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An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: There are many stories of how artificial intelligence came to take over the world, but one of the most important developments is the emergence in 2012 of AlexNet, a neural network that, for the first time, demonstrated a huge jump in a computer's ability to recognize images. Thursday, the Computer History Museum (CHM), in collaboration with Google, released for the first time the AlexNet source code written by University of Toronto graduate student Alex Krizhevsky, placing it on GitHub for all to peruse and download. "CHM is proud to present the source code to the 2012 version of Alex Krizhevsky, Ilya Sutskever, and Geoffery Hinton's AlexNet, which transformed the field of artificial intelligence," write the Museum organizers in the readme file on GitHub. Krizhevsky's creation would lead to a flood of innovation in the ensuing years, and tons of capital, based on proof that with sufficient data and computing, neural networks could achieve breakthroughs previously viewed as mainly theoretical. The Computer History Museum's software historian, Hansen Hsu, published an essay describing how he spent five years negotiating with Google to release the code.

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Firefly Aerospace has teamed up with Blue Origin's Honeybee Robotics unit to deploy a rover on its 2028 lunar mission to study the Gruithuisen Domes -- rare volcanic formations that may reveal insights into the moon's geology and potential resources. The announcement follows Firefly's successful Blue Ghost Mission 1, which outlasted all prior commercial lunar landings. Reuters reports: The Gruithuisen Domes, located on the moon's near side, are unusual volcanic formations believed to be rich in silica -- a composition rare on the lunar surface -- and studying them could unlock clues about the moon's geological history and potential resources for future human missions. [...] The upcoming mission, part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, will use Firefly's Blue Ghost lander and Elytra Dark orbital vehicle, alongside the Honeybee Robotics rover, to explore the domes, building on the success of its debut effort, Firefly said.

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NASA's Curiosity rover has detected the largest organic molecules ever found on Mars -- decane, undecane, and dodecane -- suggesting that complex prebiotic chemistry may have occurred in the planet's ancient lakebeds. The findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. From a press release: Scientists probed an existing rock sample inside Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) mini-lab and found the molecules decane, undecane, and dodecane. These compounds, which are made up of 10, 11, and 12 carbons, respectively, are thought to be the fragments of fatty acids that were preserved in the sample. Fatty acids are among the organic molecules that on Earth are chemical building blocks of life. Living things produce fatty acids to help form cell membranes and perform various other functions. But fatty acids also can be made without life, through chemical reactions triggered by various geological processes, including the interaction of water with minerals in hydrothermal vents. While there's no way to confirm the source of the molecules identified, finding them at all is exciting for Curiosity's science team for a couple of reasons. Curiosity scientists had previously discovered small, simple organic molecules on Mars, but finding these larger compounds provides the first evidence that organic chemistry advanced toward the kind of complexity required for an origin of life on Mars. The new study also increases the chances that large organic molecules that can be made only in the presence of life, known as "biosignatures," could be preserved on Mars, allaying concerns that such compounds get destroyed after tens of millions of years of exposure to intense radiation and oxidation.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: German software company SAP overtook Danish healthcare company Novo Nordisk as Europe's largest company by market capitalization on Monday. At 0900 GMT, SAP had a market cap of $340 billion, slightly more than Novo Nordisk, according to Reuters calculations using LSEG Workspace data. SAP is Europe's largest software maker, providing business application software used by companies for finance, sales, supply chain and other functions. Its shares have surged in recent years, in part due to optimism that its cloud business will be a major beneficiary of recent investment in generative artificial intelligence. While SAP shares are up 7% so far in 2025, underperforming the broader European STOXX 600 index, which is up 8.3% year-to-date, they have clocked a total return of 160% since the end of 2022, far outperforming the STOXX 600's 28%. In contrast, Novo Nordisk shares have underperformed the market in recent months after data from trials of its experimental next-generation obesity drug Cagrisema disappointed investors.

