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25 Dec 2024 7:43pm GMT

Apple may be worth one and a half Googles now, but the world's most valuable company needs its relationship with the world's largest search engine to keep clicking. From a report: Such was evident Monday when Apple filed papers seeking to participate in the penalty phase of the Justice Department's antitrust case against Google. The search giant lost that case in August and is now battling the government over what remedies are appropriate. The DOJ has a long wish list that includes breaking the company up, forcing Google to make key search and user data available to potential rivals, and stopping the payments Google makes to partners such as Apple. The payments to Apple alone now reportedly equate to about $20 billion annually, and make Google the default search engine on devices like the iPhone. Apple didn't confirm any specific amounts in its filing, but did say the company feels compelled to "protect its commercial interests." Analysts widely estimate that the payments from Google are nearly pure profit for Apple, given relatively little incremental cost to generate that revenue. For Apple, $20 billion is about 16% of the operating income reported for the company's fiscal year that ended in September.

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25 Dec 2024 7:11pm GMT

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25 Dec 2024 5:44pm GMT

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25 Dec 2024 5:14pm GMT

Modern LED headlights are significantly brighter and more glaring than traditional halogen bulbs, creating dangerous driving conditions, lighting experts report. The newer lights produce an intense, concentrated beam that is bluer and more disorienting, particularly affecting older drivers. "Headlights are getting brighter, smaller and bluer. All three of those things increase a particular kind of glare. It's called discomfort glare," said Daniel Stern, chief editor of Driving Vision News.

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25 Dec 2024 5:03pm GMT

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25 Dec 2024 4:58pm GMT

Software development is entering an "autopilot era" with AI coding assistants, but the industry needs to prepare for full autonomy, argues former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor. Drawing parallels with self-driving cars, he suggests the role of software engineers will evolve from code authors to operators of code-generating machines. Taylor, a board member of OpenAI and who once rewrote Google Maps over a weekend, calls for new programming systems, languages, and verification methods to ensure AI-generated code remains robust and secure. From his post: In the Autonomous Era of software engineering, the role of a software engineer will likely transform from being the author of computer code to being the operator of a code generating machine. What is a computer programming system built natively for that workflow? If generating code is no longer a limiting factor, what types of programming languages should we build? If a computer is generating most code, how do we make it easy for a software engineer to verify it does what they intend? What is the role of programming language design (e.g., what Rust did for memory safety)? What is the role of formal verification? What is the role of tests, CI/CD, and development workflows? Today, a software engineer's primary desktop is their editor. What is the Mission Control for a software engineer in the era of autonomous development?

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25 Dec 2024 4:10pm GMT

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25 Dec 2024 4:09pm GMT

The annual defense policy bill signed by President Joe Biden Monday evening allocates $3 billion to help telecom firms remove and replace insecure equipment in response to recent incursions by Chinese-linked hackers. From a report: The fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act outlines Pentagon policy and military budget priorities for the year and also includes non-defense measures added as Congress wrapped up its work in December. The $895 billion spending blueprint passed the Senate and House with broad bipartisan support. The $3 billion would go to a Federal Communications Commission program, commonly called "rip and replace," to get rid of Chinese networking equipment due to national security concerns. The effort was created in 2020 to junk equipment made by telecom giant Huawei. It had an initial investment of $1.9 billion, roughly $3 billion shy of what experts said was needed to cauterize the potential vulnerability. Calls to replenish the fund have increased recently in the wake of two hacking campaigns by China, dubbed Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon, that saw hackers insert malicious code in U.S. infrastructure and break into at least eight telecom firms. The bill also includes a watered down requirement for the Defense Department to tap an independent third-party to study the feasibility of creating a U.S. Cyber Force, along with an "evaluation of alternative organizational models for the cyber forces" of the military branches.

