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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: San Francisco startup Based Hardware announced during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week the launch of a new AI wearable, Omi, to boost productivity. The device can be worn as a necklace where Omi's AI assistant can be activated by saying "Hey Omi." The startup also claims Omi can be attached to the side of your head, using medical tape, using a "brain interface" to understand when you're talking to it. The startup's founder, Nik Shevchenko, started marketing this device on Kickstarter as "Friend," but changed the device's name after another San Francisco hardware maker launched his own Friend device and bought the domain name for $1.8 million. Shevchenko, a Thiel fellow with a history of eye-grabbing stunts, is taking a slightly different approach with Omi. Instead of seeing the device as a smartphone replacement or an AI companion, he wants Omi to be a complementary device to your phone that boosts your productivity. The Omi device itself is a small, round orb that looks like it fell out of a pack of Mentos. The consumer version costs $89 and will start shipping in Q2 of 2025. However, you can order a developer version for delivery today for roughly $70. Based Hardware says the Omi device can answer your questions, summarize your conversations, create to-do lists, and help schedule meetings. The device is constantly listening and running your conversations through GPT-4o, and it also can remember the context about each user to offer personalized advice. In an interview with TechCrunch, Shevchenko says he understands that there may be privacy concerns with a device that's always listening. That's why he built Omi on an open source platform where users can see where their data is going, or choose to store it locally. Omi's open source platform also allows developers to build their own applications or use the AI model of their choice. Shevchenko says developers have already created more than 250 apps on Omi's app store. [...] It's unclear if the "brain interface" of Omi actually works, but the startup is tackling a fairly simple use case to start. Shevchenko wants his device to understand whether a user is talking to Omi or not, without using one of its wake words.

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Microsoft temporarily rolled back its Bing Image Creator upgrade from OpenAI's DALL-E 3 PR16 to the previous PR13 version after users reported degraded image quality, including cartoonish and "lifeless" results. TechCrunch reports: Ahead of the holidays, Microsoft said it was upgrading the AI model behind Bing Image Creator, the AI-powered image editing tool built into the company's Bing search engine. Microsoft promised that the new model -- the latest version of OpenAI's DALL-E 3 model, code-named PR16 -- would allow users to create images "twice as fast as before" with "higher quality." But it didn't deliver. Complaints quickly flooded X and Reddit. "The DALL-E we used to love is gone forever," said one Redditor. "I'm using ChatGPT now because Bing has become useless for me," wrote another. The blowback was such that Microsoft said it'll restore the previous model to Bing Image Creator until it can address the issues. "We've been able to [reproduce] some of the issues reported, and plan to revert to [DALL-E 3] PR13 until we can fix them," Jordi Ribas, head of search at Microsoft, said in a post on X Tuesday evening. "The deployment process is very slow unfortunately. It started over a week ago and will take 2-3 more weeks to get to 100%."

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TikTok has been pushing the platform's sister app, Lemon8, encouraging users to migrate via sponsored posts amid a looming ban. Axios reports: In the last few weeks, Lemon8 has been promoting its app to TikTok users through sponsored TikTok videos. In one sponsored post, TikTok user @miller.dailylife shares a video with a creator saying, "TikTok actually has another backup app. It's called Lemon8 ... and it automatically signs you in with your TikTok so you can still keep the same TikTok name and things like that. And it's supposed to transfer your followers over. ... Once you add Lemon8, it automatically pops up on your TikTok bio, so that people can just click on it. So, just so you guys know, now that they're trying to do this ban, if you want to have somewhere else to go where the government is not 100% controlling what we see, what we consume ... Just go ahead and go on to Lemon8." In November, TikTok began informing users of its sister app, Lemon8, that beginning late that month Lemon8 would be powered by TikTok, and their TikTok usernames would also be used on Lemon8. "Some of your data on TikTok will be used to power services on lemon8," the notice says. "Your Lemon8 profile link will be shown to your TikTok profile publicly by default," it continues. "You can choose not to show it by editing your TikTok profile." Last March, Lemon8 jumped into the U.S. App Store's Top 10 list shortly after it launched in the U.S. It currently ranks as one of the top-ranking free apps on Apple's app store. The report notes that the TikTok ban law also applies to other apps owned by TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance, like Lemon8. "ByteDance could be betting that regulators and app store companies are so focused on TikTok that they won't pay attention to its other apps," says Axios.

