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Monday, December 11th, 2023
| Time | Event |
| 12:46a | Is There a Mass Exodus of Former Silicon Valley Tech Companies From Austin, Texas? "Over the years, Austin has seen a huge migration of tech companies moving to the city, from billionaire owners of Twitter (X) to the largest search engine in the world," according to a local news site in Texas. "But many startups are now choosing to leave the capital city they once flocked to because of the rising cost of living, low funding, and lack of diversity, according to TechCrunch. " On Thursday, December 7, the cloud computing company VMWare announced it was laying off 577 employees in Austin as part of a nationwide job reduction to cut costs, according to the Austin American-Statesman. TechCrunch is reporting that startup founders, like Techstars Managing Director Amos Schwartzfarb, are announcing their decisions to leave Austin's "lackluster" startup scene... In 2022, Meta abandoned plans to move into the biggest skyscraper in Austin, and Google froze plans to move into 35 floors of a different downtown building, despite paying rent to the developer, according to the Washington Post... In January, CEO Don Ward of Laundris, a B2B enterprise industrial software platform, announced he would be relocating his company to Tulsa because it reminded him "of where Austin was 10 years ago in terms of the tech ecosystem being built," according to Tulsa World. Last month, startup unicorn Cart, an e-commerce business, announced it was moving its headquarters back to Houston after relocating to Austin in late 2021, according to TechCrunch. 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 2:01a | New Internet Standard L4S: the Quiet Plan to Make the Internet Feel Faster Slow load times? Choppy videos? The real problem is latency, writes the Verge — but the good news is "there's a plan to almost eliminate latency, and big companies like Apple, Google, Comcast, Charter, Nvidia, Valve, Nokia, Ericsson, T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom, and more have shown an interest." It's a new internet standard called L4S that was finalized and published in January, and it could put a serious dent in the amount of time we spend waiting around for webpages or streams to load and cut down on glitches in video calls. It could also help change the way we think about internet speed and help developers create applications that just aren't possible with the current realities of the internet... L4S stands for Low Latency, Low Loss, Scalable Throughput, and its goal is to make sure your packets spend as little time needlessly waiting in line as possible by reducing the need for queuing. To do this, it works on making the latency feedback loop shorter; when congestion starts happening, L4S means your devices find out about it almost immediately and can start doing something to fix the problem. Usually, that means backing off slightly on how much data they're sending... [L4S] makes it easier to maintain a good amount of data throughput without adding latency that increases the amount of time it takes for data to be transferred... If you really want to get into it (and you know a lot about networking), you can read the specification paper on the Internet Engineering Task Force's website... The L4S standard adds an indicator to packets, which says whether they experienced congestion on their journey from one device to another. If they sail right on through, there's no problem, and nothing happens. But if they have to wait in a queue for more than a specified amount of time, they get marked as having experienced congestion. That way, the devices can start making adjustments immediately to keep the congestion from getting worse and to potentially eliminate it altogether... In terms of reducing latency on the internet, L4S or something like it is "a pretty necessary thing," according to Greg White, a technologist at research and development firm CableLabs who helped work on the standard. "This buffering delay typically has been hundreds of milliseconds to even thousands of milliseconds in some cases. Some of the earlier fixes to buffer bloat brought that down into the tens of milliseconds, but L4S brings that down to single-digit milliseconds...." Here's the bad news: for the most part, L4S isn't in use in the wild yet. However, there are some big names involved with developing it... When we spoke to Greg White from CableLabs, he said there were already around 20 cable modems that support it today and that several ISPs like Comcast, Charter, and Virgin Media have participated in events meant to test how prerelease hardware and software work with L4S. Companies like Nokia, Vodafone, and Google have also attended, so there definitely seems to be some interest. Apple put an even bigger spotlight on L4S at WWDC 2023 after including beta support for it in iOS 16 and macOS Ventura... At around the same time as WWDC, Comcast announced the industry's first L4S field trials in collaboration with Apple, Nvidia, and Valve. That way, content providers can mark their traffic (like Nvidia's GeForce Now game streaming), and customers in the trial markets with compatible hardware like the Xfinity 10G Gateway XB7 / XB8, Arris S33, or Netgear CM1000v2 gateway can experience it right now... The other factor helping L4S is that it's broadly compatible with the congestion control systems in use today...