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25 Dec 2024 3:07pm GMT

They gave it the old college try, but America's elite universities are facing money problems partly of their own creation. From a report: It might not seem that way compared with the broader world of U.S. higher education. Ivy League institutions and a handful in a similar orbit like Stanford, Duke and the University of Chicago aren't just blessed to have international cachet and their pick of excellent students and professors -- they also have the most money and the richest alumni. By contrast, public and especially smaller private colleges and universities are cutting staff and programs. Many are closing outright. A school like Harvard, now well into its fourth century, will almost certainly survive for a fifth one. But there are financial problems below the surface that could emerge if the bull market stumbles and especially if some proposed Trump administration policies are enacted. Harvard's $53.2 billion endowment is so huge that the difference between a good and a so-so investment performance translates to sums that would dwarf most colleges' entire nest eggs. Former Harvard President and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers estimated this year that if Harvard had been able to just keep up with other Ivies and "large endowment schools" in the past several years, it would have $20 billion more. For perspective, he says that just $1 billion could fund 100 professorships or permanently cover tuition for 100 students. But even Harvard's peer group isn't doing as well as it could. Veteran investment consultant Richard Ennis wrote this month that high costs and "outdated perceptions of superiority" have stymied Ivy League endowment returns, which could have been worth 20% more since the 2008 financial crisis if invested in a classic stock and bond mix.

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25 Dec 2024 2:00pm GMT

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25 Dec 2024 1:58pm GMT

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25 Dec 2024 1:16pm GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Boston Globe: Every weekday morning at 8:30, Preston Thorpe makes himself a cup of instant coffee and opens his laptop to find the coding tasks awaiting his seven-person team at Unlocked Labs. Like many remote workers, Thorpe, the nonprofit's principal engineer, works out in the middle of the day and often stays at his computer late into the night. But outside Thorpe's window, there's a soaring chain-link fence topped with coiled barbed wire. And at noon and 4 p.m. every day, a prison guard peers into his room to make sure he's where he's supposed to be at the Mountain View Correctional Facility in Charleston, Maine, where he's serving his 12th year for two drug-related convictions in New Hampshire, including intent to distribute synthetic opioids. Remote work has spread far and wide since the pandemic spurred a work-from-home revolution of sorts, but perhaps no place more unexpectedly than behind prison walls. Thorpe is one of more than 40 people incarcerated in Maine's state prison system who have landed internships and jobs with outside companies over the past two years -- some of whom work full time from their cells and earn more than the correctional officers who guard them. A handful of other states have also started allowing remote work in recent years, but none have gone as far as Maine, according to the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison, the nonprofit leading the effort. Unlike incarcerated residents with jobs in the kitchen or woodshop who earn just a few hundred dollars a month, remote workers make fair-market wages, allowing them to pay victim restitution fees and legal costs, provide child support, and contribute to Social Security and other retirement funds. Like inmates in work-release programs who have jobs out in the community, 10 percent of remote workers' wages go to the state to offset the cost of room and board. All Maine DOC residents get re-entry support for housing and job searches before they're released, and remote workers leave with even more: up-to-date resumes, a nest egg -- and the hope that they're less likely to need food or housing assistance, or resort to crime to get by.

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25 Dec 2024 1:00pm GMT

Ars looks back at the top stories of the year.

25 Dec 2024 12:00pm GMT

A new study reveals that the widely accepted "sophomore slump" phenomenon -- where a band's second album is perceived as significantly worse than the first -- exists primarily in professional critics' reviews, not fan ratings. Researchers suggest this bias stems from social conformity among critics, while fans provide more consistent and reliable evaluations across albums. "If every music critic has heard of a sophomore slump and everyone knows it happens, they might be convinced to over-apply it in their reviews," said Gregory Webster, Ph.D., the R. David Thomas Endowed Professor of Psychology at the University of Florida and co-author of the new study. "We suspect it's a kind of social conformity, which we see in a lot of social groups." Phys.Org reports: Webster and his co-author, University of Hannover Professor of Educational Science Lysann Zander, Ph.D., analyzed thousands of albums rated by professional critics and amateur fans. Both critics and fans said that bands' albums generally got worse over time. But critics were exceptionally harsh with the second album, which was an outlier in this downward trajectory. "It's only critics that show substantial evidence of a sophomore slump bias, whereby they are giving artists' second albums unusually low reviews compared to their first and third albums," Webster said. "Fans show no evidence of a sophomore slump bias." Webster and Zander expected that fan ratings would reflect a broader consensus about a band's true performance. Fans aren't pressured by the same social norms as professional critics. And with ratings from thousands of fans, the researchers could average across a large group to find more reliable ratings.

