Ubuntu-based Linux Mint includes HexChat software by default "to offer a way for users of the distro to talk to, ask questions, and get support from other users," according to the Linux blog OMG Ubuntu.

But in February HexChat's developer announced its final release... That got devs thinking. As is, IRC isn't user-friendly. It's a kind of an arcane magic involving strange commands. Its onboarding is obtuse. And the protocol doesn't natively support things like media sharing (screenshots are useful when troubleshooting), clickable links, or other modern "niceties". And yet, IRC is a fast, established, open, and versatile protocol... It's free and immediate (no sign-up required to use it) which makes it ideal for 'when you need it' use.

So work has begun on a new dedicated "chat room" app to replace HexChat, called Jargonaut. Linux Mint's goal is not to build a fully-featured IRC client, or even an IRC client at all. Jargonaut is a chat app that just happens to use IRC as its underlying chat protocol. Users won't need to know what IRC is nor learn its syntax, as Jargonaut isn't going to respond to standard IRC commands... When the app is opened Linux Mint's official support channels are there, ready to engage with. A real-time support chat app built on IRC — with additional bells:

"[Jargonaut] will support pastebin/imgur via DND, uploading your system specifications, troubleshooting and many features which have nothing to do with IRC," says Linux Mint lead Clement Lefebvre in the distro's latest monthly update. "HexChat was a great IRC client which helped us make a relatively good support chat room. We're hoping Jargonaut will help us make this chat room even better and much easier to use."
"Like most of Linux Mint's home-grown XApps the new app is hosted on Github," the article points out, "which is where you should go t to check in on Jargonaut's current status, check out the code and compile it, or contribute to its development with your own fair hands."

The article also argues that IRC "isn't as trendy as Discord or Telegram, but it is a free, open standard that no single entity controls, is relatively low-bandwidth, interoperable, and efficient."

"Shares of Rivian Automotive surged 13% on Thursday," reports CNBC, "as the EV maker unveiled three new vehicles and announced more than $2 billion in savings related to pausing construction on a plant in Georgia."

CNBC notes that Rivian's current vehicles "start at roughly $70,000 and can top $100,000," so the new cheaper R2 midsize SUV (starting at $45,000) could be more appealing.

"Especially if it qualifies for the $7,500 EV tax credit," adds the Verge: "Seven percent of new vehicle sales are electric," [Rivian founder and CEO RJ] Scaringe notes.... "The reality is that Tesla continues to be wildly successful, and we want to pull from that 93 percent that haven't made the jump to pure EV, because the form factor didn't fit their lifestyle."
The article adds that Rivian "will use Tesla's NACS connectors for its future vehicles starting in 2025, which will allow Rivian owners to use the company's Supercharger Network. Both the R2 and R3 will have the NACS ports built natively into the vehicle..."

"I would say with absolute and complete certainty that the entire world is going to convert to electric vehicles," Scaringe tells The Verge. "I've never been more bullish on electrification. I've never been more bullish on Rivian."

More from CNBC: The announcements come at a crucial time for Rivian as it attempts to expand its customer base amid slower-than-expected EV sales in the U.S. after automakers flooded the first-adopter market with pricey all-electric vehicles in recent years. Rivian's sales pace has slowed in recent quarters, and the company widely disappointed investors last month by missing quarterly estimates and forecasting slightly lower production this year compared to 2023 due to plant downtime. The Amazon-backed company has been burning through cash to improve current EV production and narrow losses...

It will be capable of more than 300 miles of all-electric range on a single charge and 0-60 mph time in under3 seconds, the company said.
"Its battery will be capable of charging from 10 to 80 percent in under 30 minutes," notes Car and Driver.

UPDATE: The Verge reports that less than 24 hours after launching the R2, Rivian has already received more than 68,000 reservations.

It will go into production in the first half of 2026.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Police: Seven years ago, Google announced that it would phase out all Chrome apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux by 2018 (it would actually take until 2023). In its place would be what the company called Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), web apps that can be installed on a user's desktop that act as if they are practically natural apps and programs. The idea grew quickly, with Chrome users having installed PWAs in record numbers by the beginning of 2022. Soon, every website will be installable on desktops through PWAs.

In Chrome Canary (the daily build version of Google Chrome and typically a couple of versions ahead of the stable build), websites can now be installed on desktops. As part of the latest daily build, Google has added an "Install page as app" option to the "Save and share" submenu on the desktop version (via @Leopeva64 on X). This makes clicking the app -- which is just the website made to look and feel like a native app -- always open in its own window. Sites that already have their own PWAs, like YouTube or Reddit, have been prompting users to install them for a while now and will have their "Install page as app" function actually showing the name of the site. For example, YouTube's entry will show as "Install YouTube." In February, it became possible to enable the flags necessary to make any website into a PWA, but it seems to have just now become fully implemented.

