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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The prestigious Hugo awards for science fiction and fantasy writing has revealed that almost 400 votes -- about 10% of all votes cast in this year's awards -- were fraudulently paid for to help one finalist win. The Hugo administration subcommittee, which tallies the votes for the annual awards, issued a statement on Monday saying that they had determined that 377 votes had been cast by individuals with "obvious fake names and/or other disqualifying characteristics." These included voters with almost identical surnames, with just one letter changed and placed in alphabetical order, and some whose names were "translations of consecutive numbers." The voting pattern was "startlingly and obviously different" to anything the members of the current Hugo administration subcommittee had ever seen, and most of the votes favored one finalist, who the subcommittee called "Finalist A." "We have no evidence that Finalist A was at all aware of the fraudulent votes being cast for them, let alone in any way responsible for the operation. We are therefore not identifying them," the subcommittee said. Only members of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) can nominate works for the Hugos and vote on finalists, which costs a minimum of 45 pounds each year. Based on the Hugo administration subcommittee's tally, paying for 377 memberships would have cost at least $22,000. The Hugo administration subcommittee said they received "a confidential report that at least one person had sponsored the purchase of WSFS memberships by large numbers of individuals, who were refunded the cost of membership after confirming that they had voted as the sponsor wished." The subcommittee said the finalist has not been disqualified but didn't win their category without the invalid votes. "We want to reassure 2024 Hugo voters that the ballots cast were counted fairly," their statement said. "Most of all, we want to assure the winners of this year's Hugos that they have won fair and square, without any arbitrary or unexplained exclusion of votes or nominees and without any possibility that their award had been gained through fraudulent means." In February, the Hugo awards came under fire over censorship accusations that it was excluding several authors at its event in China.

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Yesterday, GM announced it was delaying production of the Cruise Origin indefinitely, opting to use the Chevy Bolt as the main vehicle for its self-driving efforts. Introduced four years ago, the Cruise Origin embodied a futuristic vision with no steering wheels or pedals and 'campfire' seating for six passengers, all while providing wireless internet. However, as Fortune's Jessica Mathews writes, the company appears to have lost interest in that vision (source paywalled; alternative source) -- at least for now. From the report: To hear GM CEO and Cruise Chair Mary Barra, the demise of the Origin comes down to costs and regulation. GM's "per unit-costs will be much lower" by focusing on Bolts instead of Origin vehicles, Barra wrote in a quarterly letter to shareholders Tuesday. Barra discussed the regulatory challenges during the quarterly earnings call, explaining the company's view that deploying the Origin was going to require "legislative change." "As we looked at this, we thought it was better to get rid of that risk," Barra said. All robo-taxi companies have been waiting on the green light from regulators for the approvals needed to add these futuristic pedal-less cars into their commercial fleets. While the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration adjusted its rules so that carmakers could manufacture and deploy cars without pedals or steering, state DMVs still have many restrictions set in place when it comes to people riding in them. GM isn't completely swearing off the concept of steering-wheel free cars -- Barra noted that there could be an opportunity for a "vehicle like the Origin in the future."

