An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, OpenAI announced that it is deepening its ties with the US government through a partnership with the National Laboratories and expects to use AI to "supercharge" research across a wide range of fields to better serve the public. "This is the beginning of a new era, where AI will advance science, strengthen national security, and support US government initiatives," OpenAI said. The deal ensures that "approximately 15,000 scientists working across a wide range of disciplines to advance our understanding of nature and the universe" will have access to OpenAI's latest reasoning models, the announcement said. For researchers from Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia National Labs, access to "o1 or another o-series model" will be available on Venado -- an Nvidia supercomputer at Los Alamos that will become a "shared resource." Microsoft will help deploy the model, OpenAI noted. OpenAI suggested this access could propel major "breakthroughs in materials science, renewable energy, astrophysics," and other areas that Venado was "specifically designed" to advance. Key areas of focus for Venado's deployment of OpenAI's model include accelerating US global tech leadership, finding ways to treat and prevent disease, strengthening cybersecurity, protecting the US power grid, detecting natural and man-made threats "before they emerge," and " deepening our understanding of the forces that govern the universe," OpenAI said. Perhaps among OpenAI's flashiest promises for the partnership, though, is helping the US achieve a "a new era of US energy leadership by unlocking the full potential of natural resources and revolutionizing the nation's energy infrastructure." That is urgently needed, as officials have warned that America's aging energy infrastructure is becoming increasingly unstable, threatening the country's health and welfare, and without efforts to stabilize it, the US economy could tank. But possibly the most "highly consequential" government use case for OpenAI's models will be supercharging research safeguarding national security, OpenAI indicated. "The Labs also lead a comprehensive program in nuclear security, focused on reducing the risk of nuclear war and securing nuclear materials and weapons worldwide," OpenAI noted. "Our partnership will support this work, with careful and selective review of use cases and consultations on AI safety from OpenAI researchers with security clearances." The announcement follows the launch earlier this week of ChatGPT Gov, "a new tailored version of ChatGPT designed to provide US government agencies with an additional way to access OpenAI's frontier models." It also worked with the Biden administration to voluntarily commit to give officials early access to its latest models for safety inspections.

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The company that Jeff Bezos founded has gone to court to keep the newspaper he owns from finding out too much about the inner workings of its business. From a report: Amazon is suing Washington state to limit the release of public records to The Washington Post from a series of state Department of Labor and Industries investigations of an Amazon Project Kuiper satellite facility in the Seattle area. The lawsuit, filed this week in King County Superior Court in Seattle, says the newspaper on Nov. 26 requested "copies of inspection records, investigation notes, interview notes, complaints," and other documents related to four investigations at the Redmond, Wash., facility between August and October 2024. It's not an unusual move by the company, and in some ways it's a legal technicality. Amazon says it's not seeking to block the records release entirely, but rather seeking to protect from public disclosure certain records that contain proprietary information and trade secrets about the company's satellite internet operations. The lawsuit cites a prior situation in which Amazon and the Department of Labor and Industries similarly worked through the court to respond to a Seattle Times public records request without disclosing proprietary information.

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Google is offering U.S. employees in its Platforms & Devices division a voluntary exit program with severance packages, following last year's merger of its Pixel hardware and Android software teams. The program affects staff working on Android, Chrome, Google Photos, Pixel, Fitbit, and Nest products, according to a memo from Senior Vice President Rick Osterloh. The move comes after the hardware division cut hundreds of roles last January when it reorganized into a functional model. Google said the program aims to retain employees committed to the combined organization's mission, though it does not coincide with any product changes.

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Nearly 90% of Oracle Java customers are looking to abandon the software maker's products following controversial licensing changes made in 2023, according to research firm Dimensional Research. The exodus reflects growing frustration with Oracle's shift to per-employee pricing for its Java platform, which critics called "predatory" and could increase costs up to five times for the same software, Gartner found. The dissatisfaction runs deepest in Europe, where 92% of French and 95% of German users want to switch to alternative providers like Bellsoft Liberica, IBM Semeru, or Azul Platform Core.

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The Authors Guild -- one of the largest associations of writers in the US -- has launched a new project that allows authors to certify that their book was written by a human, and not generated by artificial intelligence. From a report: The Guild says its "Human Authored" certification aims to make it easier for writers to "distinguish their work in increasingly AI-saturated markets," and that readers have a right to know who (or what) created the books they read. Human Authored certifications will be listed in a public database that anyone can access.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: SoftBank is in talks to invest as much as $25 billion into OpenAI [non-paywalled source], in a deal that would make it the ChatGPT maker's biggest financial backer, as the pair partner on a huge new artificial intelligence infrastructure project. The two companies announced last week they would lead a joint venture that would spend $100 billion on Stargate -- a sprawling data centre project touted by US President Donald Trump -- with the figure rising to as much as $500 billion over the next four years. SoftBank is in talks to invest $15 billion to $25 billion directly into OpenAI on top of its commitment of more than $15 billion to Stargate, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the negotiations.

