The Washington Post reports: Commitments from Big Tech companies to identify and label fake artificial-intelligence-generated images on their platforms won't be enough to keep the tech from being used by other countries to try to influence the U.S. election, said the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. AI won't completely change the long-running threat of weaponized propaganda, but it will "inflame" it, CISA Director Jen Easterly said at The Washington Post's Futurist Summit on Thursday. Tech companies are doing some work to try to label and identify deepfakes on their platforms, but more needs to be done, she said. "There is no real teeth to these voluntary agreements," Easterly said. "There needs to be a set of rules in place, ultimately legislation...."

In February, tech companies, including Google, Meta, OpenAI and TikTok, said they would work to identify and label deepfakes on their social media platforms. But their agreement was voluntary and did not include an outright ban on deceptive political AI content. The agreement came months after the tech companies also signed a pledge organized by the White House that they would label AI images. Congressional and state-level politicians are debating numerous bills to try to regulate AI in the United States, but so far the initiatives haven't made it into law. The E.U. parliament passed an AI Actt year, but it won't fully go into force for another two years.

This week the Rust Foundation jointly announced "the Safety-Critical Rust Consortium" with industry partners including Arm, AdaCore, Lynx Software Technologies, and Toyota's mobility tech subsidiary Woven. Its goal is supporting "responsible use" of Rust "in safety-critical software — systems whose failure can impact human life or cause severe environmental or property harm."

"This is exciting," said Rust creator Graydon Hoare in a statement. "I am truly pleased to see the Rust Foundation and anyone in the safety-critical space coming together on this topic."

From the announcement: "Safety is our foremost priority in vehicle software development. Traditionally, achieving the highest levels of safety has been a complex and lengthy endeavor, requiring the use of specialized tools and processes beyond the programming language," said JF Bastien, Distinguished Engineer at Woven by Toyota. "We are therefore pleased to collaborate with leading experts in the safety industry to integrate new tools such as Rust into our safety-critical systems...." Industries that are particularly concerned with functional safety include transportation (such as automotive, aviation, space), energy, life sciences, and more. Because of their potential impacts, these industries are often regulated, have liability considerations, and are guided by standards... These industries have decades of experience delivering products, learning from iterating based on real-world feedback, and improving processes. An ecosystem of tools and tool vendors have evolved, and best practices have been learned to create a safety culture around tooling.

Rust offers particular advantages in terms of developer ergonomics, productivity and software quality; however, it lacks a deep and established well of safety-processes and collective industry knowledge of safety-critical systems. Without closing this gap, a developer must primarily rely on best practices and normative precautions, which can limit innovation. Rust developers who stray from the well-trod path can find themselves facing an inquiry were an accident to occur. In these circumstances, anything that seems unusual will be investigated for fault.

This risk creates a disincentive to widespread Rust adoption, leaving developers unable to reap all its advantages while potentially facing financial, reputational and moral costs. The gap in safety-critical resources within the Rust programming language ecosystem is also an exciting opportunity. By rapidly incorporating lessons learned from years of careful development and past mistakes in the wider open source ecosystem, Rust can become a valuable component of a safety toolkit adaptable to various safety-critical industries and severity levels.
"Work under the consortium will begin with the creation of a public charter and goals," according to the announcement, with a scope possibly including "the development of guidelines, linters, libraries, static analysis tools, formal methods and language subsets to meet industrial and legal requirements. The group may further shepherd Rust Foundation-funded implementation work, including grants to existing academic teams or FOSS projects... The group will further attempt to coordinate with and expand on existing safety-critical projects and standards including SAE JA1020.
The group will maintain communication with the larger Rust Project, and "The Consortium's deliverables will be developed and licensed in a manner compatible with other Rust Project endeavors."

wgoodman shares a report from The Register: NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is back in action and conducting normal science operations for the first time since the veteran probe began spouting gibberish at the end of 2023. All four of the spacecraft's remaining operational instruments are now returning usable data to Earth, according to NASA. Some additional work is needed to tidy up the effects of the issue. Engineers need to resynchronize the timekeeping software of Voyager 1's three onboard computers to ensure that commands are executed at the correct times. Maintenance will also be performed on the digital tape recorder, which records some data from the plasma instrument for a six-monthly downlink to Earth.