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Investigative journalist and cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs writes: The Chinese company in charge of handing out domain names ending in ".top" has been given until mid-August 2024 to show that it has put in place systems for managing phishing reports and suspending abusive domains, or else forfeit its license to sell domains. The warning comes amid the release of new findings that .top was the most common suffix in phishing websites over the past year, second only to domains ending in ".com." On July 16, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) sent a letter to the owners of the .top domain registry. ICANN has filed hundreds of enforcement actions against domain registrars over the years, but in this case ICANN singled out a domain registry responsible for maintaining an entire top-level domain (TLD). Among other reasons, the missive chided the registry for failing to respond to reports about phishing attacks involving .top domains. "Based on the information and records gathered through several weeks, it was determined that .TOP Registry does not have a process in place to promptly, comprehensively, and reasonably investigate and act on reports of DNS Abuse," the ICANN letter reads (PDF). ICANN's warning redacted the name of the recipient, but records show the .top registry is operated by a Chinese entity called Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology Co. Ltd. Representatives for the company have not responded to requests for comment. Domains ending in .top were represented prominently in a new phishing report released today by the Interisle Consulting Group, which sources phishing data from several places, including the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), OpenPhish, PhishTank, and Spamhaus. Interisle's newest study examined nearly two million phishing attacks in the last year, and found that phishing sites accounted for more than four percent of all new .top domains between May 2023 and April 2024. Interisle said .top has roughly 2.76 million domains in its stable, and that more than 117,000 of those were phishing sites in the past year.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Angry T-Mobile customers have filed a class action lawsuit over the carrier's decision to raise prices on plans that were advertised as having a lifetime price guarantee. "Based upon T-Mobile's representations that the rates offered with respect to certain plans were guaranteed to last for life or as long as the customer wanted to remain with that plan, each Plaintiff and the Class Members agreed to these plans for wireless cellphone service from T-Mobile," said the complaint (PDF) filed in US District Court for the District of New Jersey. "However, in May 2024, T-Mobile unilaterally did away with these legacy phone plans and switched Plaintiffs and the Class to more expensive plans without their consent." The complaint, filed on July 12, has four named plaintiffs who live in New Jersey, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. They are seeking to represent a class of all US residents "who entered into a T-Mobile One Plan, Simple Choice plan, Magenta, Magenta Max, Magenta 55+, Magenta Amplified or Magenta Military Plan with T-Mobile which included a promised lifetime price guarantee but had their price increased without their consent and in violation of the promises made by T-Mobile and relied upon by Plaintiffs and the proposed class." The complaint seeks "restitution of all amounts obtained by Defendant as a result of its violation," plus interest. It also seeks statutory and punitive damages, and an injunction to prevent further "wrongful, unlawful, fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair conduct." The report notes that the lawsuit centers around T-Mobile's broken "Un-contract" promise made in January 2017, which assured customers that their T-Mobile One plan prices would never increase unless they decided to change their plans. Despite the guarantee, T-Mobile included a significant caveat in a FAQ on its website, stating they would only cover the final month's bill if the price was raised and the customer decided to cancel. Many customers missed this caveat, leading to confusion and frustration when prices were later hiked. The lawsuit also addresses the transition from the "Un-contract" to a new "Price Lock" guarantee, which initially offered more protection but was later weakened, causing further dissatisfaction. The FCC said it has received around 1,600 complaints regarding these price hikes by late June.

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Malaysia's digital minister said today he has asked global tech firms Microsoft and CrowdStrike to consider compensating companies that suffered losses during last week's global tech outage. From a report: Five government agencies and nine companies operating in aviation, banking and healthcare were among those affected in Malaysia, minister Gobind Singh Deo told reporters. "If there are any damages or losses, where there have been any parties that have made such claims, I've asked them to consider those claims and see to what extent they are able to help resolve the issue," Gobind said, adding that the government would also assist on the claims where possible. The total amount of losses incurred has not yet been determined, he said. The outage will cost Fortune 500 companies $5.4 billion, according to estimates from insurers. The projected financial losses exclude Microsoft.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has advocated for open-source AI development, asserting it as a strategic advantage for the United States against China. In a blog post, Zuckerberg argued that closing off AI models would not effectively prevent Chinese access, given their espionage capabilities, and would instead disadvantage U.S. allies and smaller entities. He writes: Our adversaries are great at espionage, stealing models that fit on a thumb drive is relatively easy, and most tech companies are far from operating in a way that would make this more difficult. It seems most likely that a world of only closed models results in a small number of big companies plus our geopolitical adversaries having access to leading models, while startups, universities, and small businesses miss out on opportunities. Plus, constraining American innovation to closed development increases the chance that we don't lead at all. Instead, I think our best strategy is to build a robust open ecosystem and have our leading companies work closely with our government and allies to ensure they can best take advantage of the latest advances and achieve a sustainable first-mover advantage over the long term.

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Researchers at Check Point have uncovered a clandestine network of approximately 3,000 "ghost" accounts on GitHub, manipulating the platform to promote malicious content. Since June 2023, a cybercriminal dubbed "Stargazer Goblin" has been exploiting GitHub's community features to boost malicious repositories, making them appear legitimate and popular. Antonis Terefos, a malware reverse engineer at Check Point, discovered the network's activities, which include "starring," "forking," and "watching" malicious pages to increase their visibility and credibility. The network, named "Stargazers Ghost Network," primarily targets Windows users, offering downloads of seemingly legitimate software tools while spreading various types of ransomware and info-stealer malware.

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AI is increasingly being employed in job interviews across China and India, marking a significant shift in recruitment practices in the region. This follows a similar practice making inroads in the U.S. Rest of World adds: A 2023 survey of 1,000 human-resources workers by the U.S. firm ResumeBuilder found that 10% of companies were already using AI in the hiring process, and another 30% planned to start the following year. The research firm Gartner listed natural-language chatbots as one of 2023's key innovations for the recruiting industry, designating the technology as experimental but promising. Companies like Meituan, Siemens, and Estee Lauder are using AI-powered interviews, with platforms such as MoSeeker, Talently.ai, and Instahyre leading the charge in AI recruitment solutions.

