The Biden administration on Monday told US agencies to work toward giving up use of some telecommunications airwaves in order to make room for commercial providers facing surging demand for fast 5G services. From a report: The plan, called the National Spectrum Strategy, called for "detailed studies" to be concluded within two years. The document provides for "more transparent, more coordinated" efforts at airwaves management, Lael Brainard, director of the National Economic Council, said.

"We have to make better use of the airwaves we have," said Alan Davidson, an assistant secretary of commerce who will help lead further steps to fulfill the strategy. Commercial providers have long sought more access to airwaves occupied by US agencies, saying that government uses at times aren't efficient and they should share space with new commercial technologies. Spectrum refers to the array of airwaves that carry everything from voice calls to satellite transmissions to signals for industrial machinery.

The Nepal government has decided to impose a ban on TikTok. From a report on the local newspaper Kathmandu Post: A Cabinet meeting on Monday took the decision to ban the Chinese-owned app, citing its negative effects on social harmony. However, when the decision will be brought into force is yet to be ascertained. Although freedom of expression is a basic right, a large section of society has criticised TikTok for encouraging a tendency of hate speech, the government said. In the past four years, 1,647 cases of cyber crime have been reported on the video sharing app.

The Cyber Bureau of the Nepal Police, Ministry of Home Affairs, and representatives of TikTok discussed the issue earlier last week. Monday's decision is expected to be enforced following the completion of technical preparations. The latest decision has come within days after the government introduced the 'Directives on the Operation of Social Networking 2023.' As per the new rule, social media platforms operating in Nepal required to set up their offices in the country.

Press2ToContinue writes: Starting next year, Meta will play the role of a strict schoolteacher for political ads, making them fess up if they've used AI to tweak images or sounds. This new 'honesty policy' will kick in worldwide on Facebook and Instagram, aiming to prevent voters from being duped by digitally doctored candidates or made-up events. Meanwhile, Microsoft is jumping on the integrity bandwagon, rolling out anti-tampering tech and a support squad to shield elections from AI mischief.

Nvidia, the world's most valuable chipmaker, is updating its H100 artificial intelligence processor, adding more capabilities to a product that has fueled its dominance in the AI computing market. From a report: The new model, called the H200, will get the ability to use high-bandwidth memory, or HBM3e, allowing it to better cope with the large data sets needed for developing and implementing AI, Nvidia said Monday. Amazon's AWS, Alphabet's Google Cloud and Oracle's Cloud Infrastructure have all committed to using the new chip starting next year.

The current version of the Nvidia processor -- known as an AI accelerator -- is already in famously high demand. It's a prized commodity among technology heavyweights like Larry Ellison and Elon Musk, who boast about their ability to get their hands on the chip. But the product is facing more competition: AMD is bringing its rival MI300 chip to market in the fourth quarter, and Intel claims that its Gaudi 2 model is faster than the H100. With the new product, Nvidia is trying to keep up with the size of data sets used to create AI models and services, it said. Adding the enhanced memory capability will make the H200 much faster at bombarding software with data -- a process that trains AI to perform tasks such as recognizing images and speech.

Google is suing scammers who are trying to use the hype around generative AI to trick people into downloading malware, the company has announced. From a report: In a lawsuit filed today in California, the company says individuals believed to be based in Vietnam are setting up social media pages and running ads encouraging users to "download" its generative AI service Bard. The download actually delivers malware to the victims, which steals social media credentials for the scammers to use. "Defendants are three individuals whose identities are unknown who claim to provide, among other things, 'the latest version' of Google Bard for download," the lawsuit reads.

"Defendants are not affiliated with Google in any way, though they pretend to be. They have used Google trademarks, including Google, Google AI, and Bard to lure unsuspecting victims into downloading malware onto their computers." The lawsuit notes that scammers have specifically used promoted Facebook posts in an attempt to distribute malware. Similar to crypto scams, the lawsuit highlights how interest in an emerging technology can be weaponized against people who may not fully understanding how it operates.

This week the Verge's podcast Decoder interviewed former U.S. president Barack Obama for a discussion on "AI, free speech, and the future of the internet."

