An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Canadian government on Friday demanded that Meta lift a "reckless" ban on domestic news from its platforms to allow people to share information about wildfires in the west of the country. Meta started blocking news on its Facebook and Instagram platforms for all users in Canada this month in response to a new law requiring internet giants to pay for news articles. Some people fleeing wildfires in the remote northern town of Yellowknife have complained to domestic media that the ban prevented them from sharing important data about the fires.

"Meta's reckless choice to block news ... is hurting access to vital information on Facebook and Instagram," Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said in a social media post. "We are calling on them to reinstate news sharing today for the safety of Canadians facing this emergency. We need more news right now, not less," she said. Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez earlier said the ban meant people did not have access to crucial information. Chris Bittle, a legislator for the ruling Liberal Party, complained on Thursday that "Meta's actions to block news are reckless and irresponsible." Ollie Williams, who runs Yellowknife's Cabin Radio digital radio station, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that people were posting screen shots of information on Facebook since they could not share links to news feeds. A Meta spokesperson responded by saying that the company had activated the "Safety Check" feature on Facebook that allows users to mark that they are safe in the wake of a natural disaster or a crisis.

Free and open software have transformed the tech industry. But we still have a lot to work out to make them healthy, equitable enterprises. From a report: When Xerox donated a new laser printer to MIT in 1980, the company couldn't have known that the machine would ignite a revolution. While the early decades of software development generally ran on a culture of open access, this new printer ran on inaccessible proprietary software, much to the horror of Richard M. Stallman, then a 27-year-old programmer at the university.

A few years later, Stallman released GNU, an operating system designed to be a free alternative to one of the dominant operating systems at the time: Unix. The free-software movement was born, with a simple premise: for the good of the world, all code should be open, without restriction or commercial intervention. Forty years later, tech companies are making billions on proprietary software, and much of the technology around us is inscrutable. But while Stallman's movement may look like a failed experiment, the free and open-source software movement is not only alive and well; it has become a keystone of the tech industry.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) office responsible for protecting the public from toxic substances has changed how it defines PFAS for a second time since 2021, a move critics say they fear will exclude thousands of "forever chemicals" from regulation and largely benefit industry. From a report: Instead of using a clear definition of what constitutes a PFAS, the agency's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics plans to take a "case-by-case" approach that allows it to be more flexible in determining which chemicals should be subjected to regulations. Among other uses for the compounds, the EPA appears to be excluding some chemicals in pharmaceuticals and pesticides that are generally defined as PFAS, current and former EPA officials say, and the shift comes amid fierce industry opposition to proposed limits on the chemicals.

The approach puts the toxics office at odds with other EPA divisions, other federal agencies, the European Union, Canada and most of the scientific world. The definition is likely to generate confusion in the chemical industry and within the agency, current and former EPA officials say. [...] PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of about 15,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed "forever chemicals" because they do not naturally break down in the environment. In a statement to the Guardian, the EPA said its latest definition was more "expansive" than the previous.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Late last week, MSN.com's Microsoft Travel section posted an AI-generated article about the "cannot miss" attractions of Ottawa that includes the Ottawa Food Bank, a real charitable organization that feeds struggling families. In its recommendation text, Microsoft's AI model wrote, "Consider going into it on an empty stomach." Titled, "Headed to Ottawa? Here's what you shouldn't miss!," (archive here) the article extols the virtues of the Canadian city and recommends attending the Winterlude festival (which only takes place in February), visiting an Ottawa Senators game, and skating in "The World's Largest Naturallyfrozen Ice Rink" (sic).

As the No. 3 destination on the list, Microsoft Travel suggests visiting the Ottawa Food Bank, likely drawn from a summary found online but capped with an unfortunate turn of phrase: "The organization has been collecting, purchasing, producing, and delivering food to needy people and families in the Ottawa area since 1984. We observe how hunger impacts men, women, and children on a daily basis, and how it may be a barrier to achievement. People who come to us have jobs and families to support, as well as expenses to pay. Life is already difficult enough. Consider going into it on an empty stomach."

