An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch: After a nasty battle between the developers of third-party apps and Reddit management, ultimately resulting in a site-wide protest, many app makers were put out of business due to Reddit's price increases related to the usage of its API. Though the changes meant the loss of popular apps like Apollo, RIF (Reddit is Fun), ReddPlanent, Sync and BaconReader, one app, Narwhal, is attempting to make a comeback. The company announced this week that it will implement a subscription-based version of its app at $3.99 per month, promising an ad-free and privacy-focused experience.

The new app will also include a Tip Jar to solicit donations to help keep the app afloat beyond the subscription fees and fund additional development work. Though not available at launch, the app's developer Rick Harrison (u/det0ur on Reddit and CTO at Meadow by day) says he's considering adding a small fee, perhaps $1 per month, to allow users to also check their notifications and messages... Notes Narwhal's developer, Reddit's fee will be "tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands a month depending on how many people subscribe." To work, the app will need a critical mass of subscribers to cover its costs, but Harrison says he's fairly confident the model will work.

"Also, with a simpler plan like this, I can offer a subscription on a Narwhal website for 30% less (no Apple cut)," Harrison wrote...

Narwhal isn't the only Reddit client to attempt to remain in business despite Reddit's API pricing changes. Another, Relay, announced a multi-tier subscription plan where users have to choose one of six price points, each that caps them at a certain number of API calls.

Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike shared the Washington Post's speculation about the possibility of a gigantic solar storm leaving millions without phone or internet access, and requiring months or years of rebuilding: The odds are low that in any given year a storm big enough to cause effects this widespread will happen. And the severity of those impacts will depend on many factors, including the state of our planet's magnetic field on that day. But it's a near certainty that some form of this catastrophe will happen someday, says Ian Cohen, a chief scientist who studies heliophysics at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
Long-time Slashdot reader davidwr remains skeptical. "I've only heard of two major events in the last 1300 years, one estimated to be between A. D. 744 and A. D. 993, and the other being the Carrington Event in 1859.

But efforts are being made to improve our readiness, reports the Washington Post: To get ahead of this threat, a loose federation of U.S. and international government agencies, and hundreds of scientists affiliated with those bodies, have begun working on how to make predictions about what our Sun might do. And a small but growing cadre of scientists argue that artificial intelligence will be an essential component of efforts to give us advance notice of such a storm...

At present, no warning system is capable of giving us more than a few hours' notice of a devastating solar storm. If it's moving fast enough, it could be as little as 15 minutes. The most useful sentinel — a sun-orbiting satellite launched by the U.S. in 2015 — is much closer to Earth than the sun, so that by the time a fast-moving storm crosses its path, an hour or less is all the warning we get. The European Space Agency has proposed a system to help give earlier warning by putting a satellite dubbed Vigil into orbit around the Sun, positioned roughly the same distance from the Earth as the Earth is from the Sun. It could potentially give us up to five hours of warning about an incoming solar storm-enough time to do the main thing that can help preserve electronics: Switch them all off.

But what if there were a way to predict this better, by analyzing the data we've got? That's the idea behind a new, AI-powered model recently unveiled by scientists at the Frontier Development Lab — a public-private partnership that includes NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. Department of Energy. The model uses deep learning, a type of AI, to examine the flow of the solar wind, the usually calm stream of particles that flow outward from our sun and through the solar system to well beyond the orbit of Pluto. Using observations of that solar wind, the model can predict the "geomagnetic disturbance" an incoming solar storm observed by sun-orbiting satellites would cause at any given point on Earth, the researchers involved say. This model can predict just how big the flux of the Earth's magnetic field will be when the solar storm arrives, and thus how big the induced currents in power lines and undersea internet cables will be...

Already, the first primitive ancestor of future AI-based solar-weather alert systems is live. The DstLive system, which debuted on the web in December 2022, uses machine learning to take data about the state of Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind and translate both into a single measure for the entire planet, known as DST. Think of it as the Richter scale, but for solar storms. This number is intended to give us an idea of how intense a storm's impact will be on earth, an hour to six hours in advance.

Unfortunately, we may not know how useful such systems are until we live through a major solar storm.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Tesla has officially released its API documentation to support third-party apps -- after years of operating in a gray zone with an unofficial API. For now, it is geared toward fleet management, but developers are hoping it is a first step toward creating a healthy app ecosystem. [...] So far, it still only covers the command that you can send to your car through the Tesla app, and it can ping the data from your car that goes to the app. In short, it is going to make official all the third-party fleet management apps, smartwatch integration apps, etc.