Obama warns that future copyright questions are just part of a larger issue. "If AI turns out to be as pervasive and as powerful as it's proponents expect — and I have to say the more I look into it, I think it is going to be that disruptive — we are going to have to think about not just intellectual property; we are going to have to think about jobs and the economy differently."

Specific issues may include the length of the work week and the fact that health insurance coverage is currently tied to employment — but it goes far beyond that: The broader question is going to be what happens when 10% of existing jobs now definitively can be done by some large language model or other variant of AI? And are we going to have to reexamine how we educate our kids and what jobs are going to be available...?

The truth of the matter is that during my presidency, there was I think a little bit of naivete, where people would say, you know, "The answer to lifting people out of poverty and making sure they have high enough wages is we're going to retrain them and we're going to educate them, and they should all become coders, because that's the future." Well, if AI's coding better than all but the very best coders? If ChatGPT can generate a research memo better than the third-, fourth-year associate — maybe not the partner, who's got a particular expertise or judgment? — now what are you telling young people coming up?
While Obama believes in the transformative potential of AI, "we have to be maybe a little more intentional about how our democracies interact with what is primarily being generated out of the private sector. What rules of the road are we setting up, and how can we make sure that we maximize the good and maybe minimize some of the bad?"

AI's impact will be a global problem, Obama believes, which may require "cross-border frameworks and standards and norms". (He expressed a hope that governments can educate the public on the idea that AI is "a tool, not a buddy".) During the 44-minute interview Obama predicted AI will ultimately force a "much more robust" public conversation about rules needed for social media — and that at least some of that pressure could come from how consumers interact with companies. (Obama also argues there will still be a market for products that don't just show you what you want to see.)

"One of Obama's worries is that the government needs insight and expertise to properly regulate AI," writes the Verge's editor-in-chief in an article about the interview, "and you'll hear him make a pitch for why people with that expertise should take a tour of duty in the government to make sure we get these things right." You'll hear me get excited about a case called Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC, a 1969 Supreme Court decision that said the government could impose something called the Fairness Doctrine on radio and television broadcasters because the public owns the airwaves and can thus impose requirements on how they're used. There's no similar framework for cable TV or the internet, which don't use public airwaves, and that makes them much harder, if not impossible, to regulate. Obama says he disagrees with the idea that social networks are something called "common carriers" that have to distribute all information equally.
Obama also applauded last month's newly-issued Executive Order from the White House, a hundred-page document which Obama calls important as "the beginning of building out a framework." We don't know all the problems that are going to arise out of this. We don't know all the promising potential of AI, but we're starting to put together the foundations for what we hope will be a smart framework for dealing with it... In talking to the companies themselves, they will acknowledge that their safety protocols and their testing regimens may not be where they need to be yet. I think it's entirely appropriate for us to plant a flag and say, "All right, frontier companies, you need to disclose what your safety protocols are to make sure that we don't have rogue programs going off and hacking into our financial system," for example. Tell us what tests you're using. Make sure that we have some independent verification that right now this stuff is working.

But that framework can't be a fixed framework. These models are developing so quickly that oversight and any regulatory framework is going to have to be flexible, and it's going to have to be nimble.

"Dealers don't want to change the model. They want to be the gatekeepers." That's according to Daniel Crane, a law professor at the University of Michigan who studies the laws and economics of car dealerships. He's quoted in a Washington Post article warning that "Electric vehicles are hitting a road block: Car dealers."

Former Chevy salesman Buzz Smith tells the Post that it can take longer to sell electric cars (with multiple visits and questions about their technology and chargers) — in effect reducing what a salesman earns per hour. But more to the point, "he believes the pay structure of auto salespeople isn't a good fit for the EV era." Electric cars have narrower profit margins, he said, which cuts into the commission a dealer can get. And if a customer returns to the dealership multiple times, salespeople may have to split the commission, again cutting into their take-home pay. At the same time, car dealerships make most of their overall profits from providing service for vehicles — not selling new cars. According to an analysis from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, just 16 percent of dealers' gross profits came from new car sales, while 43 percent came from parts, labor and service. (The rest of the profits come from used car sales and financing and incentives...)

