Technology

"Fortnite" maker Epic Games said on Friday Apple was impeding its attempts to set up a games store on iPhones and iPads in Europe, the latest escalation in a bitter feud over the technology giant's control of the iOS app ecosystem. From a report: Apple has twice rejected documents it submitted to launch the Epic Games Store because the design of certain buttons and labels was similar to those used by its App Store, the video-game publisher said. "We are using the same 'Install' and 'In-app purchases' naming conventions that are used across popular app stores on multiple platforms, and are following standard conventions for buttons in iOS apps," Epic said in a series of posts on X. "Apple's rejection is arbitrary, obstructive, and in violation of the DMA, and we've shared our concerns with the European Commission," it said. Under pressure from European regulators, Apple had in March cleared the way for Epic to put its own game store on iOS devices in Europe.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Top Eurocops are appealing for help from lawmakers to undermine a privacy-enhancing technology (PET) they say is hampering criminal investigations -- and it's not end-to-end encryption this time. Not exactly. From a report: Europol published a position paper today highlighting its concerns around SMS home routing -- the technology that allows telcos to continue offering their services when customers visit another country. Most modern mobile phone users are tied to a network with roaming arrangements in other countries. EE customers in the UK will connect to either Telefonica or Xfera when they land in Spain, or T-Mobile in Croatia, for example. While this usually provides a fairly smooth service for most roamers, Europol is now saying something needs to be done about the PETs that are often enabled in these home routing setups. According to the cops, they pointed out that when roaming, a suspect in a criminal case who's using a SIM from another country will have all of their mobile communications processed through their home network. If a crime is committed by a Brit in Germany, for example, then German police couldn't issue a request for unencrypted data as they could with a domestic operator such as Deutsche Telekom.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil, 76, has doubled down on his prediction of the Singularity's imminent arrival in an interview with The New York Times. Gesturing to a graph showing exponential growth in computing power, Kurzweil asserted humanity would merge with AI by 2045, augmenting biological brains with vast computational abilities. "If you create something that is thousands of times -- or millions of times -- more powerful than the brain, we can't anticipate what it is going to do," Kurzweil said. His claims, once dismissed, have gained traction amid recent AI breakthroughs. As Kurzweil ages, his predictions carry personal urgency. "Even a healthy 20-year-old could die tomorrow," he told The Times, hinting at his own mortality race against the Singularity's timeline.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nintendo has announced the end of repair services for its Wii U console, following the earlier decision to shut down all Wii U servers. Nintendo cited the expiration of the parts retention period as the reason for discontinuing repairs. The move marks the final chapter for the Wii U, which launched in 2012 but struggled to gain traction, selling only 13.56 million units compared to its successor, the Switch, which has sold over 140 million units.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Britain's Labour Party was projected on Thursday evening to win a landslide election victory, sweeping the Conservative Party out of power after 14 years, in a thundering anti-incumbent revolt that heralded a new era in British politics. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak accepted defeat Friday, and said he had called Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, to congratulate him. The New York Times: Partial results, and an exit poll conducted for the BBC and two other broadcasters, indicated that Labour was on course to win around 405 of the 650 seats in the British House of Commons, versus 154 for the Conservatives. If the projections are confirmed, it would be the worst defeat for the Conservatives in the nearly 200-year history of the party, one that would raise questions about its future -- and even its very viability. Reform U.K., an insurgent, anti-immigration party, was projected to win 4 seats but a significant share of the vote, a robust performance that came at the expense of the Conservatives. The exit poll, which accurately predicted the winner of the last five British general elections, confirmed the electorate was thoroughly fed up with the Conservatives after a turbulent era that spanned austerity, Brexit, the Covid pandemic, the serial scandals of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the ill-fated tax-cutting proposals of his successor, Liz Truss. While a Labour victory had long been predicted -- it held a double-digit polling lead over the Conservatives for more than 18 months -- the magnitude of the Tory defeat will reverberate through Britain for months, if not years. Further reading: Financial Times; BBC, and The Guardian.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MattSparkes writes: Secret international discussions have resulted in governments across the world imposing identical export controls on quantum computers, while refusing to disclose the scientific rationale behind the regulations. Although quantum computers theoretically have the potential to threaten national security by breaking encryption techniques, even the most advanced quantum computers currently in public existence are too small and too error-prone to achieve this, rendering the bans seemingly pointless. The UK is one of the countries that has prohibited the export of quantum computers with 34 or more quantum bits, or qubits, and error rates below a certain threshold. The intention seems to be to restrict machines of a certain capability, but the UK government hasn't explicitly said this. A New Scientist freedom of information request for a rationale behind these numbers was turned down on the grounds of national security. France has also introduced export controls with the same specifications on qubit numbers and error rates, as has Spain and the Netherlands. Identical limits across European states might point to a European Union regulation, but that isn't the case. A European Commission spokesperson told New Scientist that EU members are free to adopt national measures, rather than bloc-wide ones, for export restrictions. New Scientist reached out to dozens of nations to ask what the scientific basis for these matching legislative bans on quantum computer exports was, but was told it was kept secret to protect national security.