Tuesday, November 28th, 2023

Time	Event
12:30a	Several Piracy-Related Arrests Spark Fears of High-Level Crackdown In Nordic Region A series of arrests that began in late August and continued into last week has sparked concerns that a relatively rare 'Scene' crackdown targeting the top of the so-called 'Piracy Pyramid' may be underway in the Nordic region. TorrentFreak reports: In a statement last week, Denmark's National Unit for Special Crime (NSK) announced that as part of a long-running investigation, a man was arrested on November 22 and then charged with copyright infringement offenses. NSK said its officers searched the home of a 47-year-old man in South Zealand (Sydsjaelland) and seized IT equipment in connection with illegal file-sharing and "copyright infringement of a particularly serious nature." "The case is about an organized network that has illegally shared extremely large quantities of films and TV series via file sharing services," said NSK Police Commissioner Anders-Emil Nohr Kelbaek. While noting that NSK had no further information to offer at this time, Kelbaek said he was pleased that NSK had arrested another suspect believed to have played a 'significant role' in the unnamed network. Last week's arrest was only the latest in a series of arrests carried out as part of the same long-running NSK investigation into the illegal distribution of movies and TV shows. In late August, NSK arrested four people on suspicion of sharing "extremely large quantities" of movies and TV shows. NSK raided addresses in South-West Jutland, North Zealand and Bornholmand. A 43-year old was arrested at the last location, but it's claimed he lives elsewhere. In common with last week's arrest, all were charged on suspicion of "particularly serious" copyright infringement offenses. In an almost identical statement to that issued last week, Commissioner Anders-Emil Nohr Kelbaek said the case was about "an organized network that shares extremely large amounts of data, presumably in the form of films and series." TorrentFreak sources report concerns that last week's arrest may be linked to Scene groups. Terminology used by NSK doesn't instantly rule that out and does seem to suggest something potentially more significant than other arrests over the past few years. According to NSK, the August arrests took place on August 28, 2023. Using information in Scene release databases we looked for Danish Scene groups and/or groups that were releasing Denmark-focused content before that date but then made no releases afterward; while that wouldn't provide conclusive proof that a group had been targeted, the method has proven useful in the past. While activity late August suggests nothing especially out of the ordinary, activity since the arrest last week stands in contrast. TF is informed that some groups may have gone dark simply out of an abundance of caution. It's also possible that the groups have nothing to release. Furthermore, there are many other global groups with no obvious links to Danish content or Denmark that also stopped releasing on November 21. The reasons for this are unknown but holidays in the United States may play a role. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
1:10a	Tech Conference Collapses After Organizer Admits To Making Fake 'Auto-Generated' Female Speaker Samantha Cole reports via 404 Media: The founder of a software developer conference has been accused of creating fake female speakers to bolster diversity numbers -- and some speakers are dropping out, with the event just nine days away. Devternity is an online conference for developers that's invite-only for speakers. In the past, it reportedly drew hundreds of attendees both when it was in-person in Latvia and even more after it moved online. Eduard Sizovs founded the event in 2015. Engineer Gergely Orosz tweeted on Thursday that he'd discovered fake speakers listed on the Devternity site. Two women -- Anna Boyko, listed as a staff engineer at Coinbase, and Natalie Stadler, a "software craftswoman" at Coinbase -- were included on the site as speakers but appear to not exist in real life. Neither have an online presence beyond the Devternity website itself. Orosz found archived versions of the Devternity site where Boyko and Stadler were listed; Stadler's listing was up for years, according to archives from 2021. Sizovs responded to these claims in a 916-word tweet, admitting that he'd made at least one fake speaker, Stadler, in the process of building the Devternity site and then left her up. He said that the profile was "auto-generated, with a random title, random Twitter handle, random picture," and that while he noticed it was still on the site, he delayed taking it off because it wasn't a "quick fix" and that "it's better to have that demo persona while I am searching for the replacement speakers," he wrote. In his tweet, Sizovs did not elaborate on why he believed this was "better." Sizovs wrote that after this year's upcoming conference "achieved a worse-than-expected level of diversity of speakers," author and programmer Sandi Metz, "Software Craftswoman, Tech Influencer @ Instagram" Julia Kirsina, and head of developer relations at Amazon Web Services Kristine Howard were the only three women he was able to bring on as speakers. But two of the three dropped out, he said [...]. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
