CNN decries "false and bizarre" news stories being published by Microsoft on MSN.com, "one of the world's most trafficked websites and a place where millions of Americans get their news every day." Microsoft's decision to increasingly rely on the use of automation and artificial intelligence over human editors to curate its homepage appears to be behind the site's recent amplification of false and bizarre stories, people familiar with how the site works told CNN.

The site, which comes pre-loaded as the default start page on devices running Microsoft software, including on Microsoft's latest "Edge" browser... employed more than 800 editors in 2018 to help select and curate news stories shown to millions of readers around the world. But in recent years Microsoft has laid off editors, some of whom were told they were being replaced by "automation," what they understand to be AI.
CNN points out that while Microsoft's president "has publicly lectured on the responsible use" of AI, "the apparent role of AI in Microsoft's recent amplification of bogus stories raises questions about the company's public adoption of the nascent technology and for the journalism industry as a whole." CNN notes that an AI-generated poll urging readers to guess the cause of a swimmer's death "was not the first public blunder caused by Microsoft's embrace of AI." In September Microsoft republished a story about Brandon Hunter, a former NBA player who died unexpectedly at the age of 42, under the headline, "Brandon Hunter useless at 42." Then, in October, Microsoft republished an article that claimed that San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston had resigned from his position after criticism from Elon Musk. The story was entirely false.

Some of the articles featured by Microsoft were initially published by obscure websites that might have gone unnoticed amid the daily deluge of online misinformation that circulates every day. But Microsoft's decision to republish articles from fringe outlets has elevated those stories to potentially millions of additional readers, breathing life into their claims. Editors who formerly worked for Microsoft told CNN that these kinds of false stories, or virtually any other articles from low-quality websites, would not be prominently featured by Microsoft were it not for its use of AI. Ryn Pfeuffer, who worked intermittently as a contractor for Microsoft for eight years, said she received a call in May 2020 with the news that her entire team was being laid off. 2020 was the year, a Microsoft spokesperson told CNN in a statement on Wednesday, that the company began transitioning to a "personalized feed" that is "tailored by an algorithm to the interests of our audiences."
MSN "has also published other junk content, including bogus stories about fishermen catching mermaids and Bigfoot spottings," reports the tech news site Futurism, "in the wake of ditching its human editors in favor of automation.

"Noticing a pattern yet? The company pumps out trash-tier AI content, then waits until it's called out publicly to quietly delete it and move onto the next trainwreck." We've known that Microsoft's MSN news portal has been pumping out a garbled, AI-generated firehose for well over a year now. The company has been using the website to distribute misleading and oftentimes incomprehensible garbage to hundreds of millions of readers per month... And if MSN presents a vision of how the tech industry's obsession with AI is going to play out in the information ecosystem, we're in for a rough ride.
CNN got this reaction from a user whose default browser changed from Chrome to Microsoft Edge after a software update — and discovered their home page had switched to MSN.com. "It felt like I was standing in line at the grocery store reading a National Enquirer front page."

A company spokesperson assured CNN that Microsoft was "committed to addressing the recent issue of low quality articles."

Tuesday Orsted cancelled two wind farms near New Jersey that would've generated about 2.2 gigawatts of energy. But the same day America's Interior Department approved plans to install up to 176 wind turbines off the coast of Virginia with an estimated capacity of about 2.6 gigawatts of clean energy.

