An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes a new article from Ars Technica: On Thursday, mobile security company NowSecure reported that [DeepSeek] sends sensitive data over unencrypted channels, making the data readable to anyone who can monitor the traffic. More sophisticated attackers could also tamper with the data while it's in transit. Apple strongly encourages iPhone and iPad developers to enforce encryption of data sent over the wire using ATS (App Transport Security). For unknown reasons, that protection is globally disabled in the app, NowSecure said. What's more, the data is sent to servers that are controlled by ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok...

[DeepSeek] is "not equipped or willing to provide basic security protections of your data and identity," NowSecure co-founder Andrew Hoog told Ars. "There are fundamental security practices that are not being observed, either intentionally or unintentionally. In the end, it puts your and your company's data and identity at risk...." This data, along with a mix of other encrypted information, is sent to DeepSeek over infrastructure provided by Volcengine a cloud platform developed by ByteDance. While the IP address the app connects to geo-locates to the US and is owned by US-based telecom Level 3 Communications, the DeepSeek privacy policy makes clear that the company "store[s] the data we collect in secure servers located in the People's Republic of China...."

US lawmakers began pushing to immediately ban DeepSeek from all government devices, citing national security concerns that the Chinese Communist Party may have built a backdoor into the service to access Americans' sensitive private data. If passed, DeepSeek could be banned within 60 days.

After the powerful solar storm of May 2024, scientists detected two new temporary radiation belts around Earth -- one of which contained something we had never seen before: energetic protons. ScienceAlert reports: "These are really high-energy electrons and protons that have found their way into Earth's inner magnetic environment," says astronomer David Sibeck of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who was not involved with the research. "Some might stay in this place for a very long time." In fact, the belts remained intact for much longer than previous temporary radiation belts generated by solar storms: three months, compared to the weeks we'd normally expect.

Subsequent solar storms in June and August of 2024 knocked most of the particles out of orbit, significantly diminishing the density of the belts. A small amount, however, still remains up there, hanging out with Earth. What's more, the proton belt may remain intact for over a year. Ongoing measurements will help scientists measure its longevity and decay rate.

This is important information to have: particles in Earth orbit can pose a hazard to satellites hanging out up there, so knowing the particle density and the effects solar storms can have thereon can help engineers design mitigation strategies to protect our technology. At the moment, though, the hazard posed by the new radiation belts is unquantified. Future studies will be needed to determine the risks these, and future belts, might pose. The findings have been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics.

Maine's overwhelmingly popular right-to-repair law is under attack by automakers through lawsuits and lobbying efforts aimed at weakening or delaying enforcement. While the law remains in limbo due to industry influence and legal challenges, broader enforcement issues persist across multiple states, with corporations often ignoring right-to-repair laws despite their legal passage. Techdirt reports: A little over a year ago, Maine residents voted overwhelmingly (83 percent) to pass a new state right to repair law designed to make auto repairs easier and more affordable. More specifically, the law requires that automakers standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical data to consumers and third-party independent repair shops. But as we've seen with other states that have passed right to reform laws (most notably New York), passing the law isn't the end of the story. Corporate lobbyists have had great success not just watering these laws down before passage, but after voters approve them. They've also been swarmed by coordinated industry lawsuits and falsehood-spewing attacks.

Maine's popular right to repair law just took effect after a year of hashing out the fine details, but the bill's still being changed as the state tries to sort out enforcement. Large automakers have been looming over that process to try and weaken the law. But the Alliance For Automotive Innovation also just filed a new lawsuit saying the law isn't fully cooked and therefore violates the law: "This is an example of putting the cart before the horse. Before automakers can comply, the law requires the attorney general to first establish an 'independent entity' to securely administer access to vehicle data. The independent entity hasn't been established. That's not in dispute. Compliance with the law right now is not possible."

The Register's Thomas Claburn reports: Google's overhaul of Chrome's extension architecture continues to pose problems for developers of ad blockers, content filters, and privacy tools. [...] While Google's desire to improve the security, privacy, and performance of the Chrome extension platform is reasonable, its approach -- which focuses on code and permissions more than human oversight -- remains a work-in-progress that has left extension developers frustrated.

Alexei Miagkov, senior staff technology at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who oversees the organization's Privacy Badger extension, told The Register, "Making extensions under MV3 is much harder than making extensions under MV2. That's just a fact. They made things harder to build and more confusing." Miagkov said with Privacy Badger the problem has been the slowness with which Google addresses gaps in the MV3 platform. "It feels like MV3 is here and the web extensions team at Google is in no rush to fix the frayed ends, to fix what's missing or what's broken still." According to Google's documentation, "There are currently no open issues considered a critical platform gap," and various issues have been addressed through the addition of new API capabilities.