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BleepingComputer's Sergiu Gatlan reports: "Today, the White House announced the launch of the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, a new cybersecurity safety label for internet-connected consumer devices. The Cyber Trust Mark label, which will appear on smart products sold in the United States later this year, will help American consumers determine whether the devices they want to buy are safe to install in their homes. It's designed for consumer smart devices, such as home security cameras, TVs, internet-connected appliances, fitness trackers, climate control systems, and baby monitors, and it signals that the internet-connected device comes with a set of security features approved by NIST. Vendors will label their products with the Cyber Trust Mark logo if they meet the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity criteria. These criteria include using unique and strong default passwords, software updates, data protection, and incident detection capabilities. Consumers can scan the QR code included next to the Cyber Trust Mark labels for additional security information, such as instructions on changing the default password, steps for securely configuring the device, details on automatic updates (including how to access them if they are not automatic), the product's minimum support period, and a notification if the manufacturer does not offer updates for the device. "Americans are worried about the rise of criminals remotely hacking into home security systems to unlock doors, or malicious attackers tapping into insecure home cameras to illicitly record conversations," the Biden administration said on Tuesday. "The White House launched this bipartisan effort to educate American consumers and give them an easy way to assess the cybersecurity of such products, as well as incentivize companies to produce more cybersecure devise [sic], much as EnergyStar labels did for energy efficiency.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The Nobel peace prize winner Maria Ressa has said Meta's decision to end factchecking on its platforms and remove restrictions on certain topics means "extremely dangerous times" lie ahead for journalism, democracy and social media users. The American-Filipino journalist said Mark Zuckerberg's move to relax content moderation on the Facebook and Instagram platforms would lead to a "world without facts" and that was "a world that's right for a dictator." "Mark Zuckerberg says it's a free speech issue -- that's completely wrong," Ressa told the AFP news service. "Only if you're profit-driven can you claim that; only if you want power and money can you claim that. This is about safety." Ressa, a co-founder of the Rappler news site, won the Nobel peace prize in 2021 in recognition of her "courageous fight for freedom of expression." She faced multiple criminal charges and investigations after publishing stories critical of the former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. Ressa rejected Zuckerberg's claim that factcheckers had been "too politically biased" and had "destroyed more trust than they've created." "Journalists have a set of standards and ethics," Ressa said. "What Facebook is going to do is get rid of that and then allow lies, anger, fear and hate to infect every single person on the platform." The decision meant "extremely dangerous times ahead" for journalism, democracy and social media users, she said. [...] Ressa said she would do everything she could to "ensure information integrity." "This is a pivotal year for journalism survival," she said. "We'll do all we can to make sure that happens."

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Telegram's Transparency Report reveals a sharp increase in U.S. government data requests, with 900 fulfilled requests affecting 2,253 users. "The news shows a massive spike in the number of data requests fulfilled by Telegram after French authorities arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in August, in part because of the company's unwillingness to provide user data in a child abuse investigation," notes 404 Media. From the report: Between January 1 and September 30, 2024, Telegram fulfilled 14 requests "for IP addresses and/or phone numbers" from the United States, which affected a total of 108 users, according to Telegram's Transparency Reports bot. But for the entire year of 2024, it fulfilled 900 requests from the U.S. affecting a total of 2,253 users, meaning that the number of fulfilled requests skyrocketed between October and December, according to the newly released data. "Fulfilled requests from the United States of America for IP address and/or phone number: 900," Telegram's Transparency Reports bot said when prompted for the latest report by 404 Media. "Affected users: 2253," it added. A month after Durov's arrest in August, Telegram updated its privacy policy to say that the company will provide user data, including IP addresses and phone numbers, to law enforcement agencies in response to valid legal orders. Up until then, the privacy policy only mentioned it would do so when concerning terror cases, and said that such a disclosure had never happened anyway. Even though the data technically covers the entire of 2024, the jump from a total of 108 affected users in October to 2253 as of now, indicates that the vast majority of fulfilled data requests were in the last quarter of 2024, showing a huge increase in the number of law enforcement requests that Telegram completed. You can access the platform's transparency reports here.