Located approximately 27 miles from the shores of Virginia Beach, the project will be America's largest offshore wind project, capable of powering over 900,000 homes. In just its first 10 years it should save customers $3 billion in fuel costs, Dominion Energy told the Associated Press: Dominion expects construction to be completed by late 2026... Construction of the project in Virginia is expected to support about 900 jobs each year and then an estimated 1,100 annual jobs during operations, the Interior Department said. The initiative has gained wide support from Virginia policymakers and political leaders, including Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who last week attended a reception marking the arrival of eight monopile foundations for the windfarm.
Two pilot turbines have already been in place since 2020, the article points out. And when finished the new wind farm "would bolster and eventually replace the mostly natural gas-powered electricity that is contributing to costly climate change," reports MarketWatch President Biden, early in his first term, announced a goal of installing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes and prevent the spewing of 78 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide emissions... U.S. offshore wind has been helped along by nearly $8 billion in investments since Biden signed his signature, climate-heavy Inflation Reduction Act a little over a year ago... Biden's team has projected that the U.S. could install 110 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2050, a major jump considering there is less than 1 gigawatt installed today. Land-based wind farms across the U.S. already produce more than 140 gigawatts of energy, contributing to about 10% of the nation's energy portfolio...

When measured by announced plans and pledges, the country has been barreling toward its offshore goal. To date, the Department of the Interior has approved four New England-based projects that, together with the new Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, promise to deliver 5 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power 1.75 million homes with average power use. A total of more than 51 gigawatts of wind power capacity is in the works off U.S. shores and the most ambitious 10 coastal states have combined offshore wind goals of generating more than 81 gigawatts.

Mozilla has some news for users of Debian-based Linux distributions (such as Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and others): installing, updating, and testing the latest Firefox Nightly builds just got a lot easier. We've set up a new APT repository for you to install Firefox Nightly as a .deb package... These packages are compatible with the same Debian and Ubuntu versions as our traditional binaries. If you've previously used our traditional binaries (distributed as .tar.bz2 archives), switching to Mozilla's APT repository allows Firefox to be installed and updated like any other application... You will not have to restart Firefox after updating the package with APT...

For those of you who would like to use Firefox Nightly in a different language than American English, we have also created .deb packages containing the Firefox language packs.
Some context from 9to5Linux: Back in April, I reported that Mozilla was offering a DEB package of the Firefox 113 release during the beta testing phase. Unfortunately, that was the only time a DEB package was available for download and, of course, it didn't make it into the final release of Firefox 113, nor future releases. It would appear that Mozilla needed more time to work on the DEB package for Debian and Ubuntu-based distributions, and it looks like it will finally become a thing starting with an upcoming Firefox release, like Firefox 121 or later...

Using the DEB package over Snap or the official binary package offers some benefits like better performance due to advanced compiler-based optimizations, hardened binaries with all security flags enabled, access to the latest Firefox releases as fast as possible [because the .deb is integrated into Firefox's release process], and you won't have to create your own .desktop file anymore.

The Washington Post looks at the "millions of independent creators reshaping how people get their news, especially the youngest viewers." News consumption hit a tipping point around the globe during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, with more people turning to social media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Instagram than to websites maintained by traditional news outlets, according to the latest Digital News Report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. One in 5 adults under 24 use TikTok as a source for news, the report said, up five percentage points from last year. According to Britain's Office of Communications, young adults in the United Kingdom now spend more time watching TikTok than broadcast television. This shift has been driven in part by a desire for "more accessible, informal, and entertaining news formats, often delivered by influencers rather than journalists," the Reuters Institute report says, adding that consumers are looking for news that "feels more relevant...."

While a few national publications such as the New York Times and The Washington Post have seen their digital audiences grow, allowing them to reach hundreds of thousands more readers than they did a decade ago, the economics of journalism have shifted. Well-known news outlets have seen a decline in the amount of traffic flowing to them from social media sites, and some of the money that advertisers previously might have spent with them is now flowing to creators. Even some outlets that began life on the internet have struggled, with BuzzFeed News shuttering in April, Vice entering into bankruptcy and Gawker shutting down for a second time in February. The trend is likely to continue. "There are no reasonable grounds for expecting that those born in the 2000s will suddenly come to prefer old-fashioned websites, let alone broadcast and print, simply because they grow older," Reuters Institute Director Rasmus Kleis Nielsen said in the report, which is based on an online survey of roughly 94,000 adults in 46 national markets, including the United States...

