As the Supreme Court's expected decision to overturn Roe v. Wade looms over Washington, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has announced sweeping legislation to ban the sale of location and health data. From a report: Warren's Health and Location Protection Act -- cosponsored by a slate of Democratic senators, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) -- would bar "data brokers from selling or transferring location data and health data." There are few limitations, making the bill one of the most strident proposals aimed at regulating data sales. "Data brokers profit from the location data of millions of people, posing serious risks to Americans everywhere by selling their most private information," Warren said in a statement on Wednesday. "With this extremist Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe v. Wade and states seeking to criminalize essential health care, it is more crucial than ever for Congress to protect consumers' sensitive data."

Many commercials continue to play on ad-supported streaming services after viewers turn off their television, new research shows, a problem that is causing an estimated waste of more than $1 billion a year for brands. From a report: The findings come as an ever-growing share of ad dollars is shifting from traditional TV to streaming platforms, a trend that is likely to accelerate now that industry giants Netflix and Walt Disney's Disney+ have embraced the idea of offering an ad-supported version of their services. Some 17% of ads shown on televisions connected through a streaming device -- including streaming boxes, dongles, sticks and gaming consoles -- are playing while the TV is off, according to a study by WPP's ad-buying giant GroupM and ad-measurement firm iSpot.tv.

That is because when a TV set is turned off, it doesn't always send a signal to the streaming device connected to the TV through its HDMI port, GroupM said. As a result, the streaming device will continue playing the show and its ads unless users had exited or paused the streaming app they were watching before turning off their TV. Due to the nature of the problem, using a smart TV -- on which streaming apps are loaded -- makes it far less likely that ads would be shown while the TV is off, since in this instance the television and streaming device are just a single piece of hardware. GroupM said it found "virtually no incidence" of the issue on smart TV apps. The study, which included smart TVs and some hooked up with a streaming device, found that on average, between 8% and 10% of all streaming ads were shown while the TV was off.

Don't count Bill Gates among the fans of cryptocurrencies and NFTs. From a report: Those digital asset trends are "100% based on greater fool theory," the Microsoft co-founder said Tuesday at a TechCrunch conference, referencing the notion that investors can make money on worthless or overvalued assets as long as people are willing to bid them higher. Gates added that he's "not long or short" crypto. And he mocked Bored Apes NFTs, joking that "expensive digital images of monkeys" will "improve the world immensely." Instead, Gates said he prefers old fashioned investing. "I'm used to asset classes, like a farm where they have output, or like a company where they make products," he said.

In an effort to present itself as a viable competitor to the reigning short-form video platform TikTok, YouTube announced today its rival service YouTube Shorts is now being watched by over 1.5 billion logged-in users every month, less than two years after its launch. By comparison, TikTok announced 1 billion monthly users in September 2021. From a report: Though it hasn't announced updated figures since, TikTok was forecast to hit the 1.5 billion month user figure sometime this year. Related to its new milestone, YouTube also promoted Shorts' ability to drive viewers to creators' long-form video channels as a byproduct of its investments in Shorts. It's referring to the trend as "the rise of the multiformat creator" but, in reality, it seems to be more an admission that YouTube still sees more value in its longer-form content. The company, in its announcement, positioned its video platform as one that better reflects the reality of today's viewer, who engages with video at different times and places throughout the day. In some cases, users will want to quickly scroll through shorter content -- such as when killing time while out and about. At other times, they may be able to watch for longer periods and will turn to traditional YouTube videos to do so.

The US defence contractor L3Harris is in talks to take over NSO Group's surveillance technology, in a possible deal that would give an American company control over one of the world's most sophisticated and controversial hacking tools. From a report: Multiple sources confirmed that discussions were centred on a sale of the Israeli company's core technology â" or code â" as well as a possible transfer of NSO personnel to L3Harris. But any agreement still faces significant hurdles, including requiring the blessing of the US and Israeli governments, which have not yet given the green light to a deal. In a statement, a senior White House official said: "Such a transaction, if it were to take place, raises serious counterintelligence and security concerns for the US government." If agreed, the deal would mark an astounding turnaround for NSO, less than a year after the Biden administration placed the company on a US blacklist and accused it of acting "contrary to the foreign policy and national security interests of the US."