3:30a	Meta Designed Platforms To Get Children Addicted, Court Documents Allege An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta purposefully engineered its platforms to addict children and knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint. The complaint is a key part of a lawsuit filed against Meta by the attorneys general of 33 states in late October and was originally redacted. It alleges the social media company knew -- but never disclosed -- it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts. The large number of underage users was an "open secret" at the company, the suit alleges, citing internal company documents. In one example, the lawsuit cites an internal email thread in which employees discuss why a 12-year-old girl's four accounts were not deleted following complaints from the girl's mother stating her daughter was 12 years old and requesting the accounts to be taken down. The employees concluded that "the accounts were ignored" in part because representatives of Meta "couldn't tell for sure the user was underage." The complaint said that in 2021, Meta received over 402,000 reports of under-13 users on Instagram but that 164,000 -- far fewer than half of the reported accounts -- were "disabled for potentially being under the age of 13" that year. The complaint noted that at times Meta has a backlog of up to 2.5m accounts of younger children awaiting action. The complaint alleges this and other incidents violate the Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act, which requires that social media companies provide notice and get parental consent before collecting data from children. The lawsuit also focuses on longstanding assertions that Meta knowingly created products that were addictive and harmful to children, brought into sharp focus by whistleblower Frances Haugen, who revealed that internal studies showed platforms like Instagram led children to anorexia-related content. Haugen also stated the company intentionally targets children under the age of 18. Company documents cited in the complaint described several Meta officials acknowledging the company designed its products to exploit shortcomings in youthful psychology, including a May 2020 internal presentation called "teen fundamentals" which highlighted certain vulnerabilities of the young brain that could be exploited by product development. The presentation discussed teen brains' relative immaturity, and teenagers' tendency to be driven by "emotion, the intrigue of novelty and reward" and asked how these asked how these characteristics could "manifest ... in product usage." [...] One Facebook safety executive alluded to the possibility that cracking down on younger users might hurt the company's business in a 2019 email. But a year later, the same executive expressed frustration that while Facebook readily studied the usage of underage users for business reasons, it didn't show the same enthusiasm for ways to identify younger kids and remove them from its platforms. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
7:00a	Cheaper Microscope Could Bring Protein Mapping Technique To the Masses A team of researchers at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology has developed a prototype cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) microscope that, despite being significantly cheaper than high-end machines, has successfully solved protein structures with near-atomic resolution. The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Science Magazine reports: [MB physicist Chris Russo] wants a manufacturer to commercialize his team's design, which he believes could be built and sold for $500,000. That's within reach of a new hire's startup package, or one of the regular equipment grants offered by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or National Science Foundation, says Bridget Carragher, founding technical director of the Chan Zuckerberg Imaging Institute. "It would be a marvelous machine," she says. "Everyone who wants to do structural biology could do it." [...] One of the team's key insights was that the electron beam does not need the energies typically used in high-end cryo-EM microscopes. Levels of 100 kiloelectronvolts (KeV) -- one-third as high -- suffice to reveal molecular structure, and they reduce costs by eliminating the need for a regulated gas, sulfur hexafluoride, to snuff out sparks. The team also saw room for improvement in the system of lenses that focuses the electrons and the detector that captures them after they probe the sample. With the resulting prototype, the LMB group determined the structure of 11 diverse proteins. One was the iron-storing protein apoferritin, which has become a benchmark for cryo-EM resolution records. The LMB researchers mapped it at 2.6 angstroms -- 2.6 times the diameter of a hydrogen atom. That's not as high as the record cryo-EM resolution of 1.2 angstroms, but plenty good enough to make an atomic model, Russo says. And the process was fast. Because the microscope sat in the same lab as the freezing stage, the team could quickly check that its samples were good enough, rather than waiting weeks for results from a high-end machine. "Every single structure was done in less than a day," Russo says. Thermo Fisher Scientific, which makes a top-end machine, says it is already expanding the cryo-EM market. In 2020, it began to sell a lower cost option, called Tundra, that operates at 100 KeV. "I would say that there are universities that probably never believed they could own cryo-EM that now have the tools," says Trisha Rice, a vice president who heads the company's cryo-EM business. Indeed, Rajan's university just ordered one for $1.5 million. Russo says Tundra is a step in the right direction, but his team's innovations could make cryo-EM even cheaper. For example, he says, Tundra dials back the energy on a simplified version of the costly electron source used in top-end microscopes, whereas the electron gun on the LMB prototype was designed for 100 KeV from scratch. But he understands that commercializing his team's design would require large investments by potential manufacturers. "We're talking to all of them," Russo says. "But at the end of the day, it's up to them." Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