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 3:01a | Hidden Impacts of Ferocious Volcanic Eruption Finally Revealed Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared an interesting article from ScienceAlert: Undersea volcanic eruptions account for more than three-quarters of all volcanism on Earth, but rarely do we see the impacts. The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption of 2022 was a dramatic exception. Its furious explosion from shallow waters broke the ocean surface and punched through the stratosphere, generating supercharged lighting and an atmospheric shock wave that circled the globe several times. But there was far more to the fallout than satellite images could possibly capture or observers could report. We know the human toll this explosion took, but now a new study investigating the underwater impacts of the Hunga-Tonga eruption has detailed just how ferociously the explosion tore open the seafloor, ripped up undersea cables, and smothered marine life... The team also compiled a trove of data from ship-based sonar, sediment cores, geochemical analyses, water column samples, and video footage to chart the devastatingly powerful upheaval... Their analyses show at least 6 cubic kilometers (km3) of seafloor was lost from within the caldera — 20 times the eruptive volume of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption — and an additional 3.5 km3 of material was blasted out of the Hunga volcano's submerged flanks... That leaves roughly four-fifths of the ejected material in the ocean; material that was funneled into fast-moving density flows that scoured out tracks 30 meters deep in the seafloor and accumulated 22 meters (72 feet) thick in some places.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 5:35a | 'Zombie TV': Cable Channels Left Showing Reruns as Their Owners Invest in Streaming Services All those original shows on streaming services brought us "peak TV." But the New York Times reports on the flipside: back in the cable universe, they're experiencing "zombie TV": In 2015, the USA cable network was a force in original programming. Dramas like "Suits," "Mr. Robot" and "Royal Pains" either won awards or attracted big audiences. What a difference a few years make. Viewership is way down, and USA's original programming department is gone. The channel has had just one original scripted show this year, and it is not exclusive to the network — it also airs on another channel. During one 46-hour stretch last week, USA showed repeats of NBC's "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" for all but two hours, when it showed reruns of CBS' "NCIS" and "NCIS: Los Angeles." Instead of standing out among its peers, USA is emblematic of cable television's transformation. Many of the most popular channels — TBS, Comedy Central, MTV — have quickly morphed into zombie versions of their former selves. Networks that were once rich with original scripted programming are now vessels for endless marathons of reruns, along with occasional reality shows and live sports... Advertisers have begun to pull money from cable at high rates, analysts say, and leaders at cable providers have started to question what their consumers are paying for. In a dispute with Disney this year, executives who oversee the Spectrum cable service said media companies were letting their cable "programming house burn to the ground...." The media companies that own the channels are in a bind. The so-called cable bundle was enormously profitable for media companies, and more than 100 million households subscribed at the peak. But subscribers are rapidly declining as people migrate toward streaming. Now roughly 70 million households subscribe to cable. As a result, most media companies are pulling resources from their individual cable networks and directing investment toward their streaming services. Peacock, which is owned by NBCUniversal, also the parent of USA, has begun making more and more original scripted shows over the last three years. However, most streaming services are hemorrhaging cash. (An NBCUniversal executive said this week that Peacock would lose $2.8 billion this year.) Cable, although it is getting smaller, remains profitable. Media analyst Michael Nathanson believes last year was saw a "tipping point" when cable advertising decreased — by double-digit percentages — in five consecutive fiscal quarters. "Advertisers are starting to realize that there's really nothing on here and they shouldn't pay for it." One consultant who works with entertainment companies and used to run marketing at the Oxygen cable network tells the newspaper that cable channels "are being stripped for parts." The article calculates that in 2022 there were 39% fewer scripted programs on basic and premium cable than there were in 2015. "Reruns are filling the hole."