A group of ten bipartisan lawmakers from Nevada and California have asked the Biden administration to quickly provide federal funding for a private company to construct a high-speed rail line between Las Vegas and the Los Angeles area. The Associated Press reports: All six of Nevada's elected federal lawmakers and four House members from California sent the letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. They said they're on board with a proposal from Brightline West to spend more than $10 billion to lay tracks along the Interstate 15 corridor. The Mojave Desert is largely open space, and the electric-powered trains could potentially cut the four-hour trip in half, carrying passengers at speeds of nearly 200 mph (322 kph). "This project is a major priority because it will make southern Nevada more accessible to millions of visitors each year," said U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen, the Nevada Democrat leading the group. She said it "will boost our economy and create more good-paying jobs."

Union labor will be used during construction, the company and the Southern Nevada Building Trades Union have announced in recent weeks. Brightline West is seeking $3.75 billion in federal funding from the Biden administration-backed federal infrastructure law. The project could be "the blueprint for how we can connect major city pairs that are too short to fly and too far to drive," said Mike Reininger, CEO of Florida-based Brightline Holdings LLC, the only privately owned and operated intercity passenger railroad in the United States. The lawmakers' letter pointed to company projections of 35,000 construction jobs, 1,000 permanent jobs and reduced planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee in Sacramento is expected to consider a new bill called "The Delete Act," or SB 362, which aims to give Californians the power to block data tracking. "The onus is on individuals to try to protect their data from an estimated 2,000-4,000 data brokers worldwide -- many of which have no other relationship with consumers beyond the trade in their data," reports KQED. "This lucrative trade is also known as surveillance advertising, or the 'ad tech' industry." From the report: EFF supports The Delete Act, or SB 362, by state Sen. Josh Becker, who represents the Peninsula. "I want to be able to hit that delete button and delete my personal information, delete the ability of these data brokers to collect and track me," said Becker, of his second attempt to pass such a bill. "These data brokers are out there analyzing, selling personal information. You know, this is a way to put a stop to it."

Tracy Rosenberg, a data privacy advocate with Media Alliance and Oakland Privacy, said she anticipates a lot of pushback from tech companies, because "making [the Delete Act] workable probably destroys their businesses as most of us, by now, don't really see the value in the aggregating and sale of our data on the open market by third parties... "It is a pretty basic-level philosophical battle about whether your personal information is, in fact, yours to share as you see appropriate and when it is personally beneficial to you, or whether it is property to be bought and sold," Rosenberg said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: California is far and away the country's largest adopter of plug-in electric vehicles. Because of the state's ability to regulate its own air quality and spurred on by a large economy and plenty of affluent residents, the EV has gained plenty of traction in the Golden State. So much so that last month, California met its goal of having more than 1.5 million clean vehicles on the road two years ahead of schedule. California's Air Resources Board (CARB) began its Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program in 1990 with the intent of ameliorating the state's severe smog problem. By the early years of this century, air quality had improved to the point where CARB could begin using the ZEV regulations to help drive down climate emissions. It has accomplished that with goals that are more ambitious than the ones adopted by the US Environmental Protection Agency at the federal level and despite political interference from the previous administration, which wanted pollution to continue almost unabated.

A number of other states -- Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington -- have adopted CARB's ZEV program within their own borders. But none are as far down the road to EV adoption; in the first three months of this year, 21.1 percent of all new light-duty vehicles bought in California were zero-emissions vehicles. That's a 153-percent increase year on year, according to the nonprofit Veloz. Battery EVs made up the vast majority, with 95,946 sold. Unsurprisingly, Tesla was most well-represented on the sales list, with the Model Y accounting for 33,205 units by itself. (The Model 3 was next, at 19,989 sold in Q1 2023.) BMW was the best of the rest of the OEMs in total sales numbers thanks to healthy plug-in hybrid EV sales.

Los Angeles County was responsible for the highest number of new EVs added to the roads, with 36,670 registered in Q1. Orange County was next, at 15,289 new ZEVs registered, followed by Santa Clara County (11,428 new ZEVs registered). Cumulatively, that brings California to 1,523,966 ZEVs deployed by the end of Q1 2023; for context, there were just 773 ZEVs in total sold before 2011. The state had hoped to reach that milestone by the end of 2025. More than two-thirds of those 1.5 million ZEVs are BEVS -- 1,051,456, according to the California Energy Commission, with most of the remaining cars being plug-in hybrid EVs. The data shows that the hydrogen fuel cell revolution is not really accelerating, though -- only 15,432 have been registered in the state.