10:00a	Tata Consultancy Services Ordered To Cough Up $210 Million In Code Theft Trial Richard Speed reports via The Register: A jury has sided with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) against Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) over the theft of source code and documentation. A total of $210 million was this week awarded. According to the verdict [PDF], a Texas jury agreed that TCS had "willfully and maliciously" misappropriated both source and confidential documentation by "improper means," awarding CSC $140 million in damages, with another $70 million tacked on for TCS's "unjust enrichment." The complaint [PDF] was filed in April 2019 regarding CSC's VANTAGE-ONE and CyberLife software platforms. CSC had licensed these software platforms to Transamerica Corporation, a life insurance holding company, to whom Tata -- used here to collectively refer to Tata Consultancy Services Limited and Tata America International Corporation -- began providing maintenance services. In 2014, CSC and Transamerica signed off on a Third-Party Access Addendum that would allow Tata to alter CSC's software, but only for the benefit of its customer -- Transamerica. All was well until 2016, when Transamerica decided it needed to refresh its software. CSC and Tata both put in bids. CSC lost, and Tata won with its own software platform called BaNCS. The circumstances got sticky at this point, not least because Tata hired more than 2,000 Transamerica employees. CSC alleged that these former employees had access to its code and documents, and forwarded them on to the Tata BaNCS development team. The situation escalated in 2019, when a CSC employee was accidentally copied in on an email between Tata and Transamerica showing that Tata was accessing confidential information, according to CSC. The company then began legal proceedings. Documents and motions have been exchanged in the years since as Tata sought to get the case thrown out while CSC's claims were upheld. Eventually, it went to a jury trial, which found for CSC. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
1:00p	YouTube Is Getting Into Games, Too An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: YouTube is branching out into games -- at least for its paid subscribers. The platform is giving Premium users access to a set of online games that can be directly played on either the mobile app or desktop app. Known as "Playables," the company first debuted the experimental feature to select users in September. As noted by Droid-Life, YouTube sent a notification last week to Premium subscribers informing them of Playables and allowing them to try it out. Those who opt in will be able to play a total of 37 mini-games that effectively live inside YouTube -- there's no need to download or install them. The selection of games isn't too challenging or "out there" -- they include crowd-pleasers like Angry Birds Showdown, Brain Out, Daily Solitaire, The Daily Crossword, and a number of arcade games. And they may not be here to stay. YouTube Premium's notification stated that the games would be available until March 28th, 2024. For now, Premium members can find the full library of games under the "Playables" section in the Explore tab. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
2:00p	2024 is the Biggest Election Year in History Economist, in an interactive post: In 2024, countries with more than half the world's population -- over four billion people -- will send their citizens to the polls. But many elections are not fully free and fair. Some of these will have no meaningful influence on governments. In the most democratic countries, such as Britain, elections will decide the next government or cause a substantial change in policy. In Russia, one of the least democratic, the vote is very unlikely to weaken Vladimir Putin's grip on power. For countries in between, such as India or the United States, elections still matter, and may even be free and fair. But other aspects of democracy, such as participation or governance, have weaknesses. Some places, such as Brazil and Turkey, will not hold general elections in 2024 but have local or municipal elections in which the whole country will participate. Similarly, the European Union's 27 member states will elect the bloc's next parliament. More people will vote in 2024 than in any previous year. But this great march to the ballot box does not necessarily mean an explosion of democracy. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
2:40p	Evernote Pushes Users To Upgrade After making steep cuts to personnel earlier this year, Evernote's Milan-based owner Bending Spoons is now experimenting with a new plan that would push more users to upgrade to paid versions of its service. From a report: The company confirmed to TechCrunch it's been running a small test that placed limits on the number of notes free users could create, but said the new plan is not yet finalized. TechCrunch was alerted to the test by an Evernote user who logged in to a pop-up message that informed them that unless they upgraded to a paid plan, they would now be limited to only 1 notebook and 50 notes. That change would dramatically limit the service for longtime Evernote users who have accumulated hundreds or thousands of notes over the years. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