Voyager 1's woes began in November 2023, when the spacecraft stopped transmitting usable data back to Earth. Rather than engineering and science data, NASA found itself faced with a repeating pattern of ones and zeroes, as though the spacecraft was somehow stalled. Engineers reckoned the issue lay with the Flight Data System (FDS) and in March sent a command -- dubbed a "poke" -- to get the FDS to try some other software sequences and thus circumvent whatever was causing the problem. The result was a complete memory dump from the computer, which allowed engineers to pinpoint where the corruption had occurred. It appeared that a single chip was malfunctioning, and engineers were faced with the challenge of devising a software update that would work around the defective hardware.

Usable engineering data began to be returned later in April, and in May the mission team sent commands to instruct the probe to keep science data flowing. The result was that the plasma wave subsystem and magnetometer instrument began sending data immediately. According to NASA, the cosmic ray subsystem and low energy charged particle instrument required a little more tweaking but are now operational. The rescue was made all the more impressive by the fact that it takes 22.5 hours for a command to reach Voyager 1 and another 22.5 hours for a response to be received on Earth.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Alphabet's Google must face trial on U.S. antitrust enforcers' claim that the internet search juggernaut illegally dominates the online advertising technology market, a federal judge ruled on Friday. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, denied Google's motion during a hearing, according to court records. Google had argued for a win without a trial, saying that antitrust laws do not block companies from refusing to deal with rivals and that regulators had not accurately defined the ad tech market. Court papers did not specify what reasons the judge provided at the hearing. Motions like the one Google filed are only granted where a judge determines there is no factual dispute to send to trial. Last year, the U.S. Justice department and eight states sued Google, calling for the break up of the search giant's ad-technology business over alleged illegal monopolization of the digital advertising market.

An artificial intelligence candidate is on the ballot for the United Kingdom's general election next month. From a report: "AI Steve," represented by Sussex businessman Steve Endacott, will appear on the ballot alongside non-AI candidates running to represent constituents in the Brighton Pavilion area of Brighton and Hove, a city on England's southern coast. "AI Steve is the AI co-pilot," Endacott said in an interview. "I'm the real politician going into Parliament, but I'm controlled by my co-pilot." Endacott is the chairman of Neural Voice, a company that creates personalized voice assistants for businesses in the form of an AI avatar. Neural Voice's technology is behind AI Steve, one of the seven characters the company created to showcase its technology.

He said the idea is to use AI to create a politician who is always around to talk with constituents and who can take their views into consideration. People can ask AI Steve questions or share their opinions on Endacott's policies on its website, during which a large language model will give answers in voice and text based on a database of information about his party's policies. If he doesn't have a policy for a particular issue raised, the AI will conduct some internet research before engaging the voter and pushing them to suggest a policy.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Brussels is set to charge Apple over allegedly stifling competition on its mobile app store, the first time EU regulators have used new digital rules to target a Big Tech group. The European Commission has determined that the iPhone maker is not complying with obligations to allow app developers to "steer" users to offers outside its App Store without imposing fees on them, according to three people with close knowledge of its investigation.

The charges would be the first brought against a tech company under the Digital Markets Act, landmark legislation designed to force powerful "online gatekeepers" to open up their businesses to competition in the EU. The commission, the EU's executive arm, said in March it was investigating Apple, as well as Alphabet and Meta, under powers granted by the DMA. An announcement over the charges against Apple was expected in the coming weeks, said two people with knowledge of the case.

In an unprecedented move, Microsoft has announced that its big Copilot+ PC initiative that was unveiled last month will launch without its headlining "Windows Recall" AI feature next week on June 18. From a report: The feature, which captures snapshots of your screen every few seconds, was revealed to store sensitive user data in an unencrypted state, raising serious concerns among security researchers and experts.

