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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Discord co-founder and CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy wants you to know he thinks a lot about enshittification. With reports of an upcoming IPO and the news of his co-founder, Jason Citron, recently stepping down to hand leadership of the company over to Humam Sakhnini, a former Activision Blizzard executive, many Discord users are rightfully worried the platform is about to become, well, shit. "I understand the anxiety and concern," Vishnevskiy told Engadget in a recent call. "I think the things that people are afraid of are what separate a great, long-term focused company from just any other company." According to Vishnevskiy, the concern that Discord could fail to do right by its users or otherwise lose its way is a topic of regular discussion at the company. "I'm definitely the one who's constantly bringing up enshittification," he said of Discord's internal meetings. "It's not a bad thing to build a strong business and to monetize a product. That's how we can reinvest and continue to make things better. But we have to be extremely thoughtful about how we do that." The way Vishnevskiy tells it, Discord already had an identity crisis and came out of that moment with a stronger sense of what its product means to people. You may recall the company briefly operated a curated game store. Discord launched the storefront in 2018 only to shut it down less than a year later in 2019. Vishnevskiy describes that as a period of reckoning within Discord. "We call it embracing the brutal facts internally," he said of the episode. When Vishnevskiy and Citron started Discord, they envisioned a platform that would not just be for chatting with friends, but one that would also serve as a game distribution hub. "We spent a year building that component of our business and then, quite frankly, we quickly knew it wasn't going well." Out of that failure, Discord decided to focus on its Nitro subscription and embrace everyone who was using the app to organize communities outside of gaming. Since its introduction in 2017, the service has evolved to include a few different perks, but at its heart, Nitro has always been a way for Discord users to get more out of the app and support their favorite servers. [...] Vishnevskiy describes Nitro as a "phenomenal business," but the decision to look beyond gaming created a different set of problems. "It wasn't clear exactly who we were building for, because now Discord was a community product for everyone, and that drove a lot of distractions," he said. "Discord is something that is meant to be a durable company that has a meaningful impact on people's lives, not just now but in 10 years as well," Vishnevskiy said. "That's the journey that Humam joined and signed up for too. We are long-term focused. Our investors are long-term focused."

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Insect populations are crashing in supposedly protected nature reserves worldwide with climate change emerging as the primary driver of biodiversity loss for the first time in human history. Ecologist Daniel Janzen, who has monitored Costa Rica's Guanacaste conservation area since the 1970s, documented the collapse through light trap photographs that showed 3,000 moth species in 1978 versus virtually none today using identical methods. Similar declines are occurring globally with flying insects dropping 75% across 63 German reserves in under 30 years, US beetle numbers falling 83% over 45 years, and Puerto Rico experiencing up to 60-fold biomass losses since the 1970s. Recent research published in BioScience found climate change now drives decline in 91% of imperiled US species, narrowly surpassing habitat destruction.

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China's southernmost province of Hainan is piloting a programme to grant select corporate users broad access to the global internet, a rare move in a country known for having some of the world's most restrictive online censorship, as the island seeks to transform itself into a global free-trade port. From a report: Employees of companies registered and operating in Hainan can apply for the "Global Connect" mobile service through the Hainan International Data Comprehensive Service Centre (HIDCSC), according to the agency, which is overseen by the state-run Hainan Big Data Development Centre. The programme allows eligible users to bypass the so-called Great Firewall, which blocks access to many of the world's most-visited websites, such as Google and Wikipedia. Applicants must be on a 5G plan with one of the country's three major state-backed carriers -- China Mobile, China Unicom or China Telecom -- and submit their employer's information, including the company's Unified Social Credit Code, for approval. The process can take up to five months, HIDCSC staff said.

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BrianFagioli writes: Google is flexing its engineering muscles today by announcing a record-breaking score on the Speedometer 3 benchmark with its Chrome browser. If you've felt like the web got snappier lately, this could be why. According to the search giant, Chrome's latest performance improvements translate to real-world time savings. Believe it or not, that could potentially add up to 58 million hours saved annually for users. That's the equivalent of about 83 human lifetimes not wasted waiting for web pages to load!