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Google is now the only search engine that can surface results from Reddit, making one of the web's most valuable repositories of user generated content exclusive to the internet's already dominant search engine. 404 Media: If you use Bing, DuckDuckGo, Mojeek, Qwant or any other alternative search engine that doesn't rely on Google's indexing and search Reddit by using "site:reddit.com," you will not see any results from the last week. DuckDuckGo is currently turning up seven links when searching Reddit, but provides no data on where the links go or why, instead only saying that "We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us." Older results will still show up, but these search engines are no longer able to "crawl" Reddit, meaning that Google is the only search engine that will turn up results from Reddit going forward. Searching for Reddit still works on Kagi, an independent, paid search engine that buys part of its search index from Google. The news shows how Google's near monopoly on search is now actively hindering other companies' ability to compete at a time when Google is facing increasing criticism over the quality of its search results. The news follows Google signing a $60 million deal with Reddit early this year to use the social network's content to train its LLMs.

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In a response to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority's investigation into cloud services and licensing, Microsoft has defended its practices, asserting that its terms "do not meaningfully raise cloud rivals' costs." The Windows-maker emphasized Amazon's continued dominance in the UK hyperscale market and noted Google's quarter-on-quarter growth, while also highlighting the declining share of Windows Server relative to Linux in cloud operating systems and SQL Server's second-place position behind Oracle. [...] The CMA's inquiry primarily focuses on the pricing disparity between using Microsoft products on Azure versus rival cloud platforms, with most surveyed customers perceiving Azure as the more cost-effective option for Microsoft software deployment. The Register adds: Microsoft's bullish take on this is that AWS and Google should be grateful that they even get to run its software. In its response, the company said: "This dispute on pricing terms only arises because Microsoft grants all rivals IP licenses in the first place to its software that is of most popularity for use in the cloud. It does this not because there is any legal obligation to share IP with closest rivals in cloud, but for commercial reasons."

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OpenAI has built one of the fastest-growing businesses in history. It may also be one of the costliest to run. The Information: The ChatGPT maker could lose as much as $5 billion this year [non-paywalled source], according to an analysis by The Information, based on previously undisclosed internal financial data and people involved in the business. [...] On the cost side, OpenAI as of March was on track to spend nearly $4 billion this year on renting Microsoft's servers to power ChatGPT and its underlying LLMs (otherwise known as inference costs), said a person with direct knowledge of the spending. In addition to running ChatGPT, OpenAI's training costs -- including paying for data -- could balloon to as much as $3 billion this year. Last year, OpenAI ramped up the training of new AI faster than it had originally planned, said a person with direct knowledge of the decision. So while the company earlier planned to spend about $800 million on such costs, it ended up spending considerably more, this person said.

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T-Mobile and investment firm KKR have formed a joint venture (JV) to acquire fiber service provider Metronet. From a report: The fiber provider reaches over 300 communities and more than 2 million homes in 17 states. Metronet is both a pure-play fiber company and independent FTTH operator. In some markets, Metronet delivers residential speeds up to 5 Gbit/s. The acquisition includes Metronet's broadband infrastructure, residential fiber business operations and existing customers. The JV will acquire Oak Hill Capital's existing stake; Oak Hill Capital will re-invest for a minority position and Metronet CEO John Cinelli will retain a minority position after the deal closes. T-Mobile said it plans to invest nearly $4.9 billion to acquire a 50% equity stake in the JV and 100% of Metronet's residential fiber retail operations and customers, as well as funding of the JV. After the close of the deal, Metronet, based in Evansville, Indiana, will transition to a wholesale service provider for its retail customers. T-Mobile will take on management of residential customer acquisition and support, using T-Mobile's marketing and service model and Metronet's fiber broadband services.

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Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, reporting for TechCrunch: CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that crashed millions of computers with a botched update all over the world last week, is offering its partners a $10 Uber Eats gift card as an apology, according to several people who say they received the gift card, as well as a source who also received one. On Tuesday, a source told TechCrunch that they received an email from CrowdStrike offering them the gift card because the company recognizes "the additional work that the July 19 incident has caused." "And for that, we send our heartfelt thanks and apologies for the inconvenience," the email read, according to a screenshot shared by the source. The same email was also posted on X by someone else. "To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!" The report adds that some people are having trouble redeeming the card. Some are seeing the error that says the gift card "has been canceled by the issuing party and is no longer valid."