3:20p	Internet Use Does Not Appear To Harm Mental Health, Oxford Study Finds A study of more than 2 million people's internet use found no "smoking gun" for widespread harm to mental health from online activities such as browsing social media and gaming, despite widely claimed concerns that mobile apps can cause depression and anxiety. From a report: Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute, who said their study was the largest of its kind, said they found no evidence to support "popular ideas that certain groups are more at risk" from the technology. However, Andrew Przybylski, professor at the institute -- part of the University of Oxford -- said that the data necessary to establish a causal connection was "absent" without more co-operation from tech companies. If apps do harm mental health, only the companies that build them have the user data that could prove it, he said. "The best data we have available suggests that there is not a global link between these factors," said Przybylski, who carried out the study with Matti Vuorre, a professor at Tilburg University. Because the "stakes are so high" if online activity really did lead to mental health problems, any regulation aimed at addressing it should be based on much more "conclusive" evidence, he added. "Global Well-Being and Mental Health in the Internet Age" was published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science on Tuesday. In their paper, Przybylski and Vuorre studied data on psychological wellbeing from 2.4 million people aged 15 to 89 in 168 countries between 2005 and 2022, which they contrasted with industry data about growth in internet subscriptions over that time, as well as tracking associations between mental health and internet adoption in 202 countries from 2000-19. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
4:00p	India's CERT Given Exemption From Right To Information Requests India's government has granted its Computer Emergency Response Team, CERT-In, immunity from Right To Information (RTI) requests, the nation's equivalent of the freedom of information queries in the US, UK, or Australia. From a report: Reasons for the exemption have not been explained, but The Register has reported on one case in which an RTI request embarrassed CERT-In. That case related to India's sudden decision, in April 2022, to require businesses of all sizes to report infosec incidents to CERT-in within six hours of detection. The rapid reporting requirement applied both to serious incidents like ransomware attacks, and less critical messes like the compromise of a social media account. CERT-In justified the rules as necessary to defend the nation's cyberspace and gave just sixty days notice for implementation. The plan generated local and international criticism for being onerous and inconsistent with global reporting standards such as Europe's 72-hour deadline for notifying authorities of data breaches. The reporting requirements even applied to cloud operators, who were asked to report incidents on tenants' servers. Big Tech therefore opposed the plan. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
4:40p	First Transatlantic Flight Using 100% Sustainable Jet Fuel Takes Off The first transatlantic flight by a commercial airliner fully powered by "sustainable" jet fuel has taken off from London Heathrow. From a report: Tuesday's Virgin Atlantic flight, partly funded by the UK government, has been hailed by the aviation industry and ministers as a demonstration of the potential to significantly cut net carbon emissions from flying, although scientists and environmental groups are extremely sceptical. Airlines have previously flown on a blend of up to 50% of alternative fuels, called sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), and flight VS100 is operating under special dispensation with no paying passengers, using fuel made mostly from tallow and other waste products. One of those onboard, the transport secretary, Mark Harper, said: "Today's 100% SAF-powered flight shows how we can decarbonise transport both now and in the future, cutting lifecycle emissions by 70% and inspiring the next generation of solutions." Rishi Sunak said the flight was "a major milestone towards making air travel more environmentally friendly and decarbonising our skies." Virgin Atlantic said the flight to New York would show that SAF was a safe replacement for normal kerosene jet fuel. The Virgin Atlantic founder and president, Sir Richard Branson, also onboard, said: "The world will always assume something can't be done, until you do it." Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
5:20p	AI Chip Contenders Face Daunting 'Moats' Barriers to entry in an industry dominated by TSMC and Nvidia are very high. From a report: In the drama that has just played out in Silicon Valley over the future of OpenAI, one side plot concerned an ambitious chip venture by its chief executive Sam Altman. Before he was ousted and reinstated to the helm of the company, Altman had sought to raise as much as $100bn from investors in the Middle East and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son to build a rival to compete with sector giants Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. This would be a vast undertaking. And one where $100bn may not go very far. Given that the US chip designer and Taiwanese chipmaker are critical to all things generative AI, Altman is unlikely to be the only one with hopes of taking them on. But the barriers to entry -- moats in Silicon Valley parlance -- are formidable. Nvidia