A Russian court has fined Google an astronomical sum of around $20 decillion for YouTube's blocking of Russian media channels tied to sanctioned entities. The amount compounds weekly as Google continues to disregard the ruling. The Register reports: To put that into perspective, the World Bank estimates global GDP as around $100 trillion, which is peanuts compared to the prospective fine. Google might be one of the most valuable businesses on the planet, but even if Sundar Pichai rummages around the back of the sofa he won't be able to raise the funds to pay the penalty. The bizarre amount has been calculated after a four-year court case that started after YouTube banned the ultra-nationalist Russian channel Tsargrad in 2020 in response to the US sanctions imposed against its owner. Following Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022 more channels were added to the banned list and 17 stations are now suing the Chocolate Factory, including Zvezda (a TV channel owned by Putin's Ministry of Defence), according to local media.

"Google was called by a Russian court to administrative liability under Art. 13.41 of the Administrative Offenses Code for removing channels on the YouTube platform. The court ordered the company to restore these channels," lawyer Ivan Morozov told state media outlet TASS. The court imposed a fine of 100 thousand rubles ($1,025) per day, with the total fine doubling every week. Owing to compound interest (Einstein's eighth wonder of the world), Google is now on the hook for an insane amount of money, or what the judge on Monday called "a case in which there are many, many zeros."

The BBC interviewed scientists Charley Kline and Bill Duvall 55 years after the first communications were made over a system called Arpanet, short for the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. "Kline and Duvall were early inventors of networking, networks that would ultimately lead to what is today the Internet," writes longtime Slashdot reader dbialac. "Duvall had basic ideas what might come of the networks, but they had no idea of how much of a phenomenon it would turn into." Here's an excerpt from the interview: BBC: What did you expect Arpanet to become?
Duvall: "I saw the work we were doing at SRI as a critical part of a larger vision, that of information workers connected to each other and sharing problems, observations, documents and solutions. What we did not see was the commercial adoption nor did we anticipate the phenomenon of social media and the associated disinformation plague. Although, it should be noted, that in [SRI computer scientist] Douglas Engelbart's 1962 treatise describing the overall vision, he notes that the capabilities we were creating would trigger profound change in our society, and it would be necessary to simultaneously use and adapt the tools we were creating to address the problems which would arise from their use in society."

What aspects of the internet today remind you of Arpanet?
Duvall: Referring to the larger vision which was being created in Engelbart's group (the mouse, full screen editing, links, etc.), the internet today is a logical evolution of those ideas enhanced, of course, by the contributions of many bright and innovative people and organisations.

Kline: The ability to use resources from others. That's what we do when we use a website. We are using the facilities of the website and its programs, features, etc. And, of course, email. The Arpanet pretty much created the concept of routing and multiple paths from one site to another. That got reliability in case a communication line failed. It also allowed increases in communication speeds by using multiple paths simultaneously. Those concepts have carried over to the internet. Today, the site of the first internet transmission at UCLA's Boetler Hally Room 3420 functions as a monument to technology history (Credit: Courtesy of UCLA) As we developed the communications protocols for the Arpanet, we discovered problems, redesigned and improved the protocols and learned many lessons that carried over to the Internet. TCP/IP [the basic standard for internet connection] was developed both to interconnect networks, in particular the Arpanet with other networks, and also to improve performance, reliability and more.

How do you feel about this anniversary?
Kline: That's a mix. Personally, I feel it is important, but a little overblown. The Arpanet and what sprang from it are very important. This particular anniversary to me is just one of many events. I find somewhat more important than this particular anniversary were the decisions by Arpa to build the Network and continue to support its development.

Duvall: It's nice to remember the origin of something like the internet, but the most important thing is the enormous amount of work that has been done since that time to turn it into what is a major part of societies worldwide.