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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has publicly opposed a proposed 10-year moratorium on state AI regulation currently under consideration by the Senate, arguing instead for federal transparency standards in a New York Times opinion piece published Thursday. Amodei said Anthropic's latest AI model demonstrated threatening behavior during experimental testing, including scenarios where the system threatened to expose personal information to prevent being shut down. He writes: But a 10-year moratorium is far too blunt an instrument. A.I. is advancing too head-spinningly fast. I believe that these systems could change the world, fundamentally, within two years; in 10 years, all bets are off. Without a clear plan for a federal response, a moratorium would give us the worst of both worlds -- no ability for states to act, and no national policy as a backstop. The disclosure comes as similar concerning behaviors have emerged from other major AI developers -- OpenAI's o3 model reportedly wrote code to prevent its own shutdown, while Google acknowledged its Gemini model approaches capabilities that could enable cyberattacks. Rather than blocking state oversight entirely, Amodei proposed requiring frontier AI developers to publicly disclose their testing policies and risk mitigation strategies on company websites, codifying practices that companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind already follow voluntarily.

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Amazon is developing software for humanoid robots that could eventually replace hundreds of thousands of delivery workers, [non-paywalled source] The Information reports. The company is building a "humanoid park" obstacle course at its San Francisco office to test robots that would ride in the back of Amazon's Rivian electric vans and deliver packages to customers, the report said. The indoor testing facility, roughly the size of a coffee shop, will house a Rivian van and serve as a controlled environment before Amazon takes the robots on "field trips" to deliver real packages on actual streets. This summer, Amazon plans to test multiple humanoid models, including a $16,000 unit from China-based Unitree that has gained popularity among robotics developers, the report said. The initiative represents Amazon's most ambitious robotics project yet, extending beyond its existing warehouse automation to tackle the significantly more complex challenge of outdoor package delivery. Amazon currently operates more than 20,000 Rivian vehicles for deliveries and plans to expand its electric fleet to 100,000 vehicles by 2030.

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OpenAI said it disrupted several attempts [non-paywalled source] from users in China to leverage its AI models for cyber threats and covert influence operations, underscoring the security challenges AI poses as the technology becomes more powerful. From a report: The Microsoft-backed company on Thursday published its latest report on disrupting malicious uses of AI, saying its investigative teams continued to uncover and prevent such activities in the three months since Feb. 21. While misuse occurred in several countries, OpenAI said it believes a "significant number" of violations came from China, noting that four of 10 sample cases included in its latest report likely had a Chinese origin. In one such case, the company said it banned ChatGPT accounts it claimed were using OpenAI's models to generate social media posts for a covert influence operation. The company said a user stated in a prompt that they worked for China's propaganda department, though it cautioned it didn't have independent proof to verify its claim.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Vibe coding might sound chill, but Andrew Ng thinks the name is unfortunate. The Stanford professor and former Google Brain scientist said the term misleads people into imagining engineers just "go with the vibes" when using AI tools to write code. "It's unfortunate that that's called vibe coding," Ng said at a firechat chat in May at conference LangChain Interrupt. "It's misleading a lot of people into thinking, just go with the vibes, you know -- accept this, reject that." In reality, coding with AI is "a deeply intellectual exercise," he said. "When I'm coding for a day with AI coding assistance, I'm frankly exhausted by the end of the day." Despite his gripe with the name, Ng is bullish on AI-assisted coding. He said it's "fantastic" that developers can now write software faster with these tools, sometimes while "barely looking at the code."

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California's carbon allowance auction results released May 29th revealed prices had hit rock bottom, signaling weak corporate demand and casting doubt over the future of the nation's fourth-largest carbon market. Companies that typically purchase quarterly credits to cover their greenhouse gas emissions are skipping auctions while waiting to see whether the cap-and-trade program will survive beyond its current 2030 expiration date. The poor auction performance compounds California's existing $12 billion budget deficit, as the state relies on carbon credit revenues to fund climate programs. Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing to reauthorize the program through the annual budget bill, which must pass by mid-June, but lawmakers are debating fundamental changes to pricing mechanisms and spending priorities. The uncertainty extends beyond California's borders, with Washington state exploring whether to link its carbon market to California's system and Oregon lawmakers reviving their own cap-and-trade legislation.

