Cybercriminals have breached dozens of major companies including AT&T, Ticketmaster and Hot Topic by exploiting "infostealer" malware that harvests login credentials from infected computers, an investigation has found. The malware, spread through pirated software and social media, has infected 250,000 new devices daily, according to cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. Russian developers create the malware while contractors distribute it globally, deliberately avoiding former Soviet states. Hot Topic suffered potentially the largest retail hack ever in October when attackers accessed 350 million customer records using stolen developer credentials. Google and Microsoft are racing to patch vulnerabilities, but malware makers quickly adapt to new security measures.

App developers Musi and Sarafan Mobile have sued Apple and Google in California federal court over app removals they claim were unjustified, highlighting tensions over the tech giants' intellectual property enforcement policies. Musi's music-streaming app was removed after YouTube complained about interface infringement, while Sarafan's "Reely" app was taken down following Instagram's claims about logo similarity.

Both developers say the platforms breached their agreements by removing apps without sufficient evidence. The lawsuits underscore broader concerns about Apple and Google's dominance in app distribution. Their private IP dispute systems operate outside traditional legal frameworks, with platforms making unilateral decisions that can effectively shut down businesses, according to University of New Hampshire law professor Peter Karol. [...]

"In a court proceeding, you can see here's a complaint with the allegations, and then we have the defendant respond, and then we have a judge come out with an opinion saying, 'Is the mark valid? Is the mark infringed?'" said Lisa Ramsey, law professor at University of San Diego. Google and Apple's systems, meanwhile, are "a black box."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Another illegal streaming app has made its way to the App Store -- but it only surfaces pirated films for people in certain regions outside the US, including France, Canada, and the Netherlands. As shown in a post on Threads, the App Store listing for "Univer Note" presents itself as a productivity platform that can "easily help you record every day's events and plan your time." However, if you're a user in certain countries, like France or Canada, opening the app shows a collection of pirated movies, such as Venom: The Last Dance, Joker: Folie a Deux, and Terrifier 3.

Apple has scrapped plans for a budget mixed-reality headset initially slated for 2025, pushing the launch to 2027, according to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The company will instead focus on releasing an upgraded Vision Pro next year featuring its M5 chip and enhanced AI capabilities, he said. The canceled lower-cost model would have stripped features like EyeSight and used cheaper components to target mainstream consumers.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Plans by Mark Zuckerberg's Meta to build an AI data centre in the US that runs on nuclear power were thwarted in part because a rare species of bee was discovered on land earmarked for the project, according to people familiar with the matter.

Zuckerberg had planned to strike a deal with an existing nuclear power plant operator to provide emissions-free electricity for a new data centre supporting his artificial intelligence ambitions. However, the potential deal faced multiple complications including environmental and regulatory challenges, these people said.

The discovery of the rare bee species on a location next to the plant where the data centre was to be built would have complicated the project, Zuckerberg told a Meta all-hands meeting last week, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

GM's president of global markets says their EV portfolio "is growing faster than the market," according to Investopedia, "because we have an all-electric vehicle for just about everybody, no matter what they like to drive."

The headline at Barrons? "Don't Look Now, but GM's EV Sales Are on Fire." GM delivered almost 32,000 all-electric vehicles in the third quarter — a record — and up about 58% from a year earlier. The more affordable Chevy Equinox, which starts at about $35,000 before any federal tax credit, helped boost sales. GM delivered almost 10,000 of the new EVs, up from 1,013 in the second quarter, when they first went on sale.

EV penetration of total GM car sales was about almost 5%, up almost two percentage points year over year. EVs accounted for 19.4% of Cadillac sales, up about 11 percentage points year over year. Year to date, GM has delivered just over 70,000 all-electric cars.

GM originally planned to manufacture 200,000 EVs in 2024. That still looks aggressive, but the strong third-quarter showing makes 120,000 possible, which would be up almost 60% year over year — a respectable outcome. More important to investors than EV sales right now might be dealer inventories. GM said there were about 627,000 vehicles on dealer lots at the end of September. That's a little better than what Wolfe Research analyst Emmanuel Rosner expected. It indicates GM dealers have roughly 60 days worth of sales on their lots. That's a safe level. Lower dealer inventories reduce presure to reduce prices. They also reduce the need to cut production because dealer lots are full... GM expects to generate a full-year operating profit of about $14 billion.
Meanwhile, Stellantis "slashed its financial guidance recently, partly because it needs to dramatically reduce its U.S. inventories," according to the article. For example, its Jeep dealers ended August with roughly 122 days worth of sales on their lots, while its Dodge dealers "had almost 150 days of inventory."

