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OpenAI is always making slight adjustments to its models and pricing, and today brings just such an occasion. From a report: The company has released a handful of new models and dropped the price of API access -- this is primarily of interest to developers, but also serves as a bellwether for future consumer options. GPT-3.5 Turbo is the model most people interact with, usually through ChatGPT, and it serves as a kind of industry standard now -- if your answers aren't as good as ChatGPT's, why bother? It's also a popular API, being lower cost and faster than GPT-4 on a lot of tasks. So paying users will be pleased to hear that input prices are dropping by 50% and output by 25%, to $0.0005 per thousand tokens in, and $0.0015 per thousand tokens out. As people play with using these APIs for text-intensive applications, like analyzing entire papers or books, those tokens really start to add up. And as open source or self-managed models catch up to OpenAI's performance, the company needs to make sure its customers don't just leave. Hence the steady ratcheting down of prices -- though it's also a natural result of streamlining the models and improving their infrastructure.

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Cruise, the driverless car subsidiary of General Motors, said in a report on Thursday that an adversarial approach taken (non-paywalled link) by its top executives toward regulators had led to a cascade of events that ended with a nationwide suspension of Cruise's fleet. From a report: The roughly 100-page report was compiled by a law firm that Cruise hired to investigate whether its executives had misled California regulators about an October crash in San Francisco in which a Cruise vehicle dragged a woman 20 feet. The investigation found that while the executives had not intentionally misled state officials, they had failed to explain key details about the incident. In meetings with regulators, the executives let a video of the crash "speak for itself" rather than fully explain how one of its vehicles severely injured the pedestrian. The executives later fixated on protecting Cruise's reputation rather than giving a full account of the accident to the public and media, according to the report, which was written by the Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan law firm. The company said that the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission were investigating the incident, as well as state agencies and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The report is central to Cruise's efforts to regain the public's trust and eventually restart its business. Cruise has been largely shut down since October, when the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended its license to operate because its vehicles were unsafe. It responded by pulling its driverless cars off the road across the country, laying off a quarter of its staff and replacing Kyle Vogt, its co-founder and chief executive, who resigned in November, with new leaders.

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The Federal Trade Commission launched an inquiry (non-paywalled link) on Thursday into the multibillion-dollar investments by Microsoft, Amazon and Google in the artificial intelligence start-ups OpenAI and Anthropic, broadening the regulator's efforts to corral the power the tech giants can have over A.I. The New York Times: These deals have allowed the big companies to form deep ties with their smaller rivals while dodging most government scrutiny. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, while Amazon and Google have each committed billions of dollars to Anthropic, another leading A.I. start-up. Regulators have typically focused on bringing antitrust lawsuits against deals where the tech giants are buying rivals outright or using acquisitions to expand into new businesses, leading to increased prices and other harm, and have not regularly challenged stakes that the companies buy in start-ups. The F.T.C.'s inquiry will examine how these investment deals alter the competitive landscape and could inform any investigations by federal antitrust regulators into whether the deals have broken laws. The F.T.C. said it would ask Microsoft, OpenAI, Amazon, Google and Anthropic to describe their influence over their partners and how they worked together to make decisions. It also said it would demand that they provide any internal documents that could shed light on the deals and their potential impact on competition.

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PlayStation 5 system update blocks Cronus Zen controller adapter. The $100+ device promises controller compatibility but also enables gameplay "amplification." Sony crackdown follows concerns over GamePacks providing unfair advantages in Call of Duty and other online multiplayer titles. Cronus admits no timeframe for a fix. Workaround requires avoiding update or using Remote Play.

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Starting today Apple is opening up its App Store to allow game streaming apps and services. From a report: This means that services like Xbox Cloud Streaming and GeForce Now, which previously were only accessible on iOS via a web browser, will be able to offer full-featured apps. "Developers can now submit a single app with the capability to stream all of the games offered in their catalog," Apple wrote in a blog post. These changes apply "worldwide," according to the company. In 2020, Apple appeared to have carved out a space for these cloud gaming services in the App Store. But that turned out not to be the case, as all games available through each service had to be submitted and reviewed as a standalone app. So the shift to allow one app with a large catalog of games marks a major change. As part of today's announcement, Apple said that "each experience made available in an app on the App Store will be required to adhere to all App Store Review Guidelines and its host app will need to maintain an age rating of the highest age-rated content included in the app." Apple also says that developers will now "be able to provide enhanced discovery opportunities for streaming games, mini-apps, mini-games, chatbots, and plug-ins that are found within their apps," and that "mini-apps, mini-games, chatbots, and plug-ins will be able to incorporate Apple's In-App Purchase system to offer their users paid digital content or services for the first time, such as a subscription for an individual chatbot."