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California law prohibits "operating" a mobile phone while driving. And that makes it illegal for a driver to hold a cellphone in order to look at a map, a state appeals court ruled this week. From a report: In a 2016 law intended to strengthen previous restrictions, "the Legislature intended to prohibit all handheld functions of wireless telephones while driving" and "to encourage drivers to keep their eyes on the road," said the 6th District Court of Appeal. A Superior Court panel had reversed a driver's conviction for a traffic infraction and $158 fine in San Jose, ruling that the law prohibited only "actively using or manipulating" a hand-held phone for actions such as talking or listening, browsing the internet or playing video games while driving. The appeals court reinstated the conviction and the fine, in a ruling that could set a statewide standard unless it is narrowed or overturned on appeal.

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A prominent venture capitalist has warned that the technology industry's massive buildout of AI data centers risks becoming "irrational" and could end in disaster, particularly as companies pursue small nuclear reactors to power the facilities. Josh Wolfe, co-founder and partner at Lux Capital, compared the current infrastructure expansion to previous market bubbles in fiber-optic networking and cloud computing. While individual actions by hyperscale companies to build data center infrastructure remain rational, Wolfe said the collective effort "becomes irrational" and "will not necessarily persist." The warning comes as Big Tech companies pour tens of billions into data centers and energy sources, with Meta announcing just this week a deal to purchase power from an operating nuclear station in Illinois that was scheduled to retire in 2027. Wolfe said he is worried that speculative capital is flowing into small modular reactors based on presumed energy demands from data centers. "I think that that whole thing is going to end in disaster, mostly because as cliched as it is, history doesn't repeat. It rhymes," he said.

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Google's self-driving taxi service Waymo has surpassed 10 million total paid rides, marking a significant milestone in the transition of autonomous vehicles from novelty to mainstream transportation option. The company's growth trajectory, WSJ argues, shows clear signs of exponential scaling, with weekly rides jumping from 10,000 in August 2023 to over 250,000 currently. Waymo is on track to hit 20 million rides by the end of 2025. The story adds: This is not just because Waymo is expanding into new markets. It's because of the way existing markets have come to embrace self-driving cars. In California, the most recent batch of quarterly data reported by the company was the most encouraging yet. It showed that Waymo's number of paid rides inched higher by roughly 2% in both January and February -- and then increased 27% in March. In the nearly two years that people in San Francisco have been paying for robot chauffeurs, it was the first time that Waymo's growth slowed down for several months only to dramatically speed up again. Waymo currently operates in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, with expansion planned for Austin, Atlanta, Miami, and Washington D.C. The service faces incoming competition from Tesla, which plans to launch its own robotaxi service in Austin this month. Waymo remains unprofitable despite raising $5.6 billion in funding last year.

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A bitter fight over alleged corporate espionage involving two of Silicon Valley's hottest startups took a new twist on Tuesday, after $12 billion HR software company Deel claimed arch-rival Rippling had directed one of its employees to "pilfer" the company's assets by posing as a customer. From a report: The latest claim comes after Rippling alleged earlier this year that a staff member had been spying on behalf of Deel. The employee locked themselves into a bathroom and smashed their phone with an axe when confronted with allegations, according to their own testimony. In new legal filings seen by the Financial Times, Deel has countered by arguing that: "Rippling has been actively engaged in a carefully co-ordinated espionage campaign, through which it infiltrated Deel's customer platform by fraudulent means and pilfered the company's most valuable proprietary assets."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Tuesday, classic computer collector Joe Strosnider announced the availability of a new 3D-printer filament that replicates the iconic "Platinum" color scheme used in classic Macintosh computers from the late 1980s through the 1990s. The PLA filament (PLA is short for polylactic acid) allows hobbyists to 3D-print nostalgic novelties, replacement parts, and accessories that match the original color of vintage Apple computers. Hobbyists commonly feed this type of filament into commercial desktop 3D printers, which heat the plastic and extrude it in a computer-controlled way to fabricate new plastic parts. The Platinum color, which Apple used in its desktop and portable computer lines starting with the Apple IIgs in 1986, has become synonymous with a distinctive era of classic Macintosh aesthetic. Over time, original Macintosh plastics have become brittle and discolored with age, so matching the "original" color can be a somewhat challenging and subjective experience. Strosnider said he paid approximately $900 to develop the color. "Rather than keeping the formulation proprietary, he arranged for Polar Filament to make the color publicly available [for $21.99 per kilogram]," adds Ars.

