian AI," left unchecked, will erode American tech supremacy. Beijing is gripped by the conviction that a failure to keep pace in AI will make it easier for the U.S. to cut short China's resurgence as a global power. Both countries believe market share for their companies across the world is up for grabs — and with it, the potential to influence large swaths of the global population. The U.S. still has a clear lead, producing the most powerful AI models. China can't match it in advanced chips and has no answer for the financial firepower of private American investors, who funded AI startups to the tune of $104 billion in the first half of 2025, and are gearing up for more. But it has a massive population of capable engineers, lower costs and a state-led development model that often moves faster than the U.S., all of which Beijing is working to harness to tip the contest in its direction. A new "whole of society" campaign looks to accelerate the construction of computing clusters in areas like Inner Mongolia, where vast solar and wind farms provide plentiful cheap energy, and connect hundreds of data centers to create a shared compute pool — some describe it as a "national cloud" — by 2028. China is also funneling hundreds of billions of dollars into its power grid to support AI training and adoption... "Our lead is probably in the 'months but not years' realm," said Chris McGuire, who helped design U.S. export controls on AI chips while serving on the National Security Council under the Biden administration. Chinese AI models currently rank at or near the top in every task from coding to video generation, with the exception of search, according to Chatbot Arena, a popular crowdsourced ranking platform. China's manufacturing sector, meanwhile, is rocketing past the U.S. in bringing AI into the physical world through robotaxis, autonomous drones and humanoid robots. Given China's progress, McGuire said, the U.S. is "very lucky" to have its advantage in chips... If AI surpasses human intelligence and acquires the ability to improve itself, it could confer unshakable scientific, economic and military superiority on the country that controls it. Short of that, AI's ability to automate tedious tasks and process vast amounts of data quickly promises to supercharge everything from cancer diagnoses to missile defense. With so much at stake, hacking and cyber espionage are likely to get worse, as AI gives hackers more powerful tools, while increasing incentives for state-backed groups to try to steal AI-related intellectual property. As distrust grows, Washington and Beijing will also find it hard, if not impossible, to cooperate in areas like preventing extremist groups from using AI in destructive ways, such as building bioweapons. "The costs of the AI Cold War are already high and will go much higher," said Paul Triolo, a former U.S. government analyst and current technology policy lead at business consulting firm DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group. "A U.S.-China AI arms race becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with neither side able to trust that the other would observe any restrictions on advanced AI capability development...." The article includes an interesting observation from Helen Toner, director of strategy for Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology and a former OpenAI board member. Toner points out "We don't actually know" if boosting computing power with better chips will continue producing more-powerful AI models. So "If performance plateaus," the Journal writes, "despite all the spending by OpenAI and others — a growing concern in Silicon Valley — China has a chance to compete."

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"Media headlines suggesting some slowdown in EV sales are simply incorrect," writes the site Electrek, "and leave out the bigger picture that gas car sales actually are dropping..." Over the course of the last two years or so, sales of battery electric vehicles, while continuing to grow, have posted lower year-over-year percentage growth rates than they had in years prior. EV sales used to grow at 50%+ per year, but for the last couple years, they have grown closer to ~25% per year. This alone is not particularly remarkable — it is inevitable that any growing product or category will show slower percentage growth rates as sales rise, particularly one that has been growing at such a fast rate for so long. In some recent years, we had even seen year-over-year doublings in EV market share (though one of those was 2020->2021, which was anomalous). To expect improvement at that level perpetually would be close to impossible — after 3 years of doubling market share from 2023's 18% number, EVs would account for more than 100% of the global automotive market, which cannot happen... We have seen a global EV sales growth rate of 23% in the first 10 months of this year, according to a report just released by Rho Motion (recently acquired by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence). That includes a +32% bump in Europe, +22% bump in China, +4% in North America, and a big +48% bump in the "rest of the world." Notably, this 23% global growth rate is higher than last year's YTD growth rate, which was 22% at this time... In covering these trends, some journalists have attempted to use the less-wrong phrase "slower growth," showing that EV sales are still growing, but at a lower percentage change than previously seen. But for the first ten months of this year, that isn't true — EV sales are up more in 2025 than in 2024 by a percentage basis. They are also up in raw sales numbers — in 2024, EV sales grew by a larger number than in 2023. And the same is true so far in 2025. Going back to 2023, 10.7 million EVs were sold globally in the first 10 months. Then in 2024, 13.3 million were sold, a difference of 2.6 million. And so far in 2025, 16.5 million EVs have sold, a difference of 3.2 million. Not only are the numbers getting bigger, but the growth in unit sales is getting bigger as well. Even in America, the EV market "has increased so far this year, with 11.7% US EV sales growth YTD." In terms of US hybrid sales, much has been made of customers "shifting from EVs to hybrids," which is also not the case. Conventional gas-hybrid sales are indeed up and plug-in hybrids, which have grown more slowly than gas-hybrids/BEVs, have also shown some growth lately. But gas-hybrid sales have not come at the cost of EV sales, rather at the cost of gas-only car sales. Because that's just the thing: the number of gas-only vehicles being sold worldwide is a number that actually is falling. That number continues to go down year over year. Sales of new gas-powered cars are down by about a quarter from their peak in 2017, and show no signs of recovering... And yet, somehow, virtually every headline you read is about the "EV sales slump," rather than the "gas-car sales slump." The one you keep hearing about isn't happening, but the one you rarely hear about is happening... No matter what region of the world you're in, EV sales were up in the first 10 months of this year.