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 8:44a | UK's First Carbon Capture Plant Turns CO2 Into Jet Fuel "The machines in the facility waft air towards a water-based solvent," reports the Times of London, "which carbon dioxide in the air dissolves into. An electrical current then separates those compounds from the solvent, creating a pure stream of CO2." More details from Sky News: The UK's first-ever direct air capture plant has been turned on to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into jet fuel. The machine, developed by Mission Zero Technologies in partnership with the University of Sheffield, will run on solar power to recover 50 tonnes of CO2 from the air per year and turn it into Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)... Aviation accounts for about 2% of the world's emissions and Ihab Ahmed, research associate from the University of Sheffield, said the fuel has the capacity to massively reduce the impact of aviation on the environment — and is an important step towards the government's ambitious target to increase the use of SAF to at least 10% by 2030. America opened its first carbon-capture facility in November in a warehouse in California. While the carbon isn't converted into sustainable air fuel, it can capture a maximum of 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year/
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 12:34p | With 23% of US Office Space Vacant, Some Landlords Are Defaulting on Mortgages The New York Times reports: Office landlords, hit hard by the work-from-home revolution, are resorting to a desperate measure in the real estate world: "handing back the keys." When this happens, the landlord stops paying the mortgage on the office building or declines to refinance it. The bank or investors who made the loan then repossess the building... Since the pandemic began, office employees showed they could get their jobs done from home, and many have been reluctant to come back. And companies realized they could save a lot of money by renting less office space, making many office towers unprofitable for their owners and turning many business districts into ghost towns. About 23% of office space in the United States was vacant or available for sublet at the end of November, according to Avison Young, a real estate services firm, compared with 16% before the pandemic. Defaulters include "some of the biggest names in commercial real estate, like Brookfield and Blackstone," according to the article, which argues that the phenomenon "reveals both the depth of the problems in the office market and the ability of big property companies to push much of the financial pain onto others — in this case, banks and other lenders." By defaulting on their loans, the landlords avoid making any more payments (or incurring any more interest) — while saddling the banks with their depreciating building. "Big property companies can keep doing business after they default and are even considered savvy for jettisoning distressed buildings."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 2:00p | Mistral Says Mixtral, Its New Open Source LLM, Matches or Outperforms Llama 2 70B and GPT3.5 on Most Benchmarks Open source model startup Mistral AI released a new LLM last week with nothing but a torrent link. It has now offered some details about Mixtral, the new LLM. From a report: Mistral AI continues its mission to deliver the best open models to the developer community. Moving forward in AI requires taking new technological turns beyond reusing well-known architectures and training paradigms. Most importantly, it requires making the community benefit from original models to foster new inventions and usages. Today, the team is proud to release Mixtral 8x7B, a high-quality sparse mixture of experts models (SMoE) with open weights. Licensed under Apache 2.0. Mixtral outperforms Llama 2 70B on most benchmarks with 6x faster inference. It is the strongest open-weight model with a permissive license and the best model overall regarding cost/performance trade-offs. In particular, it matches or outperforms GPT3.5 on most standard benchmarks. Mixtral has the following capabilities: 1. It gracefully handles a context of 32k tokens. 2. It handles English, French, Italian, German and Spanish. 3. It has strong performance in code generation. 4. It can be finetuned into an instruction-following model that achieves a score of 8.3 on MT-Bench.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 2:40p | US Debates Data Policy To Avoid a Fragmented Global Internet The White House is racing to overcome internal differences and hash out a new policy over how the US and other governments should view the rapid rise of global data flows that are fueling everything from AI to advanced manufacturing. From a report: In a series of sessions due to begin on Wednesday, President Joe Biden's national security and economic teams are due to meet with companies, labor and human rights advocates, and other experts on the digital economy as part of a review launched last month, according to people directly involved. At issue is laying out a clear US position on the rules for the global internet as governments confront an accelerating amount of data flowing across borders with mounting economic, privacy, income inequality and national security consequences. Coming just days after the EU agreed late Friday to new regulations for AI, the Biden administration's push highlights how governments are racing to figure out their role in a fast-evolving digital economy and competing to lead the conversation. [...] In an interview, a senior administration official said the US was not backing away from long-standing US advocacy for a free and open internet even as some governments around the world are increasingly trying to restrict information flows.