While many online news creators are, like Al-Khatahtbeh, trained journalists collecting new information, others are aggregators and partisan commentators sometimes masquerading as journalists. The transformation has made the public sphere much more "chaotic and contradictory," said Jay Rosen, an associate professor of journalism at New York University and author of the PressThink blog, adding that it has never been easier to be both informed and misinformed about world events. "The internet makes possible much more content, and reaching all kinds of people," Rosen said. "But it also makes disinformation spread."
The article notes that "some content creators don't follow the same ethical guidelines that are guideposts in more traditional newsrooms, especially creators who seek to build audiences based on outrage."

The article also points out that "The ramifications for society are still coming into focus."

YouTube's crackdown on ad blockers is in full swing, leading to a wave of ad blocker uninstalls. 9to5Google reports: As Wired reports, this rollout has led to "hundreds of thousands" of uninstalls, not of YouTube but of ad blockers. The figures apparently come from various ad-blocking companies, where October saw a "record number" of people uninstalling ad blockers. Meanwhile, it also led to a record number of new installs, as many users looked to switch from one blocker to another in an effort to keep blocking ads.

One ad-blocking company, Ghostery, shared that 90% of users who completed a survey when uninstalling their ad blocker cited YouTube's changes as the reason. AdGuard told Wired that daily uninstalls were up for the entirety of October, spiking to 52,000 in a single day on October 18 as YouTube's notices started rolling out more widely. It was added that use of the Ghostery blocker is up 30% on Microsoft Edge, as some users have noticed that switching browsers at least temporarily lifts the blocking of their ad blocker. AdGuard, meanwhile, saw its paid subscription rise as some users reportedly saw success with containing to block ads using the tool.

schwit1 shares a report from Fortune: After launching Amazon from a garage in Seattle in 1994, centibilllionaire Jeff Bezos is leaving the Pacific Northwest behind and setting sail for Florida. In an Instagram post, the world's third wealthiest person -- with a net worth estimated at $160 billion -- said he wanted to be closer to my parents after they recently moved back to Miami. "My parents have always been my biggest supporters," he posted to his Instagram account, adding that his spacefaring company Blue Origin is increasingly shifting operations to Cape Canaveral.

Florida also offers a financial benefit to the Amazon founder -- it doesn't charge capital gains tax which, for a man who's sold some $30 billion in stock since 2002, according to Bloomberg, can be quite substantial. [...] But Miami is not the only place where Bezos lives. In addition to his collection of luxury cars and private Gulfstream jets, Bezos owns multiple properties valued recently at a half-billion dollars. Bezos recently bought a large home in Florida, notes schwit1.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Spread across four computer monitors arranged in a grid, a blue and green interface shows the location of more than 50 different surveillance cameras. Ordinarily, these cameras and others like them might be disparate, their feeds only available to their respective owners: a business, a government building, a resident and their doorbell camera. But the screens, overlooking a pair of long conference tables, bring them all together at once, allowing law enforcement to tap into cameras owned by different entities around the entire town all at once. This is a demonstration of Fusus, an AI-powered system that is rapidly springing up across small town America and major cities alike. Fusus' product not only funnels live feeds from usually siloed cameras into one central location, but also adds the ability to scan for people wearing certain clothes, carrying a particular bag, or look for a certain vehicle.

404 Media has obtained a cache of internal emails, presentations, memos, photos, and more which provide insight into how Fusus teams up with police departments to sell its surveillance technology. All around the country, city councils are debating whether they want to have a system that qualitatively changes what surveillance cameras mean for a town's residents and public agencies. While many have adopted Fusus, others have pushed back, and refused to have the hardware and software installed in their neighborhoods. In some ways, Fusus is deploying smart camera technology that historically has been used in places like South Africa, where experts warned about it creating an ever present blanket of surveillance. Now, tech with some of the same capabilities is being used across small town America.