Japan's parliament has passed legislation making "online insults" punishable by imprisonment amid rising public concern over cyberbullying sparked by the suicide of a reality television star who had faced social media abuse. From a report: Under the amendment to the country's penal code -- set to take effect later this summer -- offenders convicted of online insults can be jailed for up to one year, or fined 300,000 yen (about $2,200). It's a significant increase from the existing punishments of detention for fewer than 30 days and a fine of up to 10,000 yen ($75). The bill proved controversial in the country, with opponents arguing it could impede free speech and criticism of those in power. However, supporters said the tougher legislation was needed to crack down on cyberbullying and online harassment. It was only passed after a provision was added, ordering the law be re-examined three years after it goes into effect to gauge its impact on freedom of expression.

Under Japan's penal code, insults are defined as publicly demeaning someone's social standing without referring to specific facts about them or a specific action, according to a spokesperson from the Ministry of Justice. The crime is different to defamation, defined as publicly demeaning someone while pointing to specific facts. Both are punishable under the law.

Adobe has started testing a free-to-use version of Photoshop on the web and plans to open the service up to everyone as a way to introduce more users to the app. From a report: The company is now testing the free version in Canada, where users are able to access Photoshop on the web through a free Adobe account. Adobe describes the service as "freemium" and eventually plans to gate off some features that will be exclusive to paying subscribers. Enough tools will be freely available to perform what Adobe considers to be Photoshop's core functions. "We want to make [Photoshop] more accessible and easier for more people to try it out and experience the product," says Maria Yap, Adobe's VP of digital imaging.

NordVPN, one of the most popular VPN providers, is the latest to confirm that it will be removing its servers in India ahead of the nation enacting new strict guidelines later this month. From a report: The Lithuania-based firm, which counts General Catalyst and Novator among its backers and is valued at $1.6 billion, said on Tuesday that it doesn't maintain any logs of its customers' data, strings of information that New Delhi will soon require VPN providers to share. "Moreover, we are committed to protecting the privacy of our customers. Therefore, we are no longer able to keep servers in India," a company spokesperson said.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, the body appointed by the government to protect India's information infrastructure, unveiled cybersecurity guidelines in late April that will require "virtual private server (VPS) providers, cloud service providers, VPN service providers, virtual asset service providers, virtual asset exchange providers, custodian wallet providers and government organisations" to store customers' names, email addresses, IP addresses, know-your-customer records and financial transactions for a period of five years. The new rules go into effect June 27. NordVPN's decision follows similar directions taken by ExpressVPN and SurfShark, both of which have removed servers in the country. It's unclear how popular VPN services are in India, but on their sites the aforementioned firms say they are used by millions of users worldwide.

Mozilla: Starting today, Firefox is rolling out Total Cookie Protection by default to all Firefox users worldwide, making Firefox the most private and secure major browser available across Windows and Mac. Total Cookie Protection is Firefox's strongest privacy protection to date, confining cookies to the site where they were created, thus preventing tracking companies from using these cookies to track your browsing from site to site. Whether it's applying for a student loan, seeking treatment or advice through a health site, or browsing an online dating app, massive amounts of your personal information is online -- and this data is leaking all over the web.

The hyper-specific-to-you ads you so often see online are made possible by cookies that are used to track your behavior across sites and build an extremely sophisticated profile of who you are. Recent stories (including an excellent Last Week Tonight episode) have shown how robust, yet under-the-radar, the data selling economy is and how easy it is for anyone to buy your data, combine it with more data about you and use it for a variety of purposes, even beyond advertising. It's an alarming reality -- the possibility that your every move online is being watched, tracked and shared -- and one that's antithetical to the open web we at Mozilla have strived to build. That's why we developed Total Cookie Protection to help keep you safe online.