And Investopedia argues that while GM's EV sales growth is "soaring," Ford's is showing "only modest gains." [W]hile Ford's overall U.S. sales were 0.7% higher at 504,039, it had just a 12% gain in EVs to 23,509.3 In the second quarter, Ford's EV sales had soared 61% to 23,957. Sales growth was more than three times higher for Ford's hybrid models, with President of Ford Blue and Ford Customer Service Division Andrew Frick arguing that the company has "listened to customers to offer them vehicles with powertrains to meet their specific needs."

Ford is hoping to boost EV sales by offering buyers a free home charger and installation.

The Washington Post reports that America's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) "is considering legal action against Meta over allegations that it improperly used financial data obtained from third parties in its highly-lucrative advertising business..."

The article says a Meta securities filing Thursday revealed it had received a formal notification about the federal investigation last month. The filing said only that the inquiry relates to "advertising for financial products and services on our platform." A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment on the investigation. "We disagree with the claims," the company's filing said, "and believe an enforcement action is unwarranted...."

The CFPB's probe underscores its aggressive recent focus on Big Tech. In recent years, major companies including Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google have launched a wave of new financial services, including credit cards and apps that help users send money to friends... Under its current director, Rohit Chopra, the CFPB has also sought to ensure that tech giants adhere to the same safeguards that have long applied to their brick-and-mortar banking predecessors. The bureau formalized its tech crackdown in 2021, when Chopra ordered companies including Facebook to turn over records related to their payment apps and other financial service offerings.

At the time, he expressed fear that these giants already possessed troves of customer data and could solidify their dominance if they gained greater insight into users' purchasing and spending habits. "This data can be monetized by companies that seek to profit from behavioral targeting, particularly around advertising and e-commerce," Chopra said in a statement announcing the review. "That many Big Tech companies aspire to grow in this space only heightens these concerns." Since then, the watchdog agency has proposed new rules that could treat Apple, Google and PayPal-owned Venmo more like banks, opening the door for federal regulators to inspect some of their operations in a bid to protect users' deposits.

The rules, which have not been finalized, have sparked fierce lobbying opposition from major tech companies.

An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from CNBC: Threads now has nearly 275 million monthly users, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday. "We continue to be on track towards this becoming our next major social app," Zuckerberg said on a call with analysts, adding that he was "quite pleased" with the trajectory of the app.

The latest numbers indicate Threads is up 175% from a year ago when it reached 100 million users... The app is now signing up more than 1 million users per day, Zuckerberg also said on Wednesday. X remains ahead of Threads in terms of users, but not by much. Musk's social media app now has roughly 318 million monthly users, according to an estimate by market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. That's down 24% since Musk completed his acquisition of the company in October 2022, according to Sensor Tower.
The news also drew a reaction from ActivityPub/Activity Streams 2.0 co-author Evan Prodromou, who pointed out that the 275 million monthly active users is up from the 200 million reported just 13 weeks ago at the end of July.

"And most of them have access to the Fediverse. With more, hopefully, getting access soon."

Starlink has launched home Internet service to 99.5% of residents in the National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ) after a multi-year collaboration with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory to minimize interference with radio telescopes. "The vast majority of people within the areas of Virginia and West Virginia collectively known as the National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ) can now receive high speed satellite Internet service," the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Green Bank Observatory announced said. "The newly available service is the result of a nearly three-year collaborative engineering effort between the US National Science Foundation (NSF), SpaceX, and the NSF National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO), which operates the NSF Green Bank Observatory (NSF GBO) in West Virginia within the NRQZ." Ars Technica reports: There's a controversy over the 0.5 percent of residents who aren't included and are said to be newly blocked from using the Starlink Roam service. Starlink markets Roam as a service for people to use while traveling, not as a fixed home Internet service. The Pendleton County Office of Emergency Management last week issued a press release (PDF) saying that "customers with the RV/Roam packages had been using Starlink for approximately two years throughout 100% of the NRQZ. Now, the 0.5% have lost coverage after having it for two years. This means that a large section of southeastern Pendleton County and an even larger section of northern Pocahontas will NOT be able to utilize Starlink."