Rather than selling cameras themselves, Fusus' hardware and software latches onto existing installations, which can include government-owned surveillance cameras as well as privately owned cameras at businesses and homes. It turns dumb cameras into smart ones. "In essence, the Fusus solution puts a brain into every camera connected with the system," one memorandum obtained by 404 Media reads. In addition to integrating with existing surveillance installations, Fusus' hardware, called SmartCORE, can turn cameras into automatic license plate readers (ALPRs). It can reportedly offer facial recognition features, too, although Fusus hasn't provided clear clarification on this matter.

The report says the system has been adopted by numerous police departments across the United States, with approximately 150 jurisdictions using Fusus. Orland Park police have called it a "game-changer." It's also being used internationally, launching in the United Kingdom.

Here's what Beryl Lipton, investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), had to say about it: "The lack of transparency and community conversation around Fusus exacerbates concerns around police access of the system, AI analysis of video, and analytics involving surveillance and crime data, which can influence officer patrols and priorities. In the absence of clear policies, auditable access logs, and community transparency about the capabilities and costs of Fusus, any community in which this technology is adopted should be concerned about its use and abuse."

David Shepardson reports via Reuters: The top members of a U.S. House committee on China are introducing a bill that seeks to ban the U.S. government from buying Chinese drones. Mike Gallagher, the Republican chair of the committee, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking Democrat, are introducing the "American Security Drone Act" on Wednesday, the lawmakers said in a statement to Reuters. "This bill would prohibit the federal government from using American taxpayer dollars to purchase this equipment from countries like China," Gallagher said. "It is imperative that Congress pass this bipartisan bill to protect U.S. interests and our national security supply chain."

The bill would also bar local and state governments from purchasing Chinese drones using federal grants and require a federal report detailing the amount of foreign commercial off-the-shelf drones and covered unmanned aircraft systems procured by federal departments and agencies from China. Krishnamoorthi said the bill "helps protect against any vulnerabilities posed by our government agencies' reliance on foreign-manufactured drone technology and will encourage growth in the U.S. drone industry."

Separately, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday unanimously approved an amendment proposed by Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn and Democrat Mark Warner that would prohibit the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) from operating or providing federal funds for drones produced in China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela or Cuba. "Taxpayer dollars should never fund drones manufactured in regions that are hostile toward our nation," Blackburn said. China recently announced export controls on some drones and drone-related equipment, saying it wanted to safeguard "national security and interests." The U.S. Commerce Department in 2020 added dozens of Chinese companies to a trade blacklist, including the country's top chipmaker SMIC and Chinese drone giant DJI.

Emma Roth reports via The Verge: Mint, the budgeting app owned by Intuit, is shutting down. Intuit announced on Tuesday that Mint will get absorbed into Intuit's other service, Credit Karma, when it officially goes away on January 1st, 2024 (via Bloomberg). But it's still not clear whether Credit Karma will get the budgeting features that Mint is known for. [...] Mint had 3.6 million monthly active users as of 2021, Bloomberg reports, but the app's development has slowed down considerably in recent years, with the last major updates being new categorization features and the ability to connect the Apple Card to Mint. [...]

Intuit first acquired Mint in 2009, an app that has offered a free way for users to track their budgets, manage expenses, negotiate bills, and keep tabs on subscriptions. Now, Intuit is inviting users to Credit Karma, a service that the company acquired in 2020. While Credit Karma offers similar features, like the ability to view transactions, track spending, aggregate financial accounts, and credit monitoring, it still doesn't come with the same budget tracking tool that many people specifically use Mint for, and it's not clear whether Credit Karma will ever adopt it. On a support page on Credit Karma's website, Intuit says "the new experience in Credit Karma does not offer the ability to set monthly and category budgets," adding that the app instead "offers a simplified way for you to build awareness of your spending, and track your savings."

A long-time Slashdot reader writes: Continuing the seemingly industry-wide trend towards enshitification of the Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) marketplace, Max today announced that it will be making changes to the current Ad-Free plan. To wit, 4K HDR with Dolby Atmos will be removed and concurrent streams will decrease from three to two.