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Half of the Netherlands' petrol stations are set to close in the next five to 10 years as electric cars start to take over the market, according to ING Research. From a report: The bank's economists say there will be insufficient earnings in future, with only some 2,000 of today's 4,131 gas stations remaining. "It is mainly the small, unmanned petrol stations that will disappear," says ING Research, as reported in De Telegraaf. [...] Owners are trying to maintain turnover by increasing their sales of food and beverages, maintenance services and even car washing, ING says. But the long-term business model of independent stations will be difficult to maintain. "A quick calculation shows how long petrol station owners can still sell petrol," Dirk Mulder, Trade & Retail sector banker at ING Research, said. "A new car remains in the Dutch fleet for an average of 19 years. The last petrol and diesel cars will come onto the market in 2034 and will stay on the road until approximately 2053."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roku's recent update has sparked controversy among TV owners, particularly those with TCL and Hisense models. The update, version 13.0.0 released on June 6, introduced a feature called "Roku Smart Picture" that has led to numerous complaints about unwanted motion smoothing effects. The Verge adds: While Roku doesn't explicitly mention motion smoothing, or what Roku calls "action smoothing," the update has made it so that I and many others with Roku TVs see motion smoothing, regardless of whether the picture setting is Roku Smart Picture or not. My TV didn't even support motion smoothing before this. Now, I can't make it go away.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An Italian video game, 22 years in the making, has finally hit the market, setting a record for the longest development time in gaming history. "Kien," an action platformer for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance, began development in 2002 by a group of five inexperienced enthusiasts, The Guardian reports. Only one, Fabio Belsanti, saw the project through to completion. The game, inspired by 15th-century Tuscan manuscripts and early Japanese graphics, offers a challenging, nonlinear fantasy experience. It's now available on a translucent gray cartridge, complete with a printed manual -- a rarity in modern gaming. Belsanti's company, AgeOfGames, survived the delay by creating educational games. The recent boom in retro gaming finally made Kien's release feasible, he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon's Kindle e-reader system is experiencing a widespread outage, affecting new book downloads and access to undownloaded titles in users' libraries. The issue, confirmed by Amazon support, is expected to last at least 48 hours.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A new test version of Windows 11 is available for Windows Insiders on the Dev Channel with Build 26120.961, which rolls out a significant change: a new Windows Start menu. You'll immediately notice that Microsoft has redesigned the Microsoft user account display, moving it to the center of the Start menu as soon as you click on the username or profile picture. This new "account manager" feature gives you quicker access to your various Microsoft accounts, such as Microsoft 365, Xbox Game Pass, and OneDrive cloud storage. To no surprise, Microsoft is using this prominent display to remind you of their own products and services. The difference to the current Windows 11 Start menu is obvious, as the following screenshot shows:

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New research aimed at identifying foods that contain higher levels of PFAS found people who eat more white rice, coffee, eggs and seafood typically showed more of the toxic chemicals in their plasma and breast milk. The Guardian adds: The study checked samples from 3,000 pregnant mothers, and is among the first research to suggest coffee and white rice may be contaminated at higher rates than other foods. It also identified an association between red meat consumption and levels of PFOS, one of the most common and dangerous PFAS compounds. The authors said the findings highlight the chemicals' ubiquity and the many ways they can end up in the food supply.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple has removed several apps offering virtual private network services from the Russian App Store, following a request from Roskomnadzor, Russia's media regulator, independent news outlet Mediazona reported on Thursday. The VPN services removed by Apple include leading services such as ProtonVPN, Red Shield VPN, NordVPN and Le VPN. Those living in Russia will no longer be able to download the services, while users who already have them on their phones can continue using them, but will be unable to update them. Red Shield VPN posted a notice from Apple on X, which said that their app would be removed following a request from Roskomnadzor, "because it includes content that is illegal in Russia."