An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Oil and gas equipment intended to cut methane emissions is preventing scientists from accurately detecting greenhouse gases and pollutants, a satellite image investigation has revealed. Energy companies operating in countries such as the US, UK, Germany and Norway appear to have installed technology that could stop researchers from identifying methane, carbon dioxide emissions and pollutants at industrial facilities involved in the disposal of unprofitable natural gas, known in the industry as flaring. Flares are used by fossil fuel companies when capturing the natural gas would cost more than they can make by selling it. They release carbon dioxide and toxic pollutants when they burn as well as cancer-causing chemicals. Despite the health risks, regulators sometimes prefer flaring to releasing natural gas -- which is 90% methane -- directly into the atmosphere, known as "venting". The World Bank, alongside the EU and other regulators, have been using satellites for years to find and document gas flares, asking energy companies to find ways of capturing the gas instead of burning or venting it. The bank set up the Zero Routine Flaring 2030 initiative at the Paris climate conference to eradicate unnecessary flaring, and its latest report stated that flaring decreased by 3% globally from 2021 to 2022. But since the initiative, "enclosed combustors" have begun appearing in the same countries that promised to end flaring. Experts say enclosed combustors are functionally the same as flares, except the flame is hidden. Tim Doty, a former regulator at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said: "Enclosed combustors are basically a flare with an internal flare tip that you don't see. Enclosed flaring is still flaring. It's just different infrastructure that they're allowing. "Enclosed flaring is, in truth, probably less efficient than a typical flare. It's better than venting, but going from a flare to an enclosed flare or a vapor combustor is not an improvement in reducing emissions." The only method of detecting flaring globally is by using satellite-mounted tools called Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite of detectors (VIIRS), which find flares by comparing heat signatures with bright spots of light visible from space. But when researchers tried to replicate the database, they saw that the satellites were not picking up the enclosed flares. Without the satellite data, countries were forced to rely mostly on self-disclosed reporting from oil and gas companies, researchers said. Environmentalists fear the research community's ability to understand pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector could be jeopardized.

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Senior Department arms control official Paul Dean on Thursday urged China and Russia to declare that artificial intelligence would never make decisions on deploying nuclear weapons. Washington had made a "clear and strong commitment" that humans had total control over nuclear weapons, said Dean. Britain and France have made similar commitments. Reuters reports: "We would welcome a similar statement by China and the Russian Federation," said Dean, principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence and Stability. "We think it is an extremely important norm of responsible behaviour and we think it is something that would be very welcome in a P5 context," he said, referring to the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

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Apple reported fiscal second-quarter earnings that topped estimates, despite a 10% drop in iPhone sales. The company also announced that its board had authorized $110 billion in share repurchases, "a 22% increase over last year's $90 billion authorization," notes CNBC. "It's the largest buyback in history, ahead of Apple's previous repurchases." From the report: Apple did not provide formal guidance, but Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC's Steve Kovach that overall sales would grow in the "low single digits" during the June quarter. Apple posted $81.8 billion in revenue during the year-ago June quarter and LSEG analysts were looking for a forecast of $83.23 billion. On an earnings call with analysts, Apple finance chief Luca Maestri said the company expected the current quarter will deliver double-digit year-over-year percentage growth in iPad sales. What's more, he said the Services division is forecast to continue growing at about the current high rate it's achieved during the past two quarters. Apple reported net income of $23.64 billion, or $1.53 per share, down 2% from $24.16 billion, or $1.52 per share, in the year-earlier period. Cook told CNBC that sales in the fiscal second quarter suffered from a difficult comparison to the year-earlier period, when the company realized $5 billion in delayed iPhone 14 sales from Covid-based supply issues. "If you remove that $5 billion from last year's results, we would have grown this quarter on a year-over-year basis," Cook said. "And so that's how we look at it internally from how the company is performing." Apple said iPhone sales fell nearly 10% to $45.96 billion, suggesting weak demand for the current generation of smartphones, which were released in September. The sales were in line with analyst estimates, and Cook said that without last year's increased sales, iPhone revenue would have been flat. Mac sales were up 4% to $7.45 billion, but they are still below the segment's high-water mark set in 2022. Cook said sales were driven by the company's new MacBook Air models which were released with an upgraded M3 chip in March. Other Products, which is how Apple reports sales of its Apple Watch and AirPods headphones, was down 10% year over year to $7.9 billion.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent, published last month: Humans now share the web equally with bots, according to a major new report -- as some fear that the internet is dying. In recent months, the so-called "dead internet theory" has gained new popularity. It suggests that much of the content online is in fact automatically generated, and that the number of humans on the web is dwindling in comparison with bot accounts. Now a new report from cyber security company Imperva suggests that it is increasingly becoming true. Nearly half, 49.6 per cent, of all internet traffic came from bots last year, its "Bad Bot Report" indicates. That is up 2 percent in comparison with last year, and is the highest number ever seen since the report began in 2013. In some countries, the picture is worse. In Ireland, 71 per cent of internet traffic is automated, it said. Some of that rise is the result of the adoption of generative artificial intelligence and large language models. Companies that build those systems use bots scrape the internet and gather data that can then be used to train them. Some of those bots are becoming increasingly sophisticated, Imperva warned. More and more of them come from residential internet connections, which makes them look more legitimate. "Automated bots will soon surpass the proportion of internet traffic coming from humans, changing the way that organizations approach building and protecting their websites and applications," said Nanhi Singh, general manager for application security at Imperva. "As more AI-enabled tools are introduced, bots will become omnipresent."