That last line is an example of the kind of empty platitude (or embarrassing mistaken summary) one can easily find in AI-generated writing, inserted thoughtlessly because the AI model behind the article cannot understand the context of what it is doing. The article is credited to "Microsoft Travel," and it is likely the product of a large language model (LLM), a type of AI model trained on a vast scrape of text found on the Internet.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Sotheby's auction house has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by investors who regret buying Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs that sold for highly inflated prices during the NFT craze in 2021. A Sotheby's auction duped investors by giving the Bored Ape NFTs "an air of legitimacy... to generate investors' interest and hype around the Bored Ape brand," the class-action lawsuit claims. The boost to Bored Ape NFT prices provided by the auction "was rooted in deception," said the lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Central District of California. It wasn't revealed at the time of the auction that the buyer was the now-disgraced FTX, the lawsuit said.

"Sotheby's representations that the undisclosed buyer was a 'traditional' collector had misleadingly created the impression that the market for BAYC NFTs had crossed over to a mainstream audience," the lawsuit claimed. Lawsuit plaintiffs say that harmed investors bought the NFTs "with a reasonable expectation of profit from owning them." Sotheby's sold a lot of 101 Bored Ape NFTs for $24.4 million at its "Ape In!" auction in September 2021, well above the pre-auction estimates of $12 million to $18 million. That's an average price of over $241,000, but Bored Ape NFTs now sell for a floor price of about $50,000 worth of ether cryptocrurrency, according to CoinGecko data accessed today. [...]

The amended lawsuit alleges that "[Bored Ape creator Yuga Labs] colluded with fine arts broker, Defendant Sotheby's, to run a deceptive auction." After the sale, a Sotheby's representative described the winning bidder during a Twitter Spaces event as a "traditional" collector, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit said it turned out the auction buyer was now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, whose founder Sam Bankman-Fried is in jail awaiting trial on criminal charges. Ethereum blockchain transaction data shows that after the auction, "Sotheby's transferred the lot of BAYC NFTs to wallet address 0xf8e0C93Fd48B4C34A4194d3AF436b13032E641F3,77 which, upon information and belief, is owned/controlled by FTX," the complaint said. Speculation that FTX was the buyer had been percolating since at least January 2023. The lawsuit alleges that Yuga Labs and Sotheby's violated the California Unfair Competition Law, the California Corporate Securities Law, the US Securities Exchange Act, and the California Corporations Code. The plaintiffs also claim that Sotheby's Metaverse, an NFT trading platform opened after the auction, "operated (or attempted to operate) as an unregistered broker of securities."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: This year, BMO, a Canadian bank, was looking for Canadian adults to apply for a credit card. So the bank's advertising agency ran a YouTube campaign using an ad-targeting system from Google that employs artificial intelligence to pinpoint ideal customers. But Google, which owns YouTube, also showed the ad to a viewer in the United States on a Barbie-themed children's video on the "Kids Diana Show," a YouTube channel for preschoolers whose videos have been watched more than 94 billion times. When that viewer clicked on the ad, it led to BMO's website, which tagged the user's browser with tracking software from Google, Meta, Microsoft and other companies, according to new research from Adalytics, which analyzes ad campaigns for brands. As a result, leading tech companies could have tracked children across the internet, raising concerns about whether they were undercutting a federal privacy law, the report said. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, requires children's online services to obtain parental consent before collecting personal data from users under age 13 for purposes like ad targeting.

Adalytics identified more than 300 brands' ads for adult products, like cars, on nearly 100 YouTube videos designated as "made for kids" that were shown to a user who was not signed in, and that linked to advertisers' websites. It also found several YouTube ads with violent content, including explosions, sniper rifles and car accidents, on children's channels. An analysis by The Times this month found that when a viewer who was not signed into YouTube clicked the ads on some of the children's channels on the site, they were taken to brand websites that placed trackers -- bits of code used for purposes like security, ad tracking or user profiling -- from Amazon, Meta's Facebook, Google, Microsoft and others -- on users' browsers. As with children's television, it is legal, and commonplace, to run ads, including for adult consumer products like cars or credit cards, on children's videos. There is no evidence that Google and YouTube violated their 2019 agreement with the F.T.C.