Samsung is expected to report its worst profit in 14 years due to falling prices for memory chips -- the company's biggest business -- and weak demand. CNBC reports: The South Korean technology giant guided earlier this month that it would post operating profit of 600 billion Korean won ($449 million) for the first quarter. If Samsung reports this number, it would be the company's lowest profit since the first quarter of 2009. Samsung releases preliminary earnings guidance, but does not give detailed figures. It reports its full first quarter earnings on Thursday.

Samsung is the world's largest maker of memory chips, which go into everything from PCs to servers in data centers. During the height of the pandemic, demand for consumer electronics was high, as people stayed home. Electronics companies piled up chips to go into these products. But buyers are now cutting back on purchases of these goods due to inflation and macroeconomic concerns, leading to somewhat of a memory chip glut.

Google Authenticator just got an update that should make it more useful for people who frequently use the service to sign in to apps and websites. From a report: As of today, Google Authenticator will now sync any one-time two-factor authentication (2FA) codes that it generates to users' Google Accounts. Previously, one-time Authenticator codes were stored locally, on a single device, meaning losing that device often meant losing the ability to sign in to any service set up with Authenticator's 2FA. To take advantage of the new sync feature, simply update the Authenticator app. If you're signed in to a Google Account within Google Authenticator, your codes will automatically be backed up and restored on any new device you use. You can also manually transfer your codes to another device even if you're not signed in to a Google Account by following the steps on this support page.

Some users might be wary of syncing their sensitive codes with Google's cloud -- even if they did originate from a Google product. But Christiaan Brand, a group product manager at Google, asserts it's in the pursuit of convenience without sacrificing security. "We released Google Authenticator in 2010 as a free and easy way for sites to add 'something you have' 2FA that bolsters user security when signing in," Brand wrote in the blog post announcing today's change. "With this update we're rolling out a solution to this problem, making one time codes more durable by storing them safely in users' Google Account."

Microsoft will stop forcing customers of its popular Office software to also have its Teams video conferencing and messaging app automatically installed on their devices, in a move designed to prevent an official antitrust probe by EU regulators. From a report: The US tech giant has made the concession to avoid a formal investigation, said two people with direct knowledge of the decision, following a 2020 complaint by rival Slack which claimed Microsoft's practice of bundling the two services together was anti-competitive. These people said that, in future, when companies buy Office they can do it with or without Teams if they wished, but the mechanism on how to do this remains unclear. The people stressed talks are still ongoing and a deal is not certain. The move is part of an effort by Microsoft to try to avoid what would be its first antitrust probe in more than a decade, having sought to avoid legal battles with the European Commission that have proved bruising in the past.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Over the weekend, users on Reddit and YouTube began posting about problems with AMD's newest Ryzen 7000X3D processors. In some cases, the systems simply stopped booting. But in at least one instance, a Ryzen 7800X3D became physically deformed, bulging out underneath and bending the pins on the motherboard's processor socket. In a separate post, motherboard maker MSI indicated that the damage "may have been caused by abnormal voltage issues." Ryzen 7000X3D processors already impose limits on overclocking and power settings, but new BIOS updates from MSI specifically disallow any kind of "overvolting" features that could give the CPUs more power than they were built to handle.

You can still undervolt your CPU to attempt to reduce temperatures and energy usage by giving the CPU a bit less power than it was designed for. The Ryzen 7000X3D processors are set to a lower voltage than regular Ryzen 7000 CPUs by default because the extra L3 cache layered on top of the processor die can raise temperatures and make the CPU more difficult to cool. This has also made the chips much more power-efficient than the standard Ryzen chips, but that efficiency comes at the cost of overclocking settings and other features that some enthusiasts use to squeeze more performance out of their PCs.

The early user reviews for Snapchat's "My AI" feature are in -- and they're not good. From a report: Launched last week to global users after initially being a subscriber-only addition, Snapchat's new AI chatbot powered by OpenAI's GPT technology is now pinned to the top of the app's Chat tab where users can ask it questions and get instant responses. But following the chatbot's rollout to Snapchat's wider community, Snapchat's app has seen a spike in negative reviews amid a growing number of complaints shared on social media.