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25 Dec 2024 10:00am GMT

NASA's Parker Solar Probe made a historic approach on Christmas Eve, flying within 3.8 million miles of the Sun at a record-breaking speed of 430,000 mph. It marks humanity's closest encounter with a star. Live Science reports: Mission control cannot communicate with the probe during this rendezvous due to its vicinity to the sun, and will only know how the spacecraft fared in the early hours of Dec. 27 after a beacon signal confirms both the flyby's success and the overall state of the spacecraft. Images gathered during the flyby will beam home in early January, followed by scientific data later in the month when the probe swoops further away from the sun, Nour Rawafi, who is the project scientist for the mission, told reporters at the Annual Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) earlier this month. Parker launched in 2018 to help decode some of the biggest mysteries about our sun, such as why its outermost layer, the corona, heats up as it moves further from the sun's surface, and what processes accelerate charged particles to near-light speeds. In addition to revolutionizing our understanding about the sun, the probe also caught rare closeups of passing comets and studied the surface of Venus. On Christmas Eve, scientists expect the probe to have flown through plumes of plasma still attached to the sun, and hope it observed solar flares occurring simultaneously due to ramped-up turbulence on the sun's surface, which spark breathtaking auroras on Earth but also disrupt communication systems and other technology. "Right now, Parker Solar Probe has achieved what we designed the mission for," Nicola Fox, the associate administrator for NASA Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a NASA video released on Dec. 24. "It's just a total 'Yay! We did it' moment."

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25 Dec 2024 7:00am GMT

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25 Dec 2024 6:08am GMT

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25 Dec 2024 5:44am GMT

An AI system has outperformed human experts in distinguishing between American whiskey and Scotch, achieving 100% accuracy by identifying subtle differences in the chemical composition of the spirits. New Scientist reports: Andreas Grasskamp at the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV in Germany and his colleagues trained an AI molecular odor prediction algorithm called OWSum on descriptions of different whiskies. Then, in a study involving 16 samples -- nine types of Scotch whisky and seven types of American bourbon or whiskey -- they tasked OWSum with telling drinks from the two nations apart based on keyword descriptions of their flavors, such as flowery, fruity, woody or smoky. Using these alone, the AI could tell which country a drink came from with almost 94 per cent accuracy. Because the complex aroma of these spirits is determined by the absence or presence of many chemical compounds, the researchers also fed the AI a reference dataset of 390 molecules commonly found in whiskies. When they gave the AI data from gas chromatography -- mass spectrometry showing which molecules were present in the sample spirits, it boosted OWSum's ability to differentiate American from Scotch drams to 100 percent. Compounds such as menthol and citronellol were a dead giveaway for American whiskey, while the presence of methyl decanoate and heptanoic acid pointed to Scotch. The researchers also tested both OWSum and a neural network on their ability to predict the top five odor keywords based on the chemical contents of a whisky. On a score from 1 for perfect accuracy to 0 for consistent inaccuracy, OWSum achieved 0.72. The neural network achieved 0.78 and human whisky expert test participants achieved only 0.57. The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications Chemistry.

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25 Dec 2024 3:30am GMT

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25 Dec 2024 3:10am GMT

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25 Dec 2024 3:08am GMT

Researchers at the University of Toronto have experimentally observed "negative time" in photon interactions with atoms, suggesting a measurable effect rather than an illusion. The researchers stress that these findings, posted on the preprint server arXiv, don't imply time travel. Phys.Org reports: The experiments, conducted in a cluttered basement laboratory bristling with wires and aluminum-wrapped devices, took over two years to optimize. The lasers used had to be carefully calibrated to avoid distorting the results. [...] The explanation lies in quantum mechanics, where particles like photons behave in fuzzy, probabilistic ways rather than following strict rules. Instead of adhering to a fixed timeline for absorption and re-emission, these interactions occur across a spectrum of possible durations -- some of which defy everyday intuition. Critically, the researchers say, this doesn't violate Einstein's theory of special relativity, which dictates that nothing can travel faster than light. These photons carried no information, sidestepping any cosmic speed limits. "We've made our choice about what we think is a fruitful way to describe the results," said Aephraim Steinberg, a University of Toronto professor specializing in experimental quantum physics, adding that while practical applications remain elusive, the findings open new avenues for exploring quantum phenomena. "I'll be honest, I don't currently have a path from what we've been looking at toward applications," he admitted. "We're going to keep thinking about it, but I don't want to get people's hopes up."