In other words, you are paying the same price for less features. If you wish to keep the features you've had all along, all you have to do is upgrade to Ultimate Ad-Free at a 33% premium for the annual plan or 25% increase for monthly. No news yet on a crackdown of password sharing, however, that seems inevitable as the industry races to the bottom.

Meet the new cable boss, same as the old, except, they bring death by several small cuts instead of a single large one.

Rishi Sunak convened this week's AI summit in an effort to position the UK at the forefront of global efforts to stave off the risks presented by the rapidly-advancing technology -- which in the prime minister's own words, could extend as far as human extinction. From a report: But the reality exposed during the 2-day gathering of politicians and industry experts at Bletchley Park, north of London, is the US is reluctant to cede much of a leadership role on artificial intelligence to its close ally. Sunak last week said the UK would set up the "world's first AI safety institute," designed to test new forms of the technology. At the summit on Wednesday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced the US would create its own institute. Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a speech on US efforts away from the conference to allow for more press attention.

"The US definitely cut across the summit," said Anand Menon, director of the UK in a Changing Europe think tank. He called the timing of the US announcements "insensitive because this was Rishi Sunak's attempt to show the world that the UK is in the lead." US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told the summit Wednesday that while countries must work together to find global solutions to global problems, "we will compete as nations." Nevertheless, the US and UK were quick to damp down any sense of tension, with a British official saying the US told Britain of its plans to open its own institute months ago, with the announcement planned to coincide with the event.

Mozilla Foundation's decision to switch the search engine built into its Firefox browser to Yahoo from Google was a "failed" bet that degraded the user experience, the company's chief executive said. From a report: Chief Executive Officer Mitchell Baker said Mozilla decided to switch to Yahoo's technology in 2014 after CEO Marissa Mayer took over and promised "to make a big bet on us."

"That bet failed," Baker said in a videotaped interview from 2022 played Wednesday in Google's defense during the Justice Department's antitrust trial. "The search experience that Yahoo was providing to Firefox users deteriorated." The Mozilla example -- the only situation in which a browser has switched the default search engine provider -- has been cited by both Google and the Justice Department to support their arguments in the case. [...] Yahoo agreed to pay Mozilla a minimum of $375 million -- more than the $276 million a year that Google was offering, Baker said. It also agreed to reduce the number of ads and offer less user tracking than Google, but over time Yahoo reneged on that and began showing more advertising, she added.

quonset shares a report from CNN: If you try to place an order through the DoorDash app without leaving a tip, you may get this pop-up: "Orders with no tip might take longer to get delivered -- are you sure you want to continue?" The note goes on: "Dashers can pick and choose which orders they want to do. Orders that take longer to be accepted by Dashers tend to result in a slower delivery." In other words, tip your drivers, or prepare to wait a long time for a cold meal. Customers are then given the option to add a tip, or continue without one.

The message is just a test, DoorDash spokesperson Jenn Rosenberg told CNN in an email. "This reminder screen is something that we're currently testing to help create the best possible experience for all members of our community," she said. "As with anything we pilot, we look forward to closely analyzing the results and feedback." Rosenberg noted that Dashers, the people who deliver orders, are "independent contractors" who "have full freedom to accept or reject offers based on what they view as valuable and rewarding." Tips go directly to Dashers, according to the company. So if an order comes in without a tip, they're more likely to let it linger.

Orsted, a Danish offshore wind company, canceled its plans to build two wind farms off the coast of New Jersey -- "a blow to the state's efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the latest shakeout in the U.S. wind industry," reports the New York Times. From the report: The move, which will force Orsted, a Danish company, to write off as much as $5.6 billion, will crimp the Biden administration's plans to make the wind industry a critical component of plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. High inflation and soaring interest rates are making planned projects that looked like winners several years ago no longer profitable. "The world has in many ways, from a macroeconomic and industry point of view, turned upside down," Mads Nipper, Orsted's chief executive, said on a call with reporters on Wednesday.