The report's findings raise new concerns about YouTube's advertising on children's content. In 2019, YouTube and Google agreed topay a record $170 million fineto settle accusations from the Federal Trade Commission and the State of New York that the company had illegally collected personal information from children watching kids' channels. Regulators said the company had profited from using children's data to target them with ads. YouTube then said it would limit the collection of viewers' data and stop serving personalized ads on children's videos. On Thursday, two United States senators sent a letter to the F.T.C., urging it to investigate whether Google and YouTube had violated COPPA, citing Adalytics and reporting by The New York Times. Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, said they were concerned that the company may have tracked children and served them targeted ads without parental consent, facilitating "the vast collection and distribution" of children's data. "This behavior by YouTube and Google is estimated to have impacted hundreds of thousands, to potentially millions, of children across the United States," the senators wrote. Google spokesman Michael Aciman called the report's findings "deeply flawed and misleading."

Google has stated that running ads for adults on children's videos is useful because parents watching could become customers. However, they acknowledge that violent ads on children's videos violate their policies and have taken steps to prevent such ads from running in the future. Google claims they do not use personalized ads on children's videos, ensuring compliance with COPPA.

Google notes that it does not inform advertisers if a viewer has watched a children's video, only that they clicked on the ad. Google also says it cannot control data collection on a brand's website after a YouTube viewer clicks an ad -- a process that could occur on any website.

The White House ordered federal agencies to shore up their cybersecurity after agencies have lagged in implementing a key executive order President Joe Biden issued in 2021. From a report: Multiple federal departments and agencies have, as of the end of June, "failed to fully comply" with critical security practices prescribed by the executive order, "leaving the U.S. Government exposed to malicious cyber intrusions and undermining the example the Government must set for adequate cybersecurity practices," national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a memo to Cabinet secretaries this week.

Sullivan asked senior officials from across the departments to ensure they achieve "full compliance" with the executive order's security requirements by the end of the year. His memo is addressed to agencies outside of the Pentagon. "This morning the National Security Advisor shared a memo with federal departments and agencies to ensure their cyber infrastructure is compliant with the President's Executive Order to improve the nation's cybersecurity," a National Security Council spokesperson told CNN. "As we've said, the Biden-Harris Administration has had a relentless focus on strengthening the cybersecurity of nation's most critical sectors since day one, and will continue to work to secure our cyber defenses."

Subscription-based models dominate daily life and businesses profit from forgotten subscription payments. The problem of forgotten subscriptions is so large there's now a robust ecosystem of startups promising to save users money by ferreting out and canceling the subscriptions they forgot about. From a report: Now, researchers have put a number on the high value of customer inertia. Buyers' inattention can boost a business's revenue by as much as 200%, according to a new working paper from researchers at Stanford and Texas A&M submitted to the National Bureau of Economic Research. "I knew that people forgot to cancel," said coauthor Neale Mahoney, an economics professor at Stanford. "The magnitude, the pervasiveness of this issue was surprising."

Mahoney, along with fellow Stanford economics professor Liran Einav and Benjamin Klopack, an assistant professor of economics at Texas A&M, calculated the cost (or -- to companies -- benefit) of inattention by zeroing in on a specific moment in purchasers' lives: replacing a credit card. Using a large dataset from an undisclosed payment system provider, the researchers first identified 10 common subscription services, and then looked at how frequently they were renewed during normal times and when the subscriber replaced a card, forcing them to update their payment information with each service. Renewals sharply dropped off after these card replacements, even as other shopping behavior, such as buying groceries and gas, continued normally, leading them to a conclusion: When people had to actively decide to resubscribe to a service and enter new payment information, many opted out.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The Associated Press published standards today for generative AI use in its newsroom. The organization, which has a licensing agreement with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, listed a fairly restrictive and common-sense list of measures around the burgeoning tech while cautioning its staff not to use AI to make publishable content. Although nothing in the new guidelines is particularly controversial, less scrupulous outlets could view the AP's blessing as a license to use generative AI more excessively or underhandedly.