Lindsay Clark reports via The Register: Palantir has won a US Army contract worth $178.4 million to house a battlefield intelligence system inside a big truck. In what purports to be the Army's first AI-defined vehicle, Palantir will provide systems for the TITAN "ground station," which is designed to access space, high altitude, aerial, and terrestrial sensors to "provide actionable targeting information for enhanced mission command and long range precision fires", according to a Palantir statement.

TITAN stands for Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node, which might sound harmless enough. Who was ever killed by a node? The TITAN solution is built to "maximize usability for soldiers, incorporating tangible feedback and insights from soldier touchpoints at every step of the development and configuration process," the statement said. The aim of the TITAN project is to bring together military software and hardware providers in a new way. These include "traditional and non-traditional partners" of the US armed forces, such as Northrop Grumman, Anduril Industries, L3Harris Technologies, Pacific Defense, SNC, Strategic Technology Consulting, and World Wide Technology, as well as Palantir.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Alex Karp, Palantir's motor-mouth CEO, said TITAN was the logical extension of Maven, a controversial project for using machine learning and engineering to tell people and objects apart in drone footage in which Palantir is a partner and from which Google famously pulled out after employees protested. Karp said TITAN was a partnership between "people who've built software products that have been used on the battlefield and used commercially." "That simple insight which you see in the battlefield in Ukraine, which you see in Israel is something that is hard for institutions to internalize. [For] the Pentagon this step is one of the most historic steps ever because what it basically says is, 'We're going to fight for real, we're going to put the best on the battlefield and the best is not just one company.' It's a team of people led by the most prominent software provider in defense in the world: Palantir," he said. On Thursday, Palantir was one of the companies included in a new U.S. consortium assembled to support the safe development and deployment of generative AI.

Google's swanky new office building located on the Alphabet's Mountain View, California headquarters has been "plagued for months by inoperable, or, at best, spotty Wi-Fi," reports Reuters citing six people familiar with the matter. "Its recliner-laden collaborative workspaces do not work well for teams carting around laptops, since workers must plug into ethernet cables at their desks to get consistent internet service. Some make do by using their phones as hotspots." From the report: The company promoted the new building and surrounding campus in a 229-page glossy book highlighting its cutting-edge features, such as "Googley interiors" and "an environment where everyone has the tools they need to be successful."

But, a Google spokeswoman acknowledged, "we've had Wi-Fi connectivity issues in Bay View." She said Google "made several improvements to address the issue," and the company hoped to have a fix in coming weeks. According to one AI engineer assigned to the building, which also houses members of the advertising team, the wonky Wi-Fi has been no help for Google pushing a three day per week return-to-office mandate. "You'd think the world's leading internet company would have worked this out," he said.

Managers have encouraged workers to stroll outside or sit at the adjoining cafe where the Wi-Fi signal is stronger. Some were issued new laptops recently with more powerful Wi-Fi chips. Google has not publicly disclosed the reasons for the Wi-Fi problems, but workers say the 600,000-square-foot building's swooping, wave-like rooftop swallows broadband like the Bermuda Triangle.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MobileSyrup: Google's new smart assistant, Gemini, is available on multiple devices but Gemini Nano, the multimodal large language model, isn't coming to all Pixel smartphones. Gemini Nano is only available on the Google Pixel 8 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S24 series; however, we've recently learned that it's not making its way to the base Pixel 8, according to Terence Zhang, an engineer at Google and reporter by Mishaal Rahman.

Zhang told everyone that Gemini Nano isn't coming to the Pixel 8 because of hardware limitations, but it's unclear what the hardware limitations are. Many would assume it's due to the Pixel 8 housing only 8GB of RAM compared to the Pixel 8 Pro's 12GB. That said, the Galaxy S24 series starts at 8GB of RAM and can use Nano. This must mean that some other hardware limitations are holding back Gemini Nano. Hopefully, more information will come in the future, but right now, it seems like only high-end devices will get the Gemini Nano experience.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Dario Amodei, chief executive of the high-profile A.I. start-up Anthropic, told Congress last year that new A.I. technology could soon help unskilled but malevolent people create large-scale biological attacks, such as the release of viruses or toxic substances that cause widespread disease and death. Senators from both parties were alarmed, while A.I. researchers in industry and academia debated how serious the threat might be. Now, over 90 biologists and other scientists who specialize in A.I. technologies used to design new proteins -- the microscopic mechanisms that drive all creations in biology -- have signed an agreement that seeks to ensure that their A.I.-aided research will move forward without exposing the world to serious harm.

