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An anonymous reader shares a report: In the decade-long fight to control CRISPR, the super-tool for modifying DNA, it's been common for lawyers to try to overturn patents held by competitors by pointing out errors or inconsistencies. But now, in a surprise twist, the team that earned the Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing CRISPR is asking to cancel two of their own seminal patents, MIT Technology Review has learned. The decision could affect who gets to collect the lucrative licensing fees on using the technology. The request to withdraw the pair of European patents, by lawyers for Nobelists Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, comes after a damaging August opinion from a European technical appeals board, which ruled that the duo's earliest patent filing didn't explain CRISPR well enough for other scientists to use it and doesn't count as a proper invention. The Nobel laureates' lawyers say the decision is so wrong and unfair that they have no choice but to preemptively cancel their patents, a scorched-earth tactic whose aim is to prevent the unfavorable legal finding from being recorded as the reason.

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Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has defended its decision to automatically replace its antivirus software on U.S. customers' computers with UltraAV, a product from American company Pango, without explicit user consent. The forced switch, affecting nearly one million users, occurred as a result of a U.S. government ban on Kaspersky software. Kaspersky spokesperson Francesco Tius told TechCrunch that the company informed eligible U.S. customers via email about the migration, which began in early September. Windows users experienced an automatic transition to ensure continuous protection, while Mac and mobile users were instructed to manually install UltraAV. Some customers expressed alarm at the unannounced software swap. Kaspersky blamed missed notifications on unregistered email addresses, directing users to in-app messages and an online FAQ. The abrupt change raises concerns about user autonomy and privacy in software updates, particularly as UltraAV lacks an established security track record.

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An anonymous reader shares a New Yorker story: Ultimately, the iPhone 16 does little to meaningfully improve on the experience I had with the 12, besides, perhaps, charging with a USB-C, as my laptop does, cutting down on the number of cords I have to keep track of. Instead, the greatest leaps in Apple's hardware are largely directed at those niche users who are already invested in using tools such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality. The company has announced that, within a month or so, the new phones will be able to operate its proprietary artificial-intelligence system, which means that users may soon be relying on A.I. to perform daily personal tasks, like navigating their calendars or responding to e-mails. The 15 and 16 Pros can take three-dimensional photos, designed for V.R., using the Apple Vision Pro. Thus far, I don't use A.I. tools or V.R. with any frequency and have no intention of doing so on my iPhone. The fact that I do not need an iPhone 16 is a testament not so much to the iPhone's failure as to its resounding success. A lot of the digital software we rely on has grown worse for users in recent years; the iPhone, by contrast, has become so good that it's hard to imagine anything but incremental improvements. Apple's teleological phone-design strategy may have simply reached its end point, the same way evolution in nature has repeatedly resulted in an optimized species of crab. Other tech companies, meanwhile, are embracing radical departures in phone design. Samsung offers devices that fold in half, creating a smaller screen that's useful for minor tasks, such as texting, and a larger one for watching videos; Huawei is upping the ante with three folds. The BOOX Palma has become a surprise hit as a smartphone-ish device with an e-ink screen, similar to Amazon's Kindle, which uses physical pixels in its display. Dumbphones, too, are growing more popular by intentionally doing less. Apple devices, by contrast, remain effective enough that they can afford to be somewhat static.

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A year-long test of Apple's 80% charge limit feature on the iPhone 15 Pro Max has revealed only marginal benefits to battery health. MacRumors editor Juli Clover reported her device maintained 94% battery capacity after 299 charge cycles, compared to 87-90% capacity for iPhones without the limit. The opt-in setting, introduced with iPhone 15 models, aims to extend battery longevity by restricting maximum charge. Clover adhered strictly to the 80% limit for 12 months, noting occasional inconveniences like depleted batteries during long days. While the test showed slightly better battery health retention, Clover questioned whether the trade-off in daily usability was worthwhile. She adds: I don't have a lot of data points for comparison, but it does seem that limiting the charge to 80 percent kept my maximum battery capacity higher than what my co-workers are seeing, but there isn't a major difference. I have four percent more battery at 28 more cycles, and I'm not sure suffering through an 80 percent battery limit for 12 months was ultimately worth it. It's possible that the real gains from an 80 percent limit will come in two or three years rather than a single year, and I'll keep it limited to 80 percent to see the longer term impact.