That could also discourage dealers from selling EVs. Gas cars have 100 times more moving parts than electric vehicles do, and studies show that EVs have lower maintenance costs. An average gas-powered car, for example, needs an oil change about every six months, or every 5,000 to 7,500 miles. But many electric cars don't require a major service until around 150,000 miles.

"They're all terrified of that loss of maintenance," Smith said.
The Post reports one woman's complain that after buying an electric car, her salesperson "offered her a plan for oil changes and an extended warranty for a gas-powered car."

But is there something bigger going on? Since the 1950s dozens of states passed laws protecting auto dealerships, and many of those laws prevent manufacturers from selling directly to consumers. The Post notes that now "many automakers have to sell their vehicles through one of the country's more than 16,000 franchised auto dealerships. And those salespeople often don't have extensive training on how to sell an EV or even on the technology itself." Frustrated customers told The Washington Post that dealers tried to redirect their attention toward gas cars, or gave incorrect or unclear answers to questions about charging and day-to-day electric vehicle use... Then there is the maze of federal and state tax incentives that can help drivers afford a new or used EV — but only if the dealer and the consumer can understand how they work.

Some dealers, however, don't seem to want to offer electric cars: According to a survey that the Sierra Club conducted at the end of 2022, 66 percent of dealerships did not have an EV available for sale. That was at the height of EV supply chain problems, but 45 percent of those dealers — or 30 percent of all dealers surveyed — said they wouldn't offer an EV even if they could. Amid concern over an EV slowdown, electric cars are sitting longer on dealerships' lots than gas-powered cars. According to data from Cox Automotive, dealerships started the year with a roughly 50 days' supply of gas cars and electric cars. Now the supply of gas cars is around the same, but the supply of EVs has doubled.

With 1.4 billion people, India is the second most-populous country in the world.

But a new article in the Washington Post alleges that India has "set a global standard for online censorship." For years, a committee of executives from U.S. technology companies and Indian officials convened every two weeks in a government office to negotiate what could — and could not — be said on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. At the "69A meetings," as the secretive gatherings were informally called, officials from India's information, technology, security and intelligence agencies presented social media posts they wanted removed, citing threats to India's sovereignty and national security, executives and officials who were present recalled. The tech representatives sometimes pushed back in the name of free speech...

But two years ago, these interactions took a fateful turn. Where officials had once asked for a handful of tweets to be removed at each meeting, they now insisted that entire accounts be taken down, and numbers were running in the hundreds. Executives who refused the government's demands could now be jailed, their companies expelled from the Indian market. New regulations had been adopted that year to hold tech employees in India criminally liable for failing to comply with takedown requests, a provision that executives referred to as a "hostage provision." After authorities dispatched anti-terrorism police to Twitter's New Delhi office, Twitter whisked its top India executive out of the country, fearing his arrest, former company employees recounted.

Indian officials say they have accomplished something long overdue: strengthening national laws to bring disobedient foreign companies to heel... Digital and human rights advocates warn that India has perfected the use of regulations to stifle online dissent and already inspired governments in countries as varied as Nigeria and Myanmar to craft similar legal frameworks, at times with near-identical language. India's success in taming internet companies has set off "regulatory contagion" across the world, according to Prateek Waghre, a policy director at India's Internet Freedom Foundation...

Despite the huge size of China's market, companies like Twitter and Facebook were forced to steer clear of the country because Beijing's rules would have required them to spy on users. That left India as the largest potential growth market. Silicon Valley companies were already committed to doing business in India before the government began to tighten its regulations, and today say they have little choice but to obey if they want to remain there.
The Post spoke to Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the deputy technology minister in the BJP government who oversees many of the new regulations, who argued "The shift was really simple: We've defined the laws, defined the rules, and we have said there is zero tolerance to any noncompliance with the Indian law...

"You don't like the law? Don't operate in India," Chandrasekhar added. "There is very little wiggle room."

Wednesday five of the U.S. Republican candidates for president gathered for their third debate in Miami — where they again urged the banning of TikTok in America:

Moderator: Last week congressman Mike Gallagher, who is chairman of the House bipartisan select committee on the Chinese Community party, published a long essay on TikTok... [H]e called the app "predatory... controlled by America's preeminent adversary," used to push propaganda and divide America. It's "spyware," he said — a means of surveillance.