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"Players who made Steam purchases of Helldivers 2 are now, months after the fact, being told by Sony that their games will be useless unless linked to a PSN account," writes longtime Slashdot reader Baron_Yam. From a report: Publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment announced today that Helldivers 2 players on Steam will soon be required to link their in-game profiles to a PlayStation Network account -- a feature that was optional at launch due to "technical issues" -- or risk losing access to the game. SIE explained that account linking allows players to take advantage of "safety and security" provided by PlayStation, as it can more easily protect folks from "griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behavior." Many Steam players haven't responded well to the news. As of the time of writing, over 2,500 negative user reviews have been submitted to the game's storefront page today, blemishing an otherwise spotless "Very Positive" rating. Some reviews cite data harvesting and security concerns as potential worries. Others point to the fact that Sony waited months after launch to make account linking mandatory. How this affects players in regions that don't have access to the PlayStation Network is a bigger concern, though. In the Helldivers 2 Discord, community manager Thomas 'Twinbeard' Petersson said they aren't yet sure what these rule changes meant for players in areas without PSN access, which could be another factor contributing to the negative downturn.

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A bipartisan group of senators, led by Jeff Merkley, John Kennedy, and Roger Marshall, is advocating for limitations on the Transportation Security Administration's use of facial recognition technology due to concerns about privacy and civil liberties. PBS reports: In a letter on Thursday, the group of 14 lawmakers called on Senate leaders to use the upcoming reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration as a vehicle to limit TSA's use of the technology so Congress can put in place some oversight. "This technology poses significant threats to our privacy and civil liberties, and Congress should prohibit TSA's development and deployment of facial recognition tools until rigorous congressional oversight occurs," the senators wrote. The effort, led by Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., John Kennedy, R-La., and Roger Marshall, R-Kan., "would halt facial recognition technology at security checkpoints, which has proven to improve security effectiveness, efficiency, and the passenger experience," TSA said in a statement. The technology is currently in use at 84 airports around the country and is planned to expand in the coming years to the roughly 430 covered by TSA.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Late last year, an artificial intelligence engineer at Amazon was wrapping up the work week and getting ready to spend time with some friends visiting from out of town. Then, a Slack message popped up. He suddenly had a deadline to deliver a project by 6 a.m. on Monday. There went the weekend. The AI engineer bailed on his friends, who had traveled from the East Coast to the Seattle area. Instead, he worked day and night to finish the job. But it was all for nothing. The project was ultimately "deprioritized," the engineer told CNBC. He said it was a familiar result. AI specialists, he said, commonly sprint to build new features that are often suddenly shelved in favor of a hectic pivot to another AI project. The engineer, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said he had to write thousands of lines of code for new AI features in an environment with zero testing for mistakes. Since code can break if the required tests are postponed, the Amazon engineer recalled periods when team members would have to call one another in the middle of the night to fix aspects of the AI feature's software. AI workers at other Big Tech companies, including Google and Microsoft, told CNBC about the pressure they are similarly under to roll out tools at breakneck speeds due to the internal fear of falling behind the competition in a technology that, according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, is having its "iPhone moment."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Hyundai has agreed to spend nearly $1 billion on Motional, an investment that will give the automaker a majority stake while providing the self-driving startup with the necessary capital to keep operating. The Korean automaker invested $475 million directly into Motional as part of a broader deal that includes buying out joint venture partner Aptiv. As part of the deal, Hyundai will spend another $448 million to buy 11% of Aptiv's common equity interest in Motional, according to information revealed Thursday in Aptiv's first-quarter earnings report. Aptiv also shared that it expects to reduce its common equity interest in Motional from 50% as of March 31 to about 15%, leaving Hyundai with the remaining 85% control. Aptiv Chairman and CEO Kevin Clark flagged in January that the company would reduce its ownership interest in Motional. The company said at the time that it would stop allocating capital towards Motional due to the high cost of commercializing a robotaxi business and the long road ahead to profits. Aptiv on Thursday reduced its full-year net sales forecast for 2024 to be between $20.85 billion and $21.45 billion, down from between $21.3 billion to $21.9 billion. Motional confirmed the new funding round and increased stake from Hyundai, but didn't confirm Aptiv's numbers. Hyundai, however, said the amounts listed in Aptiv's earnings report were accurate. "Motional started as Boston-based autonomous vehicle startup nuTonomy in 2013, before being acquired by Delphi for $450 million," reports TechCrunch. "Delphi would later split it's business with the Aptiv unit absorbing nuTonomy. The entity became Motional under a $4 billion Hyundai-Aptiv joint venture in 2019." "While it's clear from Aptiv's earnings report that the company is trying to manage risks and optimize finances amid a less positive outlook, the company's retreat, and Hyundai's step forward, raises questions about Motional's future."