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From the personal blog of interface expert Bruce Ediger: Early in March 2025, I noticed that a web crawler with a user agent string of meta-externalagent/1.1 (+https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/crawler) was hitting my blog's machine at an unreasonable rate. I followed the URL and discovered this is what Meta uses to gather premium, human-generated content to train its LLMs. I found the rate of requests to be annoying. I already have a PHP program that creates the illusion of an infinite website. I decided to answer any HTTP request that had "meta-externalagent" in its user agent string with the contents of a bork.php generated file... This worked brilliantly. Meta ramped up to requesting 270,000 URLs on May 30 and 31, 2025... After about 3 months, I got scared that Meta's insatiable consumption of Super Great Pages about condiments, underwear and circa 2010 C-List celebs would start costing me money. So I switched to giving "meta-externalagent" a 404 status code. I decided to see how long it would take one of the highest valued companies in the world to decide to go away. The answer is 5 months.

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An anonymous reader shared this post from the gaming news site Aftermath: Concord, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Firewalk Studios' Overwatch-like shooter, was live for just two weeks before it was pulled offline. Though Concord certainly had some dedicated players, it didn't have many — which is why it may be surprising to hear that a group of players are reverse-engineering the game and its servers to bring it back to life. Publisher Sony removed Concord from stores and digital marketplaces, automatically refunded some, and, later, shut down Firewalk Studios. Two hundred or so people were laid off, and any hopes of Concord's return were dashed. Poor sales — estimated to be under 25,000 copies sold — and low player numbers marred the release. Firewalk Studios' game director Ryan Ellis said in a blog post that pieces of the game "resonated with players," but "other aspects of the game and [Concord's] initial launch didn't land the way [Firewalk Studios] intended." Concord wasn't a bad game, but it just didn't generate enough interest with enough players. Now, a group of three hobbyist reverse-engineers, who go by real, Red, and gwog online, are trying to make it playable again... "Sometimes there's enough of the server left in the game, that we can 'activate' that code and make the game believe it's a server," Red said. "We do pretty much always need to fill in the gaps though..." Concord used an anti-tamper software to keep people from cheating, which also creates a problem for people reverse engineering. It's "nearly impossible" to crack, Red said, so the group didn't — they found an exploit to "forcefully decrypt the game's code" to "restore the game and start working on servers...." It's not open to the public, but people can sign up for future tests. Even former Firewalk Studios employees have joined the server. They're excited to see Concord come back to life, too, the developers said. "Friday morning, a video of the playtest was posted to the Concord Reddit page," according to the article. (Though ironically by Friday night YouTube had had removed the video "due to a copyright claim by MarkScan Enforcement."