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 3:20p | Bus-Melting Jet Cars Are Getting Scarce As racetracks close and old aircraft engines get harder to find, the crowd-pleasing spectacles are endangered. From a report: Magdatude is a 1946 Chevy pickup modified with a jet engine. It wasn't put there for speed. On a rainy September night, the truck rumbled onto the infield of the Rockford Speedway in Illinois, stopping with its business end about 10 feet from a junk minibus. The engine whined to life and shot a blast of fire from its afterburner, engulfing the bus until it was reduced to a charred metal skeleton. "There's nothing left of that thing!" the announcer shouted. "Holy cow!" It was a textbook jet car meltdown, once a common spectacle at racetracks and drag strips. The fiery craft has become endangered as venues close, spare parts grow scarce and practitioners dwindle. "I think realistically there's going to be a few people that keep it alive," said Josh Baumgartner, Magdatude's owner. "We're hoping to be among them." A former Navy mechanic named Doug Rose helped to popularize meltdowns after he created a dragster using a jet engine from a scrapyard. According to his widow, Jeanne, he conducted his first fire show around 1968 with a car he named the Green Mamba. Over the years, he honed his craft until he could torch a half-dozen vehicles at once. "Doug's objective was to please the people," she said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 4:00p | New York Joins IBM, Micron in $10 Billion Chip Research Complex New York has partnered with chip firms to build $10 billion semiconductor research site at University at Albany, featuring cutting-edge ASML equipment to develop most advanced chips. From a report: Once the machinery is installed, the project and its partners will begin work on next-generation chip manufacturing there, according to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's office. The partners include tech giant IBM, memory manufacturer Micron and chip manufacturing equipment makers Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron. The expansion could help New York's bid to be designated a research hub under last year's $53 billion Chips Act. That legislation included $11 billion for a National Semiconductor Technology Center to foster domestic chip research and development. Expanding domestic chip manufacturing and research has become a federal and state-level priority in recent years as concern grows in the U.S. over China's expanding grasp over the industry. Chips are increasingly seen as a crux of geopolitical power, underlying advanced weapons for militaries and sophisticated artificial-intelligence systems.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 4:40p | Why the US Needs a Moonshot Mentality for AI - Led by the Public Sector Fei-Fei Li and John Etchemendy, the founding co-directors of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, in an op-ed on WSJ argue that AI is too important to be left entirely in the hands of the big tech companies: Among other things, 2023 will be remembered as the year artificial intelligence went mainstream. But while Americans from every corner of the country began dabbling with tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney, we believe 2023 is also the year Congress failed to act on what we see as the big picture: AI's impact will be far bigger than the products that companies are releasing at a breakneck pace. AI is a broad, general-purpose technology with profound implications for society that cannot be overstated. [...] So what needs to happen? President Biden has set the stage, and with all this attention, it's time for Congress to act. They need to pass the Create AI Act, adhere to the elements called on by the new executive order, and invest more in the public sector to ensure America's leadership in creating AI technology steeped in the values we stand for. We also encourage an investment in human capital to bring more talent to the U.S. to work in the field of AI within academia and the government. But why does this matter? Because this technology isn't just good for optimizing ad revenue for technology companies, but can fuel the next generation of scientific discovery, ranging from nuclear fusion to curing cancer. Furthermore, to truly understand this technology, including its sometimes unpredictable emergent capabilities and behaviors, public-sector researchers urgently need to replicate and examine the under-the-hood architecture of these models. That's why government research labs need to take a larger role in AI. [...]
