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Wednesday, January 17th, 2024
| Time | Event |
| 12:02a | Google Search Really Has Gotten Worse, Researchers Find An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Google search really has been taken over by low-quality SEO spam, according to a new, year-long study by German researchers (PDF). The researchers, from Leipzig University, Bauhaus-University Weimar, and the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, set out to answer the question "Is Google Getting Worse?" by studying search results for 7,392 product-review terms across Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo over the course of a year. They found that, overall, "higher-ranked pages are on average more optimized, more monetized with affiliate marketing, and they show signs of lower text quality ... we find that only a small portion of product reviews on the web uses affiliate marketing, but the majority of all search results do." They also found that spam sites are in a constant war with Google over the rankings, and that spam sites will regularly find ways to game the system, rise to the top of Google's rankings, and then will be knocked down. "SEO is a constant battle and we see repeated patterns of review spam entering and leaving the results as search engines and SEO engineers take turns adjusting their parameters," they wrote. They note that Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo are regularly tweaking their algorithms and taking down content that is outright spam, but that, overall, this leads only to "a temporary positive effect." "Search engines seem to lose the cat-and-mouse game that is SEO spam," they write. Notably, Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo all have the same problems, and in many cases, Google performed better than Bing and DuckDuckGo by the researchers' measures. The researchers warn that this rankings war is likely to get much worse with the advent of AI-generated spam, and that it genuinely threatens the future utility of search engines: "the line between benign content and spam in the form of content and link farms becomes increasingly blurry -- a situation that will surely worsen in the wake of generative AI. We conclude that dynamic adversarial spam in the form of low-quality, mass-produced commercial content deserves more attention." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 12:20a | Apple Revises App Store Rules To Let Developers Link To Outside Payment Methods Apple has announced changes to its U.S. App Store, allowing developers to link to alternative payment methods, "provided that the app also offer purchases through Apple's own In-App Purchase system," reports 9to5Mac. The change comes in light of the Supreme Court declining to hear Apple's appeal in its legal battle with Epic Games. From the report: The guideline says that developers can apply for an entitlement that allows them to include buttons or links directing users to out-of-app purchasing mechanisms: "Developers may apply for an entitlement to provide a link in their app to a website the developer owns or maintains responsibility for in order to purchase such items. Learn more about the entitlement. In accordance with the entitlement agreement, the link may inform users about where and how to purchase those in-app purchase items, and the fact that such items may be available for a comparatively lower price. The entitlement is limited to use only in the iOS or iPadOS App Store on the United States storefront. In all other storefronts, apps and their metadata may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than in-app purchase." According to Apple, the link to an alternative payment platform can only be displayed on "one app page the end user navigates to (not an interstitial, modal, or pop-up), in a single, dedicated location on such page, and may not persist beyond that page." Apple has provided templates that developers can use for communicating with customers about alternative in-app payment systems [...]. Apple has also confirmed that it will charge a commission on purchases made through alternative payment platforms. This commission will be 12% for developers who are a member of the App Store Small Business Program and 27% for other apps. The commission will apply to "purchases made within seven days after a user taps on an External Purchase Link and continues from the system disclosure sheet to an external website." Apple says developers will be required to provide accounting of qualifying out-of-app purchases and remit the appropriate commissions. [...] However, Apple also says that collecting this commission will be "exceedingly difficult and, in many cases, impossible." [...] The other anti-steering change that Apple is required to make is to allow developers to communicate with customers outside of their apps about alternative purchasing options, such as via email. Apple made this change in 2021 as part of its settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought on by small developers.