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Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a Substack post by economist/entrepreneur Skander Garroum: You know that feeling when you're waiting for the cable guy, and they said 'between 8am and 6pm, and you waste your entire day, and they never show up? Now imagine that, except the cable guy is 'electricity,' the day is '50 years,' and you're one of 600 million people. At some point, you stop waiting and figure it out yourself. What's happening across Sub-Saharan Africa right now is the most ambitious infrastructure project in human history, except it's not being built by governments or utilities or World Bank consortiums. It's being built by startups selling solar panels to farmers on payment plans. And it's working. Over 30 million solar products sold in 2024. 400,000 new solar installations every month across Africa. 50% market share captured by companies that didn't exist 15 years ago. Carbon credits subsidizing the cost. IoT chips in every device. 90%+ repayment rates on loans to people earning $2/day. And if you understand what's happening in Africa, you understand the template for how infrastructure will get built everywhere else for the next 50 years.

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It was the first allegation of a crime committed in space — back in 2019. But by 2020 it had led to charges of lying to federal authorities. And now a former Air Force intelligence officer "has pleaded guilty to lying to a federal agent," reports CNBC, "by falsely claiming that her estranged astronaut wife illegally accessed her bank account while aboard the International Space Station for six months, prosecutors in Houston, Texas, said Friday." The guilty plea by Summer Worden, 50, on Thursday comes more than five years after she was indicted in the space case for lying about actions by her wife, Anne McClain, a U.S. Army colonel, West Point graduate and Iraq war combat veteran, while they were in the midst of a divorce. The claim came at a time when Worden said that the couple was engaged in a custody battle over what Worden's then-6-year-old son, who had been conceived through in vitro fertilizationand carried by a surrogate... McClain was aboard the Space Station from December 2018 through June 2019. She recently commanded the SpaceX Crew-10 crew mission to the Space Station from March this year until August. Worden, who remains free on bond, is scheduled to be sentenced on February 12. She faces a maximum possible sentence of up to five years in prison.

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"The International Energy Agency's latest outlook signals that oil demand could keep growing through to the middle of the century," reports CNBC, "reflecting a sharp tonal shift from the world's energy watchdog and raising further questions about the future of fossil fuels." In its flagship World Energy Outlook, the Paris-based agency on Wednesday laid out a scenario in which demand for oil climbs to 113 million barrels per day by 2050, up 13% from 2024 levels. The IEA had previously estimated a peak in global fossil fuel demand before the end of this decade and said that, in order to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, there should be no new investments in coal, oil and gas projects... The IEA's end-of-decade peak oil forecast kick-started a long-running war of words with OPEC, an influential group of oil exporting countries, which accused the IEA of fearmongering and risking the destabilization of the global economy. The IEA's latest forecast of increasing oil demand was outlined in its "Current Policies Scenario" — one of a number of scenarios outlined by the IEA. This one assumes no new policies or regulations beyond those already in place. The CPS was dropped five years ago amid energy market turmoil during the coronavirus pandemic, and its reintroduction follows pressure from the Trump administration... Gregory Brew, an analyst at Eurasia Group's Energy, Climate and Resources team, said the IEA's retreat on peak oil demand signified "a major shift" from the group's position over the last five years. "The justifications offered for the shift include policy changes in the U.S., where slow EV penetration indicates robust oil [consumption], but is also tied to expected increases in petrochemical and aviation fuel in East and Southeast Asia," Brew told CNBC by email. "It's unlikely the agency is adjusting based on political pressure — though there has been some of that, with the Trump administration criticizing the group's supposed bias in favor of renewable energy — and the shift reflects a broader skepticism that oil demand is set to peak any time soon," he added... Alongside its CPS, the IEA also laid out projections under its so-called "Stated Policies Scenario" (STEPS), which reflects the prevailing direction of travel for the global energy system. In this assumption, the IEA said it expects oil demand to peak at 102 million barrels per day around 2030, before gradually declining. Global electric car sales are much stronger under this scenario compared to the CPS. The IEA said its multiple scenarios explore a range of consequences from various policy choices and should not be considered forecasts. Thanks to Slashdot reader magzteel for sharing the news.