PCMag wrote that "Starlink is now live in 42 of the 46 cell areas around the Green Bank Observatory's telescopes." Pendleton County Emergency Services Coordinator Rick Gillespie told Ars today that Roam coverage was cut off in the remaining four cell areas. "After the agreement, we all lost effective use within the four cells," Gillespie told Ars in an email. Gillespie's press release said that, "in many cases, Starlink was the only Internet provider option residents and emergency responders had. This is unacceptable."

California signed an agreement with major airlines to increase the use of sustainable aviation fuels, aiming to reach 200 million gallons by 2035 or about 40% of the state's air travel demand. The Hill reports: The California Air Resources Board (CARB) and Airlines for America (A4A) -- an industry trade group representing almost a dozen airlines -- pledged to increase the availability of sustainable aviation fuels statewide. Sustainable aviation fuels -- lower-carbon alternatives to petroleum-based jet fuels -- are typically made from nonpetroleum feedstocks, such as biomass or waste. At a San Francisco International Airport ceremony Wednesday, the partners committed (PDF) to using 200 million gallons of such fuels by 2035 -- an amount estimated to meet about 40 percent of travel demand within the state at that point, according to CARB. That quantity also represents a more than tenfold increase from current usage levels of these fuels, the agency added.

Among A4A member airlines are Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Atlas Air Worldwide, Delta Air Lines, FedEx, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and UPS, while Air Canada is an associate member. To achieve the 2035 goals, CARB and A4A said they plan to work together to identify, assess and prioritize necessary policy measures, such as incentivizing relevant investments and streamlining the permitting processes. A Sustainable Aviation Fuel Working Group, which will include government and industry stakeholders, will meet annually to both discuss progress and address barriers toward meeting these goals, the partners added. A public website will display updated information about the availability and use of conventional and sustainable fuels across California, while also providing details about state policies, according to the agreement.

Waymo is advancing autonomous driving with a new training model for its robotaxis built on Google's multimodal large language model (MLLM) Gemini. The Verge reports: Waymo released a new research paper today that introduces an "End-to-End Multimodal Model for Autonomous Driving," also known as EMMA. This new end-to-end training model processes sensor data to generate "future trajectories for autonomous vehicles," helping Waymo's driverless vehicles make decisions about where to go and how to avoid obstacles. But more importantly, this is one of the first indications that the leader in autonomous driving has designs to use MLLMs in its operations. And it's a sign that these LLMs could break free of their current use as chatbots, email organizers, and image generators and find application in an entirely new environment on the road. In its research paper, Waymo is proposing "to develop an autonomous driving system in which the MLLM is a first class citizen."

The paper outlines how, historically, autonomous driving systems have developed specific "modules" for the various functions, including perception, mapping, prediction, and planning. This approach has proven useful for many years but has problems scaling "due to the accumulated errors among modules and limited inter-module communication." Moreover, these modules could struggle to respond to "novel environments" because, by nature, they are "pre-defined," which can make it hard to adapt. Waymo says that MLLMs like Gemini present an interesting solution to some of these challenges for two reasons: the chat is a "generalist" trained on vast sets of scraped data from the internet "that provide rich 'world knowledge' beyond what is contained in common driving logs"; and they demonstrate "superior" reasoning capabilities through techniques like "chain-of-thought reasoning," which mimics human reasoning by breaking down complex tasks into a series of logical steps.

Waymo developed EMMA as a tool to help its robotaxis navigate complex environments. The company identified several situations in which the model helped its driverless cars find the right route, including encountering various animals or construction in the road. [...] But EMMA also has its limitations, and Waymo acknowledges that there will need to be future research before the model is put into practice. For example, EMMA couldn't incorporate 3D sensor inputs from lidar or radar, which Waymo said was "computationally expensive." And it could only process a small amount of image frames at a time. There are also risks to using MLLMs to train robotaxis that go unmentioned in the research paper. Chatbots like Gemini often hallucinate or fail at simple tasks like reading clocks or counting objects.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Royal Navy: The Royal Navy has successfully demonstrated the capabilities of ground-breaking cold atom technology. P2000 vessel HMS Pursuer hosted the trial, which unlocks new possibilities in areas such as covert monitoring, which require precise signals for accurate positioning, navigation and timing. The Office of the Chief of Technology Officer (OCTO) for the RN worked with UK quantum technology company Aquark Technologies. The trial involved the company's miniature cold atom systems, founded on Aquark's unique laser-cooling method, known as supemolasses.