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California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a law (AB 2426) to combat "disappearing" purchases of digital games, movies, music, and ebooks. The legislation will force digital storefronts to tell customers they're just getting a license to use the digital media, rather than suggesting they actually own it. From a report: When the law comes into effect next year, it will ban digital storefronts from using terms like "buy" or "purchase," unless they inform customers that they're not getting unrestricted access to whatever they're buying. Storefronts will have to tell customers they're getting a license that can be revoked as well as provide a list of all the restrictions that come along with it. Companies that break the rule could be fined for false advertising.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Google Maps is reeling in business pages engaging in fake reviews, and highlighting such activity to its users. Google will now impose restrictions against business profiles that violate the search giant's Fake Engagement policy, such as temporarily removing reviews, blocking new reviews or ratings, and displaying a warning message on profiles that have had fake reviews deleted. The business profile restrictions were introduced in the UK earlier this year, but Search Engine Roundtable notes that the support page was updated in mid-September to seemingly apply globally. For the moment, however, only users in the UK are seeing the business warnings.

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Intel has released microcode update 0x12B for its 13th and 14th generation Core processors, addressing persistent stability issues stemming from voltage irregularities. The update targets a specific clock tree circuit within the CPU's IA core that was causing elevated voltage requests during idle and light workloads. The company identified four key factors contributing to voltage instability: motherboards exceeding Intel's power specifications, an Enhanced Thermal Velocity Boost algorithm allowing sustained high performance at elevated temperatures, frequent high voltage requests from the processor, and problematic microcode demanding elevated core voltages during low-activity periods. While previous update 0x129 addressed some concerns, the new 0x12B update aims to resolve the root cause of the "Vmin shift" problem, where voltage spikes lead to increased power requirements and potential degradation over time. Intel is working with motherboard manufacturers to roll out BIOS updates incorporating the new microcode.

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The Tor Project: Today the Tor Project, a global non-profit developing tools for online privacy and anonymity, and Tails, a portable operating system that uses Tor to protect users from digital surveillance, have joined forces and merged operations. Incorporating Tails into the Tor Project's structure allows for easier collaboration, better sustainability, reduced overhead, and expanded training and outreach programs to counter a larger number of digital threats. In short, coming together will strengthen both organizations' ability to protect people worldwide from surveillance and censorship. Countering the threat of global mass surveillance and censorship to a free Internet, Tor and Tails provide essential tools to help people around the world stay safe online. By joining forces, these two privacy advocates will pool their resources to focus on what matters most: ensuring that activists, journalists, other at-risk and everyday users will have access to improved digital security tools. In late 2023, Tails approached the Tor Project with the idea of merging operations. Tails had outgrown its existing structure. Rather than expanding Tails's operational capacity on their own and putting more stress on Tails workers, merging with the Tor Project, with its larger and established operational framework, offered a solution. By joining forces, the Tails team can now focus on their core mission of maintaining and improving Tails OS, exploring more and complementary use cases while benefiting from the larger organizational structure of The Tor Project. This solution is a natural outcome of the Tor Project and Tails' shared history of collaboration and solidarity. 15 years ago, Tails' first release was announced on a Tor mailing list, Tor and Tails developers have been collaborating closely since 2015, and more recently Tails has been a sub-grantee of Tor. For Tails, it felt obvious that if they were to approach a bigger organization with the possibility of merging, it would be the Tor Project.