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The Register's Connor Jones reports: Marc Rogers, DEF CON's head of security, faces tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills following an accident that left him with a broken neck and temporary quadriplegia. The prominent industry figure, whose work has spanned roles at tech companies such as Vodafone and Okta, including ensuring the story lines on Mr Robot and The Real Hustle were factually sound, is recovering in hospital. [...] Rogers said it will be around four to six weeks before he returns to basic independence and is able to travel, but a full recovery will take up to six months. He begins a course of physical therapy today, but his insurance will only cover the first of three required weeks, prompting friends to set up a fundraiser to cover the difference. Rogers has an impressive cyber CV. Beginning life in cybersecurity back in the '80s when he went by the handle Cjunky, he has gone on to assume various high profile roles in the industry. In addition to the decade leading Vodafone UK's cybersecurity and being the VP of cybersecurity strategy at Okta, as already mentioned, Rogers has also worked as head of security at Cloudflare and founded Vectra, among other experiences. Now he heads up security at DEF CON, is a member of the Ransomware Taskforce, and is the co-founder and CTO at AI observability startup nbhd.ai. If you hadn't heard of him from any of these roles, or from his work in the entertainment biz, he's also known for his famous research into Apple's Touch ID sensor, which he was able to compromise on both the iPhone 5S and 6 during his time as principal researcher at Lookout. Other consumer-grade kit to get the Rogers treatment include the short-lived Google Glass devices, also while he was at Lookout, and the Tesla Model S back in 2015. "It's a sad fact that in the US GoFundMe has become the de facto standard for covering insurance shortfalls," Rogers said. "I will be forever grateful to my friends who stood it up for me and those who donated to it so that I can resume making bad guys cry as soon as feasibly possible." The cybersecurity community has rallied together to support Rogers' fundraiser, which has accrued over $83,000 in donations. The goal is $100,000.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T, following last year's embarrassing botched update that kicked every device off its wireless network and blocked over 92 million phone calls, is now promising full-day bill credits to mobile customers for future outages that last at least 60 minutes and meet certain other criteria. A similar promise is being made to fiber customers for unplanned outages lasting at least 20 minutes, but only if the customer uses an AT&T-provided gateway. The "AT&T Guarantee" announced today has caveats that can make it possible for a disruption to not be covered. AT&T says the promised mobile bill credits are "for wireless downtime lasting 60 minutes or more caused by a single incident impacting 10 or more towers." The full-day bill credits do not include a prorated amount for the taxes and fees imposed on a monthly bill. The "bill credit will be calculated using the daily rate customer is charged for wireless service only (excludes taxes, fees, device payments, and any add-on services," AT&T said. If an outage lasts more than 24 hours, a customer will receive another full-day bill credit for each additional day. If only nine or fewer AT&T towers aren't functioning, a customer won't get a credit even if they lose service for an hour. The guarantee kicks in when a "minimum 10 towers [are] out for 60 or more minutes resulting from a single incident," and the customer "was connected to an impacted tower at the time the outage occurs," and "loses service for at least 60 consecutive minutes as a result of the outage." The guarantee "excludes events beyond the control of AT&T, including but not limited to, natural disasters, weather-related events, or outages caused by third parties." AT&T says it will determine "in its sole discretion" whether the disruption is "a qualifying" network outage. "Consumers will automatically receive a bill credit equaling a full day of service and we'll reach out to our small business customers with options to help make it right," AT&T said. When there's an outage, AT&T said it will "notify you via e-mail or SMS to inform you that you've been impacted. Once the interruption has been resolved, we'll contact you with details about your bill credit." If AT&T fails to provide the promised credit for any reason, customers will have to call AT&T or visit an AT&T store. To qualify for the similar fiber-outage promise, "customers must use AT&T-provided gateways," the firm said. There are other caveats that can prevent a home Internet customer from getting a bill credit. AT&T said the fiber-outage promise "excludes events beyond the control of AT&T, including but not limited to, natural disasters, weather-related events, loss of service due to downed or cut cable wires at a customer residence, issues with wiring inside customer residence, and power outages at customer premises. Also excludes outages resulting from planned maintenance." AT&T notes that some residential fiber customers in multi-dwelling units "have an account with AT&T but are not billed by AT&T for Internet service." In the case of outages, these customers would not get bill credits but would be given the option to redeem a reward card that's valued at $5 or more.