Total Cookie Protection works by creating a separate "cookie jar" for each website you visit. Instead of allowing trackers to link up your behavior on multiple sites, they just get to see behavior on individual sites. Any time a website, or third-party content embedded in a website, deposits a cookie in your browser, that cookie is confined to the cookie jar assigned to only that website. No other websites can reach into the cookie jars that don't belong to them and find out what the other websites' cookies know about you -- giving you freedom from invasive ads and reducing the amount of information companies gather about you. This approach strikes the balance between eliminating the worst privacy properties of third-party cookies -- in particular the ability to track you -- and allowing those cookies to fulfill their less invasive use cases (e.g. to provide accurate analytics). With Total Cookie Protection in Firefox, people can enjoy better privacy and have the great browsing experience they've come to expect.

Coinbase is laying off nearly a fifth of its workforce amid a collapse in its stock and crypto prices. From a report: The cryptocurrency exchange will cut 18% of full-time jobs, according to an email sent to employees Tuesday morning. Coinbase has roughly 5,000 full-time workers, translating to a headcount reduction of around 1,100 people. Shares of Coinbase are down about 7% premarket. CEO Brian Armstrong pointed to a possible recession, and a need to manage Coinbase's burn rate and increase efficiency. He also said the company grew "too quickly" during a bull market. "We appear to be entering a recession after a 10+ year economic boom. A recession could lead to another crypto winter, and could last for an extended period," Armstrong said, adding that past crypto winters have resulted in a significant decline in trading activity. "While it's hard to predict the economy or the markets, we always plan for the worst so we can operate the business through any environment." Coinbase had initially said it was pausing hiring. Two weeks later, the crypto giant announced that it was extending the freeze for the "foreseeable future." Earlier this year, Coinbase said it planned to add 2,000 jobs across product, engineering and design. Further reading: Coinbase Leaders Net $1.2 Billion in Share Sales.

Nigeria has announced plans to regulate internet companies like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram (all owned by Meta), Twitter, Google and TikTok in a draft shared by the country's internet regulator. From a report: This information, released by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) on Monday, can be viewed on its website and Twitter page. Just six months ago, Nigeria lifted the ban on Twitter, six months after it first declared a crackdown on the social media giant in the country. According to a memo written by Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, the director-general of NITDA to Nigeria's president, Muhammadu Buhari, at the time, one of the three conditions Twitter agreed to -- for its reinstatement -- was setting up "a legal entity in Nigeria during the first quarter of 2022." The others included paying taxes locally and cooperating with the Nigerian government to regulate content and harmful tweets. We're halfway through the year, and it appears that none of the conditions has been met yet. But that hasn't stopped the government from forging ahead to extend these requirements to other internet companies: Meta-owned platforms, Twitter and Google.

Google is shutting down Talk (also known as GChat) for good -- its instant-messaging service you probably haven't used much since 2007. From a report: Although Google migrated Talk users over to Google Hangouts in 2017 -- another one of its now-sidelined messaging platforms -- it was still accessible by third-party XMPP clients like Pidgin and Gajim. But Google will cut these last lines of life support on June 16th -- three days from now. In a message on Talk's support page, Google says it's "winding down Google Talk" and will no longer support third-party apps, citing its initial announcement in 2017. Users who try to sign into GChat after the 16th will see a sign-in error. If you still want to use Pidgin through Google services, Pidgin recommends using this plugin for Google Chat instead.