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ZipNada writes: A federal court in Texas has partially blocked the government's ban on noncompete agreements that was set to take effect September 4. An estimated 30 million people, or one in five American workers, are bound by noncompetes. The employment agreements typically prevent workers -- everyone from minimum wage earners to CEOs -- from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own. In its complaint, Ryan LLC accused the FTC of overstepping its statutory authority in declaring all noncompetes unfair and anticompetitive. Judge Brown agreed, writing, "The FTC lacks substantive rulemaking authority with respect to unfair methods of competition." Through a statement Wednesday evening, the FTC said its authority is supported by both statute and precedent. "We will keep fighting to free hardworking Americans from unlawful noncompetes, which reduce innovation, inhibit economic growth, trap workers, and undermine Americans' economic liberty," wrote FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar. The FTC has long argued that noncompetes hurt workers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A hacker infiltrated OpenAI's internal messaging systems in early 2023, stealing confidential information about the ChatGPT maker's AI technologies, New York Times reported Thursday. The breach, disclosed to employees in April that year but kept from the public, has sparked internal debate over the company's security protocols and potential national security implications, the report adds. The hacker accessed an employee forum containing sensitive discussions but did not breach core AI systems. OpenAI executives, believing the hacker had no government ties, opted against notifying law enforcement, the Times reported. From the report: After the breach, Leopold Aschenbrenner, an OpenAI technical program manager focused on ensuring that future A.I. technologies do not cause serious harm, sent a memo to OpenAI's board of directors, arguing that the company was not doing enough to prevent the Chinese government and other foreign adversaries from stealing its secrets. Mr. Aschenbrenner said OpenAI had fired him this spring for leaking other information outside the company and argued that his dismissal had been politically motivated. He alluded to the breach on a recent podcast, but details of the incident have not been previously reported. He said OpenAI's security wasn't strong enough to protect against the theft of key secrets if foreign actors were to infiltrate the company.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Hikari-no-Akari, a long-established and popular pirate site that specializes in Japanese music, is being targeted in U.S. federal court by Sony Music. [...] The music download portal, which links to externally hosted files, has been operating for well over a decade and currently draws more than a million monthly visits. In addition to the public-facing part of the site, HnA also has a private forum and Discord channel. [...] Apparently, Sony Music Japan has been keeping an eye on the unauthorized music portal. The company has many of its works shared on the site, including anime theme music, which is popular around the globe. For example, a few weeks ago, HnA posted "Sayonara, Mata Itsuka!" from the Japanese artist Kenshi Yonezu, which is used as the theme song for the asadora series "The Tiger and Her Wings." Around the same time, PEACEKEEPER, a song by Japanese musician STEREO DIVE FOUNDATION, featured in the third season of the series "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime", was shared on the site. Sony Music Japan is a rightsholder for both these tracks, as well as many others that were posted on the site. The music company presumably tried to contact HnA directly to have these listings removed and reached out to its CDN service Cloudflare too, asking it to take action. [...] They are a prerequisite for obtaining a DMCA subpoena, which Sony Music Japan requested at a California federal court this week. Sony requested two DMCA subpoenas, both targeted at hikarinoakari.com and hnadownloads.co. The latter domain receives the bulk of its traffic from the first, which isn't a surprise considering the 'hnadownloads' name. Through the subpoena, the music company hopes to obtain additional information on the people behind these sites. That includes, names, IP-addresses, and payment info. Presumably, this will be used for follow-up enforcement actions. It's unclear whether Cloudflare will be able to hand over any usable information and for the moment, HnA remains online. Several of the infringing URLs that were identified by Sony have recently been taken down, including this one. However, others remain readily available. The same applies to private forum threads and Discord postings, of course.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Epilogue, the company behind the GB Operator emulator, which lets users play Game Boy cartridges on a PC, announced that it's working on an update to turn the Game Boy Camera into a lo-fi webcam. Time Extension reports: The Playback app currently allows you to download photos from the Game Boy Camera accessory, but Epilogue has just demonstrated the ability to use the peripheral as a webcam. "We now have a live feed from the Game Boy Camera, but still need to fine-tune some things and allow for configuration options," says the company. "We wanted to share this update because it was exciting to see it finally work, and [we] can't wait to see everyone having fun with it. It's the worst and the best webcam you'll ever have."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cloudflare today unveiled a new feature part of its content delivery network (CDN) that prevents AI developers from scraping content on the web. According to Cloudflare, the feature is available for both the free and paid tiers of its service. SiliconANGLE reports: The feature uses AI to detect automated content extraction attempts. According to Cloudflare, its software can spot bots that scrape content for LLM training projects even when they attempt to avoid detection. "Sadly, we've observed bot operators attempt to appear as though they are a real browser by using a spoofed user agent," Cloudflare engineers wrote in a blog post today. "We've monitored this activity over time, and we're proud to say that our global machine learning model has always recognized this activity as a bot." One of the crawlers that Cloudflare managed to detect is a bot that collects content for Perplexity AI Inc., a well-funded search engine startup. Last month, Wired reported that the manner in which