This method to generate cold atoms does not need an applied magnetic field, therefore reducing the size, weight, power consumption and cost of sensors. A cold atom is an atom that has been laser-cooled to extremely low temperatures, typically near absolute zero (-273.15C). At these temperatures, the thermal motion of atoms is very slow, allowing their quantum mechanical properties to be precisely controlled. Quantum Sensing is an advanced sensor technology that detects changes in motion, and electric and magnetic fields, by collecting data at the atomic level. Commander Matthew Steele, who heads up Future Technology for OCTO, said: "Quantum technologies being developed in the UK will offer an alternative Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) capability necessary to operate effectively in GPS denied or degraded environments."

"Over the next three years, the Navy seeks to accelerate the development of quantum technologies -- such as Aquarks -- through funding and sea trials, to secure the Royal Navy an opportunity to invest in a non-GPS-based PNT capability and to maintain its global operating advantage."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The trend of big touchscreens in cars has left many yearning for the not-so-distant days when most user interactions happened with physical buttons. But Rivian's chief software officer Wassym Bensaid believes using buttons in a car is an "anomaly." "It's a bug. It's not a feature," Bensaid said Wednesday at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. "Ideally, you would want to interact with your car through voice. The problem today is that most voice assistants are just broken." To that end, Bensaid said that "every week" he's driving around an engineering vehicle that has an AI-powered voice assistant, though he did not specify which one. He mentioned earlier in his interview with TechCrunch's transportation editor Kirsten Korosec that Rivian has "partnerships that I cannot yet talk about."

"I think the car is actually a fantastic environment for AI," he said, while noting that latency and hallucinations are still very big problems that need to be solved. "The final north star I have is having voice [controls] become the primary means of interaction with the vehicle. The reality is that the vehicle is so feature-rich, that even if we do a fantastic job in the UI, there will always be prioritization that we need to do in terms of having things one or two menus behind," Bensaid told TechCrunch after he got off stage. Bensaid also said he's a big believer in the ability of AI-powered voice controls to handle complex requests. For instance, he said if a driver says "I'm hungry" the in-car assistant should be able to quickly direct them to a nearby restaurant that they might prefer. Bensaid said the company is committed to creating a unique, integrated user experienced tailored for Rivian owners -- one that won't include CarPlay.

CarPlay "takes over all the pixels in the screen, and it's a replacement of the entire experience, and we truly believe that with the technology capabilities that we have, we can offer a much more refined, integrated experience," he said.

Corporate resistance to AI tools is costing employees six hours per week in manual tasks that could be automated, according to research by recruitment firm SThree. Sixty-three percent of workers blame management's "digital illiteracy" for slow AI adoption, despite major companies rushing to tout AI initiatives since ChatGPT's launch. A 2023 tech.io study found two-thirds of business leaders barely use AI tools due to limited understanding.

Apple is taking a 20 percent stake in its iPhone satellite connectivity partner GlobalStar -- a stake worth $400 million -- as part of an expansion of its deal with the company. From a report: GlobalStar will also receive a prepayment of $1.1 billion from Apple that is intended to improve satellite infrastructure.

Apple relies on GlobalStar's satellites to enable to send emergency text messages, iMessage reactions, and more through the skies in areas with no cell signal. GlobalStar disclosed the details of the deal expansion in an SEC filing, which includes "a new satellite constellation, expanded ground infrastructure, and increased global [mobile satellite services] licensing."

Three months ago, Wall Street punished the world's largest technology firms for spending enormous amounts to develop artificial intelligence, only to deliver results that failed to justify the costs. Silicon Valley's response this quarter? Plans to invest even more. Bloomberg: The capital expenditures of the four largest internet and software companies -- Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet -- are set to total well over $200 billion this year, a record sum for the profligate collective.