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"Aamrok 3.0, ported to Qt5/KDE Frameworks 5, has been released," writes Slashdot reader serafean. "With the heavy lifting being done, the Qt6/KF6 version is expected later in the year." Originally developed for Linux as part of the KDE desktop environment, Amarok is a free, cross-platform music player that supports various audio formats and a user interface that can be tailored to individual preferences. These are the main features/changes, as highlighted in a KDE blog post: FEATURES: - Added a visual hint that context view applets can be resized in edit mode. - Display missing metadata errors in Wikipedia applet UI. - Add a button to stop automatic Wikipedia page updating. (BR 485813) CHANGES: - Replace defunct lyricwiki with lyrics.ovh as lyrics provider for now. (BR 455937) - Show only relevant items in wikipedia applet right click menu (BR 323941), use monobook skin for opened links and silently ignore non-wikipedia links. - Don't show non-functional play mode controls in dynamic mode (BR 287055) The changelog is available here. You can find the package on download.kde.org.

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Aria Alamalhodaei reports via TechCrunch: Hubble Network has become the first company in history to establish a Bluetooth connection directly to a satellite -- a critical technology validation for the company, potentially opening the door to connecting millions more devices anywhere in the world. The Seattle-based startup launched its first two satellites to orbit on SpaceX's Transporter-10 ride-share mission in March; since that time, the company confirmed that it has received signals from the onboard 3.5mm Bluetooth chips from over 600 kilometers away. The sky is truly the limit for space-enabled Bluetooth devices: the startup says its technology can be used in markets including logistics, cattle tracking, smart collars for pets, GPS watches for kids, car inventory, construction sites, and soil temperature monitoring. Haro said the low-hanging fruit is those industries that are desperate for network coverage even once per day, like remote asset monitoring for the oil and gas industry. As the constellation scales, Hubble will turn its attention to sectors that may need more frequent updates, like soil monitoring, to continuous coverage use cases like fall monitoring for the elderly. Once its up and running, a customer would simply need to integrate their devices' chipsets with a piece of firmware to enable connection to Hubble's network.

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In a first for "digital health technology," the Apple Watch's atrial fibrillation (AFib) history feature has been approved by the FDA to join the FDA's Medical Device Development Tools (MDDT) program. This means the wearable is now usable in clinical studies. The Verge reports: The FDA announcement describes using it as a noninvasive way to collect the data both before and after treatment: "Designed to be used as a biomarker test to help evaluate estimates of AFib burden as a secondary effectiveness endpoint within clinical studies intended to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of cardiac ablation devices to treat."

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When given the choice, pet parrots prefer to video-call each other instead of watch pre-recorded videos of other birds. Those are the findings from a new paper (PDF) set to appear next week at a conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Hawaii. Phys.Org reports: The study, led by animal-computer interaction specialists at the University of Glasgow, gave tablet devices to nine parrots and their owners to explore the potential of the video chats to expand the birds' social lives. Their results suggest that the clever birds, who often suffer from loneliness in captivity, may be able to tell the difference between live and pre-recorded content on digital devices, and strongly prefer interacting with other birds in real time. Over the course of the six-month study, the parrots chose to initiate calls to other birds significantly more often than they opted to watch pre-recorded footage. They also seemed more engaged in the live chats, spending much longer on calls with other birds than they did watching videos from a library of options. The findings could help steer the future course of the emerging "animal internet," which uses digital technology to empower animals to interact with humans and each other in new ways.