has about 95 per cent of the markets for GPU, or graphics processing units. These computer processors were originally designed for graphics but have become increasingly important in areas such as machine learning. TSMC has about 90 per cent of the world's advanced chip market. These businesses are lucrative. TSMC runs on gross margins of nearly 60 per cent, Nvidia at 74 per cent. TSMC makes $76bn in sales a year. The impressive figures make it seem as though there is plenty of room for more contenders. A global shortage of Nvidia's AI chips makes the prospect of vertical integration yet more attractive. As the number of GPUs required to develop and train advanced AI models grows rapidly, the key to profitability for AI companies lies in having stable access to GPUs. [...] It is one thing for companies to design customised chips. But Nvidia's profitability comes not from making chips cost-efficient, but by providing a one-stop solution for a wide range of tasks and industries. For example, Nvidia's HGX H100 systems, which can go for about $300,000 each, are used to accelerate workloads for everything from financial applications to analytics. Coming up with a viable rival for the HGX H100 system, which is made up of 35,000 parts, would take much more than just designing a new chip. Nvidia has been developing GPUs for more than two decades. That head start, which includes hardware and related software libraries, is protected by thousands of patents. Even setting aside the challenges of designing a new AI chip, manufacturing is where the real challenge lies. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
6:00p	Global Pay TV Penetration To Fall For the First Time in 2024 Global pay TV penetration (the number of pay TV subscriptions relative to the number of households) is set to decline for the first time ever in 2024 following a peak penetration of 60.3% in Q4 2023. This decline will continue into the forecast period, with a drop of almost 4 percentage points by the end of 2028, according to Ampere's latest forecasts, which cover 96 markets. From a report: This decline in pay TV penetration has been driven primarily by the Americas, and in particular North America which has seen its pay TV penetration almost halve from a high of 84% in 2009 to 45% in 2023. In the case of North America, this drop has been caused by a combination of high costs (currently over $90 per month) and competition from a mature SVoD market which is driving customers increasingly to cut the cord. However, the recent distribution deal between Disney and Charter in the US, which saw select Disney streaming products bundled into Charter's TV packages, demonstrates that cable operators in the region remain a powerful force as distribution partners, giving streamers the ability to reach a larger and potentially untapped audience base. In addition to North America, Latin America has also shown large declines in pay TV penetration, with a drop of around 10 percentage points since its peak of 42% in 2016. On the contrary, the APAC and Europe have shown the highest penetration growth in recent years, with large gains coming from China, especially after China Mobile acquired an IPTV license in 2018. The growth in these regions has largely come from low-cost IPTV services which are often bundled into broadband packages for a low cost, and helps drive pay TV subscriptions in these areas. In Europe, markets such as Portugal, Serbia and Hungary are expected to see further growth in the forecast period. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
6:40p	Google's New Geothermal Energy Project is Up and Running A first-of-its-kind geothermal project is now up and running in Nevada, where it will help power Google's data centers with clean energy. From a report: Google is partnering with startup Fervo, which has developed new technology for harnessing geothermal power. Since they're using different tactics than traditional geothermal plants, it is a relatively small project with the capacity to generate 3.5 MW. For context, one megawatt is enough to meet the demand of roughly 750 homes. The project will feed electricity into the local grid that serves two of Google's data centers outside of Las Vegas and Reno. It's part of Google's plan to run on carbon pollution-free electricity around the clock by 2030. To reach that goal, it'll have to get more sources of clean energy online. And it sees geothermal as a key part of the future electricity mix that can fill in whenever wind and solar energy wane. "If you think about how much we advanced wind and solar and lithium ion storage, here we are -- this is kind of the next set of stuff and we feel like companies have a huge role to play in advancing these technologies," says Michael Terrell, senior director of energy and climate at Google. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
7:20p	Amazon Updates Homegrown Chips, Even as It Grows Nvidia Ties Amazon's cloud-computing unit announced updated versions of its in-house computer chips while also forging closer ties with Nvidia -- dual efforts designed to ensure it can get enough supplies of crucial data-center processors. From a report: New homegrown Graviton4 chips will have as much as 30% better performance than their predecessors, Amazon Web Services said at its annual re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. Computers using the processors will start coming online in the coming months. The company also unveiled Trainium2, an updated version of a processor designed for artificial intelligence systems. It will begin powering new services starting next year, Amazon said. That chip provides an alternative to so-called AI accelerators sold by Nvidia -- processors that have been vital to the build-out of artificial intelligence services. But Amazon also touted "an expansion of its partnership" with Nvidia, whose chief executive officer, Jensen Huang, joined AWS counterpart Adam Selipsky on stage. AWS will be the first big user of an updated version of that company's Grace Hopper Superchip, and it will be one of the data-center companies hosting Nvidia's DGX Cloud service. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