Governor Christie, do you agree with chairman Gallgaher, and if so would you ban or force the sale of TikTok.

Chris Christie: I agree 100% with chairman Gallagher, and let me say this. TikTok is not only spyware. it is polluting the minds of American young people, all throughout this country. And they're doing it intentionally... This is China trying to further divide the United States of America...

In my first week as president, we would ban TikTok. They want to go ahead and sell it, let 'em go ahead and sell it. But I'll tell you another reason we would do it. Facebook's not in China. X is not in China. They're not permitting a free flow of information to the Chinese people from our social media companies. Yet we just open the door and let them do what they're doing. TikTok should be banned because they are poisoning American minds, and I would do it Week One... [Applause from audience.]

Ron DeSantis: [DeSantis began by saying he would also ban TikTok.] I think that China's the top threat we face. They've been very effective at infiltrating different parts of our society... And as the dad of a 6-, 5-, and a 3-year-old, I'm concerned about the data that they're getting from our young people, and what they're doing to pollute the minds of our young people... Their role in our culture? If we ignore that, we're not going to be able to win the fight...

Vivek Ramaswamy: In the last debate [Nikki Haley] made fun of me for joining TikTok? Well her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time, so you might want to take care of your family first... [Audience boos]

Nikki Haley: Leave my daughter out of your voice.

Vivek Ramaswamy: The next generation of Americans are using it, and that's actually the point... Here's the truth. The easy answer is actually to say that we're just going to ban one app. We gotta go further. We have to ban any U.S. company actually transferring U.S. data to the Chinese. Here's a story most people don't know. Airbnb hands over U.S. user data to the CCP. Now that's a U.S.-owned company... Even U.S. companies in Silicon Valley are regularly doing it...

Tim Scott: What we should do is ban TikTok, period... If you cannot ban TikTok, you should eliminate the Chinese presence on the app. Period.
In the previous debate Nikki Haley made her own position clear. "We can't have TikTok in our kids' lives. We need to ban it."

Long-time Slashdot reader cusco writes: Forty years ago today Microsoft introduced its new Graphical User Interface for MS-DOS. Inspired by the Xerox PARC project Alto, as was the Apple Mac, it was their first attempt to address the user unfriendliness of the standard computer interface. Named Windows 1.0 after the "windows" it created to view individual running programs, it generated quite a bit of interest at the initial reveal. Unfortunately, difficulty in ironing out bugs (especially in memory management) delayed release for two years, to November 1985.

Press2ToContinue writes: 01.AI, a Chinese AI startup, has stockpiled enough Nvidia AI and HPC GPUs to last 18 months, in anticipation of a U.S. export ban. Looks like 01.AI is taking "goo big or go home" to a new level with their GPU shopping spree. They're basically the dragon from "The Hobbit," but instead of gold, they're hoarding Nvidia chips. Maybe they're planning the ultimate LAN party or just really into extreme Minecraft graphics. Either way, it's like they say: "In the land of tech embargoes, the one with the secret GPU stash is king." Or in this case, playing 4D chess while the rest of us are stuck figuring out which port the HDMI cable goes into. "We have stockpiled a lot of Nvidia chips," said 01.AI founder Kai-Fu Lee in an interview with Bloomberg. "The jury is out on whether China in 1.5 years can make equivalent or nearly as good chips."

"We will have two parallel universes. Americans will supply their products and technologies to the U.S. and other countries and Chinese companies will build for China and whoever else uses Chinese products. The reality is that they will not compete very much in the same marketplace."

Does Gmail want to be an instant messaging client? From a report: Last month the popular webmail app shipped an emoji reactions bar in the mobile app, where a single tap would send a new email with your emoji response. Now, a wild new UI experiment spotted by Android Police goes another step further: a quick reply bar that looks just like instant messaging input. Rather than the usual input block you get for writing paragraphs of overly formal text, this new Gmail experiment has a one-line input bar at the bottom for replies. A drop-down menu just above it lets you pick from the usual "reply," "reply all," or "forward" options. Besides that, you get an attachment and send button. An "expand" button will presumably launch the usual compose interface.