In the documentation, Tesla writes that all third-party apps are going to have to go through the new API starting next year: "Following the release of Tesla Vehicle Command SDK support for REST API vehicle command endpoints is now reaching end of life. Starting 2024 most vehicles will require sending commands via Tesla Vehicle Command SDK." Tesla put together a process to onboard those apps on its website. If you are using some of those apps, you will likely receive a notification to give them official authorization to access car data.

Keumars Afifi-sabet reports via TechRadar: Lenovo has the green light to see a portfolio of new enterprise-focused devices powered by Esper Foundation -- a custom Android operating system -- and bundled with a complementary mobile device management (MDM) platform. The firm's first device running Esper Foundation is the Lenovo ThinkCentre M70a, an all-in-one desktop PC fitted with an up to 12th-Gen Intel Core i9 CPU, alongside 16GB DDR4 RAM and up to 512GB SSD. It'll be followed by the Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q, M90n-1 IoT, and the ThinkEdge SE30 v2 machines by the end of 2023. Esper Foundation is based on Android 11 and has customizable branding, peripheral compatibility, quarterly security patches, and three years of support. The MDM system, meanwhile, remotely deploys, manages, and updates devices from a single view.

By integrating a custom version of Android in its PCs, Lenovo is banking on the Esper Foundation OS appealing to businesses as an alternative to Windows, as well as Google's own ChromeOS. With platforms like Esper's, there may well be a means to find a rival to compete with Windows in the enterprise, particularly in highly niche industries such as the retail, hospitality, and healthcare industries -- at which Esper Foundation is directed. "This collaboration is another step forward in Lenovo's drive to meet changing customer demand across retail, hospitality, healthcare, and other industries," said Johanny Payero, Lenovo's director of global advanced solutions marketing and strategy. "Dedicated devices are proliferating across several key industries, and our new joint solution with Esper allows us to deliver the best of Android with the consistency and predictability of Lenovo's x86 devices."

Google is still wondering if it should make major changes to its homepage. The last experiment we saw filled the usually stark white page with info cards showing things like the weather and stocks, but this new experiment has a much bigger focus on news. From a report: Instead of a homepage featuring only the Google logo, a search box, and a few buttons, this latest experiment looks a lot more like the "Google Discover" newsfeed you get on the Google mobile app. That means rows of news articles that Google has algorithmically detected will interest you, often with wild month-to-month quality swings in the sites it promotes. To the right of the newsfeed is a stack of "at a glance" cards featuring sports scores, stocks, and the weather. The change makes Google look a lot busier -- and a lot more like Bing and Yahoo.

Canon has begun selling its nanoimprint semiconductor manufacturing systems, seeking to claw back market share by positioning the technology as a simpler and more attainable alternative to the leading-edge tools of today. From a report: The Tokyo-based company's new chipmaking machines can produce circuits equivalent to 5-nanometer scale when using extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), a field dominated by industry leader ASML Holding NV. Canon expects its device to reach next-generation 2nm production with further advances and improvements, it said in a statement on Friday. Like domestic peer Nikon Corp., Canon has fallen far behind ASML in the EUV race, but its nanoimprint lithography approach may help it close the gap.

Canon's machinery may also add a new front in the US-China trade war, as the import of EUV machines -- so far the only reliable method for fabricating 5nm chips and smaller -- into China is prohibited by trade sanctions. The Japanese firm's technique skips photolithography altogether and instead impresses the desired circuit pattern onto the silicon wafer. Because of its novelty, it's unlikely to be expressly forbidden by existing trade curbs.

Ed Cara reports via Gizmodo: Scientists appear to have developed a hand prosthetic that provides much more control and comfort than those available today. In new research this week, they've detailed the case of a Swedish woman who has successfully worn the advanced bionic limb for years with no major issues, while experiencing significantly less pain than before. The woman, identified as Karin, suffered a farming injury that took much of her right arm below the elbow over 20 years ago. Like many amputees, Karin went on to develop phantom limb pain, which required her to take high doses of medication to manage. She also benefited little from conventional prosthetics, finding them too unwieldy to use for daily life. But several years ago, Karin became one of the first patients enrolled in the DeTOP project, an expansive research study funded by the European Union and involving dozens of scientists across Europe that's looking to develop the next generation of bionic limbs.