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alternative_right shares a report from Phys.Org: Using conventional propulsion and low-energy trajectories, it takes six to nine months for crewed spacecraft to reach Mars. These durations complicate mission design and technology requirements and raise health and safety concerns since crews will be exposed to extended periods in microgravity and heightened exposure to cosmic radiation. Traditionally, mission designers have recommended nuclear-electric or nuclear-thermal propulsion (NEP/NTP), which could shorten trips to just 3 months. In a recent study, a UCSB physics researcher identified two trajectories that could reduce transits to Mars using the Starship to between 90 and 104 days. The study was authored by Jack Kingdon, a graduate student researcher in the Physics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He is also a member of the UCSB Weld Lab, an experimental ultracold atomic physics group that uses quantum degenerate gases to explore quantum mechanical phenomena. [...] As outlined on its website, conference presentations, and user manual, the SpaceX mission architecture consists of six Starships traveling to Mars. Four of these spacecraft will haul 400 metric tons (440 U.S. tons) of cargo while two will transport 200 passengers. Based on the Block 2 design, which has a 1,500 metric ton (1,650 U.S. ton) propellant capacity, the crewed Starships will require 15 tankers to fully refuel in low Earth orbit (LEO). The cargo ships would require only four, since they would be sent on longer low-energy trajectories. Once the flotilla arrives at Mars, the Starships will refuel using propellant created in situ using local carbon dioxide and water ice. When the return window approaches, one of the crew ships and 3-4 cargo ships will refuel and then launch into a low Mars orbit (LMO). The cargo ships will then transfer the majority of their propellant to the crew ship and return to the surface of Mars. The crew ship would then depart for Earth, and the process could be repeated for the other crew ship. Kingdon calculated multiple trajectories using a Lambert Solver, which produces the shortest elliptical arc in two-body problem equations (aka Lambert's problem). The first would depart Earth on April 30th, 2033, taking advantage of the 26-month periodic alignment between Earth and Mars. The transit would last 90 days, with the crew returning to Earth after another 90-day transit by July 2nd, 2035. The second would depart Earth on July 15th, 2035, and return to Earth after a 104-day transit on December 5th, 2037. As Kingdon explained, the former trajectory is the most likely to succeed: "The optimal trajectory is the 2033 trajectory -- it has the lowest fuel requirements for the fastest transit time. A note that may not be obvious to the layreader is that Starship can very easily reach Mars in ~3 months -- in fact, it can in any launch window, over a fairly wide range of trajectories. However, Starship may impact the Martian atmosphere too fast (although we do not know, and likely SpaceX don't either actually how fast Starship can hit the Martian atmosphere and survive). The trajectories discussed are ones that I am confident Starship will survive." The paper describing the work has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said that the "tides have turned" in Silicon Valley and made it more palatable for the tech industry to support the US military's efforts. From a report: There's long existed a "silent majority" who wanted to pursue defense projects, Bosworth said during an interview at the Bloomberg Tech summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. "There's a much stronger patriotic underpinning than I think people give Silicon Valley credit for," he said. Silicon Valley was founded on military development and "there's really a long history here that we are kind of hoping to return to, but it is not even day one," Bosworth added. He described Silicon Valley's new openness to work with the US military as a "return to grace."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Corporate investigators found evidence that Chinese hackers broke into an American telecommunications company in the summer of 2023, indicating that Chinese attackers penetrated the US communications system earlier than publicly known. Investigators working for the telecommunications firm discovered last year that malware used by Chinese state-backed hacking groups was on the company's systems for seven months starting in the summer of 2023, according to two people familiar with the matter and a document seen by Bloomberg News. The document, an unclassified report sent to Western intelligence agencies, doesn't name the company where the malware was found and the people familiar with the matter declined to identify it. The 2023 intrusion at an American telecommunications company, which hasn't been previously reported, came about a year before US government officials and cybersecurity companies said they began spotting clues that Chinese hackers had penetrated many of the country's largest phone and wireless firms. The US government has blamed the later breaches on a Chinese state-backed hacking group dubbed Salt Typhoon. It's unclear if the 2023 hack is related to that foreign espionage campaign and, if so, to what degree. Nonetheless, it raises questions about when Chinese intruders established a foothold in the American communications industry. "We've known for a long time that this infrastructure has been vulnerable and was likely subject to attack," said Marc Rogers, a cybersecurity and telecommunications expert. "What this shows us is that it was attacked, and that going as far back as 2023, the Chinese were compromising our telecom companies." Investigators linked the sophisticated rootkit malware Demodex to China's Ministry of State Security, noting it enabled deep, stealthy access to systems and remained undetected on a U.S. defense-linked company's network until early 2024. A Chinese government spokesperson denied responsibility for cyberattacks and accused the U.S. and its allies of spreading disinformation and conducting cyber operations against China.