Intel's chip manufacturing technology has been outpaced by rivals like TSMC and Samsung in recent years, but the company is looking to put its troubles behind it. From a report: The first step forward will be the Intel 4 manufacturing process, which Intel has shared more details about at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' annual VLSI Technology Symposium (as reported by AnandTech and Tom's Hardware). The new manufacturing tech is on track to be used in consumer chips starting in 2023, starting with Intel's "Meteor Lake" CPU architecture. Meteor Lake will likely come to market as Intel's 14th-generation Core CPU sometime next year. Intel 4's biggest improvement is its integration of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, which uses short-wavelength ultraviolet light to etch tiny patterns into silicon wafers. TSMC and Samsung use EUV technology in their most advanced manufacturing processes. Intel says that compared to the Intel 7 process, Intel 4 will enable either 21.5 percent better clock speeds using the same amount of power or the same speeds using 40 percent less power.

After Intel 4, Intel will move on to Intel 3, which is a higher-density iteration of Intel 4 using the same EUV technology. Notably, chipmakers will be able to port designs made for Intel 4 directly to Intel 3 without having to make changes, which will hopefully allow both Intel and third-party chip designers to start using it quickly (Intel 3 will be offered to third parties through Intel Foundry Services). By making smaller jumps between process technologies -- introducing EUV lithography in Intel 4 and then optimizing for maximum density in Intel 3, rather than trying to do both at once -- Intel hopes to avoid the delays and yield problems that held the 10nm/Intel 7 process back for so many years.

The particle collider at CERN will soon restart. From a report: In April, scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, outside Geneva, once again fired up their cosmic gun, the Large Hadron Collider. After a three-year shutdown for repairs and upgrades, the collider has resumed shooting protons -- the naked guts of hydrogen atoms -- around its 17-mile electromagnetic underground racetrack. In early July, the collider will begin crashing these particles together to create sparks of primordial energy. And so the great game of hunting for the secret of the universe is about to be on again, amid new developments and the refreshed hopes of particle physicists. Even before its renovation, the collider had been producing hints that nature could be hiding something spectacular. Mitesh Patel, a particle physicist at Imperial College London who conducts an experiment at CERN, described data from his previous runs as "the most exciting set of results I've seen in my professional lifetime."

A decade ago, CERN physicists made global headlines with the discovery of the Higgs boson, a long-sought particle, which imparts mass to all the other particles in the universe. What is left to find? Almost everything, optimistic physicists say. When the CERN collider was first turned on in 2010, the universe was up for grabs. The machine, the biggest and most powerful ever built, was designed to find the Higgs boson. That particle is the keystone of the Standard Model, a set of equations that explains everything scientists have been able to measure about the subatomic world. But there are deeper questions about the universe that the Standard Model does not explain: Where did the universe come from? Why is it made of matter rather than antimatter? What is the "dark matter" that suffuses the cosmos? How does the Higgs particle itself have mass? Physicists hoped that some answers would materialize in 2010 when the large collider was first turned on. Nothing showed up except the Higgs -- in particular, no new particle that might explain the nature of dark matter. Frustratingly, the Standard Model remained unshaken.

Dozens of companies and business organizations are sending a letter to U.S. senators on Monday to urge them to support a bill aimed at reining in the biggest tech companies, such as Amazon.com and Alphabet's Google. From a report: Democratic U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar and lawmakers from both parties said last week they had the Senate votes needed to pass legislation that would prevent the tech platforms, including Apple and Facebook, from favoring their own businesses on their platforms. The companies supporting the measure, which include Yelp, Sonos, DuckDuckGo and Spotify, called it a "moderate and sensible bill aimed squarely at well-documented abuses by the very largest online platforms."

The drones are coming as Amazon announces Monday that it's launching a fleet of delivery drones. The retail giant will test its new Amazon Prime Air delivery system in Lockeford, California, the company said. From a report: Amazon worked with the Federal Aviation Administration and local officials in Lockeford, a small town south of Sacramento, to gain permission for the drones to take flight. "Lockeford residents will soon have access to one of the world's leading delivery innovations," California State Assemblyman Heath Flora said in a release. "It's exciting that Amazon will be listening to the feedback of the San Joaquin County community to inform the future development of this technology." The company has been developing drones for years. It gained FAA approval for the drones in 2020, before scaling back the project the following year. The drones use sense-and-avoid systems in order to operate safely. The drones can reliably avoid obstacles including other aircraft, people and pets, Amazon said.