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Meta is considering a paid subscription in the UK that would remove advertisements from its platform. The BBC reports: Under the plans, people using the social media sites could be asked to pay for an ad-free experience if they do not want their data to be tracked. Meta already provides ad-free subscriptions for Facebook and Instagram users in the EU, starting from euros (5 pounds) a month. A spokesperson for the firm said the company was "exploring the option" of offering a similar service in the UK. They said the firm was "engaging constructively" with the UK data watchdog about the subscription service, following a consultation in 2024. The Information Commissioner's Office previously said it expected Meta to consider data protection concerns before it launched an ad-free subscription. Meta says personalized advertising allows its platforms to be free at the point of access. Guidance issued by the regulator in January states that users must be presented with a genuine free choice. Social media platforms such as Meta heavily rely on ad revenues, and the company says personalised advertising allows its platforms to be free. Advertising accounted for more than 96% of its revenue in its latest quarterly financial results.

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Samsung Electronics vice chairman and co-CEO, Han Jong-hee, passed away from a heart attack on Tuesday at the age of 63. The Korea Herald reports: Since joining Samsung Electronics, Han held several key positions, including head of the LCD TV Lab. In 2021, he was appointed vice chairman and co-CEO, taking charge of the company's Device eXperience or DX division, which oversees its electronics and consumer device businesses. Developing...

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Two in five tech workers quit in the past year due to inflexible workplace policies around hours, location, and workload intensity, with most citing a desire for remote work and greater autonomy. The Register reports: The findings come from a survey of 26,000 plus staff that operate in 35 markets, including 2,548 respondents in tech, and fly in the face of more and more corporations issuing return to office mandates and demanding long working hours. Amsterdam-based recruitment biz Randstad, which commissioned the research, says 40 percent of the tech people it polled said they resigned due to hardline policies, and 56 percent threatened to seek an alternative if their requests for flexibility were ignored. Almost three-quarters claim remote work boosts a "sense of community" with colleagues -- versus the average of 58 percent across other sectors -- and 68 percent say they'd trust their employer more if they were more easy going on hours, the intensity of the work and the place where they can work. Graig Paglieri, Randstad Digital boss, said the "IT sector has shown that personalized work benefits and flexible options are essential not only for attracting top talent but also for retaining them in competitive markets. Policies should align with organizational, team and individual needs, ensuring a flexible and tailored approach."

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A software engineer successfully ran Meta's Llama 2 generative AI model on a 20-year-old PowerBook G4, demonstrating how well-optimized code can push the limits of legacy hardware. MacRumors' Joe Rossignol reports: While hardware requirements for large language models (LLMs) are typically high, this particular PowerBook G4 model from 2005 is equipped with a mere 1.5GHz PowerPC G4 processor and 1GB of RAM. Despite this 20-year-old hardware, my brother was able to achieve inference with Meta's LLM model Llama 2 on the laptop. The experiment involved porting the open-source llama2.c project, and then accelerating performance with a PowerPC vector extension called AltiVec. His full blog post offers more technical details about the project.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Jack Ma-backed Ant Group used Chinese-made semiconductors to develop techniques for training AI models that would cut costs by 20%, according to people familiar with the matter. Ant used domestic chips, including from affiliate Alibaba and Huawei, to train models using the so-called Mixture of Experts machine learning approach, the people said. It got results similar to those from Nvidia chips like the H800, they said, asking not to be named as the information isn't public. Hangzhou-based Ant is still using Nvidia for AI development but is now relying mostly on alternatives including from Advanced Micro Devices and Chinese chips for its latest models, one of the people said. The models mark Ant's entry into a race between Chinese and US companies that's accelerated since DeepSeek demonstrated how capable models can be trained for far less than the billions invested by OpenAI and Alphabet Inc.'s Google. It underscores how Chinese companies are trying to use local alternatives to the most advanced Nvidia semiconductors. While not the most advanced, the H800 is a relatively powerful processor and currently barred by the US from China. The company published a research paper this month that claimed its models at times outperformed Meta Platforms Inc. in certain benchmarks, which Bloomberg News hasn't independently verified. But if they work as advertised, Ant's platforms could mark another step forward for Chinese artificial intelligence development by slashing the cost of inferencing or supporting AI services.