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Should we leave space exploration to robots — or prioritize human spaceflight, making us a multiplanetary species? Harvard professor Robin Wordsworth, who's researched the evolution and habitability of terrestrial-type planets, shares his thoughts: In space, as on Earth, industrial structures degrade with time, and a truly sustainable life support system must have the capability to rebuild and recycle them. We've only partially solved this problem on Earth, which is why industrial civilization is currently causing serious environmental damage. There are no inherent physical limitations to life in the solar system beyond Earth — both elemental building blocks and energy from the sun are abundant — but technological society, which developed as an outgrowth of the biosphere, cannot yet exist independently of it. The challenge of building and maintaining robust life-support systems for humans beyond Earth is a key reason why a machine-dominated approach to space exploration is so appealing... However, it's notable that machines in space have not yet accomplished a basic task that biology performs continuously on Earth: acquiring raw materials and utilizing them for self-repair and growth. To many, this critical distinction is what separates living from non-living systems... The most advanced designs for self-assembling robots today begin with small subcomponents that must be manufactured separately beforehand. Overall, industrial technology remains Earth-centric in many important ways. Supply chains for electronic components are long and complex, and many raw materials are hard to source off-world... If we view the future expansion of life into space in a similar way as the emergence of complex life on land in the Paleozoic era, we can predict that new forms will emerge, shaped by their changed environment, while many historical characteristics will be preserved. For machine technology in the near term, evolution in a more life-like direction seems likely, with greater focus on regenerative parts and recycling, as well as increasingly sophisticated self-assembly capabilities. The inherent cost of transporting material out of Earth's gravity well will provide a particularly strong incentive for this to happen. If building space habitats is hard and machine technology is gradually developing more life-like capabilities, does this mean we humans might as well remain Earth-bound forever? This feels hard to accept because exploration is an intrinsic part of the human spirit... To me, the eventual extension of the entire biosphere beyond Earth, rather than either just robots or humans surrounded by mechanical life-support systems, seems like the most interesting and inspiring future possibility. Initially, this could take the form of enclosed habitats capable of supporting closed-loop ecosystems, on the moon, Mars or water-rich asteroids, in the mold of Biosphere 2. Habitats would be manufactured industrially or grown organically from locally available materials. Over time, technological advances and adaptation, whether natural or guided, would allow the spread of life to an increasingly wide range of locations in the solar system. The article ponders the benefits (and the history) of both approaches — with some fasincating insights along the way. "If genuine alien life is out there somewhere, we'll have a much better chance of comprehending it once we have direct experience of sustaining life beyond our home planet."

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"Quantum computing is still years away, but Nvidia just built the bridge that will bring it closer..." argues investment site The Motley Fool, "by linking today's fastest AI GPUs with early quantum processors..." NVIDIA's new hybrid system strengthens communication at microsecond speeds — orders of magnitude faster than before — "allowing AI to stabilize and train quantum machines in real time, potentially pulling major breakthroughs years forward." CUDA-Q, Nvidia's open-source software layer, lets researchers choreograph that link — running AI models, quantum algorithms, and error-correction routines together as one system. That jump allows artificial intelligence to monitor [in real time]... For researchers, that means hundreds of new iterations where there used to be one — a genuine acceleration of discovery. It's the quiet kind of progress engineers love — invisible, but indispensable... Its GPUs (graphics processing units) are already tuned for the dense, parallel calculations these explorations demand, making them the natural partner for any emerging quantum processor... Other companies chase better quantum hardware — superconducting, photonic, trapped-ion — but all of them need reliable coordination with the computing power we already have. By offering that link, Nvidia turns its GPU ecosystem into the operating environment of hybrid computing, the connective tissue between what exists now and what's coming next. And because the system is open, every new lab or start-up that connects strengthens Nvidia's position as the default hub for quantum experimentation... There's also a defensive wisdom in this move. If quantum computing ever matures, it could threaten the same data center model that built Nvidia's empire. CEO Jensen Huang seems intent on making sure that, if the future shifts, Nvidia already sits at its center. By owning the bridge between today's technology and tomorrow's, the company ensures it earns relevance — and revenue — no matter which computing model dominates. So Nvidia's move "isn't about building a quantum computer," the article argues, "it's about owning the bridge every quantum effort will need."