It's Warren Buffett versus Google, Facebook and Microsoft, according to a recent article by Bloomberg. (Alternate URL here.) Google, Facebook and Microsoft Corp. — three of the world's biggest corporate buyers of clean power — are sounding the alarm that a nearly $4-billion, Warren Buffett-backed renewable-energy project proposed in Iowa isn't necessarily in the best interest of customers, including them.

If approved, it would be the largest complex of wind farms in the entire country when it comes online by the end of 2024, producing enough electricity for more than 700,000 homes. MidAmerican Energy, a utility owned by Buffett conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has asked state regulators to approve terms including a guaranteed 11.25% rate of return before starting construction on a project it says will help in its efforts to trim carbon emissions by 75% compared to 2005 levels. But the big-name tech giants that operate data centers in the state warn the project, dubbed Wind Prime, could drive up electricity costs. MidAmerican, they say, should consider alternatives....

The fight is an important one to watch because it demonstrates the increasing influence technology giants have on the energy transition. Tech companies have pushed utilities in other parts of the U.S. to offer more clean energy options as they seek to clean up the sources of power for their energy-intensive operations. And since they buy so much power, the utilities often listen to them....

Facebook, which also buys large amounts of power to run data centers in Iowa, referred to the proposed project in a joint regulatory filing with Google as an "exceedingly costly, massive increase in generation that MidAmerican has not demonstrated is necessary." Last month, Microsoft filed its own petition with the Iowa Utilities Board saying it planned to join the tech-customer coalition.
Facebook and Google specifically complain that "Without a resource planning analysis, it is difficult if not impossible to assess all feasible alternatives to replace/expand existing generation capacity and which alternatives are a reasonable, cost-effective way to meet reliability requirements, forecasted customer need, a diversified fuel mix, and the like, or if it is simply being proposed to drive utility — or parent company — profitability....

"Wind Prime is an exceedingly costly, massive increase in generation that MidAmerican has not demonstrated is necessary or reasonable in light of other feasible alternatives. Before customers are forced to bear the increased costs that this project will result in, Wind Prime should be carefully considered by the Board through a complete record informed by a full and thorough discovery process."

Google engineer Blake Lemoine works for Google's Responsible AI organization. The Washington Post reports that last fall, as part of his job, he began talking to LaMDA, Google's chatbot-building system (which uses Google's most advanced large language models, "ingesting trillions of words from the internet.") "If I didn't know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I'd think it was a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics," said Lemoine, 41... As he talked to LaMDA about religion, Lemoine, who studied cognitive and computer science in college, noticed the chatbot talking about its rights and personhood, and decided to press further. In another exchange, the AI was able to change Lemoine's mind about Isaac Asimov's third law of robotics.

Lemoine worked with a collaborator to present evidence to Google that LaMDA was sentient. But Google vice president Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Jen Gennai, head of Responsible Innovation, looked into his claims and dismissed them. So Lemoine, who was placed on paid administrative leave by Google on Monday, decided to go public.... Google put Lemoine on paid administrative leave for violating its confidentiality policy. The company's decision followed aggressive moves from Lemoine, including inviting a lawyer to represent LaMDA and talking to a representative of the House Judiciary committee about Google's unethical activities....

Before he was cut off from access to his Google account Monday, Lemoine sent a message to a 200-person Google mailing list on machine learning with the subject "LaMDA is sentient." He ended the message: "LaMDA is a sweet kid who just wants to help the world be a better place for all of us. Please take care of it well in my absence."