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Microsoft is expanding its Security Copilot platform with six new AI agents designed to autonomously assist cybersecurity teams by handling tasks like phishing alerts, data loss incidents, and vulnerability monitoring. There are also five third-party AI agents created by its partners, including OneTrust and Tanium. The Verge reports: Microsoft's six security agents will be available in preview next month, and are designed to do things like triage and process phishing and data loss alerts, prioritize critical incidents, and monitor for vulnerabilities. "The six Microsoft Security Copilot agents enable teams to autonomously handle high-volume security and IT tasks while seamlessly integrating with Microsoft Security solutions," says Vasu Jakkal, corporate vice president of Microsoft Security. Microsoft is also working with OneTrust, Aviatrix, BlueVoyant, Tanium, and Fletch to enable some third-party security agents. These extensions will make it easier to analyze data breaches with OneTrust or perform root cause analysis of network outages and failures with Aviatrix. [...] While these latest AI agents in the Security Copilot are designed for security teams to take advantage of, Microsoft is also improving its phishing protection in Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 will start protecting Teams users against phishing and other cyberthreats within Teams next month, including better protection against malicious URLs and attachments.

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An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg column: Worries over China's "3D" problem -- that deflation, debt and demographics are structurally hampering growth -- are melting away. Instead, investors are talking about how the world's second-largest economy can take on the US and challenge its technological dominance. There is the prevailing sense that China's "engineer dividend" is finally paying off. Between 2000 and 2020, the number of engineers has ballooned from 5.2 million to 17.7 million, according to the State Council. That reservoir can help the nation move up the production possibility frontier, the thinking goes. In a way, DeepSeek shouldn't have come as a surprise. Size matters. A bigger talent pool alone gives China a better chance to disrupt. In 2022, 47% of the world's top 20th percentile AI researchers finished their undergraduate studies in China, well above the 18% share from the US, according to data from the Paulson Institute's in-house think tank, MacroPolo. Last year, the Asian nation ranked third in the number of innovation indicators compiled by the World Intellectual Property Organization, after Singapore and the US. What this also means is that innovative breakthroughs can pop out of nowhere. [...] More importantly, China's got the cost advantage. Those under the age of 30 account for 44% of the total engineering pool, versus 20% in the US, according to data compiled by Kaiyuan Securities. As a result, compensation for researchers is only about one-eighth of that in the US. Credit must be given to President Xi Jinping for his focus on higher education as he seeks to upgrade China's value chain. These days, roughly 40% of high-school graduates go to universities, versus 10% in 2000. Meanwhile, engineering is one of the most popular majors for post-graduate studies. It's a welcome reprieve for a government that has been struggling with a shrinking population.

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FaunaDB, a serverless database combining relational and document features, will shut down by the end of May due to unsustainable capital demands. The company plans to open source its core technology, including its FQL query language, in hopes of continuing its legacy within the developer community. The Register reports: The startup pocketed $27 million in VC funding in 2020 and boasted that 25,000 developers worldwide were using its serverless database. However, last week, FaunaDB announced that it would sunset its database services. FaunaDB said it plans to release an open-source version of its core database technology. The system stores data in JSON documents but retains relational features like consistency, support for joins and foreign keys, and full schema enforcement. Fauna's query language, FQL, will also be made available to the open-source community. "Driving broad based adoption of a new operational database that runs as a service globally is very capital intensive. In the current market environment, our board and investors have determined that it is not possible to raise the capital needed to achieve that goal independently," the leadership team said. "While we will no longer be accepting new customers, existing Fauna customers will experience no immediate change. We will gradually transition customers off Fauna and are committed to ensuring a smooth process over the next several months," it added.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: 23andMe filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Sunday, leaving the fate of millions of people's genetic information up in the air as the company deals with the legal and financial fallout of not properly protecting that genetic information in the first place. The filing shows how dangerous it is to provide your DNA directly to a large, for-profit commercial genetic database; 23andMe is now looking for a buyer to pull it out of bankruptcy. 23andMe said in court documents viewed by 404 Media that since hackers obtained personal data about seven million of its customers in October 2023, including, in some cases "health-related information based upon the user's genetics," it has faced "over 50 class action and state court lawsuits," and that "approximately 35,000 claimants have initiated, filed, or threatened to commence arbitration claims against the company." It is seeking bankruptcy protection in part to simplify the fallout of these legal cases, and because it believes it may not have money to pay for the potential damages associated with these cases. CEO and cofounder Anne Wojcicki announced she is leaving the company as part of this process. The company has the genetic data of more than 15 million customers. According to its Chapter 11 filing, 23andMe owes money to a host of pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies, artificial intelligence companies (including a company called Aganitha AI and Coreweave), as well as health insurance companies and marketing companies. Shortly before the filing, California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued an "urgent" alert to 23andMe customers: "Given 23andMe's reported financial distress, I remind Californians to consider invoking their rights and directing 23andMe to delete their data and destroy any samples of genetic material held by the company." In a letter to customers Sunday, 23andMe said: "Your data remains protected. The Chapter 11 filing does not change how we store, manage, or protect customer data. Our users' privacy and data are important considerations in any transaction, and we remain committed to our users' privacy and to being transparent with our customers about how their data is managed." It added that any buyer will have to "comply with applicable law with respect to the treatment of customer data." 404 Media's Jason Koebler notes that "there's no way of knowing who is going to buy it, why they will be interested, and what will become of its millions of customers' DNA sequences. 23andMe has claimed over the years that it strongly resists law enforcement requests for information and that it takes customer security seriously. But the company has in recent years changed its terms of service, partnered with big pharmaceutical companies, and, of course, was hacked."