The two projects, known as Ocean Wind 1 and 2, were destined to provide green energy to New Jersey. They were strongly backed by the state's governor, Phil Murphy, a Democrat with national ambitions who stresses his environmental credentials but who has lately drawn scorn for falling short in combating climate change. On Wednesday he suggested that Orsted was a dishonest broker and insisted that the "future of offshore wind" along the state's 130-mile coastline remained strong. Mr. Nipper said Orsted thought that losses on the New Jersey projects would rise over time, so "the only sensible thing is to draw a line in the sand."

Offshore wind and other parts of the renewable industry have hit some snags in Europe, especially in Britain. But Mr. Nipper said the problems were more acute in the United States because early contracts lacked protection from inflation and developers incurred high costs because of delays in approvals during the Trump administration. The company's stock price fell nearly 26 percent on Wednesday after it reported a loss of about $3.2 billion for the third quarter and warned that the write-downs -- essentially a reduction in the value of the company's investments -- would affect Orsted's finances. Orsted is writing off 28.4 billion krone, or about $4 billion, now. The company estimates that it may take another charge of up to 11 billion krone later in the year. The report notes that Orsted still plans to move forward with a $4 billion project called Revolution Wind intended to supply power to consumers in Rhode Island. Other projects are under construction, too, "like Vineyard Wind, which will eventually have 62 turbines in the waters off Martha's Vineyard, Mass."

Dan Milmo reports via The Guardian: The Guardian has accused Microsoft of damaging its journalistic reputation by publishing an AI-generated poll speculating on the cause of a woman's death next to an article by the news publisher. Microsoft's news aggregation service published the automated poll next to a Guardian story about the death of Lilie James, a 21-year-old water polo coach who was found dead with serious head injuries at a school in Sydney last week.

The poll, created by an AI program, asked: "What do you think is the reason behind the woman's death?" Readers were then asked to choose from three options: murder, accident or suicide. Readers reacted angrily to the poll, which has subsequently been taken down -- although highly critical reader comments on the deleted survey were still online as of Tuesday morning. A reader said one of the Guardian reporters bylined on the adjacent story, who had nothing to do with the poll, should be sacked. Another wrote: "This has to be the most pathetic, disgusting poll I've ever seen."

The chief executive of the Guardian Media Group, Anna Bateson, outlined her concerns about the AI-generated poll in a letter to Microsoft's president, Brad Smith. She said the incident was potentially distressing for James's family and had caused "significant reputational damage" to the organization as well as damaging the reputation of the journalists who wrote the story. "This is clearly an inappropriate use of genAI [generative AI] by Microsoft on a potentially distressing public interest story, originally written and published by Guardian journalists," she wrote. Bateson added that it had demonstrated "the important role that a strong copyright framework plays in enabling publishers to be able to negotiate the terms on which our journalism is used." A Microsoft spokesperson said: "We have deactivated Microsoft-generated polls for all news articles and we are investigating the cause of the inappropriate content. A poll should not have appeared alongside an article of this nature, and we are taking steps to help prevent this kind of error from reoccurring in the future."

Emma Roth reports via The Verge: YouTube is broadening its efforts to crack down on ad blockers. The platform has "launched a global effort" to encourage users to allow ads or try YouTube Premium, YouTube communications manager Christopher Lawton says in a statement provided to The Verge. If you run into YouTube's block, you may see a notice that says "video playback is blocked unless YouTube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled." It also includes a prompt to allow ads or try YouTube Premium. You may get prompts about YouTube's stance on ad blockers but still be able to watch a video, though, for one Verge staffer, YouTube now fully blocks them nearly every time.