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 12:45a | LG Washing Machine Found Sending 3.7 GB of Data a Day An LG washing machine owner discovered that his smart home appliance was uploading an average of 3.66GB of data daily. "Concerned about the washer's internet addiction, Johnie forced the device to go cold turkey and blocked it using his router UI," reports Tom's Hardware. From the report: Johnie's initial screenshot showed that on a chosen day, the device uploaded 3.57GB and downloaded about 100MB, and the data traffic was almost constant. Meanwhile, according to the Asus router interface screenshot, the washing machine accounted for just shy of 5% of Johnie's internet traffic daily. The LG washing machine owner saw the fun in his predicament and joked that the device might use Wi-Fi for "DLCs (Downloadable Laundry Cycles)." He wasn't entirely kidding: The machine does download presets for various types of apparel. However, the lion's share of the data transferred was uploaded. Working through the thread, we note that Johnie also pondered the possibility of someone using his washing machine for crypto mining. "I'd gladly rent our LPU (Laundry Processing Unit) by the hour," he quipped. Again, there was the glimmer of a possibility that there could be truth behind this joke. Another social media user highlighted a history of hackers taking over LG smart-connected appliances. The SmartThinQ home appliances HomeHack vulnerability was patched several weeks after being made public. A similar modern hack might use the washing machine's computer resources as part of a botnet. Taking control of an LG washing machine as part of a large botnet for cryptocurrency mining or nefarious networking purposes wouldn't be as far-fetched as it sounds. Large numbers of relatively low-power devices can be formidable together. One of the more innocent theories regarding the significant data uploads suggested laundry data was being uploaded to LG so it could improve its LLM (Large Laundry Model). It sought to do this to prepare for the launch of its latest "AI washer-dryer combo" at CES, joked Johnie. For now, it looks like the favored answer to the data mystery is to blame Asus for misreporting it. We may never know what happened with Johnie, who is now running his LG washing machine offline. Another relatively innocent reason for the supposed high volume of uploads could be an error in the Asus router firmware. In a follow-up post a day after his initial Tweet, Johnie noted "inaccuracy in the ASUS router tool," with regard to Apple iMessage data use. Other LG smart washing machine users showed device data use from their router UIs. It turns out that these appliances more typically use less than 1MB per day.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 1:25a | Uber Shutting Down Alcohol Delivery Service Drizly Uber is shutting down alcohol delivery service Drizly three years after the company acquired it for $1.1 billion. Axios reports: Drizly was always a bit of an odd match for Uber, in that it didn't hire or contract its own delivery workers. Instead, Drizly provided backend tech that let local liquor stores provide their own deliveries. The bigger issue, however, might have been cybersecurity. Drizly in 2020 confirmed a hack that exposed information on around 2.5 million customers. What it didn't say, however, was that the company had been aware of the security flaw for two years without fixing it. That information was discovered by the Federal Trade Commission, after Uber's acquisition of Drizly, and led to an FTC order that restricted the types of customer information that Drizly could collect and retain. "After three years of Drizly operating independently within the Uber family, we've decided to close the business and focus on our core Uber Eats strategy of helping consumers get almost anything -- from food to groceries to alcohol -- all on a single app," said Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, Uber's SVP of delivery. "We're grateful to the Drizly team for their many contributions to the growth of the BevAlc delivery category as the original industry pioneer."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 2:02a | Apple Vision Pro Will Launch With 3D Movies From Disney Plus Apple has announced several new experiences launching with their upcoming Vision Pro spatial computing headset, including 3D content from Disney Plus. "Other apps announced with Vision Pro support include ESPN, MLB, PGA Tour, Max, Discovery Plus, Amazon Prime Video, Paramount Plus, Peacock, Pluto TV, Tubi, Fubo, Crunchyroll, Red Bull TV, IMAX, TikTok, and MUBI," reports The Verge, noting that Netflix's existing app "will work unmodified on Apple's new headset." From the report: The announcement lists some of the movies that will be in 3D, and naturally, Avatar: The Way of Water is among them. But Vision Pro owners will also get 3D versions of movies like Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Encanto. The movies will be available to rent through the Apple TV app, and the company says that anyone who has already bought the movies will now get 3D versions without paying extra. Otherwise, "more titles, including those available exclusively to Disney Plus subscribers, will be announced at a later date." Among the four screening environments for Disney Plus subscribers, one is called the Disney Plus Theater, which the company says takes inspiration from Hollywood's El Capitan Theatre, as well as others based on Pixar's Monsters, Inc., the fictional Avengers Tower from Marvel Avengers films, and one set in the cockpit of a landspeeder sitting in Star Wars' Tatooine desert. Besides Disney content, Apple mentioned the Apple TV app will have some free "immersive entertainment" that includes Alicia Keys: Rehearsal Room and a film from Planet Earth producers called Prehistoric Planet Immersive. The $3,499 Vision Pro headset will start shipping on February 2nd. Pre-orders begin January 19th at 8AM ET.