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The Rust Foundation has a responsibility to "shed light on the impact of supporting the often unseen work" that keeps the Rust Project running. So this week they announced a new initiative "to provide consistent, transparent, and long term support for the developers who make the Rust programming language possible." It's the Rust Foundation Maintainers Fund, "an initiative we'll shape in close collaboration with the Rust Project Leadership Council and Project Directors to ensure funding decisions are made openly and with accountability." In the months ahead, we'll define the fund's structure, secure contributions, and work with the Rust Project and community to bring it to life. This work will build on lessons from earlier iterations of our grants and fellowships to create a lasting framework for supporting Rust's maintainers... Over the past several months, through ongoing board discussions and input from the Leadership Council, this initiative has taken shape as a way to help maintainers continue their vital development and review work, and plan for the future... This initiative reflects our commitment to Rust being shaped by its people, guided by open collaboration, and backed by a global network of contributors and partners. The Rust Foundation Maintainers Fund will operate within the governance framework shared between the Rust Project and the Rust Foundation, ensuring alignment and oversight at every level... The Rust Foundation's approach to this initiative will be guided by our structure: as a 501( C)(6) nonprofit, we operate under a mandate for transparency and accountability to the Rust Project, language community, and our members. That means we must develop this fund in coordination with the Rust Project's priorities, ensuring shared governance and long-term viability... Our goal is simple: to help the people building Rust continue their essential work with the support they deserve. That means creating the conditions for long term maintainer roles and ensuring continuity for those whose efforts keep the language stable and evolving. Through the Rust Foundation Maintainers Fund, we aim to address these needs directly. "The more companies using Rust can contribute to the Rust Foundation Maintainers Fund, the more we can keep the language and tooling evolving for the benefit of everyone," says Rust Foundation project director Carol Nichols.

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The nonprofit Dust-to-Digital Foundation is making thousands of historic songs accessible to the public for free through a new partnership with the University of California, Santa Barbara. The songs represent "some of the rarest and most uniquely American music borne from the Jazz Age and the Great Depression," according to the university, and classic blues recordings or tracks by Fiddlin' John Carson and his daughter Moonshine Kate "would have likely been lost to landfills and faded from memory." Launched in 1999 by Lance and April Ledbetter, Dust-to-Digital focused on preserving hard-to-find music. Originally a commercial label producing high-quality box sets (along with CDs, records, and books), it established a nonprofit foundation in 2010, working closely with collectors to digitize and preserve record collections. And there's an interesting story about how they became familiar with library curator David Seubert... Once a relationship is established, Dust-to-Digital sets up special turntables and laptops in a collector's home, with paid technicians painstakingly digitizing and labeling each record, one song at a time. Depending on the size of the collection, the process can take months, even years... In 2006, they heard about Seubert's Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project getting "slashdotted," a term that describes when a website crashes or receives a sudden and debilitating spike in traffic after being mentioned in an article on Slashdot. Here in 2025, the university's library already has over 50,000 songs in a Special Research Collections, which they've been uploading it to a Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) database. ("Recordings in the public domain are also available for free download, in keeping with the UCSB Library's mission for open access.") Over 5,000 more songs from Dust-to-Digital have already been added, says library curator Seubert, and "Thousands more are in the pipeline." One interest detail? The bulk of the new songs come from Joe Bussard, a man whose 75-year obsession with record collecting earned him the name "the king of the record collectors and "the saint of 78s".

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The literary magazine of the Phi Beta Kappa society argues "the replacement of human readers by AI has lately become a real possibility. "In fact, there are good reasons to think that we will soon inhabit a world in which humans still write, but do so mostly for AI." "I write about artificial intelligence a lot, and lately I have begun to think of myself as writing for Al as well," the influential economist Tyler Cowen announced in a column for Bloomberg at the beginning of the year. He does this, he says, because he wants to boost his influence over the world, because he wants to help teach the AIs about things he cares about, and because, whether he wants to or not, he's already writing for AI, and so is everybody else. Large-language-model (LLM) chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude are trained, in part, by reading the entire internet, so if you put anything of yourself online, even basic social-media posts that are public, you're writing for them. If you don't recognize this fact and embrace it, your work might get left behind or lost. For 25 years, search engines knit the web together. Anyone who wanted to know something went to Google, asked a question, clicked through some of the pages, weighed the information, and came to an answer. Now, the chatbot genie does that for you, spitting the answer out in a few neat paragraphs, which means that those who want to affect the world needn't care much about high Google results anymore. What they really want is for the AI to read their work, process it, and weigh it highly in what it says to the millions of humans who ask it questions every minute. How do you get it to do this? For that, we turn to PR people, always in search of influence, who are developing a form of writing (press releases and influence campaigns are writing) that's not so much search-engine-optimized as chatbot-optimized. It's important, they say, to write with clear structure, to announce your intentions, and especially to include as many formatted sections and headings as you can. In other words, to get ChatGPT to pay attention, you must write more like ChatGPT. It's also possible that, since LLMs understand natural language in a way traditional computer programs don't, good writing will be more privileged than the clickbait Google has succumbed to: One refreshing discovery PR experts have made is that the bots tend to prioritize information from high-quality outlets. Tyler Cowen also wrote in his Bloomberg column that "If you wish to achieve some kind of intellectual immortality, writing for the Als is probably your best chance.... Give the Als a sense not just of how you think, but how you feel — what upsets you, what you really treasure. Then future Al versions of you will come to life that much more, attracting more interest." Has AI changed the reasons we write? The Phi Beta Kappa magazine is left to consider the possibility that "power over a superintelligent beast and resurrection are nothing to sneeze at" — before offering another thought. "The most depressing reason to write for AI is that unlike most humans, AIs still read. They read a lot. They read everything. Whereas, aided by an AI no more advanced than the TikTok algorithm, humans now hardly read anything at all..."