Google has integrated AI deeply across its operations, with over 25% of its new code generated by AI. CEO Sundar Pichai announced the milestone during the company's third quarter 2024 earnings call. The Verge reports: AI is helping Google make money as well. Alphabet reported $88.3 billion in revenue for the quarter, with Google Services (which includes Search) revenue of $76.5 billion, up 13 percent year-over-year, and Google Cloud (which includes its AI infrastructure products for other companies) revenue of $11.4 billion, up 35 percent year-over-year. Operating incomes were also strong. Google Services hit $30.9 billion, up from $23.9 billion last year, and Google Cloud hit $1.95 billion, significantly up from last year's $270 million. "In Search, our new AI features are expanding what people can search for and how they search for it," CEO Sundar Pichai says in a statement. "In Cloud, our AI solutions are helping drive deeper product adoption with existing customers, attract new customers and win larger deals. And YouTube's total ads and subscription revenues surpassed $50 billion over the past four quarters for the first time."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: LinkedIn, the social platform used by professionals to connect with others in their field, hunt for jobs, and develop skills, is taking the wraps off its latest effort to build artificial intelligence tools for users. Hiring Assistant is a new product designed to take on a wide array of recruitment tasks, from ingesting scrappy notes and thoughts to turn into longer job descriptions, through to sourcing candidates and engaging with them. LinkedIn is describing Hiring Assistant as a milestone in its AI trajectory: it is, per the Microsoft-owned company, its first "AI agent" And one that happens to be targeting one of LinkedIn's most lucrative categories of users (recruiters).

LinkedIn said the AI assistant is now live with a "select group" of customers (large enterprises such as AMD, Canva, Siemens and Zurich Insurance among them). It's slated to be rolling out more widely in the coming months. [...] "It's designed to take on a recruiter's most repetitive task so they can spend more time on the most impactful part of their jobs," Hari Srinivasan, LinkedIn's VP of product, said in an interview -- "a big statement," he admitted. The product includes the ability to upload full job descriptions, or just note what you want it to have, along with job postings that you like the look of from other companies or roles. In turn, that becomes a list of qualifications you're looking for, as well as an initial pipeline of candidates that you can interact with -- to look for more potential hires that are similar to some, or less like others -- with algorithms designed to search based on skills rather than other indicators (such as where a person lives or went to school), per Srinivasan.

The AI assistant also integrates with third-party application tracking systems, although ultimately, the whole system is trained on LinkedIn data, which spans 1 billion users, 68 million companies and 41,000 skills. LinkedIn said Hiring Assistant is due to get more features soon, such as messaging and scheduling support for interviews, as well as handle follow-ups when candidates have questions before or after interviews. Basically the aim is for it to cover a lot of (time-consuming) admin-style tasks, plus take on some of the thinking, that recruiters have to do daily. Second, unlike many of the other AI features that LinkedIn has released, Hiring Assistant is very squarely aimed at LinkedIn's B2B business, the products it sells to the recruitment industry. "We're really focused on making Hiring Assistant great," said Erran Berger, VP of engineering, in an interview. "This is all bleeding edge, and I mean everything from the experience and how our users are going to interact with it, to the technology that backs it. And so we're really focused on nailing that a lot of the technology we've built is applicable to problems that we're trying to solve for our members and customers. But right now, you know, we really just want to nail this, and then we can figure out where we go from there."

Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel outlined a vision for universal connectivity last week that merges satellite and ground-based networks. The FCC recently became the first regulator to establish a framework for supplemental coverage from space (SCS). "Satellites may be in our skies, but they are the anchor tenant in our communications future," said Rosenworcel, calling for seamless integration of fiber, cellular, wireless, and satellite infrastructure into a unified network. The vision comes as the FCC's Affordable Connectivity Program recently ended due to funding depletion.

Cryptocurrency firm Consensys said on Tuesday it would cut 20% of its total workforce, citing broader macroeconomic pressures and ongoing regulatory challenges facing the industry. From a report: The decision will impact 162 of a total of 828 employees at the company, Consensys CEO Joseph Lubin told Reuters in a mailed statement. Crypto companies have frequently accused the Securities and Exchange Commission of regulatory overreach and exceeding its jurisdiction, while the agency argues that the industry is disregarding securities laws designed to protect investors and other market participants.

"Multiple cases with the SEC, including ours, represent meaningful jobs and productive investment lost due to the SEC's abuse of power and Congress's inability to rectify the problem," Lubin said in a blog post, opens new tab. "Such attacks from the U.S. government will end up costing many companies that have been investigated, sued, or sent Wells Notices, many millions of dollars," he added.