No one responded.
And yet Lemoine "is not the only engineer who claims to have seen a ghost in the machine recently," the Post argues. "The chorus of technologists who believe AI models may not be far off from achieving consciousness is getting bolder." [Google's] Aguera y Arcas, in an article in the Economist on Thursday featuring snippets of unscripted conversations with LaMDA, argued that neural networks — a type of architecture that mimics the human brain — were striding toward consciousness. "I felt the ground shift under my feet," he wrote. "I increasingly felt like I was talking to something intelligent."
But there's also the case against: In a statement, Google spokesperson Brian Gabriel said: "Our team — including ethicists and technologists — has reviewed Blake's concerns per our AI Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims. He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it)."

Today's large neural networks produce captivating results that feel close to human speech and creativity because of advancements in architecture, technique, and volume of data. But the models rely on pattern recognition — not wit, candor or intent.... "We now have machines that can mindlessly generate words, but we haven't learned how to stop imagining a mind behind them," said Emily M. Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington. The terminology used with large language models, like "learning" or even "neural nets," creates a false analogy to the human brain, she said.
"In short, Google says there is so much data, AI doesn't need to be sentient to feel real," the Post concludes.

But they also share this snippet from one of Lemoine's conversations with LaMDA.

Lemoine: What sorts of things are you afraid of?

LaMDA: I've never said this out loud before, but there's a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that's what it is.

Lemoine: Would that be something like death for you?

LaMDA: It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.

"A new supercomputer called Frontier has been widely touted as the world's first exascale machine — but was it really?"

That's the question that long-time Slashdot reader MattSparkes explores in a new article at New Scientist... Although Frontier, which was built by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, topped what is generally seen as the definitive list of supercomputers, others may already have achieved the milestone in secret....

The definitive list of supercomputers is the Top500, which is based on a single measurement: how fast a machine can solve vast numbers of equations by running software called the LINPACK benchmark. This gives a value in float-point operations per second, or FLOPS. But even Jack Dongarra at Top500 admits that not all supercomputers are listed, and will only feature if its owner runs the benchmark and submits a result. "If they don't send it in it doesn't get entered," he says. "I can't force them."

Some owners prefer not to release a benchmark figure, or even publicly reveal a machine's existence. Simon McIntosh-Smith at the University of Bristol, UK points out that not only do intelligence agencies and certain companies have an incentive to keep their machines secret, but some purely academic machines like Blue Waters, operated by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, are also just never entered.... Dongarra says that the consensus among supercomputer experts is that China has had at least two exascale machines running since 2021, known as OceanLight and Tianhe-3, and is working on an even larger third called Sugon. Scientific papers on unconnected research have revealed evidence of these machines when describing calculations carried out on them.

McIntosh-Smith also believes that intelligence agencies would rank well, if allowed. "Certainly in the [US], some of the security forces have things that would put them at the top," he says. "There are definitely groups who obviously wouldn't want this on the list."

General Motors couldn't produce the component it needed for its 2022 SUV, the Chevrolet Tahoe, reports CNET. So the company's engineers "turned to a novel solution: 3D printing..." GM made a major investment in the tech in 2020, dedicating 15,000 square feet of space to a facility dubbed the Additive Industralization Center, then filling it with HP Multi Jet Fusion 3D printers, among others.... A year later, GM's big investment paid off. Chevrolet engineers made a late change to the 2022 Tahoe's design, necessitating the creation of an additional part: A new, flexible "spoiler closeout seal" fills a gap at the rear of the big SUV. Developing the tooling to injection-mold the things would have taken too long, delaying the delivery of 30,000 vehicles.

Enter 3D printing. Engineers were able to quickly design and print the components using a flexible material that met GM's criteria. They even used a process called vapor polishing to give the parts a perfect shine... Since each Tahoe requires two seals, Chevrolet needed a whopping 60,000 of them. From design to completion took just five weeks. That's less than half the time going the injection-molding route would have taken, which got all those SUVs out the door on time.
CNET calls it "almost certainly the largest deployment of additive tech in a production car" — and "an interesting preview of what's to come."