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 3:30a | Beeper Users Say Apple Is Now Blocking Their Macs From Using iMessage Entirely An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The Apple-versus-Beeper saga is not over yet it seems, even though the iMessage-on-Android Beeper Mini was removed from the Play Store last week. Now, Apple customers who used Beeper's apps are reporting that they've been banned from using iMessage on their Macs -- a move Apple may have taken to disable Beeper's apps from working properly, but ultimately penalizes its own customers for daring to try a non-Apple solution for accessing iMessage. The latest follows a contentious game of cat-and-mouse between Apple and Beeper, which Apple ultimately won. [...] According to users' recounting of their tech support experiences with Apple, the support reps are telling them their computer has been flagged for spam, or for sending too many messages — even though that's not the case, some argued. This has led many Beeper users to believe this is how Apple is flagging them for removal from the iMessage network. One Beeper customer advised others facing this problem to ask Apple if their Mac was in a "throttled status" or if their Apple ID was blocked for spam to get to the root of the issue. Admitting up front that third-party software was to blame would sometimes result in the support rep being able to lift the ban, some noted. The news of the Mac bans was earlier reported by Apple news site AppleInsider and Times of India, and is being debated on Y Combinator forum site Hacker News. On the latter, some express their belief that the retaliation against Apple's own users is justified as they had violated Apple's terms, while others said that iMessage interoperability should be managed through regulation, not rogue apps. Far fewer argued that Apple is exerting its power in an anticompetitive fashion here.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 7:00a | Human 'Behavioral Crisis' At Root of Climate Breakdown, Say Scientists In a new paper published in the journal Science Progress, author Joseph Merz argues that climate issues are symptoms of ecological overshoot, driven by exploited human behaviors such as overconsumption, waste, and population growth. The paper emphasizes the need to change societal norms and behaviors through various means, including using marketing and media strategies to promote sustainable living, rather than solely focusing on technological or policy solutions. The Guardian reports: Merz and colleagues believe that most climate "solutions" proposed so far only tackle symptoms rather than the root cause of the crisis. This, they say, leads to increasing levels of the three "levers" of overshoot: consumption, waste and population. They claim that unless demand for resources is reduced, many other innovations are just a sticking plaster. "We can deal with climate change and worsen overshoot," says Merz. "The material footprint of renewable energy is dangerously underdiscussed. These energy farms have to be rebuilt every few decades -- they're not going to solve the bigger problem unless we tackle demand." "Overshoot" refers to how many Earths human society is using up to sustain -- or grow -- itself. Humanity would currently need 1.7 Earths to maintain consumption of resources at a level the planet's biocapacity can regenerate. Where discussion of climate often centers on carbon emissions, a focus on overshoot highlights the materials usage, waste output and growth of human society, all of which affect the Earth's biosphere. "Essentially, overshoot is a crisis of human behavior," says Merz. "For decades we've been telling people to change their behavior without saying: 'Change your behavior.' We've been saying 'be more green' or 'fly less', but meanwhile all of the things that drive behavior have been pushing the other way. All of these subtle cues and not so subtle cues have literally been pushing the opposite direction -- and we've been wondering why nothing's changing." The paper explores how neuropsychology, social signaling and norms have been exploited to drive human behaviors which grow the economy, from consuming goods to having large families. The authors suggest that ancient drives to belong in a tribe or signal one's status or attract a mate have been co-opted by marketing strategies to create behaviors incompatible with a sustainable world. "People are the victims -- we have been exploited to the point we are in crisis. These tools are being used to drive us to extinction," says the evolutionary behavioral ecologist and study co-author Phoebe Barnard. "Why not use them to build a genuinely sustainable world?" Just one-quarter of the world population is responsible for nearly three-quarters of emissions. The authors suggest the best strategy to counter overshoot would be to use the tools of the marketing, media and entertainment industries in a campaign to redefine our material-intensive socially accepted norms. "We're talking about replacing what people are trying to signal, what they're trying to say about themselves. Right now, our signals have a really high material footprint -- our clothes are linked to status and wealth, their materials sourced from all over the world, shipped to south-east Asia most often and then shipped here, only to be replaced by next season's trends. The things that humans can attach status to are so fluid, we could be replacing all of it with things that essentially have no material footprint -- or even better, have an ecologically positive one."