Last week, Microsoft addressed these concerns by announcing that it would make changes to Windows Recall to ensure the feature handles data securely on device. At that time, the company insisted that Windows Recall would launch alongside Copilot+ PCs on June 18, with an update being made available at launch to address the concerns with Windows Recall. Now, Microsoft is saying Windows Recall will launch at a later date, beyond the general availability of Copilot+ PCs. This means these new devices will be missing their headlining AI feature at launch, as Windows Recall is now delayed indefinitely. The company says Windows Recall will be added in a future Windows update, but has not given a timeframe for when this will be. Further reading:
'Microsoft Has Lost Trust With Its Users and Windows Recall is the Straw That Broke the Camel's Back'
Windows 11's New Recall Feature Has Been Cracked To Run On Unsupported Hardware
Is the New 'Recall' Feature in Windows a Security and Privacy Nightmare?
Mozilla Says It's Concerned About Windows Recall.

Richard Speed reports via The Register: Privacy campaigner noyb has filed a GDPR complaint regarding Google's Privacy Sandbox, alleging that turning on a "Privacy Feature" in the Chrome browser resulted in unwanted tracking by the US megacorp. The Privacy Sandbox API was introduced in 2023 as part of Google's grand plan to eliminate third-party tracking cookies. Rather than relying on those cookies, website developers can call the API to display ads matched to a user's interests. In the announcement, Google's VP of the Privacy Sandbox initiative called it "a significant step on the path towards a fundamentally more private web."

However, according to noyb, the problem is that although Privacy Sandbox is advertised as an improvement over third-party tracking, that tracking doesn't go away. Instead, it is done within the browser by Google itself. To comply with the rules, Google needs informed consent from users, which is where issues start. Noyb wrote today: "Google's internal browser tracking was introduced to users via a pop-up that said 'turn on ad privacy feature' after opening the Chrome browser. In the European Union, users are given the choice to either 'Turn it on' or to say 'No thanks,' so to refuse consent." Users would be forgiven for thinking that 'turn on ad privacy feature' would protect them from tracking. However, what it actually does is turn on first-party tracking.

Max Schrems, honorary chairman of noyb, claimed: "Google has simply lied to its users. People thought they were agreeing to a privacy feature, but were tricked into accepting Google's first-party ad tracking. "Consent has to be informed, transparent, and fair to be legal. Google has done the exact opposite." Noyb noted that Google had argued "choosing to click on 'Turn it on' would indeed be considered consent to tracking under Article 6(1)(a) of the GDPR."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon says that it will commit up to $230 million to startups building generative AI-powered applications. The investment, roughly $80 million of which will fund Amazon's second AWS Generative AI Accelerator program, aims to position AWS as an attractive cloud infrastructure choice for startups developing generative AI models to power their products, apps and services. Much of the new tranche -- including the entire portion set aside for the accelerator program -- comes in the form of compute credits for AWS infrastructure, meaning that it can't be transferred to other cloud service providers like Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

To sweeten the pot, Amazon is pledging that startups in this year's Generative AI Accelerator cohort will gain access to experts and tech from Nvidia, the program's presenting partner. They will also be invited to join the Nvidia Inception program, which provides companies opportunities to connect with potential investors and additional consulting resources. The Generative AI Accelerator program has also grown substantially. Last year's cohort, which had 21 startups, received only up to $300,000 in AWS compute credits, amounting to around a combined $6.3 million investment. "With this new effort, we will help startups launch and scale world-class businesses, providing the building blocks they need to unleash new AI applications that will impact all facets of how the world learns, connects, and does business," Matt Wood, VP of AI products at AWS, said in a statement. Further reading: How Amazon Blew Alexa's Shot To Dominate AI

Speaking of Microsoft, the House Homeland Security committee is grilling Microsoft President Brad Smith Thursday about the software giant's plans to improve its security after a series of devastating hacks reached into federal officials' email accounts, challenging the company's fitness as a dominant government contractor. Washington Post adds:The questioning followed a withering report on one of those breaches, where the federal Cyber Safety Review Board found the event was made possible by a "cascade of avoidable errors" and a security culture "that requires an overhaul." In that hack, suspected agents of China's Ministry of State Security last year created digital keys using a tool that allowed them to pose as any existing Microsoft customer. Using the tool, they impersonated 22 organizations, including the U.S. Departments of State and Commerce, and rifled through Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo's email among others.