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The US is warning homegrown tech startups and venture capital firms that some foreign investments may be fronts for hostile nations seeking data and technology for their governments or to undermine American businesses. From a report: Several US intelligence agencies are spotlighting the concern in a joint bulletin Wednesday to small businesses, trade associations and others associated with the venture capital community, according to the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. "Unfortunately our adversaries continue to exploit early-stage investments in US startups to take their sensitive data," said Michael Casey, director of the NCSC. "These actions threaten US economic and national security and can directly lead to the failure of these companies." Washington has ramped up scrutiny of investments related to countries it considers adversaries, most notably China, as advanced technologies with breakthrough commercial potential, such as artificial intelligence, can also be used to enhance military or espionage capabilities. [...] Small tech companies and venture capitalists "are not in a position to assess the national security implications of their investments," said Mark Montgomery, former executive director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, which was assigned to develop a US cybersecurity strategy. "There are way too many examples where what appears to be, at best, potentially only dual-use or non-military-use technology is quickly twisted and used as a national security tool."

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A surge in new oil and gas production in 2024 threatens to unleash nearly 12 billion tonnes of planet-heating emissions, with the world's wealthiest countries -- such as the US and the UK -- leading a stampede of fossil fuel expansion in spite of their climate commitments, new data reveals. From a report: The new oil and gas field licences forecast to be awarded across the world this year are on track to generate the highest level of emissions since those issued in 2018, as heatwaves, wildfires, drought and floods cause death and destruction globally, according to analysis of industry data by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). The 11.9bn tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions -- which is roughly the same as China's annual carbon pollution -- resulting over their lifetime from all current and upcoming oil and gas fields forecast to be licensed by the end of 2024 would be greater than the past four years combined. The projection includes licences awarded as of June 2024, as well as the oil and gas blocks open for bidding, under evaluation or planned. Meanwhile, fossil fuel firms are ploughing more money into developing new oil and gas sites than at any time since the 2015 Paris climate deal, when the world's governments agreed to take steps to cut emissions and curb global heating. The world's wealthiest countries are economically best placed -- and obliged under the Paris accords -- to lead the transition away from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources. But these high-capacity countries with a low economic dependence on fossil fuels are spearheading the latest drilling frenzy despite dwindling easy-to-reach reserves, handing out 825 new licences in 2023, the largest number since records began.

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Global enterprises are grappling with the complexities of AI adoption, according to hundreds of top industry executives at a recent private software conference hosted by UBS. UBS adds: We heard: 1. The data points from a private GPU cloud infrastructure provider were a very bullish readthrough to GPU demand, Microsoft's AI infra capabilities and the ramp of enterprise/software demand for training and inference compute. 2. One F500 customer was at 1% Office Copilot roll-out, moving to perhaps 2% in a year as they a) fine-tune internal best practices and b) negotiate to get Microsoft much lower on price. 3. One private flagged "copilot chaos," with customers having to choose between AI copilots from seemingly every tech firm (we wonder if this creates pricing pressure and/or an evaluation slowdown). 4. Popular use cases are AI apps for internal, domain-specific tasks (simple workflow automation). 5. Little evidence of AI resulting in customer headcount cuts, but headcount reduction with 3rd-party managed services providers and (India-based) SI firms.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Content creators are busy people. Most spend more than 20 hours a week creating new content for their respective corners of the web. That doesn't leave much time for audience engagement. But Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's CEO, thinks that AI could solve this problem. In an interview with internet personality Rowan Cheung, Zuckerberg laid out his vision for a future in which creators have their own bots, of sorts, that capture their personalities and "business objectives." Creators will offload some community outreach to these bots to free up time for other, presumably more important tasks, Zuckerberg says. "I think there's going to be a huge unlock where basically every creator can pull in all their information from social media and train these systems to reflect their values and their objectives and what they're trying to do, and then people can can interact with that," Zuckerberg said. "It'll be almost like this artistic artifact that creators create that people can kind of interact with in different ways." [...] It's tough to imagine creators putting trust in the hands of flawed AI bots to interact with their fans. In the interview, Zuckerberg acknowledges that Meta has to "mitigate some of the concerns" around its use of generative AI and win users' trust over the long term. This is especially true as some of Meta's AI training practices are actively driving creators away from its platforms.