Miagkov described an unresolved problem that means Privacy Badger is unable to strip Google tracking redirects on Google sites. "We can't do it the correct way because when Google engineers design the [chrome.declarativeNetRequest API], they fail to think of this scenario," he said. "We can do a redirect to get rid of the tracking, but it ends up being a broken redirect for a lot of URLs. Basically, if the URL has any kind of query string parameters -- the question mark and anything beyond that -- we will break the link." Miagkov said a Chrome developer relations engineer had helped identify a workaround, but it's not great. Miagkov thinks these problems are of Google's own making -- the company changed the rules and has been slow to write the new ones. "It was completely predictable because they moved the ability to fix things from extensions to themselves," he said. "And now they need to fix things and they're not doing it."

The Register highlights concerns raised at a recent UK parliamentary committee regarding AI companies' exploitation of copyrighted content without permission or payment. From the report: The Culture, Media and Sport Committee and Science, Innovation and Technology Committee asked composer Max Richter how he would know if "bad-faith actors" were using his material to train AI models. "There's really nothing I can do," he told MPs. "There are a couple of music AI models, and it's perfectly easy to make them generate a piece of music that sounds uncannily like me. That wouldn't be possible unless it had hoovered up my stuff without asking me and without paying for it. That's happening on a huge scale. It's obviously happened to basically every artist whose work is on the internet."

Richter, whose work has been used in a number of major film and television scores, said the consequences for creative musicians and composers would be dire. "You're going to get a vanilla-ization of music culture as automated material starts to edge out human creators, and you're also going to get an impoverishing of human creators," he said. "It's worth remembering that the music business in the UK is a real success story. It's 7.6 billion-pound income last year, with over 200,000 people employed. That is a big impact. If we allow the erosion of copyright, which is really how value is created in the music sector, then we're going to be in a position where there won't be artists in the future."

Speaking earlier, former Google staffer James Smith said much of the damage from text and data mining had likely already been done. "The original sin, if you like, has happened," said Smith, co-founder and chief executive of Human Native AI. "The question is, how do we move forward? I would like to see the government put more effort into supporting licensing as a viable alternative monetization model for the internet in the age of these new AI agents."

Matt Rogerson, director of global public policy and platform strategy at the Financial Times, said: "We can only deal with what we see in front of us and [that is] people taking our content, using it for the training, using it in substitutional ways. So from our perspective, we'll prosecute the same argument in every country where we operate, where we see our content being stolen." The risk, if the situation continued, was a hollowing out of creative and information industries, he said. [...] "The problem is we can't see who's stolen our content. We're just at this stage where these very large companies, which usually make margins of 90 percent, might have to take some smaller margin, and that's clearly going to be upsetting for their investors. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't. It's just a question of right and wrong and where we pitch this debate. Unfortunately, the government has pitched it in thinking that you can't reduce the margin of these big tech companies; otherwise, they won't build a datacenter."

Most Britons support strict controls on AI systems that could surpass human capabilities, according to a YouGov poll, highlighting a growing divide between public opinion and government policy. The survey of 2,344 adults found 87% back laws requiring AI developers to prove their systems are safe before release, while 60% favor banning the development of "smarter-than-human" AI models. Only 9% trust tech CEOs to act in the public interest on AI regulation.

A survey of 2,130 Americans has revealed widespread vulnerability to cyber attacks through unsupported smart devices, with 43% unaware their devices might lose software support. The security threat was underscored in December 2023 when U.S. authorities disrupted a Chinese state-sponsored botnet targeting home routers and cameras that had stopped receiving security updates. Cloudflare separately reported a record-breaking DDoS attack in late 2023, primarily originating from compromised smart TVs and set-top boxes.

The survey, conduced by Consumer Reports, found that only 39% of consumers learned about lost software support from manufacturers, with most discovering issues when devices stopped working (40%) or through media reports (15%). Most consumers expect their smart devices to retain functionality after losing software support, particularly for large appliances (70%). However, Consumer Reports' research found only 14% of 21 smart appliance brands specify support timeframes, while an FTC study of 184 devices showed just 11% disclose support duration.