The event triggered the sharpest criticism in decades of the stalwart federal vendor, and has prompted rival companies and some authorities to push for less government reliance on its technology. Two senators wrote to the Pentagon last month, asking why the agency plans to improve nonclassified Defense Department tech security with more expensive Microsoft licenses instead of with alternative vendors. "Cybersecurity should be a core attribute of software, not a premium feature that companies upsell to deep-pocketed government and corporate customers," Sens. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote. "Through its buying power, DOD's strategies and standards have the power to shape corporate strategies that result in more resilient cybersecurity services." Any serious shift in executive branch spending would take years, but Department of Homeland Security leaders say plans are in motion to add security guarantees and requirements to more government purchases -- an idea touted in the Cyber Safety Review Board's Microsoft report.

Assisted driving systems and robot taxis are becoming more popular in China with government help, as cities designate large areas for testing on public roads. From a report: The world's largest experiment in driverless cars is underway on the busy streets of Wuhan, a city in central China with 11 million people, 4.5 million cars, eight-lane expressways and towering bridges over the muddy waters of the Yangtze River. A fleet of 500 taxis navigated by computers, often with no safety drivers in them for backup, buzz around. The company that operates them, the tech giant Baidu, said last month that it would add a further 1,000 of the so-called robot taxis in Wuhan.

Across China, 16 or more cities have allowed companies to test driverless vehicles on public roads, and at least 19 Chinese automakers and their suppliers are competing to establish global leadership in the field. No other country is moving as aggressively. The government is providing the companies significant help. In addition to cities designating on-road testing areas for robot taxis, censors are limiting online discussion of safety incidents and crashes to restrain public fears about the nascent technology.

Surveys by J.D. Power, an automotive consulting firm, found that Chinese drivers are more willing than Americans to trust computers to guide their cars. "I think there's no need to worry too much about safety -- it must have passed safety approval," said Zhang Ming, the owner of a small grocery store near Wuhan's Qingchuan Pavilion, where many Baidu robot taxis stop. Another reason for China's lead in the development of driverless cars is its strict and ever-tightening control of data. Chinese companies set up crucial research facilities in the United States and Europe and sent the results back home. But any research in China is not allowed to leave the country. As a result, it's difficult for foreign carmakers to use what they learn in China for cars they sell in other countries.

A former Microsoft employee claims the tech giant dismissed his repeated warnings about a security flaw that was later exploited in the SolarWinds hack, prioritizing business interests over customer safety. Andrew Harris, who worked on Microsoft's cloud security team, says he discovered the weakness in 2016 but was told fixing it could jeopardize a multibillion-dollar government contract and the company's competitive edge, ProPublica reported Thursday.

The flaw, in a Microsoft product called Active Directory Federation Services, allowed hackers to bypass security measures and access sensitive cloud data. Russian hackers exploited the vulnerability in the 2020 SolarWinds attack, breaching several U.S. agencies. Microsoft continues to deny wrongdoing, insisting customer protection is its top priority. The revelations come at a time when Microsoft is facing increasing scrutiny over its security practices and seeks to expand its government business.

Following in the European Union's footsteps, Japan's parliament has enacted a law on Wednesday that will prohibit big tech from blocking third-party app stores. AppleInsider reports: The intention of the bill is that it will facilitate competition and reduce app prices. Japan's government reportedly believes that Apple and Google are a duopoly, and that they charge developers high fees that are then passed on to users. Big tech companies with App Stores will also prohibit companies from prioritizing their own services. Google is likely to be hit hardest by this. Violators will initially be fined up to 20% of the domestic revenue of the specific service that broke the law. The fee can increase to 30%, if the behavior continues.