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25 Dec 2024 2:02am GMT

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25 Dec 2024 1:26am GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: Although Samsung Foundry is a major chip contract manufacturer, the South Korean government mulls creating a government-funded contract chipmaker tentatively called Korea Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, KSMC, reports The Korea Biz Wire. Industry experts and academics have proposed the initiative. The Semiconductor Industry Association's Ahn Ki-hyun called for a long-term government investment. Experts project that an investment of KRW 20 trillion ($13.9 billion) in KSMC could result in economic gains of KRW 300 trillion ($208.7 billion) by 2045. However, the big question is whether $13.9 billion is enough to establish a chipmaker. Another concern about publicly funded corporations like KSMC is whether they could develop advanced manufacturing technologies and land enough orders from clients to be profitable. It turns out that in addition to semiconductor makers, Korea needs more fabless software developers. The proposal was introduced during a seminar hosted by the National Academy of Engineering of Korea (NAEK). The plan aims to address structural weaknesses in the industry, such as an over-reliance on Samsung's advanced nodes under 10nm amid the lack of mature process technologies. Smaller system semiconductor firms struggle to thrive as Korea lacks manufacturing diversity, as seen in Taiwan, where companies like UMC and PSMC that focus on mature and specialty nodes complement TSMC's advanced process technologies.

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25 Dec 2024 1:25am GMT

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25 Dec 2024 1:07am GMT

In 2024, North Korean state-sponsored hackers stole $1.34 billion in cryptocurrency across 47 attacks, marking a 102.88% increase from 2023 and accounting for 61% of global crypto theft. BleepingComputer reports: Although the total number of incidents in 2024 reached a record-breaking 303, the total losses figure isn't unprecedented, as 2022 remains the most damaging year with $3.7 billion. Chainalysis says most of the incidents this year occurred between January and July, during which 72% of the total amount for 2024 was stolen. The report highlights the DMM Bitcoin hack from May, where over $305 million was lost, and the WazirX cyberheist from July, which resulted in the loss of $235 million. As for what types of platforms suffered the most damage, DeFi platforms were followed by centralized services. Regarding the means, the analysts report that private key compromises accounted for 44% of the losses, while exploitation of security flaws corresponded to just 6.3% of stolen cryptocurrency. This is a sign that security audits have a significant effect on reducing exploitable flaws on the platforms. However, stricter security practices in the handling of private keys need to be implemented.

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25 Dec 2024 12:45am GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: More than 140 Facebook content moderators have been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content including murders, suicides, child sexual abuse and terrorism. The moderators worked eight- to 10-hour days at a facility in Kenya for a company contracted by the social media firm and were found to have PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD), by Dr Ian Kanyanya, the head of mental health services at Kenyatta National hospital in Nairobi. The mass diagnoses have been made as part of lawsuit being brought against Facebook's parent company, Meta, and Samasource Kenya, an outsourcing company that carried out content moderation for Meta using workers from across Africa. The images and videos including necrophilia, bestiality and self-harm caused some moderators to faint, vomit, scream and run away from their desks, the filings allege. The case is shedding light on the human cost of the boom in social media use in recent years that has required more and more moderation, often in some of the poorest parts of the world, to protect users from the worst material that some people post. The lawsuit claims that at least 40 moderators experienced substance misuse, marital breakdowns, and disconnection from their families, while some feared being hunted by terrorist groups they monitored. Despite being paid eight times less than their U.S. counterparts, moderators worked under intense surveillance in harsh, warehouse-like conditions.