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France's Mistral AI is facing mounting pressure over its future as an independent European AI champion, as competition intensifies from U.S. tech giants and China's emerging players. The Paris-based startup, valued at $6.5 billion and backed by Microsoft and Nvidia, has struggled to keep pace with larger rivals despite delivering advanced AI models with a fraction of their resources. The pressure increased this week after China's DeepSeek released a cutting-edge open-source model that challenged Mistral's efficiency-focused strategy. Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch dismissed speculation about selling to Big Tech companies, saying the firm hopes to go public eventually. However, one investor told the Financial Times that "they need to sell themselves." The stakes are high for Europe's tech ambitions. Mistral remains the region's only significant player in large language models, the technology behind ChatGPT, after Germany's Aleph Alpha pivoted away from the field last year. The company has won customers including France's defense ministry and BNP Paribas, but controls just 5% of the enterprise AI market compared to OpenAI's dominant share.

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India's IT minister on Thursday praised DeepSeek's progress and said the country will host the Chinese AI lab's large language models on domestic servers, in a rare opening for Chinese technology in India. From a report: "You have seen what DeepSeek has done -- $5.5 million and a very very powerful model," IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday, responding to criticism New Delhi has received for its own investment in AI, which has been much less than many other countries. Since 2020, India has banned more than 300 apps and services linked to China, including TikTok and WeChat, citing national security concerns. The approval to allow DeepSeek to be hosted in India appears contingent on the platform storing and processing all Indian users' data domestically, in line with India's strict data localization requirements. [...] DeepSeek's models will likely be hosted on India's new AI Compute Facility. The facility is powered by 18,693 graphics processing units (GPUs), nearly double its initial target -- almost 13,000 of those are Nvidia H100 GPUs, and about 1,500 are Nvidia H200 GPUs.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: While most of our conversations about Nintendo recently have focused on the somewhat bizarre patent lawsuit the company filed against Pocketpair over the hit game Palworld, traditionally our coverage of the company has focused more on the very wide net of IP bullying it engages in. This is a company absolutely notorious for behaving in as protectionist a fashion as possible with anything even remotely related to its IP. That reputation is so well known, in fact, that it serves the company's bullying purposes. When smaller entities get threat letters or oppositions to applied-for trademarks and the like, some simply back down without a fight. But not the Super Mario shop in Costa Rica, it seems. The supermarket store owned by a man named Mario (hence the name), has had a trademark on its name since 2013. But when Mario's son, Charlito, went to renew the registration, Nintendo's lawyers suddenly came calling. Last year it was time to renew the registration, Charlito stated, which prompted Nintendo to get involved. While Nintendo has trademarked the use of Super Mario worldwide under numerous categories, including video games, clothing and toys, it appears the company did not specifically state anything about the names of supermarkets. This, Charlito says, was the key factor in the decision by Costa Rica's trademark authority, the National Register, to side with the supermarket. "As you will see from the picture [here], it is extremely clear, based on the rest of the store's signage and branding, that there is absolutely no attempt in any of this to draw any kind of association with Nintendo's iconic character," writes Techdirt's Timothy Geigner. "The shop already had the name for over a decade, and had a trademark on the name for over a decade, all apparently without any noticeable effect on Nintendo's enormous business. For a renewal of that mark to trigger this kind of conflict is absurd."

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Mr. Dollar Ton shares a report from the BBC: The chemical building blocks of life have been found, among many other complex chemical compounds, in the grainy dust of an asteroid called Bennu, an analysis reveals. Samples of the space rock, which were scooped up by a Nasa spacecraft and brought to Earth, contain a rich array of minerals and thousands of organic compounds. These include amino acids, which are the molecules that make up proteins, as well as nucleobases -- the fundamental components of DNA. The findings are published in two papers in the journal nature.