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In 2022 the iPhone 14 featured emergency satellite service, and there's now support for roadside assistance and the ability to send and receive text messages. But for future iPhones, Apple is now reportedly working on five new satellite features, reports LiveMint: As per Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is building an API that would allow developers to add satellite connections to their own apps. However, the implementation is said to depend on app makers, and not every feature or service may be compatible with this system. The iPhone maker is also reportedly working on bringing satellite connectivity to Apple Maps, which would give users the chance to navigate without having access to a SIM card or Wi-Fi. The company is also said to be working on improved satellite messages that could support sending photos and not be limited to just text messages. Apple currently relies on the satellite network run by Globalstar to power current features on iPhones. However, the company is said to be exploring a potential sale, and Elon Musk's SpaceX could be a possible purchaser. The Mac Observer notes Bloomberg also reported Apple "has discussed building its own satellite service instead of depending on partners." And while some Apple executives pushed back, "the company continues to fund satellite research and infrastructure upgrades with the goal of offering a broader range of features." And "Future iPhones will use satellite links to extend 5G coverage in low-signal regions, ensuring that users remain connected even when cell towers are out of range.... Apple's slow but steady progress shows how the company wants iPhone satellite technology to move from emergency use to everyday convenience."

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"For months, a small company in San Francisco has been pursuing a secretive project: the birth of a genetically engineered baby," reports the Wall Street Journal: Backed by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and his husband, along with Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, the startup — called Preventive — has been quietly preparing what would amount to a biological first. They are working toward creating a child born from an embryo edited to prevent a hereditary disease.... Editing genes in embryos with the intention of creating babies from them is banned in the U.S. and many countries. Preventive has been searching for places to experiment where embryo editing is allowed, including the United Arab Emirates, according to correspondence reviewed by The Wall Street Journal... Preventive is in the vanguard of a growing number of startups, funded by some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley, that are pushing the boundaries of fertility and working to commercialize reproductive genetic technologies. Some are working on embryo editing, while others are already selling genetic screening tools that seek to account for the influence of dozens or hundreds of genes on a trait. They say their ultimate goal is to produce babies who are free of genetic disease and resilient against illnesses. Some say they can also give parents the ability to choose embryos that will have higher IQs and preferred traits such as height and eye color. Armstrong, the cryptocurrency billionaire, is leading the charge to make embryo editing a reality. He has told people that gene-editing technology could produce children who are less prone to heart disease, with lower cholesterol and stronger bones to prevent osteoporosis. According to documents and people briefed on his plans, he is already an investor or in talks with embryo editing ventures... After the Journal approached people close to the company last month to ask about its work, Preventive announced on its website that it had raised $30 million in investment to explore embryo editing. The statement pledged not to advance to human trials "if safety cannot be established through extensive research..." Other embryo editing startups are Manhattan Genomics, co-founded by Thiel Fellow Cathy Tie, and Bootstrap Bio, which plans to conduct tests in Honduras. Both companies are in early stages. The article notes the only known instance of children born from edited embryos was in 2018, when Chinese scientist He Jiankui "shocked the world with news that he had produced three children genetically altered as embryos to be immune to HIV. He was sentenced to prison in China for three years for the illegal practice of medicine. "He hasn't publicly shared the children's identities but says they are healthy.