Karin's prosthesis was created by the Italian company Presilia and is nicknamed Mia Hand. It's outfitted with state-of-art technology, including AI. And to further improve its functionality, her surgeons performed osseointegration during the attachment procedure, a process that directly fuses bone to the implant, ideally creating a stronger mechanical connection. They also implanted electrodes in her arm muscles and nerves, as well as rewired some of her nerves in the remaining part of the arm. The result is a robotic limb that's directly connected to Karin's neuromusculoskeletal system.

Much like a real flesh-and-blood hand, it's controlled by Karin's nervous system and provides sensory feedback. Her new hand can purportedly perform around 80% of the typical daily tasks that a regular limb would be able to do. And it's substantially reduced her phantom limb pain and the need for medication. The team's findings on Mia Hand's initial success are published in the journal Science Robotics. Karin is one of three patients enrolled in the DeTOP project. And while it may take time for the research on these patients to reach completion, the hope is that these prosthetics can eventually become the new standard for upper limb amputees. For Karin, it's already been a tremendous gift.

Since 2012, Google Pixel phones have had a Photo Sphere Mode, allowing users to capture 360-degree images. Now, according to Android Authority, Google has dropped the feature from the Pixel 8 series with no explanation given. From the report: Photo Sphere Mode allowed you to capture panoramic 360-degree pictures by stitching multiple images together. The feature was first introduced back in 2012 on the Nexus 4 and persisted well into the Pixel era, with the likes of the Pixel Fold and Pixel 7a still offering it. The act of capturing a Photo Sphere wasn't exactly seamless owing to the sheer number of images required, although it had an admittedly intuitive UI. Significant stitching issues and exposure/white balance differences were also very common.

We're therefore not surprised Google has decided to drop the feature. Even without taking the aforementioned issues into account, the mode's utility seemed limited beyond some scenarios like mapping purposes (e.g. viewing environments in Google Maps) and VR. In saying so, we hope the company rebounds with a more polished take on 360-degree photos in the future.

Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: For those making use of GPU-accelerated AV1 video encoding with the latest AMD Radeon graphics hardware on Linux, the upcoming Mesa 23.3 release will support the high-quality AV1 preset for offering higher quality encodes. Merged this week to Mesa 23.3 are the RadeonSI Video Core Next (VCN) changes for supporting the high quality AV1 encoding mode preset.

Mesa 23.3 will be out as stable later this quarter for those after slightly higher quality AV1 encode support for Radeon graphics on this open-source driver stack alongside many other recent Mesa driver improvements especially on the Vulkan side with Radeon RADV and Intel ANV.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: New York State officials on Wednesday unveiled a bill to protect young people from potential mental health risks by prohibiting minors from accessing algorithm-based social media feeds unless they have permission from their parents. Gov. Kathy Hochul and Letitia James, the state attorney general, announced their support of new legislation to crack down on the often inscrutable algorithms, which they argue are used to keep young users on social media platforms for extended periods of time -- sometimes to their detriment. If the bill is passed and signed into law, anyone under 18 in New York would need parental consent to access those feeds on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and other social media platforms that use algorithms to display personalized content. While other states have sought far-reaching bans and measures on social media apps, New York is among a few seeking to target the algorithms more narrowly.

The legislation, for example, would target TikTok's central feature, its ubiquitous "For You" feed, which displays boundless reams of short-form videos based on user interests or past interactions. But it would not affect a minor's access to the chronological feeds that show posts published by the accounts that a user has decided to follow. The bill would also allow parents to limit the number of hours their children can spend on a platform and block their child's access to social media apps overnight, from midnight until 6 a.m., as well as pause notifications during that time.

The bill in New York, which could be considered as soon as January when the 2024 legislative session begins, is likely to confront resistance from tech industry groups. The bill's sponsors, State Senator Andrew Gounardes and Assemblywoman Nily Rozic, said they were readying for a fight. But Ms. Hochul's enthusiastic support of the bill -- she rarely joins lawmakers to introduce bills -- is a sign that it could succeed in the State Capitol, which Democrats control. A second bill unveiled on Wednesday is meant to protect children's privacy by prohibiting websites from "collecting, using, sharing, or selling personal data" from anyone under 18 for the purpose of advertising, unless they receive consent, according to a news release. Both bills would empower the state attorney general to go after platforms found in violation.