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 10:00a | Famous XKCD Comic Comes Full Circle With AI Bird-Identifying Binoculars An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last week, Austria-based Swarovski Optik introduced the AX Visio 10x32 binoculars, which the company says can identify over 9,000 species of birds and mammals using image recognition technology. The company is calling the product the world's first "smart binoculars," and they come with a hefty price tag -- $4,799. "The AX Visio are the world's first AI-supported binoculars," the company says in the product's press release. "At the touch of a button, they assist with the identification of birds and other creatures, allow discoveries to be shared, and offer a wide range of practical extra functions." The binoculars, aimed mostly at bird watchers, gain their ability to identify birds from the Merlin Bird ID project, created by Cornell Lab of Ornithology. As confirmed by a hands-on demo conducted by The Verge, the user looks at an animal through the binoculars and presses a button. A red progress circle fills in while the binoculars process the image, then the identified animal name pops up on the built-in binocular HUD screen within about five seconds. In 2014, a famous xkcd comic strip titled Tasks depicted someone asking a developer to create an app that, when a user takes a photo, will check whether the user is in a national park (deemed easy due to GPS) and check whether the photo is of a bird (to which the developer says, "I'll need a research team and five years"). The caption below reads, "In CS, it can be hard to explain the difference between the easy and the virtually impossible." It's been just over nine years since the comic was published, and while identifying the presence of a bird in a photo was solved some time ago, these binoculars arguably go further by identifying the species of the bird in the photo (it also keeps track of location due to GPS). While apps to identify bird species already exist, this feature is now packed into a handheld pair of binoculars.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 2:00p | Brace Yourself, IPv6 is Coming Paul Copplestone, co-founder of Supabase, writing in a blog post: On February 1st 2024, AWS will start charging for IPv4 addresses. This will cost $0.005 per hour -- around $4 month. A more accurate title for this post would be "Brace yourself, IPv4 is leaving," because I can't imagine many companies will pay to keep using the IPv4 address. While $4 is relatively small for an individual, my hypothesis is that AWS is a foundational layer to many infrastructure companies, like Supabase -- we offer a full EC2 instance for every Postgres database, so this would add millions to our AWS bill. Infrastructure companies on AWS have a few choices: 1. Pass on the cost to the customer. 2. Provide a workaround (for example, a proxy). 3. Only offer IPv6 and hope the world will catch up.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 2:40p | Cyber Attacks Are One of the Biggest Threats Facing Healthcare Systems An increase in cyber attacks on the healthcare sector is jeopardising patient safety, and prompting some governments to publish new cyber security standards. From a report: Publicly disclosed global cyber security breaches between January and September last year showed that the healthcare sector suffered more attacks (241) than any other sector, ahead of government (147), and information technology including software, hardware and IT services (91), according to research by Omdia, a technology research provider. The most common type of cyber breach in healthcare was hacking, followed by supply chain attacks, "phishing" (where cyber criminals pose as legitimate organisations to trick people into disclosing passwords and payment details), and "ransomware," in which hackers use malicious software -- "malware" -- to encrypt data until the victim pays a ransom to unlock it. "The healthcare sector is such a tempting target [for cyber security criminals] because ... you can put lives at risk," says James Lewis, a cyber security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US think-tank. The UK's National Health Service has been hit by significant ransomware attacks. In 2017, the "WannaCry" attack is estimated to have cost the NHS $116.3mn and caused the cancellation of 19,000 patient appointments. Another hacking, in 2022, took down the non-emergency 111 service, and disrupted management systems for mental health services and emergency prescriptions.