Executives from each company warned investors this week that their splurge will continue next year, or even ramp up. The spree underscores the extreme costs and resources consumed from the worldwide boom in AI ignited by the arrival of ChatGPT. Tech giants are racing to secure the scarce high-end chips and build the sprawling data centers the technology demands. To do so, the companies have cut deals with energy providers to power these facilities, even reviving a notorious nuclear plant.

Indonesia has banned sales of Google Pixel smartphones for failing to meet a 40% local content requirement, days after blocking Apple's iPhone 16 in Southeast Asia's biggest phone market. Google must obtain local content certification before resuming sales in Indonesia, Industry Ministry spokesman Febri Hendri Antoni Arief said. The move follows last week's iPhone 16 ban after Apple failed to fulfill a $95 million investment pledge.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Complaints about the brightness of modern headlights have become commonplace. On X, thousands of users have tweeted about headlights being too bright. The subreddit r/fuckyourheadlights has over 35,000 members who post blurry photos of offending high beams and LED headlights. Outlets like the New York Times and NBC News have written about the risks of headlight glare. Advocacy groups have called for bans on LED headlights. And the UK government launched a review into the dangers of headlight glare earlier this year, after many driver complaints. And yet, according to many experts, the problem with headlights is not that they're too bright -- it's that they're not bright enough. "We actually need more light on the road than what we have," says Greg Bannon, director of automotive engineering at the American Automobile Association (AAA). Only a minority of US roadways have overhead street lighting, as one 2019 AAA report noted. As a result, in many areas, headlights are the sole method of illumination when driving at night. But which is the safety bigger risk: inadequate illumination, or headlights that impair the vision of other drivers? The report notes that the U.S. standards set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) haven't changed in decades and are much weaker than Europe's. Adaptive headlights, which automatically adjust brightness to avoid blinding other drivers, have been approved by NHTSA since 2022 but are still relatively rare due to differing standards and costs.

Google is rolling out a dedicated weather app on Pixel phones (model 6 and newer with Android 15) that integrates AI-generated summaries and customizable widgets. Ars Technica reports: There's a prominent "AI generated weather report" on top of the weather stack, which is a combination of summary and familiarity. "Cold and rainy day, bring your umbrella and hold onto your hat!" is Google's example; I can't provide another one, because an update to "Gemini Nano" is pending. You can see weather radar for your location, along with forecasted precipitation movement. The app offers "Nowcasting" precipitation guesses, like "Rain continuing for 2 hours" or "Light rain in 10 minutes."

The best feature, one seen on the version of Weather that shipped to the Pixel Tablet and Fold, is that you can rearrange the order of data shown on your weather screen. I moved the UV index, humidity, sunrise/sunset, and wind conditions as high as they could go on my setup. It's a trade-off, because the Weather app's data widgets are so big as to require scrolling to get the full picture of a day, and you can't move the AI summary or 10-day forecast off the top. But if you only need a few numbers and like a verbal summary, it's handy. Sadly, if you're an allergy sufferer and you're not in the UK, Germany, France, or Italy, Google can't offer you any pollen data or forecasts. There is also, I am sad to say, no frog. You can download the app here.

Former Google chief Eric Schmidt thinks the US Army should expunge "useless" tanks and replace them with AI-powered drones instead. From a report: Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative in Saudi Arabia this week, he said: "I read somewhere that the US had thousands and thousands of tanks stored somewhere," adding, "Give them away. Buy a drone instead."

The former Google supremo's argument is that recent conflicts, such as the war in Ukraine, have demonstrated how "a $5,000 drone can destroy a $5 million tank." In fact, even cheaper drones, similar to those commercially available for consumers, have been shown in footage on social media dropping grenades through the open turret hatch of tanks. Schmidt, who was CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, then executive chairman to 2015, and executive chairman of Alphabet to 2018, founded White Stork with the aim of supporting Ukraine's war effort. It hopes to achieve this by developing a low-cost drone that can use AI to acquire its target rather than being guided by an operator and can function in environments where GPS jamming is in operation.

Notably, Schmidt also served as chair of the US government's National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), which advised the President and Congress about national security and defense issues with regard to AI. "The cost of autonomy is falling so quickly that the drone war, which is the future of conflict, will get rid of eventually tanks, artillery, mortars," Schmidt predicted.