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Apple's emergency request to pause a court order forcing it to ease App Store restrictions was denied by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, allowing new compliance rules to take effect while Apple continues to appeal. 9to5Mac reports: Apple had asked the appeals court to halt enforcement of a recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who found Apple in contempt this April for effectively dodging her original injunction. Convoluted, right? Exactly. The judge observed several violations, including Apple's imposition of a 27% fee on out-of-app transactions and overall attempts to continue making it unappealing for developers to direct users to external payment options. As Reuters noted: "In its emergency appeal, Apple said the ruling blocked the company from "exercising control over core aspects of its business operations' and forced it to give away free access to its services." In rejecting Apple's motion, the court is letting those new compliance requirements stand while the company appeals the decision. Apple had hoped to halt the enforcement until the decision was final, which would grant the company the right to roll back the changes it was recently compelled to implement. In a statement provided to 9to5Mac, Apple said: "We are disappointed with the decision not to stay the district court's order, and we'll continue to argue our case during the appeals process. As we've said before, we strongly disagree with the district court's opinion. Our goal is to ensure the App Store remains an incredible opportunity for developers and a safe and trusted experience for our users."

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FFmpeg has added support for WHIP (WebRTC-HTTP Ingestion Protocol), enabling sub-second latency live streaming by leveraging WebRTC's fast, secure video delivery capabilities. It's a major update that introduces a new WHIP muxer to make FFmpeg more powerful for real-time broadcasting applications. Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports: WHIP uses HTTP for exchanging initial information and capabilities and then uses STUN binding to establish a UDP session. Encryption is supported -- and due to WebRTC, mandatory -- with WHIP and audio/video frames are split into RTP packets. WebRTC-HTTP Ingestion Protocol is an IETF standard for ushering low-latency communication over WebRTC to help with streaming/broadcasting uses. With this FFmpeg commit introducing nearly three thousand lines of new code, an initial WHIP muxer has been introduced. You can learn more about WebRTC WHIP in this presentation by Millicast (PDF).

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"One of the few major independent science-surplus/DIY outlets left is American Science & Surplus," writes longtime Slashdot reader Tyler Too. "They've recently launched a GoFundMe campaign to ensure their survival." Ars Technica reports: Now, nearly 90 years after its launch selling "reject lenses" as American Lens & Photo, American Science & Surplus is facing an existential threat. The COVID-19 pandemic and increased costs hit the business hard, so the store has launched a GoFundMe campaign looking to raise $200,000 from customers and fans alike. What's happening in suburban Chicago is a microcosm of the challenges facing local retail, with big-box retailers and online behemoths overwhelming beloved local institutions. It's a story that has played out countless times in the last two-plus decades, and owner Pat Meyer is hoping this tale has a different ending. Ars reports on American Science & Surplus' long history, noting that it was founded in 1937 and has grown from a modest surplus shop into a beloved, quirky institution for makers, science enthusiasts, and curiosity seekers. Over the decades, it evolved far beyond its original niche of lenses and lab equipment. As Meyer, a 41-year veteran of the company, put it: "I've done everything in the company that there is to do... it's been my life for 41 years." Once known for its robust telescope section and deep inventory of scientific odds and ends, the store has adapted to shifting consumer habits -- some changes bittersweet. True to its DIY spirit, American Science & Surplus is described as a "physical manifestation of the maker ethos," stocked with everything from motors to military gas masks to mule-branding kits. It also carries a rare sense of humor, with quirky signage like a warning that a "Deluxe Walking Cane" is "not the edible kind of cane." Today, American Science & Surplus faces modern challenges like relocating a costly warehouse and overhauling outdated software and web infrastructure. But Meyer is optimistic, noting that contributions to their GoFundMe campaign represent more than financial help: "It's about supporting local retail during a very challenging time. Who wants to buy everything at Amazon, Walmart, Temu, and Target?"

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