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Astronomers have discovered a newly identified asteroid that has a 1-in-83 chance of striking Earth on December 22, 2032, though the most likely scenario is a close miss. Designated as 2024 YR4, the asteroid measures in at 196 feet wide and is currently 27 million miles away. Space.com reports: The near-Earth object (NEO) discovered in 2024, which is around half as wide as a football field is long, will make a very close approach to Earth on Dec. 22, 2032. It's estimated to come within around 66,000 miles (106,200 kilometers) of Earth on that day, according to NASA's Center of NEO Studies (CNEOS). However, when orbital uncertainties are considered, that close approach could turn out to be a direct hit on our planet. Such an impact could cause an explosion in the atmosphere, called an "airburst," or could cause an impact crater when it slams into the ground. This is enough to see asteroid 2024 YR4 leap to the top of the European Space Agency's NEO impact Risk List and NASA's Sentry Risk Table. "People should absolutely not worry about this yet," said Catalina Sky Survey engineer and asteroid hunter David Rankin. "Impact probability is still very low, and the most likely outcome will be a close approaching rock that misses us." As for where it could hit Earth, Rankin said that the "risk corridor" for impact runs from South America across the Atlantic to sub-Saharan Africa.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: US Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) today proposed a law that would let copyright owners obtain court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to foreign piracy websites. The bill would also force DNS providers to block sites. Lofgren said in a press release that she "work[ed] for over a year with the tech, film, and television industries" on "a proposal that has a remedy for copyright infringers located overseas that does not disrupt the free Internet except for the infringers." Lofgren said she plans to work with Republican leaders to enact the bill. [...] Lofgren's bill (PDF) would impose site-blocking requirements on broadband providers with at least 100,000 subscribers and providers of public domain name resolution services with annual revenue of over $100 million. The bill has exemptions for VPN services and "similar services that encrypt and route user traffic through intermediary servers"; DNS providers that offer service "exclusively through encrypted DNS protocols"; and operators of premises that provide Internet access, like coffee shops, bookstores, airlines, and universities. Lofgren released a summary of the bill explaining how copyright owners can obtain blocking orders. "A copyright owner or exclusive licensee may file a petition in US District Court to obtain a preliminary order against a foreign website or online service engaging in copyright infringement," the summary said. For non-live content, the petition must show that "transmission of a work through a foreign website likely infringes exclusive rights under Section 106 [of US law] and is causing irreparable harm." For live events, a petition must show that "an imminent or ongoing unauthorized transmission of a live event is likely to infringe, and will cause irreparable harm." The proposed law says that after a preliminary order is issued, copyright owners would be able to obtain orders directing service providers "to take reasonable and technically feasible measures to prevent users of the service provided by the service provider from accessing the foreign website or online service identified in the order." Judges would not be permitted to "prescribe any specific technical measures" for blocking and may not require any action that would prevent Internet users from using virtual private networks.Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge described the bill as a "censorious site-blocking" measure "that turns broadband providers into copyright police at Americans' expense." "Rather than attacking the problem at its source -- bringing the people running overseas piracy websites to court -- Congress and its allies in the entertainment industry has decided to build out a sweeping infrastructure for censorship," Public Knowledge Senior Policy Counsel Meredith Rose said. "Site-blocking orders force any service provider, from residential broadband providers to global DNS resolvers, to disrupt traffic from targeted websites accused of copyright infringement. More importantly, applying blocking orders to global DNS resolvers results in global blocks. This means that one court can cut off access to a website globally, based on one individual's filing and an expedited procedure. Blocking orders are incredibly powerful weapons, ripe for abuse, and we've seen the messy consequences of them being implemented in other countries."

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The U.S. Copyright Office has ruled that AI-assisted works can receive copyright protection if they contain perceptible human creativity, such as creative modifications or arrangements. However, fully machine-generated content remains ineligible for copyright. The Associated Press reports: An AI-assisted work could be copyrightable if an artist's handiwork is perceptible. A human adapting an AI-generated output with "creative arrangements or modifications" could also make it fall under copyright protections. The report follows a review that began in 2023 and fielded opinions from thousands of people that ranged from AI developers, to actors and country singers. It shows the copyright office will continue to reject copyright claims for fully machine-generated content. A person simply prompting a chatbot or AI image generator to produce a work doesn't give that person the ability to copyright that work, according to the report. "Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine ... would undermine rather than further the constitutional goals of copyright," [said Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter]. The copyright office says it's working on a separate report that "will turn to the training of AI models on copyrighted works, licensing considerations, and allocation of any liability."

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NordVPN has introduced NordWhisper, a new protocol designed to bypass VPN blocks in restrictive countries like Russia and India by making VPN traffic appear like regular internet activity. Gizmodo reports: NordVPN claims to have found a way to make traffic from its service look normal, though admits that it may not always work perfectly. It also says the NordWhisper protocol may introduce more latency. The protocol is rolling out first to users on Windows, Linux, and Android. Support for other platforms will come in the future.