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The iPhone's app ecosystem is about to go through its biggest shake-up since the App Store launched in 2008. Today, Apple announced how it plans to change the rules for developers releasing iOS software in the European Union in response to the bloc's Digital Markets Act (DMA) coming into force in March. The big news is that third-party app stores will be allowed on iOS for the first time, breaking the Apple App Store's position as the sole distributor of iPhone apps. The changes will arrive with iOS 17.4 in March. From a report: Here's how the new "alternative app marketplaces," as Apple called them, will work. Users in the EU and on iOS 17.4 will be able to download a marketplace from that marketplace's website. In order to be used on an iPhone, those marketplaces have to go through Apple's approval process, and once you download one, you have to explicitly give it permission to download apps to your device. But once the marketplace is approved and on your device, you can download anything you want -- including apps that violate App Store guidelines. You can even set a non-App Store marketplace as the default on your device. Developers, meanwhile, can choose whether to use Apple's payment services and in-app purchases or integrate a third-party system for payments without paying an additional fee to Apple. If the developer wants to stick with Apple's existing in-app payment system, there's an additional 3 percent processing fee. Apple still plans to keep a close eye on the app distribution process. All apps must be "notarized" by Apple, and distribution through third-party marketplaces is still managed by Apple's systems. Developers will only be allowed to distribute a single version of their app across different app stores, and they'll still have to abide by some basic platform requirements, like getting scanned for malware. Apple says that anyone looking to develop an alternative app marketplace will have to provide evidence that it can financially "guarantee support for developers and customers." Apple wants "a stand-by letter of credit from an A-rated (or equivalent by S&P, Fitch, or Moody's) financial Institution of 1 million Euro prior to receiving the entitlement. It will need to be auto-renewed on a yearly basis."

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When is cancer not cancer? It's an unexpected question that has stirred the world of cancer treatment in recent years, most notably now with prostate cancer. WSJ: A growing number of doctors are advocating what might seem like an unusual position: That low-grade prostate cancers that grow very slowly or not at all shouldn't be called cancer or carcinoma. The reason, they say, is that those words scare men, their families and sometimes even their doctors into seeking more aggressive treatment than patients need -- leaving men with debilitating side effects -- rather than pursuing a carefully monitored wait-and-see approach. A name change wouldn't be unprecedented. Certain other forms of thyroid, cervical and bladder cancers have been reclassified, sometimes partly to avoid scaring people about cancers that are unlikely to spread. "The word 'cancer' engenders so much anxiety and fear," says Dr. Laura Esserman, a professor of surgery and radiology at the University of California, San Francisco and director of its Breast Care Center, who is advocating for a type of lower-risk breast cancer to be renamed. "Patients think if I don't do something tomorrow, this is going to kill me. In fact, that's not true."

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The 2023 Hugo Awards for science fiction hosted in China sparked controversy by excluding several authors without explanation, raising censorship concerns. Works removed included RF Kuang's bestseller "Babel," an episode of "The Sandman," and author Xiran Jay Zhao. The prestigious Hugo Awards are voted on by science fiction fans and marked the first time the annual World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) was held in China. With no reasons given for the exclusions, revealed only when nomination statistics were posted, questions emerged whether there had been interference or censorship in the process from Chinese authorities. The removed works included Kuang's speculative fiction novel "Babel," which recently won fiction book of the year in the British book awards. Bruce66423 shares a report: Recently released documents showed that several works or authors -- some with links to China -- had been excluded from the ballot despite receiving enough nominations to be included on their respective shortlists. The excluded nominees include Kuang and Zhao, authors who were born in China but are now based in the west. Concerns have been raised that the authors were targeted for political reasons, connected to the fact that the ruling Chinese Communist party exerts a tight control on all cultural events that take place inside its borders. [...] Episode six of The Sandman, which is based on a comic book written by Neil Gaiman, was excluded from the best dramatic presentation category, despite receiving enough nominations to be on the final ballot. Gaiman has publicly criticised the Chinese authorities for imprisoning writers. [...] Writing on Facebook, Gaiman said: "Until now, one of the things that's always been refreshing about the Hugos has been the transparency and clarity of the process ... This is obfuscatory, and without some clarity it means that whatever has gone wrong here is unfixable, or may be unfixable in ways that don't damage the respect the Hugos have earned over the last 70 years."