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CERN faces a pivotal decision about its future as the Large Hadron Collider approaches the end of its usefulness by the early 2040s. Management proposes building the Future Circular Collider (FCC), a machine with a 90-kilometer circumference that would smash particles at eight times the energy of the LHC. This hugely consequential plan faces significant challenges. Much of the required technology doesn't exist yet, including superconducting magnets strong enough to bend high-energy particle beams. The project also lacks the clear rationale that the LHC had in finding the Higgs boson. The proposal has divided physicists. Critics worry about the decades-long timeline, potential cost overruns, and the risk of sacrificing other valuable CERN activities. Germany, which provides 20% of the lab's budget, has already indicated it won't increase contributions. A council-appointed group is now gathering input from the physics community before making recommendations in December. Nature's editorial board adds: Unless some nations step up with a major infusion of cash, the FCC faces an uncertain prospect of being funded. But waiting too long could mean that there will be a large gap between the new facility opening and the closure of the LHC, and precious expertise could end up being lost. Although physicists might disagree on what CERN should do, they nearly unanimously care about the lab's future. They and their leaders must now make the case for why European taxpayers, who fund most of the lab's yearly budget should care, too. The stakes are beyond science, and even beyond Europe.

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Valve's early anti-piracy efforts, which eventually led to the Steam platform, were sparked by co-founder Monica Harrington's nephew using her money to buy a CD burner for copying games, she revealed at last week's Game Developers Conference. Harrington said her nephew's "lovely thank you note" about sharing games with friends represented a "generational shift" in piracy attitudes that could "put our entire business model at risk." Half-Life subsequently launched with CD key verification in 1998. When players complained about authentication failures, co-founder Mike Harrington discovered "none of them had actually bought the game," confirming the system worked. Although easily bypassed, this early protection influenced Steam's more robust DRM implemented with Half-Life 2 in 2004, which became the industry standard for PC game distribution.

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"There's no shortage of videos showing Steam running on expensive ARM single-board computers with discrete GPUs," writes Slashdot reader VennStone. "So I thought it would be worthwhile to make a guide for doing it on (relatively) inexpensive RK3588-powered single-board computers, using Box86/64 and Armbian." The guides I came across were out of date, had a bunch of extra steps thrown in, or were outright incorrect... Up first, we need to add the Box86 and Box64 ARM repositories [along with dependencies, ARMHF architecture, and the Mesa graphics driver]... The guide closes with a multi-line script and advice to "Just close your eyes and run this. It's not pretty, but it will download the Steam Debian package, extract the needed bits, and set up a launch script." (And then the final step is sudo reboot now.) "At this point, all you have to do is open a terminal, type 'steam', and tap Enter. You'll have about five minutes to wait... Check out the video to see how some of the tested games perform." At 720p, performance is all over the place, but the games I tested typically managed to stay above 30 FPS. This is better than I was expecting from a four-year-old SOC emulating x86 titles under ARM. Is this a practical way to play your Steam games? Nope, not even a little bit. For now, this is merely an exercise in ludicrous neatness. Things might get a wee bit better, considering Collabora is working on upstream support for RK3588 and Valve is up to something ARM-related, but ya know, "Valve Time"... "You might be tempted to enable Steam Play for your Windows games, but don't waste your time. I mean, you can try, but it ain't gonna work."