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 3:20p | JPMorgan Suffers 45 Billion Cyber Attacks a Day Speaking of cyber attacks, JPMorgan Chase is targeted by hackers trying to infiltrate its systems 45 billion times a day -- twice the rate at which it was attacked a year earlier -- the bank's head of asset and wealth management has said. FT: Speaking at Davos on Wednesday, Mary Erdoes said the bank spent $15bn on technology every year and employed 62,000 technologists, with many focused solely on combating the rise in cyber crime. "We have more engineers than Google or Amazon. Why? Because we have to," she said. "The fraudsters get smarter, savvier, quicker, more devious, more mischievous." Western lenders have suffered a surge in cyber attacks in the past two years, which has been partly blamed on Russian hackers acting in response to sanctions placed on the country and its banks following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But the use of artificial intelligence by cyber criminals has also increased the number of incidents and level of sophistication of attacks.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 4:00p | India Puts Tech Firms on Notice Over Deepfakes Inaction An anonymous reader shares a report: India has warned tech companies that it is prepared to impose bans if they fail to take active measures against deepfake videos, a senior government minister said, on the heels of warning by a well-known personality over a deepfake advertisement using his likeness to endorse a gaming app.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 4:40p | Google To Tweak Search Results To Comply With EU Tech Rules Google will tweak online search results to give comparison sites more prominence, the company said in a blogpost on Wednesday, as it outlined efforts to comply with new EU tech rules that could hit revenues for some companies. Reuters: Under the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA), which the company will have to comply with by March 7, Google is obligated to treat rival services and products the same way as it treats its own when it ranks them in search results. It is also required to allow business users to access the data that they generate when using Google's platform.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 5:20p | Fujitsu is Sorry That Its Software Helped Send Innocent People To Prison Fujitsu has apologized for its role in the British Post Office scandal, acknowledging that its buggy accounting software contributed to the wrongful prosecutions of hundreds of postal employees. From a report: "Fujitsu would like to apologize for our part in this appalling miscarriage of justice," Paul Patterson, co-CEO of Fujitsu's European division, said in a hearing held by the UK Parliament's Business and Trade Committee. "We were involved from the very start. We did have bugs and errors in the system and we did help the Post Office in their prosecutions of the sub-postmasters. For that we are truly sorry." The committee hearing focused on possible compensation for victims of what has been called "the worst miscarriage of justice in British history." Patterson said that Fujitsu has "a moral obligation" to contribute to the compensation for victims. A BBC report explains that between 1999 and 2015, "more than 900 sub-postmasters and postmistresses were prosecuted for theft and false accounting after money appeared to be missing from their branches, but the prosecutions were based on evidence from faulty Horizon software. Some sub-postmasters wrongfully went to prison, many were financially ruined. Some have since died."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 6:00p | Verizon Writes Off $5.8 Billion From Enterprise as Sales Decline Verizon is writing down the value of its business services division by $5.8 billion, a sign of the company's declining enterprise operations. From a report: The wireless carrier said in a filing Wednesday that the non-cash goodwill impairment charge was due to "secular declines, as well as continuing competitive and macroeconomic pressure." As a result of the impairment, Verizon said the balance of its business unit was $1.7 billion at the end of 2023. The decline is tied to the telecommunications giant's legacy wireline operations, which provide fixed-line communications services for businesses, through copper or fiber wires. This segment has seen demand drop considerably as its mobile business service has surged. Verizon's wireline business revenue fell 8.1% through the third quarter and is likely to stay muted in 2024, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 6:40p | 'Student Should Have a Healthy-Looking BMI': How Universities Bend Over Backwards To Accommodate Food Delivery Robots samleecole writes: A food delivery robot company instructed a public university to promote its service on campus with photographs and video featuring only students who "have a healthy-looking BMI," [body mass index] according to emails and documents I obtained via a public records request. The emails also discuss how ordering delivery via robot should become a "habit" for a "captured" customer base of students on campus. These highly specific instructions show how universities around the country are going to extreme lengths to create a welcoming environment on campus for food delivery robots that sometimes have trouble crossing the street and need traffic infrastructure redesigned for them in order to navigate campus, a relatively absurd cache of public records obtained by 404 Media reveals.