The Japanese government's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) will choose which firms to apply it to. Companies that will be regulated will be required to submit compliance reports annually. While it hasn't been explicitly said that Apple and Google must comply, It seems certain that the announcement that they'll be held to the provisions is imminent. The Japan FTC isn't expected to add any Japanese firms to the list. The law likely won't take effect until the end of 2025.

The European Union on Wednesday said it would impose higher tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle imports, which it found benefit "heavily from unfair subsidies" and pose a "threat of economic injury" to EV producers in Europe. CNBC reports: On a preliminary basis, the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, concluded that the battery-electric vehicles value chain in China "benefits from unfair subsidization" and pronounced that it is in the EU's interest to impose "provisional countervailing duties" on BEV imports from China. The additional tariffs are the result of an EU probe that began in October. The duties are currently provisional, but will be introduced from July 4 in the event of unfruitful talks with Chinese authorities to reach a resolution, the commission said in a statement. Definitive measures will be placed within four months of the imposition of provisional duties. [...]

The bloc is imposing a 38.1% tariff on battery-electric vehicle producers who did not cooperate with its investigation, and a lower 21% duty on carmakers in the Asian country who complied but have not been "sampled." The commission also disclosed a set of individual tariffs, which [Valdis Dombrovskis, the EU commissioner for trade, said] are linked to their cooperation with the probe and with the amount of information they supplied. Rates are lower for those companies who shared details, he added. Main Chinese BEV producer BYD was struck with a 17.4% tariff, with Geely slapped with a 20% duty. The EU has also imposed its 38.1% tariff on autos firm SAIC. All three producers were sampled in the EU probe, which is ongoing. Meanwhile, taxes on imported Chinese EVs in the United States are set to quadruple from 25% to 100%, starting this year.

Qualcomm faces potential disruption to its Windows on Arm laptops due to a legal battle with Arm, while MediaTek prepares to enter the market. Qualcomm's exclusivity deal with Microsoft for Copilot+ PCs, based on its Snapdragon SoCs, is set to expire this year.

MediaTek plans to launch its own Windows on Arm chip in late 2024, though it's unclear if it has Microsoft's approval. The legal dispute stems from Qualcomm's acquisition of Nuvia, with Arm claiming Nuvia's licenses are non-transferable without permission. Arm terminated the licenses, requiring Qualcomm to stop using processor designs developed under those agreements. Arm asserts current Copilot+ SoCs descend from Nuvia's chips, potentially subjecting them to an injunction if Arm prevails in court. Qualcomm maintains its existing Arm license rights cover its custom CPUs. Both companies declined to comment on the ongoing legal matter.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is prioritizing enforcement actions against major technology companies that cause the most harm, FTC Chair Lina Khan said at an event. Khan emphasized the importance of targeting "mob bosses" rather than lower-level offenders to effectively address illegal behaviors in the industry. The FTC has recently launched antitrust probes into Microsoft, Open AI, and Nvidia, and has taken legal action against Meta, Amazon, Google, and Apple in recent years. TechCrunch adds: Khan said that in any given year, the FTC sees up to 3,000 merger filings reported to the agency and that around 2% of those deals get a second look by the government. "So you have 98% of deals that, for the most part, are going through," she said. "If you are a startup or a founder that is eager for an acquisition as an exit, a world in which you have five or six or seven or eight potential suitors, I would think, is a better world in which you just have one or two, right? And so, actually promoting more competition at that level to ensure that startups have you know more of a fair chance of getting a better valuation, I think would be beneficial as well."