The biologists, who include the Nobel laureate Frances Arnold and represent labs in the United States and other countries, also argued that the latest technologies would have far more benefits than negatives, including new vaccines and medicines. "As scientists engaged in this work, we believe the benefits of current A.I. technologies for protein design far outweigh the potential for harm, and we would like to ensure our research remains beneficial for all going forward," the agreement reads. The agreement does not seek to suppress the development or distribution of A.I. technologies. Instead, the biologists aim to regulate the use of equipment needed to manufacture new genetic material. This DNA manufacturing equipment is ultimately what allows for the development of bioweapons, said David Baker, the director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington, who helped shepherd the agreement.

China is in the process of raising more than $27 billion for its largest chip fund to date, accelerating the development of cutting-edge technologies to counter a US campaign to thwart its rise. From a report: The National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund is amassing a pool of capital from local governments and state enterprises for its third vehicle that should exceed the 200 billion yuan of its second fund, according to people familiar with the matter. Known as the Big Fund, the state-backed firm is expanding its remit just as the US prepares to sharply escalate technology curbs designed to curtail Chinese chip and artificial intelligence progress.

The establishment of a much larger third fund -- directly overseen by China's powerful tech ministry -- signals a resurgent effort to harness the world's largest semiconductor market after years of mixed success with central stewardship. Huawei and its partner Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. still had to rely on US-origin technology to build an advanced processor last year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple today released visionOS 1.1, marking the first major update to the visionOS operating system that was launched alongside the Vision Pro in February. visionOS updates can be installed by going to the Settings app on the Vision Pro, selecting the General section, and choosing Software Update. The Vision Pro headset will need to be removed to install new software, with a progress bar available on the front EyeSight display.

Apple is making several improvements to the Vision Pro with the visionOS update. Mobile Device Management is available for businesses, and Persona and EyeSight look better than before. The virtual keyboard has been updated to address bugs and make cursor positioning more accurate, and there are also bug fixes for the Mac Virtual Display. Here's a summary of visionOS 1.1 from the release notes: "This update introduces MDM features that enable deployment, device configuration, and management for enterprises. This release also includes Persona improvements, the ability to delete system apps from the Home View, as well as other features, bug fixes, and security updates for your Apple Vision Pro."

An APK teardown performed by Android Authority has revealed that Reddit is now using a Large Language Model (LLM) to detect harassment on the platform. From the report: Reddit also updated its support page a week ago to mention the use of an AI model as part of its harassment filter. "The filter is powered by a Large Language Model (LLM) that's trained on moderator actions and content removed by Reddit's internal tools and enforcement teams," reads an excerpt from the page. The Register reports: The filter can be enabled in a Reddit community's mod tools, but individual moderators will need to have permissions to change subreddit settings to enable it. The harassment filter can be set to low ("filters the least content but with the most accurate results") and high ("filters the most content but may be less accurate"), and also includes an explicit allow list to force the AI to ignore certain keywords, up to 15 of which can be added. Once enabled, the filter creates a new tag in the moderation queue called "potential harassment," which moderators can review for accuracy. Reddit's help page says the feature is now available on desktop and the official Reddit apps, though it's not clear when the feature was added.

Michael Larabel writes via Phoronix: Fedora Workstation has long defaulted to using GNOME's Wayland session by default, but it has continued to install the GNOME X.Org session for fallback purposes or those opting to use it instead. But for the Fedora Workstation 41 release later in the year, there is a newly-approved plan to no longer have that GNOME X.Org session installed by default. Recently there was a Fedora Workstation ticket opened to no longer install the GNOME X.Org session by default. This is just about whether the X.Org session is pre-installed but would continue to live in the repository for those wanting to explicitly install it.

The Fedora Workstation working group decided to go ahead with this change for the Fedora 41 cycle, not the upcoming Fedora 40 release. So pending any obstacles by FESCo, which is unlikely. Fedora Workstation 41 will not be installing the GNOME X.Org session by default. Long live Wayland.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has released its 2023 Internet Crime Report (PDF), which recorded a 22% increase in reported losses compared to 2022, amounting to a record of $12.5 billion. The number of relevant complaints submitted to the FBI in 2023 reached 880,000, 10% higher than the previous year, with the age group topping the report being people over 60, which shows how vulnerable older adults are to cybercrime. Both figures continue a worrying trend seen by the agency since 2019, where complaints and losses rise yearly. For 2023, the types of crimes that increased were tech support scams and extortion, whereas phishing, personal data breach, and non-payment/non-delivery scams slightly waned.