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 7:20p | Google's Circle To Search is a Dead-Simple Way To Find What You're Looking For It's hard to think of a more self-explanatory feature than Circle to Search: it does exactly what it sounds like it does. You circle something on your phone screen, tap a button, and voila! A page full of Google search results telling you about the thing you circled. The Verge: The new feature is launching on five phones to start -- the three members of Samsung's brand-new Galaxy S24 series, as well as Google's Pixel 8 and 8 Pro -- before it comes to other "select, premium" Android phones. Well, maybe it does need a little explaining. If the feature sounds familiar, you might be thinking of Google Lens, which is similar. But instead of opening up the Google app, you can use Circle to Search anywhere on your device. Just long-press the home button if you're using three-button navigation -- or the navigation handle if you're using gesture nav -- and it will appear on top of whatever app or screen you're currently using. You can circle, highlight, or tap a subject, including text as well as images.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 8:00p | Amazon is Working on a Paid Version of Alexa Amazon is revamping its Alexa voice assistant as it prepares to launch a new paid subscription plan this year, Business Insider reported Wednesday, citing internal documents and people familiar with the matter. But the change is causing internal conflict and may lead to further delay, the report added. From the report: Tentatively called "Alexa Plus," the paid version of Alexa is intended to offer more conversational and personalized AI technology, said one of the documents obtained by Business Insider. The team is working towards a June 30 launch deadline, and has been testing the underlying voice technology, dubbed "Remarkable Alexa," with 15,000 external customers, these people said. But the quality of the new Alexa's answers is still falling short of expectations, often sharing inaccurate information, external tests have found. Amazon is now going through a major overhaul of Alexa's technology stack to address this issue, though the team is experiencing some discord.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 8:40p | Epic Plans To Contest Apple's 'Bad-Faith' Compliance With Court Ruling Over App Store An anonymous reader shares a report: Fortnite maker Epic Games is not happy about how Apple intends to comply with a district court's injunction that permitted app developers to direct users to their own websites and payment platforms -- a court order that came into effect following the Supreme Court's decision to not hear the Apple antitrust case, leaving the current ruling to stand. Though Apple had largely won the case, as the court decided it was not a monopolist, a judge ruled that app makers should be able to steer their customers to the web from links or buttons inside their apps, something that forced Apple to change its App Store rules. But Apple's compliance doesn't give app makers the victory they had hoped, as the tech giant aims to still charge commissions on purchases made outside of apps -- a decision Epic aims to challenge in court. According to statements made by Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, shared on X, Apple's "bad-faith" compliance undermines the judge's order that would have allowed buttons or external links "in addition to [in-app purchases.]" The Ninth Circuit District Court had ruled on one count of out ten in favor of Epic in its decision, finding that Apple violated California's Unfair Competition law. The decision meant Apple had to remove the "anti-steering" clause from its agreement with App Store developers. This clause for years had prevented app developers from directing their customers to other ways to pay for in-app purchases or subscriptions from inside their apps, leading to confusing screens or broken features, where customers would have to figure out on their own how to make the necessary purchases from the developer's website.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 9:20p | Samsung Announces New Galaxy S24 Lineup With AI-Powered Photo Editing, Search Features Samsung announced its new flagship Galaxy S24 smartphone lineup today, with loads of new artificial intelligence features. CNBC reports: For Samsung's top-tier S24 Ultra, which is the company's biggest of the three devices and comes with punchier specs and features, Samsung is using a version of Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon Series 8 Gen 3 optimized for Galaxy. The company is using a mix of Qualcomm systems-on-chips (SoCs) and its own Exynos chipset for its S24 and S24+ models. [...] The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is the main event for most tech gadget enthusiasts -- and, for the most part, it isn't a whole lot different to the Galaxy S23 Ultra looks-wise. That's