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 5:20p | Ex-Commissioner For Facial Recognition Tech Joins Facewatch Firm He Approved The recently-departed watchdog in charge of monitoring facial recognition technology in UK has joined the private firm he controversially approved, paving the way for the mass roll-out of biometric surveillance cameras in high streets across the country. From a report: In a move critics have dubbed an "outrageous conflict of interest," Professor Fraser Sampson, former biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner, has joined Facewatch as a non-executive director. Sampson left his watchdog role on 31 October, with Companies House records showing he was registered as a company director at Facewatch the following day, 1 November. Campaigners claim this might mean he was negotiating his Facewatch contract while in post, and have urged the advisory committee on business appointments to investigate if it may have "compromised his work in public office." It is understood that the committee is currently considering the issue. Facewatch uses biometric cameras to check faces against a watch list and, despite widespread concern over the technology, has received backing from the Home Office, and has already been introduced in hundreds of high-street shops and supermarkets.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 6:00p | That Call Center Tech Scammer Could Be a Human Trafficking Victim Human trafficking to staff cyber scam call centers, once isolated to Southeast Asia, has expanded beyond the region, according to an Interpol investigation revealing new evidence of abuse in South America and the Middle East. Previous hotspots since 2021 were Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. From a report: The latest five-month operation discovered that victims from Malaysia were being trafficked to work in Peruvian call centers and Ugandan victims were being trafficked to Dubai for the same reason, only to be diverted to Thailand and then Myanmar. Police in Telangana, India, recently registered their first case of human trafficking for the purposes of cyber fraud. An accountant was lured to southeast Asia to work for a cyber fraud operation before eventually being returned in exchange for a ransom payment. Interpol said that in Myanmar alone, it identified trafficking victims originating from at least 22 different countries, although most come from the country's Kayin and Shan states. Operation Storm Makers II has led to hundreds of arrests and the rescue of more than 140 individuals, although the scale of the threat is much larger; many of the 360 investigations remain open and ongoing. Fake job ads luring victims with promises of high pay for light work in IT, marketing, modeling, and other roles now utilize AI translation tools to target non-Chinese speakers, expanding the victim pool, according to the report.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 6:45p | Beeper's iMessage App for Android is Back The faceoff between Apple and Beeper has entered another round. Days after Apple managed to block Beeper Mini from seamlessly sending and receiving iMessages on Android, Beeper says the app is up and running again -- sort of. From a report: See, Beeper Mini works a little differently this time: you must now sign in with an Apple ID, whereas previously it would automatically register you to iMessage via your phone number. Beeper says it's working on a fix to restore phone number registration with iMessage, but until then, your friends won't be able to send iMessages directly to your phone number. Instead, the blue bubbles will have to come to and from your email address. That's not nearly as convenient, but at the end of the day, it's still iMessage. Another change is that for now, owing to what could escalate into a cat-and-mouse game with Apple, Beeper Mini will be free to use. "Things have been a bit chaotic, and we're not comfortable subjecting paying users to this," the company wrote in a blog post today about the update. The app originally required a $2-per-month subscription. Apple's statement on Friday made clear that it won't hesitate to shut down further attempts to dupe its servers into believing Android phones are genuine Apple devices.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 7:21p | Cop28 Draft Agreement Calls for Fossil Fuel Cuts But Avoids 'Phase-Out' A draft deal to cut global fossil fuel production is "grossly insufficient" and "incoherent" and will not stop the world from avoiding dangerous climate breakdown, according to delegates at the UN's Cop28 summit. From a report: The text put forward by the summit presidency after 10 days of wrangling was received with concern and anger by many climate experts and politicians, though others welcomed elements of the draft including the first mention in a Cop text of reducing fossil fuel production. Some countries are despairing that the text does not require a full phase-out of fossil fuels. Cedric Schuster of