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Microsoft is laying off 1,900 workers -- or around 8% of Microsoft Gaming's 22,000 employees. The majority of layoffs are at Activision Blizzard, though cuts will impact Xbox and ZeniMax employees, too. The memo from Microsoft Gaming chief Phil Spencer: It's been a little over three months since the Activision, Blizzard, and King teams joined Microsoft. As we move forward in 2024, the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business. Together, we've set priorities, identified areas of overlap, and ensured that we're all aligned on the best opportunities for growth. As part of this process, we have made the painful decision to reduce the size of our gaming workforce by approximately 1900 roles out of the 22,000 people on our team. The Gaming Leadership Team and I are committed to navigating this process as thoughtfully as possible. The people who are directly impacted by these reductions have all played an important part in the success of Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax and the Xbox teams, and they should be proud of everything they've accomplished here. We are grateful for all of the creativity, passion and dedication they have brought to our games, our players and our colleagues. We will provide our full support to those who are impacted during the transition, including severance benefits informed by local employment laws. Those whose roles will be impacted will be notified, and we ask that you please treat your departing colleagues with the respect and compassion that is consistent with our values. Looking ahead, we'll continue to invest in areas that will grow our business and support our strategy of bringing more games to more players around the world. Although this is a difficult moment for our team, I'm as confident as ever in your ability to create and nurture the games, stories and worlds that bring players together.

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Illegal subscription services that steal films or TV shows bring in $2 billion a year in ads and subscriber fees (non-paywalled link). From a report: Ever since taking on Netflix at its own game, old Hollywood has struggled to turn a profit in streaming, with the likes of Disney+, Peacock and Paramount+ losing billions of dollars each year, sparking concerns on Wall Street that the services will never be as profitable as cable once was. But the age of streaming has been a boon for some unintended winners: pirates that use software to rip a film or television show in seconds from legitimate online video platforms and host the titles on their own, illegitimate services, which rake in about $2 billion annually from ads and subscriptions. With no video production costs, illicit streaming sites such as myflixer and projectfreetv have achieved profit margins approaching 90%, according to the Motion Picture Association, a trade group representing Hollywood studios that's working to crack down on the thousands of illegal platforms that have cropped up in recent years. Initially the rise of legitimate online businesses such as Netflix actually helped curb digital piracy, which had largely been based on file uploads. But now piracy involving illegal streaming services as well as file-sharing costs the US economy about $30 billion in lost revenue a year and some 250,000 jobs, estimates the US Chamber of Commerce's Global Innovation Policy Center. The global impact is about $71 billion annually. In the US, which counts almost 130 subscription piracy sites, the MPA estimates that the top three combined have about 2 million users paying $5 to $10 per month for films, TV shows and live sports. Analysts say the user number could soar as the cost of subscriptions from legitimate companies such as Walt Disney approach $20 per month as they seek to bolster the finances of their streaming platforms. "Some of these pirate websites have gotten more daily visits than some of the top 10 legitimate sites," says Karyn Temple, the MPA's general counsel. "That really shows how prolific they are."

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A wide-spanning investigation by 404 Media reveals more details about a secretive spy tool that can tracks billions of phone profiles through the advertising industry called Patternz. From the report: Hundreds of thousands of ordinary apps, including popular ones such as 9gag, Kik, and a series of caller ID apps, are part of a global surveillance capability that starts with ads inside each app, and ends with the apps' users being swept up into a powerful mass monitoring tool advertised to national security agencies that can track the physical location, hobbies, and family members of people to build billions of profiles, according to a 404 Media investigation. 404 Media's investigation, based on now deleted marketing materials and videos, technical forensic analysis, and research from privacy activists, provides one of the clearest examinations yet of how advertisements in ordinary mobile apps can ultimately lead to surveillance by spy firms and their government clients through the real time bidding data supply chain. The pipeline involves smaller, obscure advertising firms and advertising industry giants like Google. In response to queries from 404 Media, Google and PubMatic, another ad firm, have already cut-off a company linked to the surveillance firm.