A directive known as Document 79 ramps up Beijing's effort to replace U.S. tech with homegrown alternatives. From a report: For American tech companies in China, the writing is on the wall. It's also on paper, in Document 79. The 2022 Chinese government directive expands a drive that is muscling U.S. technology out of the country -- an effort some refer to as "Delete A," for Delete America. Document 79 was so sensitive that high-ranking officials and executives were only shown the order and weren't allowed to make copies, people familiar with the matter said. It requires state-owned companies in finance, energy and other sectors to replace foreign software in their IT systems by 2027.

American tech giants had long thrived in China as they hot-wired the country's meteoric industrial rise with computers, operating systems and software. Chinese leaders want to sever that relationship, driven by a push for self-sufficiency and concerns over the country's long-term security. The first targets were hardware makers. Dell, International Business Machines and Cisco Systems have gradually seen much of their equipment replaced by products from Chinese competitors.

Document 79, named for the numbering on the paper, targets companies that provide the software -- enabling daily business operations from basic office tools to supply-chain management. The likes of Microsoft and Oracle are losing ground in the field, one of the last bastions of foreign tech profitability in the country. The effort is just one salvo in a yearslong push by Chinese leader Xi Jinping for self-sufficiency in everything from critical technology such as semiconductors and fighter jets to the production of grain and oilseeds. The broader strategy is to make China less dependent on the West for food, raw materials and energy, and instead focus on domestic supply chains.

Samsung's 2024 OLED TV lineup will feature both QD-OLED and WOLED panels, making it harder for consumers to distinguish between the two technologies. The company announced three new series without specifying the panel types, but reports suggest that even within the S90D series, both QD-OLED and WOLED may be used. Samsung's decision to use both panel types is attributed to LG Display's request not to position WOLED as inferior to QD-OLED.

Apple is preparing to allow EU-based iPhone users to uninstall its first-party Safari browser by the end of 2024 and is working on a more "user-friendly" way of transferring data "from an iPhone to a non-Apple phone" by fall 2025. From a report: That's according to a new compliance document published by the company, which outlines all the ways it's complying with the European Union's new Digital Markets Act that comes into force this week.

Other user-facing initiatives detailed in Apple's document include a "browser switching solution" to transfer data between browsers on the same device, which it plans to make available by late 2024 or early 2025. It'll also be possible to change the default navigation app on iOS by March 2025 in the EU. The document doesn't explicitly state whether any of these features will be available globally or whether they'll be exclusive to users in the EU. But many of the company's previously announced plans to comply with the DMA -- including the ability to run browser engines other than WebKit and install third-party app stores -- are only available in the bloc.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A group of US lawmakers has introduced a bill that would require Chinese tech giant ByteDance to sell off the popular video-sharing TikTok app within six months or face a ban. For years American officials have raised concerns that data from the app could fall into the hands of the Chinese government. A bipartisan set of 19 lawmakers introduced the legislation on Tuesday. TikTok called the bill a disguised "outright ban."

In a statement announcing the bill, the lawmakers said "applications like TikTok that are controlled by foreign adversaries pose an unacceptable risk to US national security." The bill would give ByteDance 165 days to divest, or it would be blocked from the app store and web hosting platforms in the US. TikTok has previously argued against divestment, saying a change in ownership would not impose new restrictions on data use. [...] The House Energy and Commerce Committee said it would consider the latest bill on Thursday. "This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs," TikTok said in a statement to the BBC.

Former President Donald Trump attempted to completely ban TikTok in 2020, but that was unsuccessful. More recently, a group of senators introduced legislation to block TikTok last year, but it was stalled due to lobbying from the company.

Linwei Ding, a former Google software engineer, has been indicted for stealing trade secrets related to AI to benefit two Chinese companies. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each criminal count. Reuters reports: Ding's indictment was unveiled a little over a year after the Biden administration created an interagency Disruptive Technology Strike Force to help stop advanced technology being acquired by countries such as China and Russia, or potentially threaten national security. "The Justice Department just will not tolerate the theft of our trade secrets and intelligence," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a conference in San Francisco.

According to the indictment, Ding stole detailed information about the hardware infrastructure and software platform that lets Google's supercomputing data centers train large AI models through machine learning. The stolen information included details about chips and systems, and software that helps power a supercomputer "capable of executing at the cutting edge of machine learning and AI technology," the indictment said. Google designed some of the allegedly stolen chip blueprints to gain an edge over cloud computing rivals Amazon.com and Microsoft, which design their own, and reduce its reliance on chips from Nvidia.