YouTube confirmed that it was disabling videos for users with ad blockers in June, but Lawton described it as only a "small experiment globally" at the time. Now, YouTube has expanded this effort. Over the past several weeks, more users with ad blockers installed have found themselves unable to watch YouTube videos, with a post from Android Authority highlighting the increase in reports. Lawton maintains that the "use of ad blockers" violates the platform's terms of service, adding that "ads support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favorite content on YouTube."

The new open-source, copy-on-write file system known as Bcachefs has been successfully merged into the Linux 6.7 kernel. "Given the past struggles to get Bcachefs mainlined, I certainly didn't expect to see Linus Torvalds act so soon on merging it," writes Phoronix's Michael Larabel. "But after it spent all of the 6.6 cycle within Linux-Next, overnight Linus Torvalds did in fact land this new file-system developed by Kent Overstreet."

From a Slashdot story published on Friday August 21, 2015: Bcachefs is a new open-source file-system derived from the bcache Linux kernel block layer cache. Bcachefs was announced by Kent Overstreet, the lead Bcache author. Bcachefs hopes to provide performance like XFS/EXT4 while having features similar to Btrfs and ZFS. The bachefs on-disk format hasn't yet been finalized and the code isn't yet ready for the Linux kernel. That said, initial performance results are okay and "It probably won't eat your data -- but no promises." Features so far for Bcachefs are support for multiple devices, built-in caching/tiering, CRC32C checksumming, and Zlib transparent compression. Support for snapshots is to be worked on.

Forty countries in a U.S.-led alliance plan to sign a pledge never to pay ransom to cybercriminals and to work toward eliminating the hackers' funding mechanism, a senior White House official said on Tuesday. From a report: The International Counter Ransomware Initiative comes as the number of ransomware attacks grows worldwide. The United States is by far the worst hit, with 46% of such attacks, Anne Neuberger, U.S. deputy national security adviser in the Biden administration for cyber and emerging technologies, told reporters on a virtual briefing. "As long as there is money flowing to ransomware criminals, this is a problem that will continue to grow," she said.

AV1 -- a next-generation, royalty-free video codec developed by the Alliance for Open Media, a consortium including tech giants like Google, Mozilla, Cisco, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, Intel, and Apple -- is finally making inroads. From a report: We are finally seeing more hardware support for this codec. The new M3 chips from Apple support AV1 decode. The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max also feature an AV1 hardware decoder. The official Android 14 Compatibility Definition makes support for AV1 mandatory. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, widely used by Android phones released in 2023, supports AV1. With the exception of Microsoft Edge, all browsers support AV1.

Around 66 million years ago, the Chicxulub asteroid caused a mass extinction event, killing three-quarters of life on Earth, including the dinosaurs. A new study suggests that fine silicate dust from the asteroid, which remained in the atmosphere for up to 15 years, played a more significant role in causing the impact winter and extinction than previously thought. Phys.Org reports: Fine silicate dust from pulverized rock would have stayed in the atmosphere for 15 years, dropping global temperatures by up to 15 degrees Celsius, researchers said in a study in the journal Nature Geoscience. [...] For the study, the international team of researchers was able to measure dust particles thought to be from right after the asteroid struck. The particles were found at the Tanis fossil site in the US state of North Dakota.

Though 3,000 kilometers (1,865 miles) away from the crater, the site has preserved a number of remarkable finds believed to be dated from directly after the asteroid impact in sediment layers of an ancient lake. The dust particles were around 0.8 to 8.0 -- micrometers -- just the right size to stick around in the atmosphere for up to 15 years, the researchers said.

Entering this data into climate models similar to those used for current-day Earth, the researchers determined that dust likely played a far greater role in the mass extinction than had previously been thought. Out of all the material that was shot into the atmosphere by the asteroid, they estimated that it was 75 percent dust, 24 percent sulfur and one percent soot. The dust particles "totally shut down photosynthesis" in plants for at least a year, causing a "catastrophic collapse" of life, [said Ozgur Karatekin, a researcher at the Royal Observatory of Belgium].