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The Pokemon Company said Thursday it has not granted any permission to "another company," referring to viral new game Palworld-developer Pocketpair, to use Pokemon intellectual property or assets and "intends to investigate and take appropriate measures" against the fast-growing survival game operator. From a report: The statement is Pokemon Company's first acknowledgement of Palworld's fast-growing survival title, which has sold over 8 million copies in less than six days, exceeding the performance of even the most popular AAA titles. But as TechCrunch previously reported, Palworld is also attracting a growing number of fans of Japan's legendary firm over perceived plagiarism and uncanny resemblance. However, its fusion of monster collecting, automation, and survival/crafting mechanics has struck a chord with players nonetheless.

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New York City declared Wednesday that it's the first city to issue an advisory officially designating social media as an environmental toxin. From a report: In response to the danger social media poses to the mental health of young people, the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene issued an advisory identifying unrestricted access to and use of social media as a public health hazard. The department urged parents and caregivers to delay giving children access to a smartphone or social media until at least age 14. They also urged federal and state policymakers to expand on legislative proposals that protect youth from "predatory practices by social media companies."

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Dominic Gates, reporting for Seattle Times: The fuselage panel that blew off an Alaska Airlines jet earlier this month was removed for repair then reinstalled improperly by Boeing mechanics on the Renton final assembly line, a person familiar with the details of the work told The Seattle Times. If verified by the National Transportation Safety Board investigation, this would leave Boeing primarily at fault for the accident, rather than its supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which originally installed the panel into the 737 MAX 9 fuselage in Wichita, Kan. That panel, a door plug used to seal a hole in the fuselage sometimes used to accommodate an emergency exit, blew out of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 as it climbed out of Portland on Jan. 5. The hair-raising incident drew fresh and sharp criticism of Boeing's quality control systems and safety culture, which has been under the microscope since two fatal 737 MAX crashes five years ago. Last week, a different person -- an anonymous whistleblower who appears to have access to Boeing's manufacturing records of the work done assembling the specific Alaska Airlines jet that suffered the blowout -- on an aviation website separately provided many additional details about how the door plug came to be removed and then mis-installed. "The reason the door blew off is stated in black and white in Boeing's own records," the whistleblower wrote. "It is also very, very stupid and speaks volumes about the quality culture at certain portions of the business." The self-described Boeing insider said company records show four bolts that prevent the door plug from sliding up off the door frame stop pads that take the pressurization loads in flight, "were not installed when Boeing delivered the airplane." the whistleblower stated. "Our own records reflect this." NTSB investigators already publicly raised the possibility that the bolts had not been installed. Further reading: Alaska Air CEO Says Loose Bolts Found in 'Many' Boeing Jets. Delta Air Lines Boeing 757 Lost Nose Wheel Before Takeoff, FAA Says. FAA Calls for Door-Plug Checks on Second Boeing Jet.

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Apple's longest-running product is an increasingly small part of the company's business. And yet, it's never been more successful. Jason Snell, writing for The Verge: Twenty years ago, on the Mac's 20th anniversary, I asked Steve Jobs if the Mac would still be relevant to Apple in the age of the iPod. He scoffed at the prospect of the Mac not being important: "of course" it would be. Yet, 10 years later, Apple's revenue was increasingly dominated by the iPhone, and the recent success of the new iPad had provided another banner product for the company. When I interviewed Apple exec Phil Schiller for the Mac's 30th anniversary, I found myself asking him about the Mac's relevance, too. He also scoffed: "Our view is, the Mac keeps going forever," he said. Today marks 40 years since Jobs unveiled the original Macintosh at an event in Cupertino, and it once again feels right to ask what's next for the Mac. Next week, Apple will release financial results that will reinforce that Mac sales are among the best they've been in the product's history. Then, a day later, Apple will release a new device, the Vision Pro, that will join the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch in an ever-expanding lineup of which the Mac is only one small part. As the Mac turns 40, it's never been more successful -- or more irrelevant to Apple's bottom line. It's undergone massive changes in the past few years that ensure its survival but also lash it to a hardware design process dominated by the iPhone. Being middle-aged can be complicated. Mac users -- and I've been one of them for 34 of those 40 years -- have been on the defensive for most of the platform's existence. The original Mac cost $2,495 (equivalent to more than $7,300 today), and it had to compete with Apple's own Apple II series, which was more affordable and wildly successful. The Mac was far from a sure thing, even at Apple: in the years after the Mac was first introduced, Apple released multiple new Apple II models. (One even had a mouse and ran a version of the Mac's Finder file manager.) It took a long time for the Mac to emerge from the Apple II's shadow. And as revolutionary as the Mac's interface was -- it was the first popular personal computer to have a mouse-driven, menu-oriented user interface rather than a simple command line -- it also had to overcome an enormous amount of resistance for being such an outlier. Once Microsoft truly embraced the Mac's interface style with Windows, it took over the world, leaving the Mac with measly market share and diminishing prospects. Further reading: Apple Shares the Secret of Why the 40-Year-Old Mac Still Rules. Greg Joswiak on the Mac's Enduring Appeal. Mac at 40: The Eras Tour. 40 Years Later, the Original Mac is More Amazing Than Ever. The Birth of the Mac: Rolling Stone's 1984 Feature on Steve Jobs and His Whiz Kids (March 1, 1984).