Samoa, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said: "We will not sign our death certificate. We cannot sign on to text that does not have strong commitments on phasing out fossil fuels." The Cop28 presidency released a draft text in the early evening on Monday, which called for "reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, so as to achieve net zero by, before or around 2050, in keeping with the science." The text avoids highly contentious calls for a "phase-out" or "phase-down" of fossil fuels, which have been the focus of deep disagreement among the more than 190 countries meeting in Dubai. But instead of requiring fossil fuel producers to cut their output, it frames such reductions as optional, by calling on countries to "take actions that could include" reducing fossil fuels. "That one word 'could' just kills everything," said Eamon Ryan, Ireland's environment minister.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 8:00p | Microsoft and Labor Unions Form 'Historic' Alliance on AI Microsoft is teaming up with labor unions to create "an open dialogue" on how AI will impact workers. From a report: The software giant is forming an alliance with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, which comprises 60 labor unions representing 12.5 million workers, according to a statement on Monday. Under the partnership, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft will provide labor leaders and workers with formal training on how AI works. The education sessions will start in the winter of 2024. Microsoft will also begin gathering feedback from labor groups and will focus on unions and workers in "key selected sectors." The initiative marks the first formal collaboration on AI between labor unions and the technology industry and coincides with growing concerns that artificial intelligence could displace workers. The agreement also includes a template for "neutrality" terms that would make it easier for unions to organize at Microsoft. The move expands an approach the company already agreed to for its video game workers and lays the groundwork for broader unionization at Microsoft. Neutrality agreements commit companies not to wage anti-union campaigns in response to workers organizing.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 8:40p | Apple Rolls Out Journal App With iOS 17.2 and iPadOS 17.2 Updates Apple today released iOS 17.2 and iPadOS 17.2, the second major updates to the iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 operating systems that came out in September. From a report: The iOS 17.2 update includes the new Journal app, which is designed to allow iOS users to record key moments in their lives. The Journal app includes journaling suggestions, scheduled notifications, and options for adding photos, locations, and more.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 9:20p | Nvidia Emerges as Leading Investor in AI Companies Nvidia, the world's most valuable chipmaker, has become one of the most prolific investors in AI start-ups this year, seeking to capitalise on its position as the dominant provider of AI processors. From a report: Silicon Valley-based Nvidia said on Monday it had invested in "more than two dozen" companies this year, from big new AI platforms valued in the billions of dollars to smaller start-ups applying AI to industries such as healthcare or energy. According to estimates by Dealroom, which tracks venture capital investments, Nvidia participated in 35 deals in 2023, almost six times more than last year. That made the chipmaker the most active large-scale investor in AI in a banner year for dealmaking in the sector, outstripping Silicon Valley's largest venture firms such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia, according to Dealroom, excluding small-scale accelerator funds such as Y Combinator that place many smaller bets. "Broadly, for Nvidia, the number one criteria [for making start-up investments] is relevancy," Mohamed Siddeek, head of its dedicated venture arm NVentures, told the Financial Times. "Companies that use our technology, who depend on our technology, who build their businesses on our technologyâ...âI can't think of a situation where we've invested in a company that did not use Nvidia products."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 10:02p | US Healthcare Giant Norton Says Hackers Stole Millions of Patients' Data During Ransomware Attack An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Kentucky-based nonprofit healthcare system Norton Healthcare has confirmed that hackers accessed the personal data of millions of patients and employees during an earlier ransomware attack. Norton operates more than 40 clinics and hospitals in and around Louisville, Kentucky, and is the city's third-largest private employer. The organization has more than 20,000 employees, and more than 3,000 total providers on its medical staff, according to its website. In a filing with Maine's attorney general on Friday, Norton said that the sensitive