The organization's AI manifesto underscores a belief that artificial intelligence content should be treated as the flawed tool that it is -- not a replacement for trained writers, editors and reporters exercising their best judgment. "We do not see AI as a replacement of journalists in any way," the AP's Vice President for Standards and Inclusion, Amanda Barrett, wrote in an article about its approach to AI today. "It is the responsibility of AP journalists to be accountable for the accuracy and fairness of the information we share." The article directs its journalists to view AI-generated content as "unvetted source material," to which editorial staff "must apply their editorial judgment and AP's sourcing standards when considering any information for publication." It says employees may "experiment with ChatGPT with caution" but not create publishable content with it. That includes images, too. "In accordance with our standards, we do not alter any elements of our photos, video or audio," it states. "Therefore, we do not allow the use of generative AI to add or subtract any elements." However, it carved an exception for stories where AI illustrations or art are a story's subject -- and even then, it has to be clearly labeled as such.

Barrett warns about AI's potential for spreading misinformation. To prevent the accidental publishing of anything AI-created that appears authentic, she says AP journalists "should exercise the same caution and skepticism they would normally, including trying to identify the source of the original content, doing a reverse image search to help verify an image's origin, and checking for reports with similar content from trusted media." To protect privacy, the guidelines also prohibit writers from entering "confidential or sensitive information into AI tools." Although that's a relatively common-sense and uncontroversial set of rules, other media outlets have been less discerning. [...] It's not hard to imagine other outlets -- desperate for an edge in the highly competitive media landscape -- viewing the AP's (tightly restricted) AI use as a green light to make robot journalism a central figure in their newsrooms, publishing poorly edited / inaccurate content or failing to label AI-generated work as such. Further reading: NYT Prohibits Using Its Content To Train AI Models

The United States Space Force has activated its first and only unit dedicated to targeting other nations' satellites and the ground stations that support them. Space.com reports: The 75th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron (ISRS) was activated on Aug. 11 at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado. This unit is part of Space Delta 7, an element of the U.S. Space Force tasked with providing intelligence on adversary space capabilities. It'll do things like analyze the capabilities of potential targets, locate and track these targets as well as participate in "target engagement," which presumably refers to destroying or disrupting adversary satellites, the ground stations that support them and transmissions sent between the two.

Master Sgt. Desiree Cabrera, 75th ISRS operations superintendent, said the new unit will revolutionize the targeting capabilities of not just the Space Force, but also the entire U.S. military: "Not only are we standing up the sole targeting squadron in the U.S. Space Force, we are changing the way targeting is done across the joint community when it comes to space and electromagnetic warfare." The 75th ISRS will also analyze adversary space capabilities including "counterspace force threats," according to the Space Force's statement. Counterspace forces refer to adversary systems aimed at preventing the U.S. from using its own satellites during a conflict.

The UK government will host a summit on the safety of artificial intelligence at the start of November, with "like-minded" countries invited to the event in Bletchley Park to address global threats to democracy, including the use of AI in warfare and cyber security. From a report: Leading academics and executives from AI companies, including Google's DeepMind, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic, will be asked to the AI Safety Summit at the Buckinghamshire site where British codebreakers were based during the second world war. "The UK will host the first major global summit on AI safety this autumn," a spokesperson for the government said on Wednesday, adding that Downing Street would set out further details in due course. Prime minister Rishi Sunak initially announced in June the UK would be organising a summit on AI regulation after a meeting in Washington with President Joe Biden.

One of the most productive scientific collaborations of the 21st century is pulling apart, as deteriorating relations between the U.S. and China lead researchers to sever ties. From a report: The decoupling, which began in recent years with investigations into Chinese researchers in the U.S., has accelerated as tensions have risen between the superpowers. Now some U.S. lawmakers are pushing to let a landmark agreement to cooperate on science and technology, signed in 1979 and renewed routinely since, expire this month. China has built itself into a powerful engine of scientific discovery in recent decades, partly with American help, and many in Washington fear that China could gain a security and military advantage unless the U.S. takes decisive steps to cut off cooperation in scientific research.