Over the past week, Snapchat's average U.S. App Store review was 1.67, with 75% of reviews being 1-star, according to data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. For comparison, across Q1 2023, the Snapchat average U.S. App Store review was 3.05 with only 35% of reviews being 1-star. The number of daily reviews has also increased by 5 times over the last week, the firm noted.

Google is leaning into flexibility as part of a new strategy to stymie the impact of belt-tightening among cyber chiefs. From a report: Google Cloud and Mandiant, the threat intelligence unit it acquired last year, unveiled at the RSA Conference in San Francisco today that they're opening their security products to integrations from competitors, as well as offering new Google plug-ins for other vendors' tools. The news, which was shared first with Axios, means that Google customers will now have more options to embed Google's tools in partner companies' products, like CrowdStrike, Trellix and SentinelOne. Other companies, like Accenture and login management company Okta, will also be integrating their products into Google's as part of the plan. Chief information security officers are facing increasing board pressure during a wobbly economy to cut down the number of vendors they work with and simplify their security programs. As a result, vendors have started to intertwine their competitors' products into their own tools in recent years to reach more customers.

The U.S. Supreme Court, exploring free speech rights in the social media era, on Monday agreed to consider whether the Constitution's First Amendment bars government officials from blocking their critics on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. From a report: The justices took up an appeal by two members of a public school board from the city of Poway in Southern California of a lower court's ruling in favor of school parents who sued after being blocked from Facebook pages and a Twitter account maintained by the officials. The justices also took up an appeal by a Michigan man of a lower court's ruling against him after he sued a city official in Port Huron who blocked him on Facebook following critical posts made by the plaintiff about the local government's COVID-19 response. At issue is whether a public official's social media activity can amount to governmental action bound by First Amendment limits on government regulation of speech.

When the U.S. Supreme Court decides in the coming months whether to weaken a powerful shield protecting internet companies, the ruling also could have implications for rapidly developing technologies like artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT. From a report: The justices are due to rule by the end of June whether Alphabet's YouTube can be sued over its video recommendations to users. That case tests whether a U.S. law that protects technology platforms from legal responsibility for content posted online by their users also applies when companies use algorithms to target users with recommendations.

What the court decides about those issues is relevant beyond social media platforms. Its ruling could influence the emerging debate over whether companies that develop generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT from OpenAI, a company in which Microsoft is a major investor, or Bard from Alphabet's Google should be protected from legal claims like defamation or privacy violations, according to technology and legal experts. That is because algorithms that power generative AI tools like ChatGPT and its successor GPT-4 operate in a somewhat similar way as those that suggest videos to YouTube users, the experts added.

Hackers, particularly state-sponsored and organized cybercriminals, wreak havoc worldwide. However, their aliases, such as Fancy Bear and Refined Kitten, often undermine the seriousness of their actions, Wired argues. Microsoft's cybersecurity division recently revamped its naming taxonomy for the hundreds of hacker groups it tracks, adopting two-word names with a weather-based term to indicate the hackers' suspected country and affiliation.

For instance, the Iranian group Phosphorous is now dubbed Mint Sandstorm, while Russia's Iridium (Sandworm) goes by Seashell Blizzard. Critics, like Rob Lee, founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm Dragos, argue that the whimsical new names could hinder the perception of the profession and be counterproductive for cybersecurity analysis. Furthermore, the new naming scheme forces analysts and customers to revise their databases and products to align with Microsoft's terminology. The revised system also risks cementing educated guesses about hackers' national loyalties without clarity on the confidence of those assessments.

An anonymous reader shared this scathing rant from the Verge: It's a truth universally acknowledged that smart speakers should just shut up. I don't want to know when Siri / Alexa / Google has locked my front door — I just asked it to do that and I expect it to happen. (We'll put a pin in the fact that it doesn't always do this). So Google's announcement this week that it's taking more steps to stop its Google Assistant from chattering away to you every time you send a command to a Nest smart speaker is a welcome one.

The Assistant already stays schtum when you ask it to turn the lights off in the room you're in, sending a gentle chime to let you know it was successful. (You know, in case THE LIGHTS TURNING OFF didn't alert you to this fact.) However, it still loves to have a good old chat when you ask it to do something like change the temperature of your thermostat. "Okay, setting the living room AC to 76 degrees." This new change will, according to a community blog post from Google, roll out over the next few weeks. It will make the speaker chime instead of starting a conversation when you ask it to control smart devices, including switches, plugs, fans, blinds, TVs, and speakers.