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Several users on Reddit have noticed that Spotify has started hiding song lyrics behind a paywall. "This means you won't be able to sing along unless you know the lyrics already, or are willing to look them up in another app," reports Android Police. From the report: Still, you lose the convenience of real-time sync with the track and automatic scrolling. Like skips per hour, it appears Spotify will implement a limit system and accessing lyrics will count against the user's limit, which should ideally reset after a stipulated time. Spotify usually requests lyrics from songwriters, publishers, and independent artists. However, in most other cases, the company has a working relationship with MusixMatch to provide lyrics, and perhaps Spotify isn't willing to absorb the costs of this partnership. That would explain why lyrics are now paywalled, but as a free-tier user, such changes are chipping away at the service's appeal.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: Last week, hundreds of nurses protested the implementation of sloppy AI into hospital systems in front of Kaiser Permanente. Their primary concern: that systems incapable of empathy are being integrated into an already dysfunctional sector without much thought toward patient care: "No computer, no AI can replace a human touch," said Amy Grewal, a registered nurse. "It cannot hold your loved one's hand. You cannot teach a computer how to have empathy." There are certainly roles automation can play in easing strain on a sector full of burnout after COVID, particularly when it comes to administrative tasks. The concern, as with other industries dominated by executives with poor judgement, is that this is being used as a justification by for-profit hospital systems to cut corners further. From a National Nurses United blog post (spotted by 404 Media): "Nurses are not against scientific or technological advancement, but we will not accept algorithms replacing the expertise, experience, holistic, and hands-on approach we bring to patient care," they added. Kaiser Permanente, for its part, insists it's simply leveraging "state-of-the-art tools and technologies that support our mission of providing high-quality, affordable health care to best meet our members' and patients' needs." The company claims its "Advance Alert" AI monitoring system -- which algorithmically analyzes patient data every hour -- has the potential to save upwards of 500 lives a year. The problem is that healthcare giants' primary obligation no longer appears to reside with patients, but with their financial results. And, that's even true in non-profit healthcare providers. That is seen in the form of cut corners, worse service, and an assault on already over-taxed labor via lower pay and higher workload (curiously, it never seems to impact outsized high-level executive compensation).

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Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global Management have made a bid to acquire Paramount for $26 billion and take it private. Variety reports: Sony and private-equity giant Apollo submitted a letter with the non-binding offer Wednesday to Paramount Global, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The bid, which would include the assumption of debt and could be negotiated, would be a premium over the company's current $22 billion enterprise value. Shares of Paramount Global jumped 13% on news of the offer from Apollo and Sony Entertainment, closing at $13.86 per share Thursday. It's not clear how Paramount's board will proceed on the Sony-Apollo proposal, having rejected previous overtures from the private-equity firm. The company has an exclusive negotiating window with Skydance that ends Friday (May 3), but discussions among the parties could extend beyond that. If it happens, the combination of Sony Pictures with Paramount Pictures would likely result in mass layoffs -- and knock the number of major Hollywood studios from five to four, after Disney took over 20th Century. Sony Corp., which acquired Columbia Pictures in 1990 for $3.5 billion, is the largest studio operator in the industry that does not have a broad-scale direct-to-consumer streaming play. Under the proposed bid with Apollo, Sony would be the majority owner of the combined company. Sony Corp. would merge Sony Pictures Entertainment into a joint venture with Paramount Global. Sony and Apollo would both contribute cash to finance the deal. What's unclear is what would happen to the 28 local TV stations CBS owns; FCC rules bar foreign entities (i.e. Tokyo-based Sony) from having majority ownership control of broadcast TV stations, so Sony would need to carve out a separate U.S. ownership structure for the station group. In the Skydance scenario, Redstone would sell her stake in National Amusements, which holds 77% of the voting shares in Paramount Global, to Skydance, whereupon Skydance would merge with Paramount Global in an all-stock deal that would value Skydance at roughly $5 billion. Paramount Global would remain a publicly traded company. Redstone would receive up to $2 billion from the Skydance-NAI transaction; in addition, Skydance would pay a premium for Paramount Global shares and pay $3 billion to the company to help pay down debt. Ellison would serve as CEO of the merged Paramount-Skydance, while Jeff Shell, the former NBCUniversal CEO who is chairman of sports and media at RedBird and works under founder and managing partner Gerry Cardinale, would take on a key management role.