A partnership between Qualcomm and Iridium to bring satellite connectivity to Android phones has fallen apart, almost a year after the deal was announced. From a report: In January, the two companies debuted the Snapdragon Satellite platform, a way to bring satellite-based SMS and emergency messaging to high-end smartphones. But on Thursday, Iridium said Qualcomm will cancel the partnership, effective Dec. 3. "The companies successfully developed and demonstrated the technology; however, notwithstanding this technical success, smartphone manufacturers have not included the technology in their devices," Iridium said in the announcement. "Due to this, on November 3, 2023, Qualcomm notified Iridium that it has elected to terminate the agreements."

Qualcomm didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. But the statement from Iridium suggests the Snapdragon Satellite platform suffered from technical issues, or perhaps failed to attract interest from smartphone vendors. Back in January, the companies also indicated that the Snapdragon Satellite platform would require supported phones to be manufactured with modems that could communicate with the Iridum network's L-Band radio frequencies.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A young man sits in a car, pointing a cellphone camera out of the window, seemingly trying to remain undetected. As he breathes heavily in anticipation, he peers at a T-Mobile store across the road from where he is parked.

Suddenly, there is some commotion inside. An accomplice grabs something off a table where a T-Mobile employee is sitting. The accomplice, dressed in a mask and black baseball cap, then bursts out of the store and clumsily sprints towards the car. The man in the vehicle starts laughing, then giggling uncontrollably like a child. The pair got what they came for: a T-Mobile employee's tablet, the sort workers use everyday when dealing with customer support issues or setting up a new phone.

To the people in the car, what this tablet is capable of is much more valuable than iPad hardware itself. The tablet lets them essentially become T-Mobile. It can grant them the ability to take over target phone numbers, and redirect any text messages or calls for the victim to the hacker's own device, as part of a hack called a SIM swap. From there, they can easily break into email, cryptocurrency, and social media accounts.

Tumblr is downscaling its ambitions after failing to reach goals for a new audience, aiming to move some staff members to other divisions of parent company Automattic. From a report: A leaked memo, which circulated on Tumblr and was confirmed in a Verge comment by Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg, says that "the majority" of Tumblr's non-support, safety, and moderation staff will "switch to other divisions." In follow-up posts on Tumblr, Mullenweg stated that Automattic is planning "a more focused approach in 2024," including an emphasis on the "core functionality" of the site.

[...] It describes implementing a backup plan to "reflect and decide where else we should concentrate our energy together" without laying off staff from Automattic -- which also operates the WordPress.com and WordPress VIP hosting services. "This plan is happening now." That involves transferring the majority of 139 people on a team identified as covering product development, marketing, and other tasks outside support, moderation, and security.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In an ingenious study published this summer, US researchers showed that within a few months of the launch of ChatGPT, copywriters and graphic designers on major online freelancing platforms saw a significant drop in the number of jobs they got, and even steeper declines in earnings. This suggested not only that generative AI was taking their work, but also that it devalues the work they do still carry out.

Most strikingly, the study found that freelancers who previously had the highest earnings and completed the most jobs were no less likely to see their employment and earnings decline than other workers. If anything, they had worse outcomes. In other words, being more skilled was no shield against loss of work or earnings. But the online freelancing market covers a very particular form of white-collar work and of labour market. What about looking higher up the ranks of the knowledge worker class? For that, we can turn to a recent, fascinating Harvard Business School study, which monitored the impact of giving GPT-4, OpenAI's latest and most advanced offering, to employees at Boston Consulting Group.

Tumblr may be nearing its end after its management sent memos to staff with the Lord Tennyson quote about having "loved and lost." Ars Technica reports: Internet statesman and Waxy.org proprietor Andy Baio posted what is "apparently an internal Automattic memo making the rounds on Tumblr" to Threads. The memo, written to employees at WordPress.com parent company Automattic, which bought Tumblr from Verizon's media arm in 2019, is titled or subtitled "You win or you learn." The posted memo states that a majority of the 139 employees working on product and marketing at Tumblr (in a team apparently named "Bumblr") will "switch to other divisions." Those working in "Happiness" (Automattic's customer support and service division) and "T&S" (trust and safety) would remain.