the bot scrapes websites makes its requests appear as regular user traffic. As a result, website operators have struggled to block Perplexity AI from using their content. Cloudflare assigns every website visit that its platform processes a score of 1 to 99. The lower the number, the greater the likelihood that the request was generated by a bot. According to the company, requests made by the bot that collects content for Perplexity AI consistently receive a score under 30. "When bad actors attempt to crawl websites at scale, they generally use tools and frameworks that we are able to fingerprint," Cloudflare's engineers detailed. "For every fingerprint we see, we use Cloudflare's network, which sees over 57 million requests per second on average, to understand how much we should trust this fingerprint." Cloudflare will update the feature over time to address changes in AI scraping bots' technical fingerprints and the emergence of new crawlers. As part of the initiative, the company is rolling out a tool that will enable website operators to report any new bots they may encounter.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: The Food and Drug Administration will no longer allow the use of brominated vegetable oil (BVO) in food products and sodas due to concerns it poses a threat to people's health, the FDA announced Tuesday. The ban follows similar action in California against the food additive that's modified with bromine, which has been used in small quantities as a stabilizer in some citrus-flavored drinks and which is also found in fire retardants. Jim Jones, the deputy commissioner for the FDA's Human Foods Program, said in a statement that "removal of the only authorized use of BVO from the food supply was based on a thorough review of current science and research findings that raised safety concerns." The FDA "concluded that the intended use of BVO in food is no longer considered safe after the results of studies conducted in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found the potential for adverse health effects in humans," per an agency statement. A 2022 FDA study found that oral exposure to the additive "is associated with increased tissue levels of bromine and that at high levels of exposure the thyroid is a target organ of potential negative health effects in rodents." The ban takes effect on August 2. Companies will have one year from then to "reformulate, relabel, and deplete the inventory of BVO-containing products before the FDA begins enforcing the final rule," according to the agency.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Paul Voosen reports via Science Magazine: Few things prompt as much anxiety in science and the wider world as the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and the rising influence of China. This spring, these two factors created a rift at the European Geosciences Union (EGU), one of the world's largest geoscience societies, that led to the firing of its president. The whole episode has been "a packaging up of fear of AI and fear of China," says Michael Stephenson, former chief geologist of the United Kingdom and one of the founders of Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE), a $70 million effort to connect digital geoscience databases. In 2019, another geoscience society, the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), kicked off DDE, which has been funded almost entirely by the government of China's Jiangsu province. The dispute pivots on GeoGPT, an AI-powered chatbot that is one of DDE's main efforts. It is being developed by Jian Wang, chief technology officer of e-commerce giant Alibaba. Built on Qwen, Alibaba's own chatbot, and fine-tuned on billions of words from open-source geology studies and data sets, GeoGPT is meant to provide expert answers to questions, summarize documents, and create visualizations. Stephenson tested an early version, asking it about the challenges of using the fossilized teeth of conodonts, an ancient relative of fish, to define the start of the Permian period 299 million years ago. "It was very good at that," he says. As awareness of GeoGPT spread, so did concern. Paul Cleverly, a visiting professor at Robert Gordon University, gained access to an early version and said in a recent editorial in Geoscientist there were "serious issues around a lack of transparency, state censorship, and potential copyright infringement." Paul Cleverly and GeoScienceWorld CEO Phoebe McMellon raised these concerns in a letter to IUGS, arguing that the chatbot was built using unlicensed literature without proper citations. However, they did not cite specific copyright violations, so DDE President Chengshan Wang, a geologist at the China University of Geosciences, decided not to end the project. Tensions at EGU escalated when a complaint about GeoGPT's transparency was submitted before the EGU's April meeting, where GeoGPT would be introduced. "It arrived at an EGU whose leadership was already under strain," notes Science. The complaint exacerbated existing leadership issues within EGU, particularly surrounding President Irina Artemieva, who was seen as problematic by some executives due to her affiliations and actions. Science notes that she's "affiliated with Germany's GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel but is also paid by the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences to advise it on its geophysical research." Artemieva forwarded the complaint via email to the DDE President to get his view, but forgot to delete the name attached to it, leading to a breach of confidentiality. This incident, among other leadership disputes, culminated in her dismissal and the elevation of Peter van der Beek to president. During the DDE session at the EGU meeting, van der Beek's enforcement actions against Chinese scientists and session attendees led to allegations of "harassment and discrimination." "Seeking to broker a peace deal around GeoGPT," IUGS's president and another former EGU president, John Ludden, organized a workshop and invited all parties to discuss GeoGPT's governance, ongoing negotiations for licensing deals and alternative AI models for GeoGPT's use.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.