Malak Saleh reports via Engadget: Twitch has quickly taken back its policy update that permitted users to post sexual content as long as it was labeled. In another update, the company said it is not going to allow any depictions of real or fictional nudity on its streaming platform. After giving users the green light to post "artistic nudity," Twitch says some streamers created content that violated policy.

The media streamed in response to the initial approval of sexually explicit content on Twitch was "met with community concern," according to the update. The company said, "We have decided that we went too far with this change." While a huge part of the initial decision was to allow for the "digital depiction" of artistic nudity, the company clarified that digital depictions of sexual content is a concern when artificial intelligence can be used to develop realistic images and that it can be difficult to discern between what's been digitally produced and real photography.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Some TikTok users may have skipped reviewing an update to TikTok's terms of service this summer that shakes up the process for filing a legal dispute against the app. According to The New York Times, changes that TikTok "quietly" made to its terms suggest that the popular app has spent the back half of 2023 preparing for a wave of legal battles. In July, TikTok overhauled its rules for dispute resolution, pivoting from requiring private arbitration to insisting that legal complaints be filed in either the US District Court for the Central District of California or the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles. Legal experts told the Times this could be a way for TikTok to dodge arbitration claims filed en masse that can cost companies millions more in fees than they expected to pay through individual arbitration.

Perhaps most significantly, TikTok also added a section to its terms that mandates that all legal complaints be filed within one year of any alleged harm caused by using the app. The terms now say that TikTok users "forever waive" rights to pursue any older claims. And unlike a prior version of TikTok's terms of service archived in May 2023, users do not seem to have any options to opt out of waiving their rights. Lawyers told the Times that these changes could make it more challenging for TikTok users to pursue legal action at a time when federal agencies are heavily scrutinizing the app and complaints about certain TikTok features allegedly harming kids are mounting.

A marketing team within media giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims it has the capability to listen to ambient conversations of consumers through embedded microphones in smartphones, smart TVs, and other devices to gather data and use it to target ads, according to a review of CMG marketing materials by 404 Media and details from a pitch given to an outside marketing professional. From a report: Called "Active Listening," CMG claims the capability can identify potential customers "based on casual conversations in real time." The news signals that what a huge swath of the public has believed for years -- that smartphones are listening to people in order to deliver ads -- may finally be a reality in certain situations. Until now, there was no evidence that such a capability actually existed, but its myth permeated due to how sophisticated other ad tracking methods have become.

It is not immediately clear if the capability CMG is advertising and claims works is being used on devices in the market today, but the company notes it is "a marketing technique fit for the future. Available today." 404 Media also found a representative of the company on LinkedIn explicitly asking interested parties to contact them about the product. One marketing professional pitched by CMG on the tech said a CMG representative explained the prices of the service to them. "What would it mean for your business if you could target potential clients who are actively discussing their need for your services in their day-to-day conversations? No, it's not a Black Mirror episode -- it's Voice Data, and CMG has the capabilities to use it to your business advantage," CMG's website reads.

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is, once again, having trouble transmitting any scientific or systems data back to Earth. "The 46-year-old spacecraft is capable of receiving commands, but a problem seems to have arisen with the probe's computers," reports Space.com. Slashdot readers quonset and ArchieBunker shared the news. From the report: Voyager 1's flight data system (FDS), which collects onboard engineering information and data from the spacecraft's scientific instruments, is no longer communicating as expected with the probe's telecommunications unit (TMU), according to a NASA blog post on Dec. 12. When functioning properly, the FDS compiles the spacecraft's info into a data package, which is then transmitted back to Earth using the TMU. Lately, that data package has been "stuck," the blog post said, "transmitting a repeating pattern of ones and zeros." Voyager's engineering team traced the problem back to the FDS, but it could be weeks before a solution is found. In May 2022, Voyager 1 experienced transmitting issues for several months before a workaround was found. Meanwhile, Voyager 2 experienced an unplanned "communications pause" earlier this year after a routine sequence of commands triggered a 2-degree change in the spacecraft's antenna orientation. This prevented it from receiving commands or transmitting data back to Earth until NASA fixed the issue a week later.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: In a paper published in Nature today, the researchers say it is the first time a large language model has been used to discover a solution to a long-standing scientific puzzle -- producing verifiable and valuable new information that did not previously exist. "It's not in the training data -- it wasn't even known," says coauthor Pushmeet Kohli, vice president of research at Google DeepMind. Large language models have a reputation for making things up, not for providing new facts. Google DeepMind's new tool, called FunSearch, could change that. It shows that they can indeed make discoveries -- if they are coaxed just so, and if you throw out the majority of what they come up with.