Oscar winner Robert Downey Jr. has threatened legal action against future studio executives who attempt to recreate his likeness using AI. "I intend to sue all future executives just on spec," Downey said when asked about potential AI recreations of his performances. He dismissed concerns about Marvel Studios using his likeness without permission, citing trust in their leadership. During the interview, he criticized tech executives who position themselves as AI gatekeepers, calling it "a massive fucking error."

Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports: Over the past year we have seen Raspberry Pi working a lot on Wayland support for the Raspberry Pi OS desktop and using it on their latest Raspberry Pi models. With today's new Raspberry Pi OS update, Wayland is being used by default across all Raspberry Pi devices. The new Raspberry Pi OS update shipping today is using Wayland across all Raspberry Pi models. Labwc is also now the Wayland compositor of choice and those upgrading their existing Raspberry Pi OS installation will be prompted whether to switch to Labwc or keep using the prior Wayfire compositor. Raspberry Pi developers feel that the Labwc Wayland compositor offers the best experience on their single board computers. You can learn more about the update and download it via the RaspberryPi.com blog.

Further reading: Raspberry Pi Launches Its Own Branded SD Cards and SSDs - Plus SSD Kits

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Similar to how Mastodon offers an open source, distributed version of X, the fediverse is getting its own TikTok competitor. This week, an app called Loops began accepting signups on its new platform for sharing short, looping videos. Still in the early stages, Loops is not yet open sourced, nor has it completed its integration with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and other federated apps. However, both those efforts are in the works and when complete, will allow Loops to add another layer of social activity to the growing open social web known as the fediverse, which now has north of 11.6 million users and over 1 million monthly active users. (Mastodon accounts for roughly 65% of that activity.) Growth in this space has also encouraged other apps to adopt ActivityPub, like social magazine app Flipboard and Meta's Threads. The latter is not yet fully integrated but already has more than 200 million monthly active users.

Loops, meanwhile, was developed by Daniel Supernault, who also created the federated Instagram rival Pixelfed. In fact, Loops will run under the Pixelfed project, according to an FAQ on its website. [...] Aimed at users 13 and up, Loops will allow you to follow other users, as well as like, comment on, or share their videos. But as a part of the federated web -- the open social web running on ActivityPub -- remote users from other platforms like Mastodon and Pixelfed will also be able to follow users' Loops accounts and then view the videos in their home feed on those respective platforms. These remote followers will also be able to like, comment on, or share videos if their platform supports it. Videos published to the app will be held for moderation if the uploader has a low trust score, but trusted users will be able to skip the queue and publish immediately. The trust score is also used to hide problematic comments on posts and apply content warnings, Supernault notes. Other features, like profile sharing or the ability for Loops users to follow Mastodon and Pixelfed users in return, are still "to be announced," the site notes.

A commercial military simulation software, originally inspired by Tom Clancy novels, has become an unexpected tool for military training across NATO forces and defense analysts worldwide. Command: Professional Edition, developed by Britain's Slitherine Software, has secured contracts with the U.S. Air Force and British Strategic Command, while Taiwanese analysts use it to war-game potential conflicts with China.

The software's success stems from its vast database of military equipment and capabilities, compiled through contributions from its million-strong user base. Marine Corps University's wargaming director Tim Barrick employs the software to train officers, noting its effectiveness in developing tactical creativity. "These are not simple problems," said Barrick, a retired Marine colonel, told WSJ.

A fascinating excerpt from the report: Command's British publisher, Slitherine Software, stumbled into popularity. The family business got started around 2000 selling retail CD-ROM games like Legion, involving ancient Roman military campaigns. When Defense Department officials in 2016 first contacted Slitherine, which is based in an old house in a leafy London suburb, its father-and-son managers were so stunned they thought the call might be a prank. "Are you taking the piss?" J.D. McNeil, the father, recalled asking near the end of the conversation.

Microsoft took the unusual step on Monday of publicly criticizing longtime rival Google for running "shadow campaigns" in Europe designed to discredit the software giant with regulators. CNBC: Microsoft lawyer Rima Alaily wrote in a blog post that Google hired a firm to recruit European cloud companies to represent the search company's case. "This week an astroturf group organized by Google is launching," Microsoft lawyer Rima Alaily wrote in a blog post. "It is designed to discredit Microsoft with competition authorities, and policymakers and mislead the public. Google has gone through great lengths to obfuscate its involvement, funding, and control, most notably by recruiting a handful of European cloud providers, to serve as the public face of the new organization."