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WordPress has escalated its feud with WP Engine, a hosting provider, by blocking the latter's servers from accessing WordPress.org resources -- and therefore from potentially vital software updates. From a report: WordPress is an open source CMS which is extensible using plugins. Its home is WordPress.org, which also hosts resources such as themes and plugins for the CMS. A vast ecosystem of plugins exists from numerous suppliers, but WordPress.org is the main source. Many WordPress users rely on several plugins. Preventing WP Engine users from accessing plugin updates is therefore serious, as it could mean users can't update plugins that have security issues, or other fixes. WordPress co-founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg recently called WP Engine a "cancer" and accused it of profiting from WordPress without contributing to development of the CMS. Mullenweg has sought to have WP Engine pay trademark license fees -- a move he feels would represent a financial contribution commensurate with the benefits it derives from the project. WP Engine doesn't want or intend to pay. Mullenweg argued that if WP Engine won't pay, it should not be able to benefit from resources at WordPress.org.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Among the first AI companies that the Federal Trade Commission has exposed as deceiving consumers is DoNotPay -- which initially was advertised as "the world's first robot lawyer" with the ability to "sue anyone with the click of a button." On Wednesday, the FTC announced that it took action to stop DoNotPay from making bogus claims after learning that the AI startup conducted no testing "to determine whether its AI chatbot's output was equal to the level of a human lawyer." DoNotPay also did not "hire or retain any attorneys" to help verify AI outputs or validate DoNotPay's legal claims. DoNotPay accepted no liability. But to settle the charges that DoNotPay violated the FTC Act, the AI startup agreed to pay $193,000, if the FTC's consent agreement is confirmed following a 30-day public comment period. Additionally, DoNotPay agreed to warn "consumers who subscribed to the service between 2021 and 2023" about the "limitations of law-related features on the service," the FTC said. Moving forward, DoNotPay would also be prohibited under the settlement from making baseless claims that any of its features can be substituted for any professional service. "The complaint relates to the usage of a few hundred customers some years ago (out of millions of people), with services that have long been discontinued," DoNotPay's spokesperson said. The company "is pleased to have worked constructively with the FTC to settle this case and fully resolve these issues, without admitting liability."

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"The New York Times reports that astronomers have discovered a black hole spitting energy across 23 million light-years of intergalactic space (source paywalled; alternative source)," writes longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot. From the report: Two jets, shooting in opposite directions, compose the biggest lightning bolt ever seen in the sky -- about 140 times as long as our own Milky Way galaxy is wide, and more than 10 times the distance from Earth to Andromeda, the nearest large spiral galaxy. Follow-up observations with optical telescopes traced the eruption to a galaxy 7.5 billion light-years away that existed when the universe was less than half its current age of 14 billion years. At the heart of that galaxy was a black hole spewing energy equivalent to the output of more than a trillion stars. "The Milky Way would be a little dot in these two giant eruptions," said Martijn Oei, a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Oei led the team that made the discovery, which was reported in Nature on Sept. 18 and announced on the journal's cover with an illustration reminiscent of a "Star Wars" poster. The astronomers have named the black hole Porphyrion, after a giant in Greek mythology -- a son of Gaia -- who fought the gods and lost. The discovery raises new questions of how such black holes could affect the evolution and structure of the universe.

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New research suggests that Mars' missing atmosphere may have been absorbed by minerals in the planet's clays, in a process similar to geological reactions on Earth. It may explain Mars' loss of its atmosphere and potential to support life, with methane possibly still present and usable as an energy source. Longtime Slashdot reader Baron_Yam writes: Conditions on early Mars were highly likely to have had CO2 carried down into the ground by water, where reactions with rock resulted in iron oxide (and Mars' rust-red surface) and released hydrogen, which in turn reacted with the water to form methane that was bound in smectite clays. It's all still there, just under the surface. The research has been published in the journal Science Advances.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Some McDonald's franchisees -- which own and operate 95% of McDonald's in the United States -- are now rolling out kiosks that can take cash and accept change. But even in these locations, McDonald's is reassigning cashiers to other roles, including new "guest experience lead" jobs that help customers use the kiosks and assist with any issues. "In theory, kiosks should help save on labor, but in reality, restaurants have added complexity due to mobile ordering and delivery, and the labor saved from kiosks is often reallocated for these efforts," said RJ Hottovy, an analyst who covers the restaurant and retail industries at data analytics firm Placer.ai. Kiosks "have created a restaurant within a restaurant." And in some cases, kiosks have even been a flop. Bowling ally chain Bowlero added kiosks in lanes for customers to order food and drinks, but they went unused because staff and customers weren't fully trained on using them. "The unintended consequences have surprised a lot of people," Hottovy said. Even some of the benefits of kiosks touted by chains -- they upsell customers by suggesting menu items and speed up orders -- don't always play out. A recent study from Temple University researchers found that, when a line forms behind customers using kiosks, they experience more stress when placing their orders and purchase less food. And some customers take longer to order tapping around on kiosks and paying than they do telling a cashier they'd like to order a burger and fries. Not to mention the kiosks can malfunction or break down. "If kiosks really improved speed of service, order accuracy, and upsell, they'd be rolled out more extensively across the industry than they are today," Hottovy said. Kiosks have also been threatened as a fast-food industry response to higher minimum wage laws. [...] But the quick-service and fast-casual segments of the restaurant industry continue to grow. Staffing levels were nearly 150,000 jobs, or 3%, above pre-pandemic levels, according to the latest Labor Department data. Christopher Andrews, a sociologist at Drew University who studies the effects of technology on work, said the impacts of kiosks were similar to other self-service technology such as ATMs and self-checkout machines in supermarkets. Both technologies were predicted to cause job losses. "The introduction of ATMs did not result in massive technological unemployment for bank tellers," he said. "Instead, it freed them up from low-value tasks such as depositing and cashing checks to perform other tasks that created value." Self-checkout have also not resulted in retail job losses, the report adds. "In some cases, self-checkout backfired for chains because self-checkout leads to higher merchandise losses from customer errors and more intentional shoplifting than when human cashiers are ringing up customers."