A passenger on the French rail network SNCF has revealed that he received a $155 fine for using his phone on loud speaker within a train station. From a report: The passenger, named only as David, told French TV channel BFM that he was on the phone to his sister while waiting at Nantes station when the SNCF staff member told him to switch his phone's loud speaker off, or risk being fined. When he argued, he was served with the $155 fine, which has been increased to $207 because he did not pay it immediately. Further reading: Flying Was Already the Worst. Then America Stopped Using Headphones.

A British manufacturer of hydrogen fuel cell components for London's double-decker bus fleet has collapsed into administration, jeopardizing a $15.8 million government-backed project to cut transport emissions. Aeristech Limited, which was developing high-powered compressors for hydrogen fuel cells, was working on Project HEIDI to retrofit London buses with hydrogen technology. The project received $7.84 million in government funding last year, with additional investment from project partners including University of Bath and Equipmake.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Newly unsealed emails allegedly provide the "most damning evidence" yet against Meta in a copyright case raised by book authors alleging that Meta illegally trained its AI models on pirated books.

Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting a controversial large dataset known as LibGen, which includes tens of millions of pirated books. But details around the torrenting were murky until yesterday, when Meta's unredacted emails were made public for the first time. The new evidence showed that Meta torrented "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna's Archive, including at least 35.7 terabytes of data from Z-Library and LibGen," the authors' court filing said. And "Meta also previously torrented 80.6 terabytes of data from LibGen."

"The magnitude of Meta's unlawful torrenting scheme is astonishing," the authors' filing alleged, insisting that "vastly smaller acts of data piracy -- just .008 percent of the amount of copyrighted works Meta pirated -- have resulted in Judges referring the conduct to the US Attorneys' office for criminal investigation."

The Senate Commerce Committee approved the Kids Off Social Media Act, banning children under 13 from social media and requiring federally funded schools to restrict access on networks and devices. Politico reports: The panel approved the Kids Off Social Media Act -- sponsored by the panel's chair, Texas Republican Ted Cruz, and a senior Democrat on the panel, Hawaii's Brian Schatz -- by voice vote, clearing the way for consideration by the full Senate. Only Ed Markey (D-Mass.) asked to be recorded as a no on the bill. "When you've got Ted Cruz and myself in agreement on something, you've pretty much captured the ideological spectrum of the whole Congress," Sen. Schatz told POLITICO's Gabby Miller.

[...] "KOSMA comes from very good intentions of lawmakers, and establishing national screen time standards for schools is sensible. However, the bill's in-effect requirements on access to protected information jeopardize all Americans' digital privacy and endanger free speech online," said Amy Bos, NetChoice director of state and federal affairs. The trade association represents big tech firms including Meta and Google. Netchoice has been aggressive in combating social media legislation by arguing that these laws illegally restrict -- and in some cases compel -- speech. [...] A Commerce Committee aide told POLITICO that because social media platforms already voluntarily require users to be at least 13 years old, the bill does not restrict speech currently available to kids.

DeepSeek's AI app will highly likely face a US consumer ban after topping download charts on Apple's App Store and Google Play, according to analysts at US investment bank Jefferies. The US federal government, Navy and Texas have already banned the app, and analysts expect broader restrictions using legislation similar to that targeting TikTok.

While consumer access may be blocked, US developers could still be allowed to self-host DeepSeek's model to eliminate security risks, the analysts added. Even if completely banned, DeepSeek's impact on pushing down AI costs will persist as US companies work to replicate its technology, Jefferies said in a report this week reviewed by Slashdot.

The app's pricing advantage remains significant, with OpenAI's latest o3-mini model still costing 100% more than DeepSeek's R1 despite being 63% cheaper than o1-mini. The potential ban comes amid broader US-China tech tensions. While restrictions on H20 chips appear unlikely given their limited training capabilities, analysts expect the Biden administration's AI diffusion policies to remain largely intact under Trump, with some quota increases possible for overseas markets based on their AI activity levels.

In 2022, writer and activist Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" to describe the gradual deterioration of a service or product. The term's prevalence has increased to the point that it was the National Dictionary of Australia's word of the year last year. The editors at Ars Technica, having "covered a lot of things that have been enshittified," decided to highlight some of the worst examples the've come across. Here's a summary of each thing mentioned in their report: Smart TVs: Evolved into data-collecting billboards, prioritizing advertising and user tracking over user experience and privacy. Features like convenient input buttons are sacrificed for pushing ads and webOS apps. "This is all likely to get worse as TV companies target software, tracking, and ad sales as ways to monetize customers after their TV purchases -- even at the cost of customer convenience and privacy," writes Scharon Harding. "When budget brands like Roku are selling TV sets at a loss, you know something's up."