The conflict represents a fresh battle between two companies that do battle in cloud infrastructure as well as online advertising and productivity software. The latest chapter surfaces as Google faces heightened regulatory pressure in Europe and in the U.S., where it's in the midst of its second antitrust trial against the Justice Department. Alaily suggested in Monday's post that Google hired advisory firm DGA Group to set up the Open Cloud Coalition. One company that opted not to participate in the group told Microsoft that the coalition would receive financial backing from Google and criticize Microsoft's practices in Europe, Alaily wrote.

Italian technology firm Bending Spoons has emerged as an unconventional private equity player, acquiring struggling tech companies and dramatically restructuring them for profitability, most notably with its purchase of note-taking app Evernote.

The Milan-based company, valued at $2.6 billion, has acquired six companies since 2022, including WeTransfer and Meetup's assets. CEO Luca Ferrari has told investors the company could deploy up to $2 billion for future acquisitions. Bending Spoons typically targets subscription-based software companies with steady cash flow, implementing steep price hikes and significant staff reductions post-acquisition.

At Evernote, the company dismissed over half the workforce and increased annual subscription costs by 63% to $130. The strategy appears to be working. Bending Spoons reports annual sales have surged to $700 million from $162 million in 2022, with Evernote turning profitable earlier this year.

An anonymous reader shares a report: As Meta tries to keep up with OpenAI in developing AI, the Facebook owner is working on a search engine [non-paywalled link] that crawls the web to provide conversational answers about current events to people using its Meta AI chatbot.

In doing so, Meta hopes to lower its reliance on Google Search and Microsoft's Bing, which currently provide information about news, sports and stocks to people using Meta AI, according to a person who has spoken with the search engine team. It could also give Meta a backup option if Google or Microsoft withdrew from these arrangements, according to a person who has been involved with the strategy.

AmiMoJo shares a report: Tech behemoth OpenAI has touted its artificial intelligence-powered transcription tool Whisper as having near "human level robustness and accuracy." But Whisper has a major flaw: It is prone to making up chunks of text or even entire sentences, according to interviews with more than a dozen software engineers, developers and academic researchers.

Those experts said some of the invented text -- known in the industry as hallucinations -- can include racial commentary, violent rhetoric and even imagined medical treatments. Experts said that such fabrications are problematic because Whisper is being used in a slew of industries worldwide to translate and transcribe interviews, generate text in popular consumer technologies and create subtitles for videos.

[...] It's impossible to compare Nabla's AI-generated transcript to the original recording because Nabla's tool erases the original audio for "data safety reasons," Nabla's chief technology officer Martin Raison said.

Indonesia has banned sales of Apple's iPhone 16, citing the tech giant's failure to meet local investment requirements, the country's Ministry of Industry said. The ministry said Apple's local unit has not fulfilled the mandatory 40% local content threshold for smartphones, making imported iPhone 16 units illegal for sale in Southeast Asia's largest economy.

About 9,000 iPhone 16 devices have entered Indonesia through passenger luggage since last month's launch. "These phones entered legally, but will be illegal if traded," the ministry said. Apple has invested 1.48 trillion rupiah ($108 million) of its 1.71 trillion rupiah commitment in Indonesia. The company operates four developer academies but no manufacturing facilities in the country, despite government pressure to expand its presence.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Verge: Ever wondered why some of your Instagram videos tend to look blurry, while others are crisp and sharp? It's because, on Instagram, the quality of your video apparently depends on how many views it's getting.

Here's part of Mosseri's explanation, from the video, which was reposted by a Threads user today. "In general, we want to show the highest-quality video we can ... But if something isn't watched for a long time — because the vast majority of views are in the beginning — we will move to a lower quality video. And then if it's watched again a lot then we'll re-render the higher quality video...."