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Indonesia will continue to block iPhone 16 sales despite Apple's planned $1 billion AirTag factory investment, as the facility does not meet local content requirements for smartphones, Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita said on Wednesday. Indonesia banned iPhone 16 sales last year after Apple failed to meet rules requiring 35% locally-made components in smartphones sold domestically.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: It looks like Samsung is finally ready to roll out a paid subscription for its AI-powered smartphones, but it might not look like what we were expecting. According to ETNews, Samsung Electronics vice chair Han Jong-hee has confirmed that the company's AI Subscription Club, which launched last December for some of Samsung's home appliances in South Korea, will soon roll out to both Galaxy phones and the upcoming Ballie AI robot. "We will apply the subscription service to Galaxy smartphones starting next month," he says. "Ballie will be introduced first in Korea and the US, and we plan to supply it as a subscription in Korea."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: As music sales and streaming revenue reaches a high of $3 billion -- the highest since 2001, not accounting for significant inflation -- the UK video game market, which has grown almost continually for decades, has shrunk by 4.4%. The most significant decline was in boxed video game sales, down 35%. Data from Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA) puts the total worth of the UK video game market in 2024 at $5.7 billion, double the music market and behind TV and movies at $6.2 billion. The numbers show a shift in players' purchasing habits that has been ongoing for years, from physical games to digital downloads and in-game purchases in popular, established games such as Fortnite and Roblox. Boxed games now account for 27.7% of new game sales in the UK, according to ERA data.

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Microsoft will begin enforcing storage limits on unlicensed OneDrive accounts from January 27, 2025, ending a loophole that allowed organizations to retain departed employees' data without cost. Data from accounts unlicensed for over 93 days will move to recycle bins for another 93 days before permanent deletion, unless under retention policies. Archived data retrieval will cost $0.60 per gigabyte plus $0.05 monthly per gigabyte. Organizations must either retrieve data, add licenses, or risk losing access, Microsoft has warned.

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The Japanese government published an alert on Wednesday accusing a Chinese hacking group of targeting and breaching dozens of government organizations, companies, and individuals in the country since 2019. From a report: Japan's National Police Agency and the National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity attributed the years-long hacking spree to a group called MirrorFace. "The MirrorFace attack campaign is an organized cyber attack suspected to be linked to China, with the primary objective of stealing information related to Japan's national security and advanced technology," the authorities wrote in the alert, according to a machine translation. A longer version of the alert said the targets included Japan's Foreign and Defense ministries, the country's space agency, as well as politicians, journalists, private companies and tech think tanks, according to the Associated Press. In July 2024 Japan's Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) wrote in a blog post that MirrorFace's "targets were initially media, political organisations, think tanks and universities, but it has shifted to manufacturers and research institutions since 2023."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The six biggest banks in the US have all quit the global banking industry's net zero target-setting group, with the imminent inauguration of Donald Trump as president expected to bring political backlash against climate action. JP Morgan is the latest to withdraw from the UN-sponsored net zero banking alliance (NZBA), following Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs. All six have left since the start of December. Analysts have said the withdrawals are an attempt to head off "anti-woke" attacks from rightwing US politicians, which are expected to escalate when Trump is sworn in as the country's 47th president in just under a fortnight. Trump's vows to deregulate the energy sector, dismantle environmental rules and "drill, baby, drill," were a big part of his campaign platform and are expected to form a key part of his blueprint for governing the US, the world's biggest oil and gas producer.

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Version:next-20250108 (linux-next) Released:2025-01-08

America's aging elevators are facing significant repair delays and rising costs, creating accessibility challenges and leaving vulnerable populations stranded. Experts argue that implementing federal standards and modernizing systems could address these issues. However, fixing the nation's approximately one million elevators is "becoming a heavy lift," reports Axios. From the report: America's aging elevators are time-consuming and costly to fix. The workforce of technicians who know how to fix them is aging. And buildings with elevators in need of repair often need to wait ages for replacement parts due to arcane supply-chain issues. [...] Elevator parts shortages appear to stem largely from two issues: Parts suppliers often prioritize their biggest customers, which in this case happens to be builders in China, where the vast majority of the world's new elevators are installed, according to [Stephen Smith, executive director of the Center for Building in North America]. And parts are often no longer available for aging -- and often obsolete -- elevators, meaning they often have to be custom made. "In some cases, the entire elevator system may need to be modernized or replaced, leading to substantial costs and potential disruptions to building operations," an advisory called The Elevator Consultants reports. A patchwork of state regulations and union rules make it laborious for building owners and contractors to comply with current standards, according to Smith. who said the U.S. would benefit from federal elevator standards. "The feds have not involved themselves in regulations of the construction industry since Reagan took an axe to it in the 1980s," Smith said. The good news is that "about 80 percent of reliability issues can be solved by replacing the doors," Joseph Bera, at VP at Schindler Elevators, tells commercial real estate publication Propmodo.