Google's Voice Assistant (e.g., Nest Hubs): Functionality has degraded over time, with previously working features becoming unreliable. Users report frequent misunderstandings and unresponsiveness. "I'm fine just saying it now: Google Assistant is worse now than it was soon after it started," writes Kevin Purdy. "Even if Google is turning its entire supertanker toward AI now, it's not clear why 'Start my morning routine,' 'Turn on the garage lights,' and 'Set an alarm for 8 pm' had to suffer."

Portable Document Format (PDF): While initially useful for cross-platform document sharing and preserving formatting, PDFs have become bloated and problematic. Copying text, especially from academic journals, is often garbled or impossible. "Apple, which had given the PDF a reprieve, has now killed its main selling point," writes John Timmer. "Because Apple has added OCR to the MacOS image display system, I can get more reliable results by screenshotting the PDF and then copying the text out of that. This is the true mark of its enshittification: I now wish the journals would just give me a giant PNG."

Televised Sports (specifically cycling and Formula 1): Streaming services have consolidated, leading to significantly increased costs for viewers. Previously affordable and comprehensive options have been replaced by expensive bundles across multiple platforms. "Formula 1 racing has largely gone behind paywalls, and viewership is down significantly over the last 15 years," writes Eric Berger. "Major US sports such as professional and college football had largely been exempt, but even that is now changing, with NFL games being shown on Peacock, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. None of this helps viewers. It enshittifies the experience for us in the name of corporate greed."

Google Search: AI overviews often bury relevant search results under lengthy, sometimes inaccurate AI-generated content. This makes finding specific information, especially primary source documents, more difficult. "Google, like many big tech companies, expects AI to revolutionize search and is seemingly intent on ignoring any criticism of that idea," writes Ashley Belanger.

Email AI Tools (e.g., Gemini in Gmail): Intrusive and difficult to disable, these tools offer questionable value due to their potential for factual inaccuracies. Users report being unable to fully opt-out. "Gmail won't take no for an answer," writes Dan Goodin. "It keeps asking me if I want to use Google's Gemini AI tool to summarize emails or draft responses. As the disclaimer at the bottom of the Gemini tool indicates, I can't count on the output being factual, so no, I definitely don't want it."

Windows: While many complaints about Windows 11 originated with Windows 10, the newer version continues the trend of unwanted features, forced updates, and telemetry data collection. Bugs and performance issues also plague the operating system. "... it sure is easy to resent Windows 11 these days, between the well-documented annoyances, the constant drumbeat of AI stuff (some of it gated to pricey new PCs), and a batch of weird bugs that mostly seem to be related to the under-the-hood overhauls in October's Windows 11 24H2 update," writes Andrew Cunningham. "That list includes broken updates for some users, inoperable scanners, and a few unplayable games. With every release, the list of things you need to do to get rid of and turn off the most annoying stuff gets a little longer."

Web Discourse: The rapid spread of memes, trends, and corporate jargon on social media has led to a homogenization of online communication, making it difficult to distinguish original content and creating a sense of constant noise. "[T]he enshittifcation of social media, particularly due to its speed and virality, has led to millions vying for their moment in the sun, and all I see is a constant glare that makes everything look indistinguishable," writes Jacob May. "No wonder some companies think AI is the future."

Google aims to release commercial quantum computing applications within five years, challenging Nvidia's prediction of a 20-year timeline. "We're optimistic that within five years we'll see real-world applications that are possible only on quantum computers," founder and lead of Google Quantum AI Hartmut Neven said in a statement. Reuters reports: Real-world applications Google has discussed are related to materials science - applications such as building superior batteries for electric cars - creating new drugs and potentially new energy alternatives. [...] Google has been working on its quantum computing program since 2012 and has designed and built several quantum chips. By using quantum processors, Google said it had managed to solve a computing problem in minutes that would take a classical computer more time than the history of the universe.

Google's quantum computing scientists announced another step on the path to real world applications within five years on Wednesday. In a paper published in the scientific journal Nature, the scientists said they had discovered a new approach to quantum simulation, which is a step on the path to achieving Google's objective.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Robocallers posing as employees of the Federal Communications Commission made the mistake of trying to scam real employees of the FCC, the FCC announced yesterday. "On the night of February 6, 2024, and continuing into the morning of February 7, 2024, over a dozen FCC staff and some of their family members reported receiving calls on their personal and work telephone numbers," the FCC said. The calls used an artificial voice that said, "Hello [first name of recipient] you are receiving an automated call from the Federal Communications Commission notifying you the Fraud Prevention Team would like to speak with you. If you are available to speak now please press one. If you prefer to schedule a call back please press two."