The shift in quality "isn't huge," Mosseri said in response to another Threads user, who'd asked if that approach disadvantaged smaller creators. That's "the right concern," he told them, but said people interact with videos based on its content, not its quality. That's consistent with how Meta has described its approach before... Meta wrote in a blog [post] that in order to conserve computing resources for the relatively few, most watched videos, it gives fresh uploads the fastest, most basic encoding. After a video "gets sufficiently high watch time," it receives a more robust encoding pass.
"It works at an aggregate level, not an individual viewer level," Mosseri wrote later on Threads. "We bias to higher quality (more CPU intensive encoding and more expensive storage for bigger files) for creators who drive more views. It's not a binary theshhold, but rather a sliding scale."

When it comes to introducing liability for software products, "the EU and U.S. are taking very different approaches," according to Lawfare's cybersecurity newsletter. "While the U.S. kicks the can down the road, the EU is rolling a hand grenade down it to see what happens." Under the status quo, the software industry is extensively protected from liability for defects or issues, and this results in systemic underinvestment in product security. Authorities believe that by making software companies liable for damages when they peddle crapware, those companies will be motivated to improve product security... [T]he EU has chosen to set very stringent standards for product liability, apply them to people rather than companies, and let lawyers sort it all out.

Earlier this month, the EU Council issued a directive updating the EU's product liability law to treat software in the same way as any other product. Under this law, consumers can claim compensation for damages caused by defective products without having to prove the vendor was negligent or irresponsible. In addition to personal injury or property damages, for software products, damages may be awarded for the loss or destruction of data. Rather than define a minimum software development standard, the directive sets what we regard as the highest possible bar. Software makers can avoid liability if they prove a defect was not discoverable given the "objective state of scientific and technical knowledge" at the time the product was put on the market.

Although the directive is severe on software makers, its scope is narrow. It applies only to people (not companies), and damages for professional use are explicitly excluded. There is still scope for collective claims such as class actions, however. The directive isn't law itself but sets the legislative direction for EU member states, and they have two years to implement its provisions. The directive commits the European Commission to publicly collating court judgements based on the directive, so it will be easy to see how cases are proceeding.

Major software vendors used by the world's most important enterprises and governments are publishing comically vulnerable code without fear of any blowback whatsoever. So yes, the status quo needs change. Whether it needs a hand grenade lobbed at it is an open question. We'll have our answer soon.

Boeing received an email from the chief pilot at Ethiopian Airlines on December 1, 2018 with several questions, reports the New York Times (alternate URL here). "in essence the pilot was asking for direction. If we see a series of warnings on the new 737 Max, he posed, what do we do?" What ensued was an email conversation among a number of Boeing senior officials about whether they could answer the pilot's questions without violating international restrictions on disseminating information about a crash while it was still under investigation. That restriction was in play because a 737 Max flown by Lion Air had crashed a few weeks earlier leaving Indonesia. The inquiry from Ethiopian Airlines would prove chillingly prescient because just months later one of its 737s would go down because of a flight control malfunction similar to the one that led to the Lion Air crash. The Ethiopian Airlines crash would kill everyone on board and leave questions about whether Boeing had done everything it could to inform pilots of what it had learned about the malfunction and how to handle it.

In response to the inquiry from Ethiopian Airlines, Boeing's chief pilot, Jim Webb, proposed to his colleagues that he thank the airline for attending a previous briefing on the flight control system, called MCAS, but otherwise decline to answer the pilot's first two questions and just refer the airline to training materials and previously issued guidance. Most of those on the email agreed.
Boeing's eventual response? "I can only address the current system and the Operations Manual Bulletin. The first two questions directly relate to the accident scenario; therefore, I will be unable to address them here." The Times adds that Boeing's chief pilot Jim Webb then "ended the email by stating that if airline officials had any additional questions about the bulletin and system, they should feel free to reach out....

"It is impossible to know whether any pilots with Ethiopian Arlines would have acted differently if Webb's reply had been more forthcoming. But Boeing's limited response to an airline seeking help highlights a missed opportunity to collaborate on safety and to pass along lessons Boeing had collected following the Lion Air jet's crash into the Java Sea on Oct. 29, 2018."

This week Google-backed Anthropic announced its upgraded AI model Claude 3.5 Sonnet could "perform tasks like navigating web browsers, filling forms, and manipulating data."

Now Google plans something similar for Chrome, reports 9to5Linux.com: According to The Information, Google is "developing artificial intelligence that takes over a person's web browser to complete tasks such as gathering research, purchasing a product or booking a flight."