Google said on Thursday that it will defend users of generative AI systems in its Google Cloud and Workspace platforms if they are accused of intellectual property violations, joining Microsoft, Adobe and other companies that have made similar pledges. From a report: Major technology companies like Google have been investing heavily in generative AI and racing to incorporate it into their products. Prominent writers, illustrators and other copyright owners have said in several lawsuits that both the use of their work to train the AI systems and the content the systems create violate their rights. "To our knowledge, Google is the first in the industry to offer a comprehensive, two-pronged approach to indemnity" that specifically covers both types of claims, a company spokesperson said. Google said its new policy applies to software, including its Vertex AI development platform and Duet AI system, which generates text and images in Google Workspace and Cloud programs.

Google announced Thursday that users who have opted-in for its Search Generative Experience (SGE) will be able to create AI images directly from the standard Search bar. From a report: SGE is Google's vision for our web searching future. Rather than picking websites from a returned list, the system will synthesize a (reasonably) coherent response to the user's natural language prompt using the same data that the list's links led to. Thursday's updates are a natural expansion of that experience, simply returning generated images (using the company's Imagen text-to-picture AI) instead of generated text. Users type in a description of what they're looking for (a Capybara cooking breakfast, in Google's example) and, within moments, the engine will create four alternatives to pick from and refine further. Users will also be able to export their generated images to Drive or share them via email.

Google has agreed to stop advertising YouTube TV as "$600 less than cable" after losing an appeal of a previous ruling that went against the company. Google said it will "modify or cease the disputed advertising claim." From a report: The case was handled in the advertising industry's self-regulatory system, not in a court of law. The National Advertising Review Board (NARB) announced today that it rejected Google's appeal and recommended that the company discontinue the YouTube TV claim. YouTube TV launched in 2017 for $35 a month, but the base package is $72.99 after the latest price hike in March 2023. Google's "$600 less than cable" claim was challenged by Charter, which uses the brand name Spectrum and is the second-biggest cable company after Comcast. The National Advertising Division (NAD) previously ruled in Charter's favor but Google appealed the decision to the NARB in August.

"Charter contended the $600 figure was inaccurate, arguing that its Spectrum TV Select service in Los Angeles only cost around $219 a year more than Google's YouTube TV service," according to a MediaPost article in August. A Google ad claimed that YouTube TV provided $600 in "annual average savings" compared to cable as of January 2023. A disclosure on the ad said the price was for "new users only" and that the $600 annual savings was "based on a study by SmithGeiger of the published cost of comparable standalone cable in the top 50 Nielsen DMAs, including all fees, taxes, promotion pricing, DVR box rental and service fees, and a 2nd cable box."

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger shares a report from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC): CBC and Radio-Canada have announced they'll no longer carry the National Research Council (NRC) time signal. Monday marked the last time it was broadcast, ending the longest running segment on CBC Radio. In a statement, spokesperson Emma Iannetta described the signal as a "wonderful partnership," but confirmed it's being dropped. Given the range of CBC platforms from traditional over-the-air radio, to satellite and the internet, the long dash undergoes a range of delays by the time it's heard, leading to accuracy concerns from the NRC, she wrote. Iannetta added that nowadays most people use their phones to get the time, though many CBC listeners have a "fondness" for the signal.

For many, the relationship with the time signal goes far beyond fondness. It's allowed sailors to set their instruments for navigation, kept railway companies running on time and helped Canadians stay punctual. In a 2019 interview with Day 6 on the occasion of the signal's 80th birthday, Laurence Wall, one of its current voices, reflected on its origin and importance. His memories include taxi drivers recognizing his voice from daily announcements and hearing from a young man living in Hong Kong who would stay up past midnight just to hear the time signal because it reminded him of home. Beyond emotional connections, the signal has a practical history too. Wall said when it started out, timekeeping was relatively primitive, with watches and clocks that needed to be regularly set in order to stay accurate.

SpaceX quietly published a new "Starlink Direct to Cell" webpage highlighting the company's forthcoming cell service for mobile phones. MobileSyrup reports: The new 'Starlink Direct to Cell' page boasts "seamless access to text, voice, and data for LTE phones across the globe" and notes that the company is targeting text capabilities in 2024, followed by voice and data capabilities in 2025. Internet of Things (IoT) support may also arrive in 2025. Starlink also advertises that the direct-to-cell system would work with "existing LTE phones wherever you can see the sky" and wouldn't require any changes to hardware, firmware, or special apps. The page also explains that Starlink Direct to Cell would use "an advanced eNodeB modem" that "acts like a cellphone tower in space." The system would allow network integration "similar to a standard roaming partner." Last year, SpaceX announced a partnership with T-Mobile, allowing users' mobile phones to connect directly with Starlink satellites in orbit. SpaceX said it was hoping to launch the service later this year but the company has been mum on the progress.