Hired by Google in 2019, Ding allegedly began his thefts three years later, while he was being courted to become chief technology officer for an early-stage Chinese tech company, and by May 2023 had uploaded more than 500 confidential files. The indictment said Ding founded his own technology company that month, and circulated a document to a chat group that said "We have experience with Google's ten-thousand-card computational power platform; we just need to replicate and upgrade it." Google became suspicious of Ding in December 2023 and took away his laptop on Jan. 4, 2024, the day before Ding planned to resign. A Google spokesperson said: "We have strict safeguards to prevent the theft of our confidential commercial information and trade secrets. After an investigation, we found that this employee stole numerous documents, and we quickly referred the case to law enforcement."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google today is sharing more details about the fees that will accompany its plan to comply with Europe's new Digital Markets Act (DMA), the new regulation aimed at increasing competition across the app store ecosystem. While Google yesterday pointed to ways it already complied with the DMA -- by allowing sideloading of apps, for example -- it hadn't yet shared specifics about the fees that would apply to developers, noting that further details would come out this week. That time is now, as it turns out.

Today, Google shared that there will be two fees that apply to its External offers program, also announced yesterday. This new program allows Play Store developers to lead their users in the EEA outside their app, including to promote offers. With these fees, Google is going the route of Apple, which reduced its App Store commissions in the EU to comply with the DMA but implemented a new Core Technology Fee that required developers to pay 0.50 euros for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold for apps distributed outside the App Store. Apple justified the fee by explaining that the services it provides developers extend beyond payment processing and include the work it does to support app creation and discovery, craft APIs, frameworks and tools to support developers' app creation work, fight fraud and more.

Google is taking a similar tactic, saying today that "Google Play's service fee has never been simply a fee for payment processing -- it reflects the value provided by Android and Play and supports our continued investments across Android and Google Play, allowing for the user and developer features that people count on," a blog post states. It says there will now be two fees that accompany External Offers program transactions:

- An initial acquisition fee, which is 10% for in-app purchases or 5% for subscriptions for two years. Google says this fee represents the value that Play provided in facilitating the initial user acquisition through the Play Store.
- An ongoing services fee, which is 17% for in-app purchases or 7% for subscriptions. This reflects the "broader value Play provides users and developers, including ongoing services such as parental controls, security scanning, fraud prevention, and continuous app updates," writes Google.

Of note, a developer can opt out of the ongoing services and corresponding fees, if the user agrees, after two years. Users who initially installed the app believe they'll have services like parental controls, security scanning, fraud prevention and continuous app updates, which is why opting out requires user consent. Although Google allows the developer to terminate this fee, those ongoing services will no longer apply either. Developers, however, will still be responsible for reporting transactions involving those users who are continuing to receive Play Store services.

Trust in AI technology and the companies that develop it is dropping, in both the U.S. and around the world, according to new data from Edelman shared first with Axios. Axios reports: Globally, trust in AI companies has dropped to 53%, down from 61% five years ago. In the U.S., trust has dropped 15 percentage points (from 50% to 35%) over the same period. Trust in AI is low across political lines. Democrats trust in AI companies is 38%, independents are at 25% and Republicans at 24%. Tech is losing its lead as the most trusted sector. Eight years ago, technology was the leading industry in trust in 90% of the countries Edelman studies. Today, it is the most trusted in only half of countries.

People in developing countries are more likely to embrace AI than those in developed ones. Respondents in France, Canada, Ireland, UK, U.S., Germany, Australia, the Netherlands and Sweden reject the growing use of AI by a three-to-one margin, Edelman said. By contrast, acceptance outpaces resistance by a wide margin in developing markets such as Saudi Arabia, India, China, Kenya, Nigeria and Thailand. "When it comes to AI regulation, the public's response is pretty clear: 'What regulation?'," said Edelman global technology chair Justin Westcott. "There's a clear and urgent call for regulators to meet the public's expectations head on."

Waymo announced that it will begin shuttling employees around 43 square miles of Austin, Texas, including the Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin and Hyde Park neighborhoods, as well as downtown Austin. As TechCrunch notes, it's "a crucial step before the company opens the program up to the public." From the report: The step forward comes just a few days after Waymo won the ability to start charging for rides in expanded territory across both Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. Waymo didn't offer a timeline for when it plans to start offering autonomous rides to the citizens of Austin. When it does, it will become the fourth city where the company's robotaxis are officially in operation, following LA, SF and Phoenix.