"Project Jarvis" — in a nod to J.A.R.V.I.S. in Iron Man — would operate in Google Chrome and is a consumer-facing (rather than enterprise) feature to "automate everyday, web-based tasks." The article doesn't specify whether this would be for mobile or desktop... Given a command/action, Jarvis works by taking "frequent screenshots of what's on their computer screen, and interpreting the shots before taking actions like clicking on a button or typing into a text field."
The Information reports that Google "plans to preview the product, also known as a computer-using agent, as early as December alongside the release of its next flagship Gemini large language model, which would help power the product, two of the people said."

SFGate spills the secrets of Disneyland's "Enchanted Tiki Room" and its lifelike animatronic singing birds — Jose, Fritz, Michael and Pierre — "whose movements were perfectly synced with the audio track." "Beneath the room, the heartbeat of the attraction is a $1 million installation of electronics equipment, operated by a roll of 14-channel magnetic tape," the Orange County Register wrote upon its opening. "It is the same system which programs the U.S. military's polaris missile." That system also ran very hot. To keep guests from overheating, air conditioning was installed throughout the building, making the Tiki Room Disneyland's first attraction to be fully air conditioned...
Or, as another article puts it, "While Disney did not delve into the speculative science of cryogenics to preserve his life, he did borrow the mechanical brain of a nuclear missile to simulate life, creating a new type of entertainment in the process."

The article remembers how Wernher Von Braun became a technical advisor (and on-camera presenter) for three Disney-produced TV episodes about space travel — at the same time Von Braun was working as technical director for the U.S. Army rocket program that produced the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile, plus the first submarine-launched ballistic missile with its ground-breaking launch control mechanism: An important aspect of the Polaris launch system hinged on the fact that the conditions under which the missiles might be launched were constantly changing. Different underwater currents, temperatures, and flexing of the metal hull all contributed to the difficulty of a successful launch. In order to minimize human errors and to automate the sequence as much as possible, scientists developed an audio control system. A magnetic audio tape with a series of prerecorded cues precisely timed to account for the submarine's movement, controlled the launch machinery.

This new technology, invented to deliver nuclear destruction, proved exactly what Disney needed for his wonderland developed for children.
The article concludes that Disneyland engineering "transformed Von Braun's military technology" to the point today where "what was once controlled by the artificial brain of a nuclear missile is now run by the equivalent of a MacBook."

SFGate delves deeper into the attraction's strange origins — and how it all came full circle 63 years later... At the intersection of Main Street and Adventureland, a restaurant called the Pavillion — now the Jolly Holiday — bridged the gap. Under one roof, it served food to Main Street guests on one side and Adventureland diners on the other. The inelegant transition created an eyesore that Walt despised... The need for the Tiki Cafe "appeared to be less about food and more about aesthetics," Ken Bruce writes in Before the Birds Sang Words , a comprehensive history of the attraction.

In 1961, Walt gathered with park designers about the concept. The sketch made by legendary theme park designer John Hench was remarkably thorough, with much of its design incorporated into the final product... When Walt saw a plethora of birds in the sketch, he famously exclaimed, "We can't have birds in there ... because they'll poop in the food." Hench hurriedly ad-libbed that the birds would be mechanical, a concept that Walt adored...

Although its powerful air conditioning may be its biggest draw today, many attractions you love owe their existence to the flock of singing birds. Disney engineers' work on the talking flora and fauna laid the foundation for much more complex Audio-Animatronics (a word that Walt Disney coined). Without Jose, Fritz, Michael and Pierre, there would be no Haunted Mansion, no Pirates of the Caribbean, no Rise of the Resistance. Next year, in celebration of Disneyland's 70th anniversary, the park will unveil one of its most sophisticated animatronics yet: Walt Disney himself. It will be the first time Walt appears in a Disney attraction anywhere in the world, completing a journey that started with a mechanical bird and ends with an immortal homage.
Their article also reveals that a year after the Tiki Room opened, one of the birds was programmed to say "Come, there's an island there for you in Hawaii. Soaring birds of United Airlines fly there too!" Because Disneyland had signed a sponsorship deal with United Airlines...