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Tony Isaac writes: The doomsday clock remains at 90 seconds to midnight, the same as last year. Interestingly, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists added 'AI' to the list of threats that they consider to be existential threats to humanity, but didn't move the hands of the clock as a result of adding that threat. My take is that they consider AI to be a very low-grade threat, but it makes me wonder why they included it at all.

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Nvidia is launching RTX Video HDR in its 551.23 Game Ready driver update, enabling RTX GPU owners to use AI to convert SDR videos to HDR in Microsoft Edge and Chrome. While subtle, it can add color detail to non-HDR YouTube videos when viewed on an HDR monitor. Like Nvidia's prior RTX Video Super Resolution for upscaling and sharpening web videos, the effect is minor but noticeable when toggling on and off.

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From its founding, OpenAI said its governing documents were available to the public. When WIRED requested copies after the company's boardroom drama, it declined to provide them. Wired: Wealthy tech entrepreneurs including Elon Musk launched OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab that they said would involve society and the public in the development of powerful AI, unlike Google and other giant tech companies working behind closed doors. In line with that spirit, OpenAI's reports to US tax authorities have from its founding said that any member of the public can review copies of its governing documents, financial statements, and conflict of interest rules. But when WIRED requested those records last month, OpenAI said its policy had changed, and the company provided only a narrow financial statement that omitted the majority of its operations. "We provide financial statements when requested," company spokesperson Niko Felix says. "OpenAI aligns our practices with industry standards, and since 2022 that includes not publicly distributing additional internal documents." OpenAI's abandonment of the long-standing transparency pledge obscures information that could shed light on the recent near-implosion of a company with crucial influence over the future of AI and could help outsiders understand its vulnerabilities. In November, OpenAI's board fired CEO Sam Altman, implying in a statement that he was untrustworthy and had endangered its mission to ensure AI "benefits all humanity." An employee and investor revolt soon forced the board to reinstate Altman and eject most of its own members, with an overhauled slate of directors vowing to review the crisis and enact structural changes to win back the trust of stakeholders.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, is seeking to retract six scientific studies and correct 31 others that were published by the institute's top researchers, including its CEO. The researchers are accused of manipulating data images with simple methods, primarily with copy-and-paste in image editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop. The accusations come from data sleuth Sholto David and colleagues on PubPeer, an online forum for researchers to discuss publications that has frequently served to spot dubious research and potential fraud. On January 2, David posted on his research integrity blog, For Better Science, a long list of potential data manipulation from DFCI researchers. The post highlighted many data figures that appear to contain pixel-for-pixel duplications. The allegedly manipulated images are of data such as Western blots, which are used to detect and visualize the presence of proteins in a complex mixture. DFCI Research Integrity Officer Barrett Rollins told The Harvard Crimson that David had contacted DFCI with allegations of data manipulation in 57 DFCI-led studies. Rollins said that the institute is "committed to a culture of accountability and integrity," and that "every inquiry about research integrity is examined fully." The allegations are against: DFCI President and CEO Laurie Glimcher, Executive Vice President and COO William Hahn, Senior Vice President for Experimental Medicine Irene Ghobrial, and Harvard Medical School professor Kenneth Anderson. The Wall Street Journal noted that Rollins, the integrity officer, is also a co-author on two of the studies. He told the outlet he is recused from decisions involving those studies.

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Abstract of a paper published on pre-print server arXiv: We show that content on the web is often translated into many languages, and the low quality of these multi-way translations indicates they were likely created using Machine Translation (MT). Multi-way parallel, machine generated content not only dominates the translations in lower resource languages; it also constitutes a large fraction of the total web content in those languages. We also find evidence of a selection bias in the type of content which is translated into many languages, consistent with low quality English content being translated en masse into many lower resource languages, via MT. Our work raises serious concerns about training models such as multilingual large language models on both monolingual and bilingual data scraped from the web.

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