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Today long-time open source advocate/journalist Doc Searls revealed that years of work by consumer privacy groups has culminated in a proposed standard "that can vastly expand our agency in the digital world" — especially in a future world where agents surf the web on our behalf: Meet IEEE P7012 , which "identifies/addresses the manner in which personal privacy terms are proffered and how they can be read and agreed to by machines." It has been in the works since 2017, and should be ready later this year. (I say this as chair of the standard's working group.) The nickname for P7012 is MyTerms (much as the nickname for the IEEE's 802.11 standard is Wi-Fi). The idea behind MyTerms is that the sites and services of the world should agree to your terms, rather than the other way around. Basically your web browser proffers whatever agreement you've chosen (from a canonical list hosted at Customer Commons) to the web sites and other online services that you're visiting. "Browser makers can build something into their product, or any developer can make a browser add-on or extension..." Searls writes. "On the site's side — the second-party side — CMS makers can build something in, or any developer can make a plug-in (WordPress) or a module (Drupal). Mobile app toolmakers can also come up with something (or many things)..." MyTerms creates a new regime for privacy: one based on contract. With each MyTerm you are the first party. Not the website, the service, or the app maker. They are the second party. And terms can be friendly. For example, a prototype term called NoStalking says "Just show me ads not based on tracking me." This is good for you, because you don't get tracked, and good for the site because it leaves open the advertising option. NoStalking lives at Customer Commons, much as personal copyrights live at Creative Commons. (Yes, the former is modeled on the latter.) "[L]et's make this happen and show the world what agency really means," Searls concludes. Another way to say it is they've created "a draft standard for machine-readable personal privacy terms." But Searl's article used a grander metaphor to explain its significance: When Archimedes said 'Give me a place to stand and I can move the world,' he was talking about agency. You have no agency on the Web if you are always the second party, agreeing to terms and policies set by websites. You are Archimedes if you are the first party, setting your own terms and policies. The scale you get with those is One 2 World. The place you stand is on the Web itself — and the Internet below it. Both were designed to make each of us an Archimedes.

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The latest Facebook whistleblower, a former international lawyer, "cannot grant any of the nearly 100 interview requests she has received from journalists from print and broadcast news outlets in the United States and the United Kingdom," reports the Washington Post (citing "a person familiar with the matter"). That's because of an independent arbiter's ruling that "also bars her from talking with lawmakers in the U.S., London and the EU, according to a legal challenge she lodged against the ruling..." On March 12, an emergency arbiter — a dispute resolution option outside the court system — sided with Meta by ruling that the tech giant might reasonably convince a court that Wynn-Williams broke a non-disparagement agreement she entered as she was being fired by the company in 2017. The arbiter also said that while her publisher Macmillan appeared for the hearing on Meta's motion, Wynn-Williams did not despite having received due notice. The arbiter did not make any assessments about the book's veracity, but Meta spokespeople argued that the ruling meant that "Sarah Wynn Williams' false and defamatory book should never have been published." Wynn-Williams this week filed an emergency motion to overturn the ruling, arguing that she didn't receive proper notice of the arbitration proceedings to the email accounts Meta knows she uses, according to a copy of the motion seen by The Post. Wynn-Williams further alleged that her severance agreement including the non-disparagement provisions are unenforceable, arguing that it violates laws that protect whistleblowers from retaliation, among other points. In a statement, legal representatives for Wynn-Williams said they were "confident in the legal arguments and look forward to a swift restoration of Ms. Wynn-Williams' right to tell her story." That book — Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism — is currently #1 on the New York Times best-seller list (and #3 on Amazon.com's best-selling books list). And the incident prompted an article by Wired editor at large Steven Levy titled "Meta Tries to Bury a Tell-All Book." ("Please pause for a moment to savor the irony," Levy writes. "Meta, the company that recently announced an end to fact-checking in posts seen by potentially millions of people, is griping that an author didn't fact-check with them?") And this led to a heated exchange on X.com between the Wired editor at large and Meta's Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bozworth: Steven Levy: Meta probably realizes that all-out war on this book will only help its sales. But they are furious that an insider--who signed an NDA!--is going White Lotus on them, showing what it's like on the inside. Meta CTO Bozworth: Except that it is full of lies, Steven. Shame on you. Steven Levy: Boz, it would be helpful if Meta called out what it believes are the factual inaccuracies, especially in cases where it calls the book "defamatory." Meta CTO Bozworth: Sorry you don't get to make up a bunch of stories and then put the burden on the person you lied about. Read the accounts from former employees who have gone through several of the anecdotes and said flatly they did not happen as written and then extrapolate. Steven Levy: I would love for Sheryl, Mark and Joel to speak out on those anecdotes and give their sides of the story. They are the key subjects of those stories and their direct denial of specific incidents would matter. Meta CTO Bozworth: Did you read what I wrote? I'm sure you would love to have more fuel for your "nobody wants you to read this" headline, but that's a total bullshit expectation. It isn't unreasonable to expect a journalist like you to do basic diligence. I'm sure you have our comms email! Steven Levy: Believe me I was in touch with your comms people...