8:00p	Amazon Announces Q, an AI Chatbot for Businesses Amazon on Tuesday announced a new chatbot called Q for people to use at work. From a report: The product, announced at Amazon Web Services' Reinvent conference in Las Vegas, represents Amazon's latest effort to challenge Microsoft and Google in productivity software. It comes one year after Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI launched its ChatGPT chatbot, which has popularized generative artificial intelligence for crafting human-like text in response to a few lines of human input. A tier for business users will cost $20 per person per month. A version with additional features for developers and IT workers will cost $25 per person per month. The Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Duet AI for Google Workspace for business workers both cost $30 per person per month. Initially, Q can help people understand the capabilities of AWS and trouble-shoot issues. People will be able to talk with it in communication apps such as Salesforce's Slack and software developers' text-editing applications, Adam Selipsky, CEO of AWS, said onstage at Reinvent. It will also appear in AWS' online Management Console. Q can provide citations of documents to back up its chat responses. The tool can automatically make changes to source code so developers have less work to do, Selipsky said. The service will be able to connect to more than 40 enterprise systems, he said. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
8:40p	Microsoft's Ugly Sweater For 2023 is Windows XP's Iconic Default Wallpaper Microsoft is returning to the Bliss hill once again with this year's entry in its now-traditional ugly retro-computing sweater series. From a report: Blue hemming at the bottom and on the sleeves evokes Windows XP's bright-blue taskbar, and in case people don't immediately recognize Bliss as "a computer thing," there's also a giant mouse pointer hovering over it. The sweater is available from size small up to a 3XL, and costs $70 regardless of which version you buy. All sizes are currently expected to arrive sometime between December 2 and 6. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
9:20p	ECB Paper Says AI is Threatening Wages, But Not Jobs So Far The rapid adoption of AI could reduce wages, but so far is creating, not destroying jobs, especially for the young and highly-skilled, research published by the European Central Bank showed on Tuesday. From a report: Firms have invested heavily in AI leaving economists striving to understand the impact on the labour market and driving fears among the wider public for the future of their jobs. At the same time, employers are struggling to find qualified workers, despite a recession that would normally ease labour market pressures. In a sample of 16 European countries, the employment share of sectors exposed to AI increased, with low and medium-skill jobs largely unaffected and highly-skilled positions getting the biggest boost, a Research Bulletin published by the ECB said. But it also cited "neutral to slightly negative impacts" on earnings and said that could increase. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
10:00p	Google Play Keeps Banning the Same Web Browser Due To Vague DMCA Notices An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: App developer Elias Saba has had some bad luck with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedowns. His Android TV app Downloader, which combines a web browser with a file manager, was suspended by Google Play in May after several Israeli TV companies complained that the app could be used to load a pirate website. Google reversed that suspension after three weeks. But Downloader has been suspended by Google Play again, and this time the reason is even harder to understand. Based on a vague DMCA notice, it appears that Downloader was suspended simply because it can load the Warner Bros. website. [...] The notice includes a copy of the DMCA complaint, which came from MarkScan, a "digital asset protection" firm that content owners hire to enforce copyrights. MarkScan said in its complaint that it represents Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. A DMCA notice is supposed to identify and describe the copyrighted work that was infringed. But MarkScan's notice about Downloader identifies the copyrighted work only as "Properties of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc." It provides no detail on which Warner Bros. work was infringed by Downloader. A DMCA notice is also supposed to provide an example of where someone can see "an authorized example of the work." In this field, MarkScan simply entered the main Warner Bros. URL: https://www.warnerbros.com/. The Downloader app had been installed over 10 million times before the takedown, according to an Internet Archive capture taken before the latest suspension. Saba appealed the takedown today, but he told us that the appeal was rejected by Google Play after 24 minutes. Saba said he also submitted a DMCA counter-notice, which gives the complainant 10 business days from today to file a legal action. After