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UPDATE (1:16 PST) Today's launch has been scrubbed due to weather, and Blue Origin is now reviewing opportunities for new launch windows. Sunday Morning Blue Origin livestreamed the planned launch of its New Glenn rocket, which will carry a very unique mission for NASA. "Twin spacecraft are set to take off on an unprecedented, winding journey to Mars," reports CNN, "where they will investigate why the barren red planet began to lose its atmosphere billions of years ago." By observing two Mars locations simultaneously, this mission can measure how Mars responds to space weather in real time — and how the Martian magnetosphere changes... Called EscaPADE, the mission will aim for an orbital trajectory that has never been attempted before, according to aerospace company Advanced Space, which is supporting the project. If successful, it could be a crucial case study that can allow extraordinary flexibility for planetary science missions down the road. The robotic mission plans to spend a year idling in an orbital backroad before heading to its target destination... [R]ather than turning toward Mars, the two orbiters will instead aim for Lagrange Point 2, or L2 — a cosmic balance point about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth. Lagrange points are special because they act as gravitational wells in which the pull of the sun and Earth are in perfect balance. The conditions can allow spacecraft to linger without being dragged away... The spacecraft will then loop endlessly in a kidney bean-shaped orbit around L2 until next year's Mars transfer window opens. This "launch and loiter" project is part of NASA's SIMPLEx [Small, Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration] program, which seeks high-value missions for less money, notes CNN. "EscaPADE's cost was less than $100 million, compared with the roughly $300 million to $600 million price tags of other NASA satellites orbiting Mars." "Blue Origin is also attempting to land and recover New Glenn's first-stage booster," notes another CNN article.

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After the Python Software Foundation rejected a $1.5 million grant because it restricted DEI activity, "a flood of new donations followed," according to a new report. By Friday they'd raised over $157,000, including 295 new Supporting Members paying an annual $99 membership fee, says PSF executive director Deb Nicholson. "It doesn't quite bridge the gap of $1.5 million, but it's incredibly impactful for us, both financially and in terms of feeling this strong groundswell of support from the community." Could that same security project still happen if new funding materializes? The PSF hasn't entirely given up. "The PSF is always looking for new opportunities to fund work benefiting the Python community," Nicholson told me in an email last week, adding pointedly that "we have received some helpful suggestions in response to our announcement that we will be pursuing." And even as things stand, the PSF sees itself as "always developing or implementing the latest technologies for protecting PyPI project maintainers and users from current threats," and it plans to continue with that commitment. The Python Software Foundation was "astounded and deeply appreciative at the outpouring of solidarity in both words and actions," their executive director wrote in a new blog post this week, saying the show of support "reminds us of the community's strength." But that post also acknowledges the reality that the Python Software Foundation's yearly revenue and assets (including contributions from major donors) "have declined, and costs have increased,..." Historically, PyCon US has been a source of revenue for the PSF, enabling us to fund programs like our currently paused Grants Program... Unfortunately, PyCon US has run at a loss for three years — and not from a lack of effort from our staff and volunteers! Everyone has been working very hard to find areas where we can trim costs, but even with those efforts, inflation continues to surge, and changing U.S. and economic conditions have reduced our attendance... Because we have so few expense categories (the vast majority of our spending goes to running PyCon US, the Grants Program, and our small 13-member staff), we have limited "levers to pull" when it comes to budgeting and long-term sustainability... While Python usage continues to surge, "corporate investment back into the language and the community has declined overall. The PSF has longstanding sponsors and partners that we are ever grateful for, but signing on new corporate sponsors has slowed." (They're asking employees at Python-using companies to encourage sponsorships.) We have been seeking out alternate revenue channels to diversify our income, with some success and some challenges. PyPI Organizations offers paid features to companies (PyPI features are always free to community groups) and has begun bringing in monthly income. We've also been seeking out grant opportunities where we find good fits with our mission.... We currently have more than six months of runway (as opposed to our preferred 12 months+ of runway), so the PSF is not at immediate risk of having to make more dramatic changes, but we are on track to face difficult decisions if the situation doesn't shift in the next year. Based on all of this, the PSF has been making changes and working on multiple fronts to combat losses and work to ensure financial sustainability, in order to continue protecting and serving the community in the long term. Some of these changes and efforts include: — Pursuing new sponsors, specifically in the AI industry and the security sector — Increasing sponsorship package pricing to match inflation — Making adjustments to reduce PyCon US expenses — Pursuing funding opportunities in the US and Europe — Working with other organizations to raise awareness — Strategic planning, to ensure we are maximizing our impact for the community while cultivating mission-aligned revenue channels The PSF's end-of-year fundraiser effort is usually run by staff based on their capacity, but this year we have assembled a fundraising team that includes Board members to put some more "oomph" behind the campaign. We'll be doing our regular fundraising activities; we'll also be creating a unique webpage, piloting temporary and VERY visible pop-ups to python.org and PyPI.org, and telling more stories from our Grants Program recipients... Keep your eyes on the PSF Blog, the PSF category on Discuss, and our social media accounts for updates and information as we kick off the fundraiser this month. Your boosts of our posts and your personal shares of "why I support the PSF" stories will make all the difference in our end-of-year fundraiser. If this post has you all fired up to personally support the future of Python and the PSF right now, we always welcome new PSF Supporting Members and donations.