You may not be surprised to learn that the FCC does not have any "Fraud Prevention Team" like the one mentioned in the robocalls, and especially not one that demands Google gift cards in lieu of jail time. "The FCC's Enforcement Bureau believes the purpose of the calls was to threaten, intimidate, and defraud," the agency said. "One recipient of an imposter call reported that they were ultimately connected to someone who 'demand[ed] that [they] pay the FCC $1,000 in Google gift cards to avoid jail time for [their] crimes against the state.'" The FCC said it does not "publish or otherwise share staff personal phone numbers" and that it "remains unclear how these individuals were targeted." Obviously, robocallers posing as FCC employees probably wouldn't intentionally place scam calls to real FCC employees. But FCC employees are just as likely to get robocalls as anyone else. This set of schemers apparently only made about 1,800 calls before their calling accounts were terminated.

The FCC described the scheme yesterday when it announced a proposed fine of $4,492,500 against Telnyx, the voice service provider accused of carrying the robocalls. The FCC alleges that Telnyx violated "Know Your Customer (KYC)" rules by providing access to calling services without verifying the customers' identities. When contacted by Ars today, Telnyx denied the FCC's allegations and said it will contest the proposed fine.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Nissan looks set to step back from merger talks with rival Honda, two sources said on Wednesday, calling into question a $60 billion tie-up to create the world's no.3 automaker and potentially leaving Nissan to drive its turnaround alone.

Talks between the two Japanese automakers have been complicated by growing differences, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Reuters reported earlier that Nissan could call off talks after Honda sounded it out about becoming a subsidiary. Nissan baulked as this was a departure from what was originally framed as a merger of equals, one of the people said.

Microsoft will charge commercial customers $61 per device in the first year to continue receiving Windows 10 security updates after support ends, The Register wrote in a PSA note Wednesday, citing text, with costs doubling each subsequent year for up to three years.

Organizations can't skip initial years to save money, as the updates are cumulative. Some users may avoid fees if they connect Windows 10 endpoints to Windows 365 Cloud PCs. The program also covers Windows 10 virtual machines running on Windows 365 or Azure Virtual Desktop for three years with an active Windows 365 subscription.

Google parent Alphabet plans to spend $75 billion on capital expenditures in 2025, up from $52.5 billion last year, as it races to compete with Microsoft and Meta in AI infrastructure. CNBC: On its earnings call, Alphabet said it expects $16 billion to $18 billion of those expenses to come in the first quarter. Overall, the expenditures will go toward "technical infrastructure, primarily for servers, followed by data centers and networking," finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said.

[...] Alphabet and its megacap tech rivals are rushing to build out their data centers with next-generation AI infrastructure, packed with Nvidia's graphics processing units, or GPUs. Last month, Meta said it plans to invest $60 billion to $65 billion this year as part of its AI push. Microsoft has committed to $80 billion in AI-related capital expenditures in its current fiscal year.

China's antitrust watchdog is laying the groundwork for a potential probe into Apple's policies and the fees it charges app developers, part of a broader push by Beijing that risks becoming another flashpoint in the country's trade war with the US. From a report: The State Administration for Market Regulation is examining Apple's policies, which include taking a cut of as much as 30% on in-app spending and barring external payment services and stores, people familiar with the matter said. Agency officials have spoken with Apple executives and app developers since last year, said the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive moves.

The conversations stem from long-running disputes between Apple and developers such as Tencent and ByteDance over iOS store policies -- a source of tension between the US company and regulators worldwide. While Beijing has since 2024 targeted the practices of US tech firms from Nvidia to most recently Alphabet's Google, regulators may not formally move against Apple if the current conversations go well.

Meta's metaverse ambitions face a decisive year in 2025, with Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth warning employees that the project could become either "a legendary misadventure" or prove visionary, Business Insider is reporting, citing an internal memo. Bosworth called for increased sales and user engagement for Meta's mixed reality products, noting the company plans to launch several AI-powered wearable devices.

The tech giant's Reality Labs division, which develops virtual and augmented reality products, reported record revenue of $1.08 billion in the fourth quarter but posted its largest-ever quarterly loss of $4.97 billion. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff the company's AI-powered smart glasses, which sold over 1 million units in 2024, marked a "great start" but would not significantly impact the business. The Reality Labs unit has accumulated losses of approximately $60 billion since 2020.