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Microsoft plans to invest $3 billion to expand its artificial intelligence and cloud Azure services in India, turning to the world's most populous nation to fuel its revenue growth engine. From a report: The firm, which has been operating in India for more than two decades, will also train an additional 10 million people in the country with AI, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at an event in Bengaluru Tuesday. "The investments in infrastructure and skilling we are announcing today reaffirm our commitment to making India AI-first, and will help ensure people and organizations across the country benefit broadly," said Nadella. "The diffusion rate of AI in India is exciting." India is a key overseas market for American tech giants that have poured tens of billions of dollars in building and scaling their operations in the South Asian market over the past two decades as they work to court businesses serving hundreds of millions of users.

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Before NASA Administrator Bill Nelson retires in a couple of weeks, he has one final message for the next administration: Don't give up on the agency's Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon. In an interview with Ars Technica's Eric Berger, Nelson discussed his time in office, the major decisions he made, and his concerns for the space agency's future under the Trump administration. Here's an excerpt from the interview: Ars: I wanted to start with the state of Artemis. You all had an event a few weeks ago where you talked about Artemis II and Artemis III delays. And you know, both those missions have slipped a couple of years now since you've been administrator. So I'm just wondering, do you know how confident we should be in the current timeline? Bill Nelson: Well, I am very confident because this most recent [delay] was occasioned by virtue of the heat shield, and it has been unanimous after all of the testing that they understand what happened to Orion's heat shield. The chunks came off in an irregular pattern from the Artemis I heat shield. With the change in the re-entry profile, they are unanimous in their recommendation that we can go with the Artemis II heat shield as it is. And I must say that of the major decisions that I've made, that was an easy one for me because it was unanimous. When I say it was unanimous, it was unanimous in the IRT, the independent review team, headed by Paul Hill. It wasn't to begin with, but after all the extensive testing, everybody was on board. It was unanimous in the deputy's committee. It was unanimous in the agency committee, and that brought it to me then in the Executive Council, and it was unanimous there. So I'm very confident that you're going to see Artemis II fly on or around April of 2026, and then if the SpaceX lander is ready, and that, of course, is a big if -- but they have met all of their milestones, and we'll see what happens on this next test... If they are ready, I think it is very probable that we will see the lunar landing in the summer of 2027. Ars: Do you think it's appropriate for the next administration to review the Artemis Program? Bill Nelson: Are you implying that Artemis should be canceled? Ars: No. I don't think Artemis will be canceled in the main. But I do think they're going to take a look at the way the missions are done at the architecture. I know NASA just went through that process with Orion's heat shield. Bill Nelson: Well, I think questioning what you're doing clearly is always an issue that ought to be on the table. But do I think that they are going to cancel, as some of the chatter out there suggests, and replace SLS with Starship? The answer is no. Ars: Why? Bill Nelson: Put yourself in the place of President Trump. Do you think President Trump would like to have a conversation with American astronauts on the surface of the Moon during his tenure? Ars: Of course. Bill Nelson: OK, let me ask you another question. Do you think that President Trump would rather have a conversation with American astronauts during his tenure rather than listening to the comments of Chinese astronauts on the Moon during his tenure? My case is closed, your Honor, I submit it to the jury. Further reading: Elon Musk: 'We're Going Straight to Mars. The Moon is a Distraction.'

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Version:next-20250107 (linux-next) Released:2025-01-07

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: John Deere is going all in on autonomous tractors. The company, which first introduced a driverless vehicle in 2022, said self-driving machines will revolutionize the field and address labor shortages. It will soon be selling self-driving dump trucks, more driverless tractors, and a robot lawn mower. "When we talk about autonomy, we mean full autonomy," Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer at John Deere, said at CES on Monday, according to The Verge. "No one's in the machine." Hindman said the company wants "more of our machines to safely run autonomously in these unique and complex environments that our customers work in every day." John Deere says many farmers in the states currently utilize the first model of its driverless tractor, The Verge reported. "Those tractors are already being used by farmers to prepare the soil for planting in the next year," Hindman said. By 2030, the company is hoping to sell a fully self-driving corn and soybean farming system. Between now and then, John Deere says its articulated dump truck will hit the market. That vehicle can carry more than 92,000 pounds at a time, The Verge reported, and the company says it will improve safety and productivity in sites like quarries. "It's unsupervised, it's capable of making decisions and operating safely on its own," Maya Sripadam, senior product manager of John Deere's subsidiary Blue River Technology, said. John Deere also plans to release driverless tractors that can spray nut orchards with pesticides, growth regulators, and nutrients for the trees. It thinks those vehicles will have a particular benefit to the California nut farming industry, which has faced labor shortages. [...] John Deere hasn't said how much the vehicles will cost. Further reading: Software Fees To Make Up 10% of John Deere's Revenues By 2030

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