Many scientists warn, however, that Washington would be severing ties as China is making its greatest contributions to scientific advancements, and cutting it off risks slowing American progress in critical areas such as biotechnology, clean energy and telecommunications. While the U.S. remains the world's pre-eminent science power, fundamental scientific research has grown borderless in the era of globalization, much as business has. More than 40% of America's scientific production -- measured by the number of high-quality papers that U.S.-based scientists produce -- involves cooperation with researchers abroad, according to Clarivate, a London-based data firm that tracks global scientific research. China and the U.S. are each other's No. 1 partner in producing scientific research, with collaborative research between the two consistently among the most-cited papers across fields, according to an analysis of Clarivate's data by Caroline Wagner, a professor of public policy at Ohio State University.

Coinbase has gained approval to sell cryptocurrency derivatives directly to retail consumers in the US. From a report: Coinbase Financial Markets, a subsidiary of the US's biggest crypto exchange, has secured approval from the National Futures Association to operate a Futures Commission Merchant and offer access to crypto futures. The offering will launch within weeks, according to a company spokesperson. Coinbase has been working on the derivatives push for some time. It applied for the NFA approval almost two years ago. In early 2022, it bought futures exchange FairX, which was already registered with US regulators. Renamed Coinbase Derivatives Exchange, it currently sends traders to buy futures from third-parties such as brokers. But with the NFA approval, Coinbase will be able to provide these same derivatives to users directly, first via Coinbase's main app.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: First shown off at 2022 CES, the Masonite M-PWR comes with a built-in Ring video doorbell and Yale smart lock, plus motion-activated LED lights and a door sensor -- all powered by your home's electrical system so there are no batteries to replace. An onboard battery backup keeps the door operational for 24 hours in the event of a power loss. Both doorbell and lock components can be upgraded over time as technology advances. If you were hoping for an all-in-one app, however, you'll be disappointed. To use all the door's features, you need the Yale app, the Ring app, and the M-PWR app.

What's all this technology going to cost you? The fiberglass Masonite M-PWR starts at $4,000 -- and that's for the basic model. Several finishes/designs/glass options are available, with pricing on the higher-end versions reaching $7,000. If you consider that a decent front door, Ring doorbell, and Yale smart lock from the same retailer can be had for under $1,000, this is clearly a door for people who want the finer things. And that price doesn't include installation, something most homeowners can't do on their own as the door needs to be hard-wired. The door has been available in new construction homes since 2022, but this marks the first time you can buy it separately.

According to Adweek, the New York Times updated its Terms of Service on August 3rd to prohibit its content from being used in the development of "any software program, including, but not limited to, training a machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI) system." That includes text, photographs, images, audio/video clips, "look and feel," metadata, and compilations. The Verge reports: The updated terms now also specify that automated tools like website crawlers designed to use, access, or collect such content cannot be used without written permission from the publication. The NYT says that refusing to comply with these new restrictions could result in unspecified fines or penalties. Despite introducing the new rules to its policy, the publication doesn't appear to have made any changes to its robots.txt -- the file that informs search engine crawlers which URLs can be accessed. The move follows a recent update to Google's privacy policy that discloses the search giant reserves the right to scrape just about everything you post online to build its AI tools.

Long lines have formed at ATMs around Ireland tonight as a cash machine glitch is allowing customers to withdraw more cash than they have in their accounts. Independent.ie reports: The fault with the online app allows people who have no money in their account to transfer up to 500 euros into a Revolut account. Some people claimed they were able to get access to 1,000 eros, but the bank insisted the daily withdrawal limit is 500 euros. Once people use their Bank of Ireland app to transfer the funds to Revolut they can then withdraw the cash from the Revoult account through any ATM.