FunSearch (so called because it searches for mathematical functions, not because it's fun) continues a streak of discoveries in fundamental math and computer science that DeepMind has made using AI. First Alpha Tensor found a way to speed up a calculation at the heart of many different kinds of code, beating a 50-year record. Then AlphaDev found ways to make key algorithms used trillions of times a day run faster. Yet those tools did not use large language models. Built on top of DeepMind's game-playing AI AlphaZero, both solved math problems by treating them as if they were puzzles in Go or chess. The trouble is that they are stuck in their lanes, says Bernardino Romera-Paredes, a researcher at the company who worked on both AlphaTensor and FunSearch: "AlphaTensor is great at matrix multiplication, but basically nothing else." FunSearch takes a different tack. It combines a large language model called Codey, a version of Google's PaLM 2 that isfine-tuned on computer code, with other systems that reject incorrect or nonsensical answers and plug good ones back in.

The researchers started by sketching out the problem they wanted to solve in Python, a popular programming language. But they left out the lines in the program that would specify how to solve it. That is where FunSearch comes in. It gets Codey to fill in the blanks -- in effect, to suggest code that will solve the problem. A second algorithm then checks and scores what Codey comes up with. The best suggestions -- even if not yet correct -- are saved and given back to Codey, which tries to complete the program again. After a couple of million suggestions and a few dozen repetitions of the overall process -- which took a few days -- FunSearch was able to come up with code that produced a correct and previously unknown solution to the cap set problem, which involves finding the largest size of a certain type of set. Imagine plotting dots on graph paper. [...] To test its versatility, the researchers used FunSearch to approach another hard problem in math: the bin packing problem, which involves trying to pack items into as few bins as possible. This is important for a range of applications in computer science, from data center management to e-commerce. FunSearch came up with a way to solve it that's faster than human-devised ones.

Emma Roth reports via The Verge: Google is releasing a tool to help users diagnose problems with their Pixel phones. Users can launch the app by entering #*#7287#*# on the dial pad, allowing them to check whether their phone is working correctly before or after a repair. There are a bunch of diagnostic tools available within the app. While users can run a full diagnostic test to detect issues across the entire device, there are also options to run individual tests for physical defects and problems affecting the phone's display, sensors, and connectivity. The new tool is available on all Pixel phones in English.

Aside from the diagnostics app, Google is introducing redesigned repair manuals the company says are "easier for technicians and DIYers to use." Users can download repair manuals from Google's website in English and French, but they're only available for the Pixel Fold, Pixel 8, and Pixel 8 Pro for now. Google says it will add repair manuals for previous and future devices "in the coming months." There's also a new Repair Mode Google introduced earlier this month, which Pixel Phone owners can toggle on when their device is getting repaired. The feature is meant to protect users' private information while their phone is in the hands of a technician [...].

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Threads is now available to users in the European Union. "Today we're opening Threads to more countries in Europe," wrote Zuckerberg in a post on the platform. "Welcome everyone." MacRumors reports: The move comes five months after the social media network launched in most markets around the world, but remained unavailable to EU-based users due to regulatory hurdles. [...] In addition to creating a Threads profile for posting, users in the EU can also simply browse Threads without having an Instagram account, an option likely introduced to comply with legislation surrounding online services.

The expansion into a market of 448 million people should see Threads' user numbers get a decent boost. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a company earnings call in October that Threads now has "just under" 100 million monthly users. Since its launch earlier this year it has gained a web app, an ability to search for posts, and a post editing feature.

The Federal Communications Commission has taken a step toward prohibiting early termination fees charged by cable and satellite TV providers. From a report: If given final approval, the FCC action would also require cable and satellite providers to provide a prorated credit or rebate to customers who cancel before a billing period ends. The new rules are being floated in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that the FCC voted to approve this week in a 3-2 vote, with both Republicans dissenting. The NPRM seeks public comment on the proposed rules and could lead to a final vote in a few months or so.

"Today's action proposes to adopt customer service protections that prohibit cable operators and DBS (Direct Broadcast Satellite) providers from imposing a fee for the early termination of a cable or DBS video service contract," the FCC said. "Additionally, the NPRM recommends the adoption of customer service protections to require cable and DBS providers to grant subscribers a prorated credit or rebate for the remaining whole days in a monthly or periodic billing cycle after the subscriber cancels service."