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Dan Goodin reports via Ars Technica: A maximum severity vulnerability that allows hackers to hijack GitLab accounts with no user interaction required is now under active exploitation, federal government officials warned as data showed that thousands of users had yet to install a patch released in January. A change GitLab implemented in May 2023 made it possible for users to initiate password changes through links sent to secondary email addresses. The move was designed to permit resets when users didn't have access to the email address used to establish the account. In January, GitLab disclosed that the feature allowed attackers to send reset emails to accounts they controlled and from there click on the embedded link and take over the account. While exploits required no user interaction, hijackings worked only against accounts that weren't configured to use multi-factor authentication. Even with MFA, accounts remained vulnerable to password resets. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-7028, carries a severity rating of 10 out of a possible 10. The vulnerability, classified as an improper access control flaw, could pose a grave threat. GitLab software typically has access to multiple development environments belonging to users. With the ability to access them and surreptitiously introduce changes, attackers could sabotage projects or plant backdoors that could infect anyone using software built in the compromised environment. An example of a similar supply chain attack is the one that hit SolarWinds in 2021, infecting more than 18,000 of its customers. Other recent examples of supply chain attacks are here, here, and here. These sorts of attacks are powerful. By hacking a single, carefully selected target, attackers gain the means to infect thousands of downstream users, often without requiring them to take any action at all. According to Internet scans performed by security organization Shadowserver, more than 2,100 IP addresses showed they were hosting one or more vulnerable GitLab instances. In order to protect your system, you should enable MFA and install the latest patch. "GitLab users should also remember that patching does nothing to secure systems that have already been breached through exploits," notes Goodin.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Microsoft has changed its policy to ban U.S. police departments from using generative AI through the Azure OpenAI Service, the company's fully managed, enterprise-focused wrapper around OpenAI technologies. Language added Wednesday to the terms of service for Azure OpenAI Service prohibits integrations with Azure OpenAI Service from being used "by or for" police departments in the U.S., including integrations with OpenAI's text- and speech-analyzing models. A separate new bullet point covers "any law enforcement globally," and explicitly bars the use of "real-time facial recognition technology" on mobile cameras, like body cameras and dashcams, to attempt to identify a person in "uncontrolled, in-the-wild" environments. [...] The new terms leave wiggle room for Microsoft. The complete ban on Azure OpenAI Service usage pertains only to U.S., not international, police. And it doesn't cover facial recognition performed with stationary cameras in controlled environments, like a back office (although the terms prohibit any use of facial recognition by U.S. police). That tracks with Microsoft's and close partner OpenAI's recent approach to AI-related law enforcement and defense contracts. Last week, taser company Axon announced a new tool that uses AI built on OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo model to transcribe audio from body cameras and automatically turn it into a police report. It's unclear if Microsoft's updated policy is in response to Axon's product launch.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Microsoft said on Thursday it will invest $2.2 billion over the next four years in Malaysia to expand cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) services in the company's latest push to promote its generative AI technology in Asia. The investment, the largest in Microsoft's 32-year history in Malaysia, will include building cloud and AI infrastructure, creating AI-skilling opportunities for 200,000 people, and supporting the country's developers, the company said. Microsoft will also work with the Malaysian government to establish a national AI Centre of Excellence and enhance the nation's cybersecurity capabilities, the company said in a statement. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who met Nadella on Thursday, said the investment supported Malaysia's efforts in developing its AI capabilities. Microsoft is trying to expand its support for the development of AI globally. Nadella this week announced a $1.7 billion investment in neighboring Indonesia and said Microsoft would open its first regional data centre in Thailand. "We want to make sure we have world class infrastructure right here in the country so that every organization and start-up can benefit," Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said during a visit to Kuala Lumpur.

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The Google Phone app is rolling out "Audio Emoji" to some users as part of an incoming update in the beta channel, version 128. As 9to5Google reports, they are "essentially stock sound effects attached to one of six different emoji." The list includes: clapping (applause), laughing, party, crying (trombone), poop, and sting (ba dum tss). From the report: When you, as the caller, select one of these "Audio Emoji," the Google Phone app will play a fun animation while a sound effect plays for a couple of seconds. The sound effect is heard on both ends of the phone call. There does seem to be a limit on how often you can use these sound effects, as there's a bit of a "cooldown" in between that prevents you from playing sounds back to back. That's probably for the best in the case of some of these.

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