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"Looks like there's a storm brewing, and it's not good news," writes ancient Slashdot reader jd. "Whether or not the bugs are classically security defects or not, this is extremely bad PR for the Linux and Open Source community. It's not clear from the article whether this affects other Open Source projects, such as FreeBSD." From a report: A critical unauthenticated Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability has been discovered, impacting all GNU/Linux systems. As per agreements with developers, the flaw, which has existed for over a decade, will be fully disclosed in less than two weeks. Despite the severity of the issue, no Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) identifiers have been assigned yet, although experts suggest there should be at least three to six. Leading Linux distributors such as Canonical and RedHat have confirmed the flaw's severity, rating it 9.9 out of 10. This indicates the potential for catastrophic damage if exploited. However, despite this acknowledgment, no working fix is still available. Developers remain embroiled in debates over whether some aspects of the vulnerability impact security.

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Disney has officially launched its password and account-sharing crackdown, rolling out what it is calling its "paid sharing program" to users in the U.S. and in many regions around the world this week. The rollout follows the company sharing plans to crackdown on unauthorized usage on its streaming service earlier this year. From a report: The paid sharing program has a couple of options for users, per a blog post published Wednesday: People sharing an account with someone outside their household can add that person as an "Extra Member" for $6.99 per month for Disney+ Basic, or $9.99 for Disney+ Premium, both discounts to the normal retail price. Only one Extra Member will be allowed per account, and it is not available as part of the Disney Bundle. In addition, users sharing an account can also subscribe to Disney+ themselves, and can transfer an eligible profile to the new account to keep their watch history and settings. The password-cracking effort has helped Netflix boost its subscribers count in recent quarters.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Some Amazon workers are refusing to "disagree and commit," as one of the company's famed leadership principles requires of those who aren't on board with a decision. Instead, hundreds of the online retailing giant's employees are complaining that CEO Andy Jassy's five-days-per-week return-to-office mandate, announced last week, will negatively impact their lives -- and productivity at work -- and how they hope the company will reverse course. The feedback is from an anonymous survey created by Amazon employees that was viewed by Fortune on Tuesday. Corporate employees have shared it widely via the messaging app Slack, including in one "remote advocacy" Slack channel with more than 30,000 members that a former employee created when Amazon first announced a three-day return-to-office mandate last year. As a result, employees who are in favor of remote or hybrid work may have been more likely to respond to the survey and therefore skew the findings. As of the afternoon of September 24, the average satisfaction rating related to the RTO mandate among survey respondents was 1.4 out of scale up to 5 (with 1 meaning "strongly dissatisfied" and 5 representing "strongly satisfied"). The survey's creators said in an introduction to their questionnaire that they plan to aggregate and share the results by email with Jassy and other company executives "to provide them with clear insight into the impact of this policy on employees, including the challenges identified and proposed solutions."