because Samsung isn't changing an awful lot with the hardware. It still comes in the same size as its predecessor -- the display is 6.8 inches, measured diagonally, though the phone is flatter this time round. The S23 Ultra had more curvature to it. The big upgrade to the external hardware with this model is that it's cased in titanium, so it's a lot sturdier than the S23 Ultra. The main difference this time round is what's inside: Samsung is going big on artificial intelligence. A key focus for Samsung, like other smartphone makers, now is on "on-demand" AI -- or, the ability to carry out AI workloads directly on a device, rather than over the cloud. Samsung said its new Galaxy S24 Ultra will come with a bunch of new AI features, a lot of which is being powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset for mobile, which is tailored for AI devices. One feature Samsung's loading into the Galaxy S24 range is the ability to circle locations or items a user is directing their camera at, or on a picture they've taken, and then look up results on what those things are. So, for instance, if you see a landmark or a shoe you want to buy, you can make a circle around that object and then the AI shows you appropriate results on Google. Another feature Samsung touted is the ability to use AI to edit photos. So users can edit reflections out of pictures they've taken, for instance if you took a picture of yourself in front of a window. Or you can move a person from one side of the room to another by dragging them from left to right. Samsung also showcased live transcription features with its latest smartphones. When calling someone who's speaking in French, for instance, a user can pull up a transcription that's being fed through to them in real time. You can also record a conversation between two people and get it transcribed, while the AI assigns a label to each person speaking, similar to transcription products like Otter AI. Samsung is also incorporating AI watermarking into these features, helping to combat misinformation and copyright infringement. "So when a Galaxy S24 user uses AI to modify a photo, Samsung will keep a log of what was changed with AI and store it in the metadata," reports CNBC. "It'll also have an icon in the bottom left corner to show that the image has been edited using AI, kind of like a watermark."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 9:40p | Samsung Is Making a Smart Ring Samsung announced it's working on a smart ring, describing it as a "powerful and accessible" health and wellness device. The Verge reports: Outside of a brief video showing off what the Galaxy Ring looks like, Samsung didn't share much more about the ring. The company didn't say when the device is coming out or what it might cost, for example. [...] Given today's focus on AI features for Samsung's new Galaxy smartphones, I'm guessing that Samsung will tout some AI-powered tools for the Galaxy Ring at some point, too. Hopefully Samsung doesn't wait too long to share more.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| 10:00p | OpenAI Must Defend ChatGPT Fabrications After Failing To Defeat Libel Suit An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: OpenAI may finally have to answer for ChatGPT's "hallucinations" in court after a Georgia judge recently ruled against the tech company's motion to dismiss a radio host's defamation suit (PDF). OpenAI had argued that ChatGPT's output cannot be considered libel, partly because the chatbot output cannot be considered a "publication," which is a key element of a defamation claim. In its motion to dismiss, OpenAI also argued that Georgia radio host Mark Walters could not prove that the company acted with actual malice or that anyone believed the allegedly libelous statements were true or that he was harmed by the alleged publication. It's too early to say whether Judge Tracie Cason found OpenAI's arguments persuasive. In her order denying OpenAI's motion to dismiss, which MediaPost shared here, Cason did not specify how she arrived at her decision, saying only that she had "carefully" considered arguments and applicable laws. There may be some clues as to how Cason reached her decision in a court filing (PDF) from John Monroe, attorney for Walters, when opposing the motion to dismiss last year. Monroe had argued that OpenAI improperly moved to dismiss the lawsuit by arguing facts that have yet to be proven in court. If OpenAI intended the court to rule on those arguments, Monroe suggested that a motion for summary judgment would have been the proper step at this stage in the proceedings, not a motion to dismiss. Had OpenAI gone that route, though, Walters would have had an opportunity to present additional evidence. To survive a motion to dismiss, all Walters had to do was show that his complaint was reasonably supported by facts, Monroe argued. Failing to convince the court that Walters had no case, OpenAI's legal theories regarding its liability for ChatGPT's "hallucinations" will now likely face their first test in court. "We are pleased the court denied the motion to dismiss so that the parties will have an opportunity to explore, and obtain a decision on, the merits of the case," Monroe told Ars. "Walters sued OpenAI after a journalist, Fred Riehl, warned him that in response to a query, ChatGPT had fabricated an entire lawsuit," notes Ars. "Generating an entire complaint with an erroneous case number, ChatGPT falsely claimed that Walters had been accused of defrauding and embezzling funds from the Second Amendment Foundation." "With the lawsuit moving forward, curious chatbot users everywhere may finally get the answer to a question that has been unclear since ChatGPT quickly became the fastest-growing consumer application of all time after its launch in November 2022: Will ChatGPT's hallucinations be allowed to ruin lives?"