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25 Dec 2024 12:02am GMT

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) warns that while most adults recognize the importance of wiping personal data from old devices, nearly 30% don't know how, and a significant number of young people either don't care or find it too cumbersome. The Register reports: Clearing personal data off an old device is an important step before ditching it or handing it on to another user. However, almost three in ten (29 percent) of adults don't know how to remove the information, according to a survey of 2,170 members of the UK public. Seventy-one percent agreed that wiping a device was important, but almost a quarter (24 percent) reckoned it was too arduous. This means that the drawer of dusty devices is set to swell -- three-quarters of respondents reported hanging on to at least one old device, and a fifth did so because they were worried about their personal information. [...] More than one in five (21 percent) of young people in the survey didn't think it was important to wipe personal data, while 23 percent said they didn't care about what might happen to that data. Fourteen percent of people aged 18-34 said they wouldn't bother wiping their devices at all, compared to just 4 percent of people over 55. On the plus side, the majority (84 percent) of respondents said they would ensure data was erased before disposing of a device. Alternatively, some might not worry about it and stick it in that special drawer alongside all the cables that might be needed one day. The survey also found that more than a quarter (27 percent) of UK adults were planning to treat themselves to a new device over the festive season [...].

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24 Dec 2024 11:20pm GMT

El Salvador secured a $1.4 billion loan deal with the IMF after agreeing to scale back its bitcoin policies, making cryptocurrency acceptance voluntary for businesses and limiting public sector involvement. The deal aims to stabilize the country's economy, with bitcoin's recent rally boosting the value of El Salvador's holdings. The BBC reports: In 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to make bitcoin legal tender. This week, the cryptocurrency briefly hit a fresh record high of more than $108,000. "The potential risks of the Bitcoin project will be diminished significantly in line with Fund policies," the IMF announcement said. "Legal reforms will make acceptance of Bitcoin by the private sector voluntary. For the public sector, engagement in Bitcoin-related economic activities and transactions in and purchases of Bitcoin will be confined." Last Friday, El Salvdaor purchased more than 11 BTC worth $1.07 million and executed another 11 BTC purchase on Sunday, according to crypto data platform Arkham. El Salvador's President, Nayib Bukele, is ramping up buys "with an interim goal of acquiring 20,000 more Bitcoin," reports the Daily Hodl.

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24 Dec 2024 10:40pm GMT

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24 Dec 2024 10:38pm GMT

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24 Dec 2024 7:39pm GMT

Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson are sheer perfection as an amnesiac former assassin and PI who foil a terrorist plot.

24 Dec 2024 4:12pm GMT

From wacky crime capers and dystopian video game adaptions to sweeping historical epics, 2024 had a little of everything

24 Dec 2024 12:00pm GMT

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24 Dec 2024 3:41am GMT

Help increases our charity haul before the sweepstakes ends.

23 Dec 2024 7:57pm GMT

440-pound 1980s behemoth rescued from an Osaka restaurant days before demolition.

23 Dec 2024 7:48pm GMT

No, four figures does not get you a numpad.

23 Dec 2024 6:09pm GMT

Flu is rising around the country, but Louisiana is well ahead of the curve.

23 Dec 2024 5:35pm GMT

Intrusion caused medical errors and diversion of emergency services.

23 Dec 2024 5:21pm GMT

Ars chats with Dune: Prophecy lead cinematographer Pierre Gill about color palettes, lighting, and other challenges.

23 Dec 2024 5:08pm GMT

Half of US companies don't know the origins of chips they buy, official said.

23 Dec 2024 4:56pm GMT

if the deal goes through it would create the world's third-largest OEM in 2026.

23 Dec 2024 3:18pm GMT

"Elon get those rocket ships going because we want to reach Mars before the end of my term."

23 Dec 2024 3:09pm GMT

This year's list features quite a bit of horror mixed in with the usual blockbuster fare-plus smaller hidden gems.

23 Dec 2024 12:00pm GMT

A2RL admits that this is a hard problem, and that's refreshing.

22 Dec 2024 12:05pm GMT

A relatively light year still had its fair share of interactive standouts.

22 Dec 2024 12:00pm GMT

Boat collision left Charlotte stranded at the surface and in danger of predation.

21 Dec 2024 12:25pm GMT