"We are at the point where after 600+ person-years of effort put into Tumblr since the acquisition in 2019, we have not gotten the expected results from our effort, which was to have revenue and usage above its previous peaks," the posted memo reads. After quotes and anecdotes about love, loss, mountain climbing, and learning on the journey, the memo notes that nobody will be let go and that team members can make a ranked list of their top three preferred assignments elsewhere inside Automattic.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Earlier this year, Mozilla acquired Fakespot, a startup that leverages AI and machine learning to identify fake and deceptive product reviews. Now, Mozilla is launching its first LLM (large language model) with the arrival of Fakespot Chat, an AI agent that will help consumers as they shop online by answering questions about the product or even suggesting questions that could be useful in your product research. [...] Fakespot has been using AI, including generative AI technologies, to make the online shopping process more trustworthy, not less. For instance, it launched a generative AI feature called Pros and Cons last year, that could replace the need for reading reviews by writing up its own summaries of a product's positives and negatives. The feature was trained on billions of data points, with the model itself using five different models under its hood, the company said.

This week, Fakespot Chat launched into testing, allowing shoppers to ask an AI chatbot about a product they're considering, similar to how you could ask a salesperson for help if you were shopping in a physical store in the real world. The technology uses AI and machine learning to sort through the product reviews, sorting real from fake, to answer the user's questions. The information from your chat session is saved to improve the experience for others, Mozilla notes, but users don't have to create an account or divulge personal information for the experience to work. The feature is available via the Fakespot Analyzer or it can be used on an Amazon.com product from Fakespot's browser extension. For the former, you'd copy and paste the URL of the product into the analyzer to ask your questions, but if using the browser add-on, the analysis starts automatically. When the analysis is complete, Fakespot Chat appears on the right-hand side of the analysis page alongside other features, like Pros and Cons, as well as Fakespot's Review Grades and Highlights. You can then interrogate the AI agent about the product as you weigh your purchase decisions.

Internet service providers and their lobby groups are fighting a US plan to prohibit discrimination in access to broadband services. In particular, ISPs want the Federal Communications Commission to drop the plan's proposal to require that prices charged to consumers be non-discriminatory. From a report: In 2021, Congress required the Federal Communications Commission to issue rules "preventing digital discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin" within two years. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel last month released her draft plan to comply with the congressional mandate and scheduled a November 15 commission vote on adopting final rules. The plan is likely to pass in a party-line vote as Rosenworcel has a 3-2 Democratic majority, but aspects of the draft could be changed before the vote. Next week's meeting could be a contentious one, judging by a statement issued Monday by Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr.

Carr described Rosenworcel's proposal as "President Biden's plan to give the administrative state effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure in the US." He also objects to the Rosenworcel plan's statement that the FCC rules may apply to entities that are not broadband providers, such as landlords, if they "impede equal access to broadband Internet access service." Consumer advocates generally support the proposal but say the planned system for handling complaints, ISP responses, and investigations is not transparent enough, reducing the system's potential to act as a deterrent. Consumer advocates also say Internet users who have already been harmed by discrimination may not get any relief because the proposed rules do not apply retroactively. ISPs including Comcast, Charter, AT&T, and Verizon have held a flurry of meetings with FCC officials and commissioners in which they argued that the rules are too broad.

Google -- under fire in court for allegedly resting on its laurels thanks to its 90% market dominance -- only made an effort to beef up the quality of its search engine in the European Union after being hit by a record antitrust fine, according to internal documents revealed in the US Justice Department's monopolization case against the tech giant. From a report: The Justice Department is arguing at a trial in Washington that Google's failure to improve its products -- unless put under pressure -- proves that it's illegally maintaining its monopoly. Alphabet's Google planned to improve its European search results only after a record 2018 European antitrust fine, according to the documents, which revealed that Google executives discussed a plan dubbed "Go Big in Europe."

The plan aimed to improve results in France and Germany in 2019 and 2020 with changes such as adding post-game soccer video highlights, more local content and news, pronunciation practice for different languages and more information on local television options available for streaming. The catalyst was a 2018 EU antitrust order that forced Google to offer a choice screen giving Android phone users five search engine options to choose from, according to US antitrust enforcers trying the case.