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| 10:40p | Cancer Deaths Are Falling, but There May Be an Asterisk Cancer deaths in the United States are falling, with four million deaths prevented since 1991, according to the American Cancer Society's annual report. At the same time, the society reported that the number of new cancer cases had ticked up to more than two million in 2023, from 1.9 million in 2022. The New York Times: Cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the United States, after heart disease. Doctors believe that it is urgent to understand changes in the death rate, as well as changes in cancer diagnoses. The cancer society highlighted three chief factors in reduced cancer deaths: declines in smoking, early detection and greatly improved treatments. Breast cancer mortality is one area where treatment had a significant impact. In the 1980s and 1990s, metastatic breast cancer "was regarded as a death sentence," said Donald Berry, a statistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and an author of a new paper on breast cancer with Sylvia K. Plevritis of Stanford University and other researchers (several authors of the paper reported receiving payments from companies involved in cancer therapies). The paper, published Tuesday in JAMA, found that the death rate from breast cancer had fallen to 27 per 100,000 women in 2019 from 48 per 100,000 in 1975. That includes metastatic cancer, which counted for nearly 30 percent of the reduction in the breast cancer death rate. Breast cancer treatment has improved so much that it has become a bigger factor than screening in saving lives, said Ruth Etzioni, a biostatistician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Death rates have even declined among women in their 40s, who generally did not have regular mammograms, said Dr. Mette Kalager, a professor of medicine at the University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital, "indicating a substantial effect of treatment," she said.
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| 11:20p | Google DeepMind's New AI System Can Solve Complex Geometry Problems An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Google DeepMind has created an AI system that can solve complex geometry problems. It's a significant step towards machines with more human-like reasoning skills, experts say. Geometry, and mathematics more broadly, have challenged AI researchers for some time. Compared with text-based AI models, there is significantly less training data for mathematics because it is symbol driven and domain specific, says Thang Wang, a coauthor of the research, which is published in Nature today. Solving mathematics problems requires logical reasoning, something that most current AI models aren't great at. This demand for reasoning is why mathematics serves as an important benchmark to gauge progress in AI intelligence, says Wang. DeepMind's program, named AlphaGeometry, combines a language model with a type of AI called a symbolic engine, which uses symbols and logical rules to make deductions. Language models excel at recognizing patterns and predicting subsequent steps in a process. However, their reasoning lacks the rigor required for mathematical problem-solving. The symbolic engine, on the other hand, is based purely on formal logic and strict rules, which allows it to guide the language model toward rational decisions. These two approaches, responsible for creative thinking and logical reasoning respectively, work together to solve difficult mathematical problems. This closely mimics how humans work through geometry problems, combining their existing understanding with explorative experimentation. DeepMind says it tested AlphaGeometry on 30 geometry problems at the same level of difficulty found at the International Mathematical Olympiad, a competition for top high school mathematics students. It completed 25 within the time limit. The previous state-of-the-art system, developed by the Chinese mathematician Wen-Tsun Wu in 1978, completed only 10. "This is a really impressive result," says Floris van Doorn, a mathematics professor at the University of Bonn, who was not involved in the research. "I expected this to still be multiple years away." DeepMind says this system demonstrates AI's ability to reason and discover new mathematical knowledge. "This is another example that reinforces how AI can help us advance science and better understand the underlying processes that determine how the world works," said Quoc V. Le, a scientist at Google DeepMind and one of the authors of the research, at a press conference.
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