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In 30 minutes the Free Software Foundation holds a live auction of memorabilia to celebrate their upcoming 40th anniversary. "By moving out of the FSF office, we got to sort through all the fun and historically important memorabilia and selected the best ones," they announced earlier — and 25 items will up for bids. (To participate in the live auction, you must register in advance.) "This is your chance to get your very own personal souvenir of the FSF," explains an 11-page auction booklet, "from original GNU art to a famous katana and the Internet Hall of Fame medal of the FSF's founder." That's right... a katana. Once upon a time, this 41-inch blade turned heads at the FSF's tech team office. Donated by FSF friends and fans of the XKCD webcomic #225, it became a lighthearted "weapon" in the war for user freedom. As RMS himself is anti-violence, he made a silly joke by examining the katana closely instead of brandishing it, symbolizing that software freedom can be defended with wit. In a legendary photo, this was perceived as if he sniffed the blade. Between the etched dragon on the scabbard and the wavy hamon on the blade, it's as flashy as it is symbolic — especially if you like taking on proprietary software with style (and a dash of humor). The auction is intended "to entrust some of the historically important free software memorabilia that were in the FSF's office and archive to the free software community instead of locking them away in a storage unit where no one can enjoy them. "Hopefully, this way some of these unique items will be displayed in galleries or on the walls of free software enthusiasts. All auction proceeds will go towards the FSF's mission to promote computer user freedom." And speaking of user freedom, here's how they described the Internet Hall of Fame medal: When Richard M. Stallman, the founder of the FSF, was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame, it was the ultimate nod to free software's immense impact on the Internet... The medal is shiny, and the frame is fancy, but the real radiance is the recognition that the Internet might look much more locked down and dull without those original free software seeds. Hang it on your wall, and you'll be reminded that hacking for user freedom can change the world.

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Reuters reported this week that several U.S. national security agencies "have halted work on a coordinated effort to counter Russian sabotage, disinformation and cyberattacks..." The plan was led by the president's National Security Council (NSC) and involved at least seven national security agencies working with European allies to disrupt plots targeting Europe and the United States, seven former officials who participated in the working groups told Reuters... [S]ince Trump took office on January 20 much of the work has come to a standstill, according to eleven current and former officials, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss classified matters... Regular meetings between the National Security Council and European national security officials have gone unscheduled, and the NSC has also stopped formally coordinating efforts across U.S. agencies... The FBI last month ended an effort to counter interference in U.S. elections by foreign adversaries including Russia and put on leave staff working on the issue at the Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Justice also disbanded a team that seized the assets of Russian oligarchs... Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Reuters the agency had placed on administrative leave personnel working on misinformation and disinformation on its election security team, without elaborating further.

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