data of approximately 2.5 million patients, as well as employees and their dependents, was accessed during its May ransomware attack. In a letter sent to those affected, the nonprofit said that hackers had access to "certain network storage devices between May 7 and May 9," but did not access Norton Healthcare's medical record system or Norton MyChart, its electronic medical record system. But Norton admitted that following a "time-consuming" internal investigation, which the organization completed in November, Norton found that hackers accessed a "wide range of sensitive information," including names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, health and insurance information and medical identification numbers. Norton Healthcare says that, for some individuals, the exposed data may have also included financial account numbers, driver licenses or other government ID numbers, as well as digital signatures. It's not known if any of the accessed data was encrypted. Norton says it notified law enforcement about the attack and confirmed it did not pay any ransom payment. The organization did not name the hackers responsible for the cyberattack, but the incident was claimed by the notorious ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware gang in May, according to data breach news site DataBreaches.net, which reported that the group claimed it exfiltrated almost five terabytes of data. TechCrunch could not confirm this, as the ALPHV website was inaccessible at the time of writing.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 10:40p | The Arc Browser Is Finally Coming To Windows The Browser Company's Chromium-based Arc browser, which aims to rethink the whole browser UI with a sidebar for tabs and lots of personalization options, is finally coming to Windows. In a post on X, the Browser Company says it's sent out the first Windows beta invites. It's currently only available for iOS and Mac users. Slashdot reader dokjest shares the email they received: Hey there, Hursh here, CTO at the Browser Co, with some exciting news! A little while ago, you signed up for a brand new browser, Arc -- one that The Verge called "The Chrome replacement I've been waiting for" and Shopify's CEO named as "the best browser." Well, starting today, we're onboarding our very first beta testers to Arc on Windows. And you're next! Over the coming weeks, our team will be onboarding hundreds of beta testers to Arc. And come January, we'll be welcoming 1,000s of you from the waitlist every week. If you don't mind a few bugs and some rough edges, sign up as a beta tester and we'll prioritize your invite to Arc! For us, this period leading up to our Windows release is about crafting the very best version of Arc that we can. And that means learning from you -- what you love, what's missing, what doesn't feel quite right. It still feels surreal to say, but it really does all begin today. Follow along for some fun on isarconwindowsyet.com -- And we'll see you very soon! - Hursh and The Browser Co Crew P.S. If you have a friend on Windows with one too many tabs, who could use a better browser -- forward this on to them, too! If you want to get on the beta waitlist, you can sign up here.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 11:20p | Google Play Movies, TV Apps Shutting Down In January 2024 Google Play Movies & TV will be replaced with Google TV on January 17, 2024. 9to5Google reports: Since the 2020 launch of the Google TV platform, that branding has replaced Play Movies & TV in areas such as mobile apps, but that's also led to the choice to do away with Play Movies & TV branding basically everywhere else. In October, that decision also made its way to Android TV, and the app has not been working ever since. Despite some confusion over the past few days, the app currently just redirects to Android TV's "Shop" tab, which has been widely available for months. In a new post, Google explains that it will do away with the last parts of Google Play Movies & TV in January 2024: "With these changes, Google Play Movies & TV will no longer be available on Android TV devices or the Google Play website.* However, you'll still be able to access all of your previously purchased titles (including active rentals) on Android TV devices, Google TV devices, the Google TV mobile app (Android and iOS), and YouTube." On January 17, Play Movies & TV will officially cease for good on Android TV. For anyone who does still have the app working -- again, most users cannot use the app already -- the "Shop" tab will become the only option. Similarly, Google says that Play Movies & TV will cease on other remaining platforms that same date. Any cable boxes with the app integrated will also lose it, and in turn pushed to the YouTube app for continued access to purchased content. Web access via play.google.com/movies will also go away, with youtube.com/movies becoming the alternative.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
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