T-Mobile's recent price hikes of up to $5 per line on older smartphone plans have left many customers shocked due to the company's previous "Un-contract" promise. Announced in 2017, T-Mobile pledged never to change the price customers pay for their plans. However, a now-removed FAQ revealed that the guarantee only ensured T-Mobile would pay the final month's charges if prices increased and customers chose to leave within 60 days. The price increases affect various plans, despite T-Mobile's earlier promises of "no crazy strings, no hoops to jump through, no hidden fees, no BS."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Mercury News: Krista DeWeese has been laid off four times in the last eight years. She wakes up every morning feeling anxious. Will I lose my job today -- again? Will I have enough to pay the rent? Even though she's an educated, experienced marketing professional, worrisome thoughts trail the 47-year-old Fremont native's every waking moment. Currently a contract worker at a health science company, she has been struggling to find secure work that pays enough to keep up with the exorbitant cost of living in the Bay Area. She has a lot of company. The past year has been tough for the Bay Area, as thousands of layoffs skittered across the region. Even workers at Silicon Valley's tech titans -- including Meta, Apple and Google -- have faced job cuts. Since 2022, tech companies in the region have slashed roughly 40,000 jobs. And with each layoff, workers are entering a market that is less friendly to job seekers than it used to be.

New research from tech advocacy organization Women Impact Tech, which examined job and salary data nationwide from 2020 to 2023, affirmed what many people already know: companies are tightening their belts -- slicing jobs and salaries alike -- and many people are struggling to find work that pays enough to live comfortably in the Bay Area. Despite having the highest tech salaries in the country, Silicon Valley has experienced the biggest drop in pay compared to other tech hubs, falling 15% from 2022 to 2023, according to Women Impact Tech. And with inflation, DeWeese and others are watching their spending power shrink. More than 10 years ago, she was earning over $100,000 in total compensation. That amount has dropped 15% since she was laid off from Yahoo in 2016, and has not increased since. "I feel like my career has been frozen in time," DeWeese said. "Things have been at a standstill."

Paula Bratcher Ratliff, president of New York-based Women Impact Tech, said that the shrinking pay hits especially hard for women, given the continuing gender pay gap. "The Bay Area took one of the largest hits," Ratliff said. "Women make up about 28% of the entire workforce in tech. When you're seeing an overall decline at 15%, and for pay equity, women have not made much traction." [...] Despite the trend of shrinking salaries in the world's tech capital, Ratliff, with Women Impact Tech, doesn't believe it's necessarily a race to the bottom. "Today, about every company is a tech company, whether they're in retail, consumer goods or hospitality," Ratliff said. "There's so many opportunities in tech without having to focus on those jobs with the tech organizations alone. We're seeing great companies emerge." While it's still unclear where the light is at the end of the tunnel for DeWeese, she remains hopeful her situation will improve. "You have to have hope or else you're just going to live in fear of being let go, again and again," she said.

Four more U.S. states on Tuesday joined the Justice Department's lawsuit against Apple alleging the iPhone maker is monopolizing smartphone markets, the department said in a statement. From a report: The four states are Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada and Washington, the Justice Department said. The original lawsuit was filed in March, and 15 states and the District of Columbia joined the lawsuit at the time. The lawsuit alleges that Apple uses its market power to get more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses and merchants. The civil lawsuit accuses Apple of an illegal monopoly on smartphones, maintained by imposing contractual restrictions on, and withholding critical access from, developers. The Justice Department has previously said Apple charges as much as $1,599 for an iPhone and makes a larger profit than any rival. Officials also said Apple imposes hidden charges on various business partners - from software developers to credit card companies and even rivals such as Alphabet's, Google, in ways that ultimately raise prices for consumers.

storkus shares a report: Starting from 2030, Mastercard will no longer require Europeans to enter their card numbers manually when checking out online -- no matter what platform or device they're using. Mastercard will announce Tuesday in a fireside chat with CNBC that, by 2030, all cards it issues on its network in Europe will be tokenized. In other words, instead of the 16-digit card number we're all accustomed to using for transactions, this will be replaced with a randomly generated "token."

The firm says it's been working with banks, fintechs, merchants and other partners to phase out manual card entry for e-commerce by 2030 in Europe, in favor of a one-click button across all online platforms. This will ensure that consumers' cards are secure against fraud attempts, Mastercard says. Users won't have to keep entering passwords every time they try to make a payment, as Mastercard is introducing passkeys that replace passwords.

storkus comments: "This story, as currently written, says nothing about their plans outside Europe but in the past the USA in particular has been dead last in getting this kind of tech."