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Blue Origin is livestreaming the launch of its New Glenn rocket, which would carry a very unique mission for NASA. "Twin spacecraft are set to take off on an unprecedented, winding journey to Mars," reports CNN, "where they will investigate why the barren red planet began to lose its atmosphere billions of years ago." By observing two Mars locations simultaneously, this mission can measure how Mars responds to space weather in real time — and how the Martian magnetosphere changes... Called EscaPADE, the mission will aim for an orbital trajectory that has never been attempted before, according to aerospace company Advanced Space, which is supporting the project. If successful, it could be a crucial case study that can allow extraordinary flexibility for planetary science missions down the road. The robotic mission plans to spend a year idling in an orbital backroad before heading to its target destination... [R]ather than turning toward Mars, the two orbiters will instead aim for Lagrange Point 2, or L2 — a cosmic balance point about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth. Lagrange points are special because they act as gravitational wells in which the pull of the sun and Earth are in perfect balance. The conditions can allow spacecraft to linger without being dragged away... The spacecraft will then loop endlessly in a kidney bean-shaped orbit around L2 until next year's Mars transfer window opens. This "launch and loiter" project is part of NASA's SIMPLEx [Small, Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration] program, which seeks high-value missions for less money, notes CNN. "EscaPADE's cost was less than $100 million, compared with the roughly $300 million to $600 million price tags of other NASA satellites orbiting Mars." "Blue Origin is also attempting to land and recover New Glenn's first-stage booster," notes another CNN article.

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"According to court filings and interviews with lawyers and scholars, the legal profession in recent months has increasingly become a hotbed for AI blunders," reports the New York Times: Earlier this year, a lawyer filed a motion in a Texas bankruptcy court that cited a 1985 case called Brasher v. Stewart. Only the case doesn't exist. Artificial intelligence had concocted that citation, along with 31 others. A judge blasted the lawyer in an opinion, referring him to the state bar's disciplinary committee and mandating six hours of A.I. training. That filing was spotted by Robert Freund, a Los Angeles-based lawyer, who fed it to an online database that tracks legal A.I. misuse globally. Mr. Freund is part of a growing network of lawyers who track down A.I. abuses committed by their peers, collecting the most egregious examples and posting them online. The group hopes that by tracking down the A.I. slop, it can help draw attention to the problem and put an end to it... [C]ourts are starting to map out punishments of small fines and other discipline. The problem, though, keeps getting worse. That's why Damien Charlotin, a lawyer and researcher in France, started an online database in April to track it. Initially he found three or four examples a month. Now he often receives that many in a day. Many lawyers... have helped him document 509 cases so far. They use legal tools like LexisNexis for notifications on keywords like "artificial intelligence," "fabricated cases" and "nonexistent cases." Some of the filings include fake quotes from real cases, or cite real cases that are irrelevant to their arguments. The legal vigilantes uncover them by finding judges' opinions scolding lawyers... Court-ordered penalties "are not having a deterrent effect," said Freund, who has publicly flagged more than four dozen examples this year. "The proof is that it continues to happen."

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