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jjslash shares a report from TechSpot: Atari teamed up with luxury watch brand Nubeo to celebrate the 45th anniversary of Asteroids with a collection of five limited-edition timepieces. Each watch, originally priced at $1,650 but discounted to $499, was limited to 125 pieces -- and they sold out almost immediately. The watches feature a unique Japanese automatic movement, where three rotating discs replace traditional hands. The smallest disc, featuring the classic Asteroids spaceship, acts as the second hand, while the minute and hour hands are represented by asteroid-filled outer discs. While they're not smartwatches, the timepieces feature Swiss Super-LumiNova glow-in-the-dark ink sitting underneath a sapphire lens within a stainless-steel case. They're water resistant up to 21 ATM (atmospheres) and have a screw-down crown, so you can show them off while at the beach or diving.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Sony's game publishing arm has done a 180-degree turn on a controversial policy of requiring PC players to sign in with PlayStation accounts for some games, according to a blog post by the company. A PlayStation account will "become optional" for Marvel's Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarok, The Last of Us Part II Remastered, and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. Sony hasn't lost hope that players will still go ahead and use a PlayStation account, though, as it's tying several benefits to signing in. Logging in with PlayStation will be required to access trophies, the PlayStation equivalent of achievements. (Steam achievements appear to be supported regardless.) It will also allow friend management, provided you have social contacts on the PlayStation Network. Additionally, Sony is providing some small in-game rewards to each title that are available if you log in with its account system. You'll get early unlocks of the Spider-Man 2099 Black Suit and the Miles Morales 2099 Suit in Spider-Man 2, for example -- or the Nora Valiant outfit in Horizon: Zero Dawn. Some of these rewards are available via other means within the games, such as the Armor of the Black Bear set for Kratos in Ragnarok.

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Microsoft has integrated DeepSeek's R1 model into its Azure AI Foundry platform and GitHub, allowing customers to experiment and deploy AI applications more efficiently. "One of the key advantages of using DeepSeek R1 or any other model on Azure AI Foundry is the speed at which developers can experiment, iterate, and integrate AI into their workflows," says By Asha Sharma, Microsoft's corporate vice president of AI platform. "DeepSeek R1 has undergone rigorous red teaming and safety evaluations, including automated assessments of model behavior and extensive security reviews to mitigate potential risks." The Verge reports: R1 was initially released as an open source model earlier this month, and Microsoft has moved at surprising pace to integrate this into Azure AI Foundry. The software maker will also make a distilled, smaller version of R1 available to run locally on Copilot Plus PCs soon, and it's possible we may even see R1 show up in other AI-powered services from Microsoft.

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Zyxel customers are facing reboot loops, high CPU usage, and login issues after an update on Friday went awry. The only fix requires physical access and a Console/RS232 cable, as no remote recovery options are available. The Register reports: "We've found an issue affecting a few devices that may cause reboot loops, ZySH daemon failures, or login access problems," Zyxel's advisory reads. "The system LED may also flash. Please note this is not related to a CVE or security issue." "The issue stems from a failure in the Application Signature Update, not a firmware upgrade. To address this, we've disabled the application signature on our servers, preventing further impact on firewalls that haven't loaded the new signature versions." The firewalls affected include USG Flex boxes and ATP Series devices running ZLD firmware versions -- installations that have active security licenses and dedicated signature updates enabled in on-premises/standalone mode. Those running on the Nebula platform, on USG Flex H (uOS), and those without valid security licenses are not affected.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Alphabet's self-driving unit Waymo announced on Wednesday it plans to expand testing of its autonomous driving technology in over 10 new cities in 2025. After testing the Waymo Driver in multiple cities, the company says the technology is adapting successfully to new environments, leading to the expansion. In addition to ongoing trips to Truckee, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Upstate New York and Tokyo, the expansion includes testing in San Diego and Las Vegas, with more cities yet to be announced. "During these trips, we'll send a limited fleet of vehicles to each city, where trained human autonomous specialists will be behind the wheel at all times," a spokeswoman for Waymo said. The testing will begin with manual driving through the densest and most complex parts of each city, including city centers and freeways. Waymo plans to send less than 10 vehicles to each city, where they will be manually driven around for a couple of months, according to The Verge, which first reported the news.

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TSMC founder Morris Chang says Apple CEO Tim Cook rejected Intel as a chip manufacturer in 2011 because the company lacked foundry expertise, despite being Apple's main supplier for Mac processors at the time. During a pause in TSMC-Apple talks to evaluate Intel's proposal, Cook told Chang that "Intel just does not know how to be a foundry," leading Apple to eventually choose TSMC as its exclusive chip supplier, the TSMC founder revealed in an interview.

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