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Winamp, the iconic media player from the late 1990s, has released its complete source code on GitHub, fulfilling a promise made in May. The move aims to modernize the player by inviting developers to collaborate on the project. The source code release includes build tools and associated libraries for the Windows app, allowing developers to provide bug fixes and new features. However, the license prohibits distribution of modified software created from this code.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: IBM's plan to replace thousands of roles with AI presently looks more like outsourcing jobs to India, at the expense of organizational competency. That view of Big Blue was offered to The Register after our report on the IT giant's latest layoffs, which resonated so strongly with several IBM employees that they contacted The Register with thoughts on the job cuts. Our sources have asked not to be identified to protect their ongoing relationships with Big Blue. Suffice to say they were or are employed as senior technologists in business units that span multiple locations and were privy to company communications: These are not views from the narrow entrance to a single cubicle. We're going to refer to three by the pseudonyms Alex, Blake, and Casey. "I always make this joke about IBM," said Alex. "It is: 'IBM doesn't want people to work for them.' Every six months or so they are doing rounds of [Resource Actions -- IBM-speak for layoffs] or forcing folks into impossible moves, which result in separation." That's consistent with CEO Arvind Krishna's commitment last year to replace around 7,800 jobs with AI. But our sources say Krishna's plan is on shaky ground: IBM's AI isn't up to the job of replacing people, and some of the people who could fix that have been let go. Alex observed that over the past four years, IBM management has constantly pushed for automation and the use of AI. "With AI tools writing that code for us ... why pay for senior-level staff when you can promote a youngster who doesn't really know any better at a much lower price?" he said. "Plus, once you have a seasoned programmer write code that is by law the company's IP and it is fed into an AI library, it basically learns it and the author is no longer needed." But our sources tell us that scenario has yet to be realized inside IBM.

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OpenAI is working on a plan to restructure its core business into a for-profit benefit corporation that will no longer be controlled by its non-profit board. "Chief executive Sam Altman will also receive equity for the first time in the for-profit company, which could be worth $150 billion after the restructuring as it also tries to remove the cap on returns for investors," reports Reuters. From the report: The OpenAI non-profit will continue to exist and own a minority stake in the for-profit company, the sources said. The move could also have implications for how the company manages AI risks in a new governance structure. [...] The details of the proposed corporate structure, first reported by Reuters, highlight significant governance changes happening behind the scenes at one of the most important AI companies. The plan is still being hashed out with lawyers and shareholders and the timeline for completing the restructuring remains uncertain, the sources said. "We remain focused on building AI that benefits everyone, and we're working with our board to ensure that we're best positioned to succeed in our mission. The non-profit is core to our mission and will continue to exist," an OpenAI spokesperson said. Earlier today, OpenAI's chief technology officer Mira Murati announced her departure from the company. Her resignation follows the departures of founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman. Further reading: OpenAI Pitched White House On Unprecedented Data Center Buildout

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced updates to the company's Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses at Meta Connect 2024 on Wednesday. [...] Meta says its smart glasses will soon have real-time AI video capabilities, meaning you can ask the Ray Ban Meta glasses questions about what you're seeing in front of you, and Meta AI will verbally answer you in real time. Currently, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses can only take a picture and describe that to you or answer questions about it, but the video upgrade should make the experience more natural, in theory at least. These multimodal features are slated to come later this year. In a demo, users could ask Ray-Ban Meta questions about a meal they were cooking, or city scenes taking place in front of them. The real-time video capabilities mean that Meta's AI should be able to process live action and respond in an audible way. This is easier said than done, however, and we'll have to see how fast and seamless the feature is in practice. We've seen demonstrations of these real-time AI video capabilities from Google and OpenAI, but Meta would be the first to launch such features in a consumer product. Zuckerberg also announced live language translation for Ray-Ban Meta. English speaking users can talk to someone speaking French, Italian, or Spanish, and their Ray-Ban Meta glasses should be able to translate what the other person is saying into their language of choice. Meta says this feature is coming later this year and will include more language later on. The Ray-Ban Meta glasses are getting reminders, which will allow people to ask Meta AI to remind them about things they look at through the smart glasses. In a demo, a user asked their Ray-Ban Meta glasses to remember a jacket they were looking at, so they could share the image with a friend later on. Meta announced that integrations with Amazon Music, Audible, and iHeart are coming to its smart glasses. This should make it easier for people to listen to music on their streaming service of choice using the glasses' built-in speakers. The Ray-Ban Meta glasses will also gain the ability to scan QR codes or phone numbers from the glasses. Users can ask the glasses to scan something, and the QR code will immediately open on the person's phone with no further action required. Zuckerberg also unveiled the company's prototype AR glasses codenamed Orion, which feature a 70-degree field of view, Micro LED projectors, and silicon carbide lenses that beam graphics directly into the wearer's eyes.

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