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Negotiations on a global tax deal have extended beyond the June 30 deadline, with countries now looking to the G20 finance leaders meeting for progress. "The stakes in the negotiations are high," reports Reuters. "A failure to reach agreement on final terms could prompt several countries to reinstate their taxes on U.S. tech giants and risk punitive duties on billions of dollars in exports to the U.S." Some countries, like Canada, have already implemented their own digital services tax. Reuters reports: The so-called "Pillar 1" arrangement, part of a 2021 global two-part tax deal, aims to replace unilateral digital services taxes (DSTs) on U.S. tech giants including Alphabet's Google, Amazon.com and Apple through a new mechanism to share taxing rights on a broader, global group of companies. Standstill agreements under which Washington has suspended threatened trade retaliation against seven countries -- Austria, Britain, France, India, Italy, Spain and Turkey -- expired on June 30, but the U.S. has not taken steps to impose tariffs. Discussions on the matter are continuing. An Italian government source said that European countries were seeking assurances that the U.S. tariffs on some $2 billion worth of annual imports from French Champagne to Italian handbags and optical lenses remained frozen while the talks continue, including at the G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro. A European Union document prepared for the G20 meeting lists finalizing the international tax deal as a "top priority." It said the G20 should urge countries and jurisdictions participating in the tax deal "to finalize discussions on all aspects of Pillar 1, with a view to signing the Multilateral Convention (MLC) by summer end and ratifying it as soon as possible." "Treasury continues to oppose all tax measures that discriminate against U.S. businesses," a U.S. Treasury spokesperson said in response to Canada's move. "We encourage all countries to finalize the work on the Pillar 1 agreement. We are in active discussions on next steps related to the existing DST joint statements."

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On Sunday, global temperatures reached their highest levels in recorded history (source may be paywalled; alternative source), with a daily average of 17.09 degrees Celsius (62.76 degrees Fahrenheit). "The historic day comes on the heels of 13 straight months of unprecedented temperatures and the hottest year scientists have ever seen," adds the Washington Post, citing preliminary data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service. From the report: Though Sunday was only slightly warmer than the world's previous hottest day, Copernicus researchers noted, it was extraordinarily hotter than anything that came before. Before July 2023, Earth's daily average temperature record -- set in August 2016 -- was 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.24 degrees Fahrenheit). But in the past year, the global has exceeded that old record on 57 days. Scientists have been tracking global temperatures only for the past few centuries. Yet there is good reason to believe that Sunday was the hottest day on Earth since the start of the last Ice Age more than 100,000 years ago. Research from paleoclimate scientists -- who use tree rings, ice cores, lake sediments and other ancient material to understand past environments -- suggests that recent heat would have been all but impossible over the last stretch of geologic time. "We are in truly uncharted territory," Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement. "And as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see records being broken in future months and years. What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media's Jason Koebler: The Department of Homeland Security bought a dog-like robot that it has modified with an "antenna array" that gives law enforcement the ability to overload people's home networks in an attempt to disable any internet of things devices they have, according to the transcript of a speech given by a DHS official at a border security conference for cops obtained by 404 Media. The DHS has also built an "Internet of Things" house to train officers on how to raid homes that suspects may have "booby trapped" using smart home devices, the official said. The robot, called "NEO," is a modified version of the "Quadruped Unmanned Ground Vehicle (Q-UGV) sold to law enforcement by a company called Ghost Robotics. Benjamine Huffman, the director of DHS's Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC), told police at the 2024 Border Security Expo in Texas that DHS is increasingly worried about criminals setting "booby traps" with internet of things and smart home devices, and that NEO allows DHS to remotely disable the home networks of a home or building law enforcement is raiding. The Border Security Expo is open only to law enforcement and defense contractors. A transcript of Huffman's speech was obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Dave Maass using a Freedom of Information Act request and was shared with 404 Media. [...] The robot is a modified version of Ghost Robotics' Vision 60 Q-UGV, which the company says it has sold to "25+ National Security Customers" and which is marketed to both law enforcement and the military. "Our goal is to make our Q-UGVs an indispensable tool and continuously push the limits to improve its ability to walk, run, crawl, climb, and eventually swim in complex environments," the company notes on its website. "Ultimately, our robot is made to keep our warfighters, workers, and K9s out of harm's way." "NEO can enter a potentially dangerous environment to provide video and audio feedback to the officers before entry and allow them to communicate with those in that environment," Huffman said, according to the transcript. "NEO carries an onboard computer and antenna array that will allow officers the ability to create a 'denial-of-service' (DoS) event to disable 'Internet of Things' devices that could potentially cause harm while entry is made."

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