However, this is still only for the room you and the speaker are in. So, when I'm in bed at night and softly request my Nest Hub to turn off the living room lights, it will still loudly respond, "TURNING OFF LIVING ROOM LIGHTS." Sigh.
The article argues the problem is specific to Google's speakers. "Knowing when to be silent is something every other smart speaker manufacturer figured out a while back."

9to5Linux reports: KDE-focused and Arch Linux-inspired independent distribution KaOS Linux celebrates today 10 years of existence with a new stable ISO release that brings some of the latest GNU/Linux technologies and a preview of the upcoming KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment.

Yes, you're reading it right, KaOS is one of the very first GNU/Linux distributions to offer you a live ISO image with a pre-release version of the KDE Plasma 6 desktop, which, of course, is compiled against the latest Qt 6 open-source application framework...

Since this is a special ISO release, the devs also added an option to play music during the installation process.
"KaOS uses the Systemd-provided Systemd-boot for UEFI installs," according to the release notes.

America's Department of Homeland Security "will establish a new task force to examine how the government can use artificial intelligence technology to protect the country," reports CNBC.

The task force was announcement by department secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Friday during a speech at a Council on Foreign Relations event: "Our department will lead in the responsible use of AI to secure the homeland," Mayorkas said, while also pledging to defend "against the malicious use of this transformational technology." He added, "As we do this, we will ensure that our use of AI is rigorously tested to avoid bias and disparate impact and is clearly explainable to the people we serve...."

Mayorkas gave two examples of how the task force will help determine how AI could be used to fine-tune the agency's work. One is to deploy AI into DHS systems that screen cargo for goods produced by forced labor. The second is to use the technology to better detect fentanyl in shipments to the U.S., as well as identifying and stopping the flow of "precursor chemicals" used to produce the dangerous drug.

Mayorkas asked Homeland Security Advisory Council Co-Chair Jamie Gorelick to study "the intersection of AI and homeland security and deliver findings that will help guide our use of it and defense against it."
The article also notes that earlier this week America's defense department hired a former Google AI cloud director to serve as its first advisor on AI, robotics, cloud computing and data analytics.

The Washington Post reports on "a relatively young app called Beeper that pulls all your chats into one place." This is significant, the Post argues, because "we're better off if we have the freedom to pick up our digital lives and move on. Tech companies should feel terrified that you'll walk if they disappoint you..." If different people send you messages in Apple's Messages (a.k.a., iMessage), WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Slack, you don't have to check multiple apps to read and reply. Maybe the best promise of Beeper is that you can ditch your iPhone or Samsung phone for another company's device and keep your text messages...

Eric Migicovsky, Beeper's co-founder, told me that if you're pulling Apple Messages into Beeper, you need a Mac computer to upload a digital file. All chat apps have different limits on how much history you can access in the app.

There's also a wait list of about 170,000 people for Beeper. (Add yourself to the list here.) The app is free, but Beeper says it will start charging for a version with extra features.
To put this all in context, the Post's reporter remembers the hassle of using a cable to transfer a long history of iPhone messages to a new Google Pixel phone, complaining that Apple makes it more difficult than other companies to switch to a different kind of system. "Many of you are happy to live in Apple's world. Great! But if you want the option to leave at some point, try to limit your use of Apple apps when possible..."

They look ahead to next year, when the EU "will require large tech companies to make their products compatible with those of competitors" — though it's not clear how much change that will bring. In the meantime, the existence of a small company like Beeper "gives me hope that we don't have to rely on the kindness of technology giants to make it easier to move to a different phone or computer system... You deserve the option of a no-hassle tech divorce at a moment's notice."

Remember that U.S. Air National Guardsman who's suspected of leaking classified documents? The New York Times has discovered "a previously undisclosed chat group on Discord" where the same airman apparently also posted "sensitive information" including "secret intelligence on the Russian war effort," this time to a group with 600 members — and "months earlier than previously known," in February of 2022. The case against Airman Teixeira, 21, who was arrested on April 13, pertains to the leaking of classified documents on another Discord group of about 50 members, called Thug Shaker Central. There, he began posting sensitive information in October 2022, members of the group told The Times. His job as an information technology specialist at an Air Force base in Massachusetts gave him top secret clearance... The user claimed to be posting information from the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies.

The additional information raises questions about why authorities did not discover the leaks sooner, particularly since hundreds more people would have been able to see the posts... The exposure of some of America's most closely guarded secrets has prompted criticism about how the Pentagon and intelligence agencies protect classified data, and whether there are weaknesses in both vetting people for security clearances and enforcing the mantra that access to secrets should only be given to people with a "need to know."