Huge queues at ATMs in Dublin, Limerick, Dundalk and other parts of the country were reported this evening as people took advantage of the screw-up to withdraw cash from their Revolut accounts. There were reports in Dundalk of gardai (the state police force of the Irish Republic) having to control crowds at ATMs in the town. The frenzied withdrawal of cash was despite warnings on social media that there is no such thing as free cash and the money will have to be repaid. The bank said in a statement: "We are working on a technical issue that is impacting a number of our services including our mobile app and 365Online. We are working to fix this as quickly as possible and apologize to customers for any inconvenience caused."

"We would like to remind customers that if they transfer or withdraw funds -- including over their normal limits -- this money will be debited from their account," the bank added. "While we are conscious customers may not be able to check their balance at this time, they should not withdraw or transfer funds if they are likely to become overdrawn."

Michael Larabel writes via Phoronix: Mozilla developers are celebrating that they are now faster than Google Chrome with the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, although that test has been superseded by the JetStream benchmark. Last week a new Firefox Nightly News was published that outlines that "We're now apparently beating Chrome on the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark!" The provided numbers now show Firefox easily beating Chrome in this decade-old JavaScript benchmark. The benchmarks come from AreWeFastYet.com. Meanwhile for the newer and more demanding JetStream 2.0 benchmark, Google Chrome continues to win easily over Firefox. You can learn more about the latest Firefox Nightly build advancements via Firefox Nightly News.

US Representative Don Bacon said he is among those whose emails were hacked in an espionage campaign that Microsoft has attributed to China. From a report:Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska and a strong advocate for US military support to Taiwan, posted on social media that the FBI had notified him that the Chinese Communist Party hacked into his personal and campaign emails over the course of a month, from May 15 to June 16. "The CCP hackers utilized a vulnerability in the Microsoft software, and this was not due to 'user error,'" he wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Bacon, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, received an email from Microsoft indicating he may have been hacked and advising him to change his password on June 16, according to Maggie Sayers, Bacon's press secretary. She said that following subsequent notification from the FBI that he had been hacked, Bacon determined emails relating to political strategy, fundraising and personal banking information may have been breached. As a former US Air Force intelligence officer, he is careful to avoid writing sensitive emails relating to China and Taiwan, she said.

The top U.S. agency for consumer financial protection will announce plans at the White House on Tuesday to regulate companies that track and sell people's personal data, part of the Biden administration's widening scrutiny of that industry's privacy practices, officials said. From a report: Data brokers' conduct can be "particularly worrisome" because the sensitive data driving the use of artificial intelligence can be collected from military personnel, people experiencing dementia, and others, according to Rohit Chopra, director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. "The CFPB will be taking steps to ensure that modern-day data brokers in the surveillance industry know that they cannot engage in illegal collection and sharing of our data," he said in a statement. President Joe Biden last year called on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to help protect the data privacy of women seeking reproductive healthcare who may face law enforcement action in some states. The FTC has also sued an Idaho company for selling mobile phone geolocation data, saying it could be traced to places like abortion clinics, churches and addiction treatment centers.

Staff shortages, a lack of specialist personnel and low pay are major barriers to achieving net zero, according to workers in the UK environment sector. From a report: The trade union Prospect, many members of which work in the climate and environment sector, received more than 500 responses to a survey on workplace trends. Widespread shortages of expert staff and reductions in specialist personnel in recent years had seriously affected workload levels, the study found. Four in 10 workers said they had seen a reduction in the numbers of expert staff in the past year, and 35% said they had experienced a significant increase in workload.

More than 100 respondents provided additional comments. "I really like the people I work with and the value of the work I do," one wrote, "but I could be paid four times as much for my skills in a different industry -- one that is bad or indifferent to the environment. We can't solve environmental problems or net zero unless we have people to do the work." The reduction in expertise has led to important tasks being assigned to inexperienced staff, according to respondents, with 36% saying specialist jobs are being allocated to untrained workers. Low pay is a significant concern across the sector, which has a large percentage of specialised and highly educated staff. Despite the skilled nature of many roles and 20% of survey participants having a PhD or equivalent, 38% of respondents report earning $38,000 or less.