An anonymous reader shares a report: You could be entitled to a small chunk of a $16 million class action settlement against anime streaming service Crunchyroll. The Sony-owned company settled a data privacy lawsuit this week that will result in about $30 settlements for individuals impacted, according to firm behind the class action. The complaint, filed in September 2022, claims that Sony shared individual Crunchyroll viewing information with third-party sites without user's permission. That means Google or Facebook might have seen your anime watch history without your knowledge. It's a violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act, which makes it illegal to video streaming services to disclose personally identifiable information without the individual's consent. Crunchyroll denies wrongdoing.

The US Federal Trade Commission is proposing a new rule that it hopes will put an end to hidden junk fees that some businesses often add as a surprise when consumers are checking out. From a report: The agency is currently seeking public comment on the rule, known as the Trade Regulation Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, after having already collected 12,000 comments last year from individuals, businesses, law enforcement groups, and others on how deceptive fees affect them. FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement that "by hiding the total price, these junk fees make it harder for consumers to shop for the best product or service and punish businesses who are honest upfront." FTC adds that tackling junk fees through its nearly 100-year-old legal mandate that covers "unfair and deceptive acts or practices" is not enough. A new rule with more precise language can do a better job with specifics, the agency argues: "It is an unfair and deceptive practice and a violation of this part for any Business to offer, display, or advertise an amount a consumer may pay without Clearly and Conspicuously disclosing the Total Price."

Utah became the latest state Tuesday to file a lawsuit against TikTok, alleging the company is "baiting" children into addictive and unhealthy social media habits. From a report: TikTok lures children into hours of social media use, misrepresents the app's safety and deceptively portrays itself as independent of its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, Utah claims in the lawsuit. "We will not stand by while these companies fail to take adequate, meaningful action to protect our children. We will prevail in holding social media companies accountable by any means necessary," Republican Gov. Spencer Cox said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit, which was filed in state court in Salt Lake City. Arkansas and Indiana have filed similar lawsuits while the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to decide whether state attempts to regulate social media platforms such as Facebook, X and TikTok violate the Constitution.

For months, Alphabet's Google and Discord have run an invitation-only chat for heavy users of Bard, Google's artificial intelligence-powered chatbot. Google product managers, designers and engineers are using the forum to openly debate the AI tool's effectiveness and utility, with some questioning whether the enormous resources going into development are worth it. From a report: "My rule of thumb is not to trust LLM output unless I can independently verify it," Dominik Rabiej, a senior product manager for Bard, wrote in the Discord chat in July, referring to large language models -- the AI systems trained on massive amounts of text that form the building blocks of chatbots like Bard and OpenAI's ChatGPT. "Would love to get it to a point that you can, but it isn't there yet."

"The biggest challenge I'm still thinking of: what are LLMs truly useful for, in terms of helpfulness?" said Googler Cathy Pearl, a user experience lead for Bard, in August. "Like really making a difference. TBD!" [...] Two participants on Google's Bard community on chat platform Discord shared details of discussions in the server with Bloomberg from July to October. Dozens of messages reviewed by Bloomberg provide a unique window into how Bard is being used and critiqued by those who know it best, and show that even the company leaders tasked with developing the chatbot feel conflicted about the tool's potential. Expounding on his answer about "not trusting" responses generated by large language models, Rabiej suggested limiting people's use of Bard to "creative / brainstorming applications." Using Bard for coding was a good option too, Rabiej said, "since you inevitably verify if the code works!"

Adobe has developed an experimental AI-powered upscaling tool that greatly improves the quality of low-resolution GIFs and video footage. From a report: This isn't a fully-fledged app or feature yet, and it's not yet available for beta testing, but if the demonstrations seen by The Verge are anything to go by then it has some serious potential. Adobe's "Project Res-Up" uses diffusion-based upsampling technology (a class of generative AI that generates new data based on the data it's trained on) to increase video resolution while simultaneously improving sharpness and detail.

In a side-by-side comparison that shows how the tool can upscale video resolution, Adobe took a clip from The Red House (1947) and upscaled it from 480 x 360 to 1280 x 960, increasing the total pixel count by 675 percent. The resulting footage was much sharper, with the AI removing most of the blurriness and even adding in new details like hair strands and highlights. The results still carried a slightly unnatural look (as many AI video and images do) but given the low initial video quality, it's still an impressive leap compared to the upscaling on Nvidia's TV Shield or Microsoft's Video Super Resolution.