Unlike Thug Shaker Central, the second chat room was publicly listed on a YouTube channel and was easily accessed in seconds... Apparently eager to impress others in the group who questioned his analysis, he said: "I have a little more than open source info. Perks of being in a USAF intel unit," referring to the United States Air Force... At times, he appeared to be posting from the military base where he was stationed... Airman Teixeira also claimed that he was actively combing classified computer networks for material on the Ukraine war.

When one of the Discord users urged him not to abuse his access to classified intelligence, Teixeira replied: "too late...."
The Times says they learned about the larger chat room "from another Discord user."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Snapchat's AI chatbot is now opening up to a global audience, the company announced today at its Snap Partner Summit. Initially launched in February, the feature originally allowed Snapchat's paid subscribers to chat with an AI chatbot powered by OpenAI's GPT technology directly in its app. Now it will be available for free. To date, users have sent nearly 2 million messages per day using the chatbot, Snap noted. With today's global expansion, the feature is also being upgraded with new functionality, including the ability to add My AI to group chats, get recommendations for places on Snap Map and Lenses, and share Snaps with My AI and receive chat replies.

Later, My AI will be able to respond with unique "generative" Snaps back, instead of just chat replies, the company also said, to keep the visual conversation going. The idea to integrate AI into the Snapchat app was originally intended to give users another way to engage in the app while taking advantage of the growing consumer demand for ChatGPT-like experiences. The company suggested the feature could be used to do things like suggest birthday gift ideas for a BFF, plan a hiking trip, suggest dinner recipes or write a poem for a friend, among other things. [...] The feature, before today, was available only to Snapchat+ $3.99 per month subscription holders, which could be helping drive upgrades.

Humane, the top-secret tech startup founded by ex-Apple vets Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, just showed off the first demo for its projector-based wearable at a TED talk. From a report: Axios' Ina Fried broke the news, and Inverse has seen a recording of the full TED talk given by Chaudhri. Journalist Zarif Ali, who had tweeted out an image of Humane's wearable projecting a phone call function onto Chaudhri's palm, says the full TED talk video is not slated to become available until April 22. I've clipped out a demo of the AI-powered wearable in action.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: China is building sophisticated cyber weapons to "seize control" of enemy satellites, rendering them useless for data signals or surveillance during wartime, according to a leaked US intelligence report. The US assesses that China's push to develop capabilities to "deny, exploit or hijack" enemy satellites is a core part of its goal to control information, which Beijing considers to be a key "war-fighting domain." The CIA-marked document, which was issued this year and has been reviewed by the Financial Times, was one of dozens allegedly shared by a 21-year-old US Air Guardsman in the most significant American intelligence disclosures in more than a decade. A cyber capability of this nature would far exceed anything Russia has deployed in Ukraine, where electronic warfare teams have taken a brute-force approach with little effect.

These attacks, first developed in the 1980s, attempt to drown out signals between low-orbit SpaceX satellites and their on-ground terminals by broadcasting on similar frequencies from truck-borne jamming systems such as the Tirada-2. China's more ambitious cyber attacks aim to mimic the signals that enemy satellites receive from their operators, tricking them into either being taken over completely or malfunctioning during crucial moments in combat. The classified US document said this cyber capability would allow China "to seize control of a satellite, rendering it ineffective to support communications, weapons, or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems." The US has never disclosed whether it has similar capabilities.

Taiwan, which has taken note of how indispensable satellite communications have been to the Ukrainian military, is seeking to build out communications infrastructure that can survive an attack from China. It is courting investors to establish its own satellite provider, while experimenting with non-geostationary satellite receivers in 700 locations around Taiwan to guarantee bandwidth in the event of war or disasters, the Financial Times reported in January. China's goals, according to the leaked assessment, [...] would seek to knock out the ability of satellites -- which tend to operate in interconnected clusters -- to communicate with each other, to relay signals and orders to weapons systems, or to send back visual and intercepted electronic data, according to experts. "China understands the superiority that the United States has in the space and cyber domains, so they are very interested in not only improving their own capabilities but in capitalizing on what we refer to as a first-mover advantage in both domains," said Moore, now a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

"They are working on all the capabilities that they want to have from a defensive and offensive standpoint, and from an ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] standpoint. They're firing on all cylinders," he said.