his first takedown in May, his app was reinstated after the DMCA complainant didn't take any legal action. Saba also wrote a blog post today about the latest takedown. "Given that my app still does not contain any copyright-infringing content and never has, I've countered this new DMCA takedown which will, hopefully, mean the app will be restored sometime in the coming weeks," he wrote. "In the meantime, you can sideload the app onto your Google TV or Android TV devices by downloading the APK from https://www.aftvnews.com/downloader.apk. Downloader remains available on Fire TV devices directly from the Amazon Appstore." Saba said it's "absurd that Google seems to make no effort at all to verify the copyright claims being made on my app which is just a web browser that can download files and has no content of any sort in it." "If loading a website with infringing content in a standard web browser is enough to violate DMCA, then every browser in the Google Play Store including @googlechrome should also be removed," said Saba in May. "It's a ridiculous claim and an abuse of the DMCA." Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
10:40p	The .meme Domain Is Here Google Registry released a new top-level .meme domain that you can now add to your website. The Verge reports: The new .meme domains are available to register right now as part of an early access period for an "additional one-time fee." If you don't want to pay extra, you can wait until they become publicly available on December 5th at 4PM UTC (12PM ET) to pay just the base annual price. There are already a handful of sites that are embracing the .meme domain, some of which are dedicated to memes from the days of yore, including grumpycat.meme, nyancat.meme, and keyboardcat.meme. The meme tracker knowyour.meme even adopted the new domain. However, some of these .meme sites just direct you to a .com address or point you to another platform. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
11:20p	Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers Futurism has accused Sports Illustrated of publishing AI-generated articles under fake author biographies. The magazine has since removed the articles in question and released a statement blaming the issue on a contractor. From the report: There was nothing in Drew Ortiz's author biography at Sports Illustrated to suggest that he was anything other than human. "Drew has spent much of his life outdoors, and is excited to guide you through his never-ending list of the best products to keep you from falling to the perils of nature," it read. "Nowadays, there is rarely a weekend that goes by where Drew isn't out camping, hiking, or just back on his parents' farm." The only problem? Outside of Sports Illustrated, Drew Ortiz doesn't seem to exist. He has no social media presence and no publishing history. And even more strangely, his profile photo on Sports Illustrated is for sale on a website that sells AI-generated headshots, where he's described as "neutral white young-adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes." Ortiz isn't the only AI-generated author published by Sports Illustrated, according to a person involved with the creation of the content who asked to be kept anonymous to protect them from professional repercussions. "There's a lot," they told us of the fake authors. "I was like, what are they? This is ridiculous. This person does not exist." "At the bottom [of the page] there would be a photo of a person and some fake description of them like, 'oh, John lives in Houston, Texas. He loves yard games and hanging out with his dog, Sam.' Stuff like that," they continued. "It's just crazy." According to a second person involved in the creation of the Sports Illustrated content who also asked to be kept anonymous, that's because it's not just the authors' headshots that are AI-generated. At least some of the articles themselves, they said, were churned out using AI as well. "The content is absolutely AI-generated," the second source said, "no matter how much they say that it's not." After we reached out with questions to the magazine's publisher, The Arena Group, all the AI-generated authors disappeared from Sports Illustrated's site without explanation. [...] Though Sports Illustrated's AI-generated authors and their articles disappeared after we asked about them, similar operations appear to be alive and well elsewhere in The Arena Group's portfolio. An Arena Group spokesperson issued the following statement blaming a contractor for the content: "Today, an article was published alleging that Sports Illustrated published AI-generated articles. According to our initial investigation, this is not accurate. The articles in question were product reviews and were licensed content from an external, third-party company, AdVon Commerce. A number of AdVon's e-commerce articles ran on certain Arena websites. We continually monitor our partners and were in the midst of a review when these allegations were raised. AdVon has assured us that all of the articles in question were written and edited by humans. According to AdVon, their writers, editors, and researchers create and curate content and follow a policy that involves using both counter-plagiarism and counter-AI software on all content. However, we have learned that AdVon had writers use a pen or pseudo name in certain articles to protect author privacy -- actions we don't condone -- and we are removing the content while our internal investigation continues and have since ended the partnership." Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)

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