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said, "Consumers are tired of these junk fees. They now have more choices when it comes to video content. But these friction-filled tactics to keep us subscribing to our current providers are aggravating and unfair. So today we kick off a rulemaking to put an end to these practices." Cable lobby group NCTA-The Internet & Television Association opposes the plan and said it will submit comments to support "consumer choice and competitive parity."

Amazon, which launched its first internet satellites in October, says it will use space lasers to ensure reliable broadband coverage even in the middle of the ocean. From a report: The technology will enable a satellite to deliver data to a cruise ship, say, even if the spacecraft isn't in range of an Amazon ground station connected to the internet. Instead, the laser will pass the request on to another satellite that has a clear view of a ground station.

The two prototype satellites successfully tested the technology, which is officially called optical inter-satellite links, Amazon said on Thursday. "If you're going to serve maritime customers, air customers, you have got to be able to get data up to your satellites," said Rajeev Badyal, who leads Amazon's Project Kuiper internet-from-space initiative. "And in the middle of the ocean, it's difficult if not impossible" to install ground stations.

Google is about to launch its grand plan to block third-party cookies in Chrome that many websites use to track your activity across the web for profit. From a report: Starting on January 4th, Google will start testing its new Tracking Protection feature that will eventually restrict website access to third-party cookies by default. It will come to a very small subset of Chrome users at the start, specifically to one percent of users globally. Afterward, Google plans to phase out the use of third-party cookies for all users in the second half of 2024.

If you're randomly selected to try Tracking Protection, Google will notify you when opening Chrome on desktop or Android. If there are issues detected by Chrome while you're browsing, a prompt will appear asking if you'd like to temporarily re-enable third-party cookies for the site.

General Motors' Cruise robotaxi unit announced today that it will lay off 900 employees, or 24% of its workforce. The news follows the departure of nine executives amid an ongoing safety investigation following an inccident in which a pedestrian was dragged by one of the company's self-driving cars. CNBC reports: The company had 3,800 employees before Thursday's cuts, which also follow a round of contractor layoffs at Cruise last month. Affected employees will receive paychecks until Feb. 12 and at least an additional eight weeks of pay, plus severance based on tenure. A Cruise representative also told CNBC that the company's goal is now to work on a fully driverless L4 service, as well as relaunching ride-hailing in one city to start. In a statement, a Cruise spokesperson said, "We shared the difficult news that we are reducing our workforce, primarily in commercial operations and related corporate functions. These changes reflect our decision to focus on more deliberate commercialization plans with safety as our north star. We are supporting impacted Cruisers with strong severance and benefits packages and are grateful to the departing employees who played important roles in building Cruise and supporting our mission."

GM added, "GM supports the difficult employment decisions made by Cruise as it reflects their more deliberate path forward, with safety as the north star. We are confident in the team and committed to supporting Cruise as they set the company up for long-term success with a focus on trust, accountability and transparency."

The Information: In the future, [Google] plans to use Gemini across nearly its entire line of products, from its search engine to its productivity applications and an AI assistant called Pixie that will be exclusive to its Pixel devices, two people familiar with the matter said. [...] The rollout of Pixie, an AI assistant exclusively for Pixel devices, could boost Google's hardware business at a time when tech companies are racing to integrate their hardware with new AI capabilities. Pixie will use the information on a customer's phone -- including data from Google products like Maps and Gmail -- to evolve into a far more personalized version of the Google Assistant, according to one of the people with knowledge of the project. The feature could launch as soon as next year with the Pixel 9 and the 9 Pro, this person said.

Google Maps will soon give you the option to store your location data on your device instead of in the cloud. Android Police reports: In the coming year, Google is planning to switch things up by defaulting to saving your Timeline directly on your device instead of the cloud. You'll also have the option to wipe out bits or the whole information dossier whenever you want and disable location history completely. When you're jumping ship to a new device and want to keep your data close, you always have the option to back it up in the cloud. Google assures you that it'll lock it up with encryption.

Another significant update is the shorter default amount of time before your location history is auto-deleted. Soon, when you turn on location history, the default auto-delete time shrinks to three months. In the past, it used to hang around for 18 months by default. If you're the sentimental type, you can extend the Timeline's lifespan or turn off the auto-delete option. Google Maps has another nifty trick up its sleeve: soon, you can erase all traces of your trips with just a few taps. Say you've got a favorite hangout spot and you want to keep it to yourself. You can wipe the slate clean right from the app, whether it's searches, directions, visits, or shares. This handy feature is making its debut on Maps for Android and iOS in the next few weeks.

Finally, you will soon be able to click on the blue dot on the map to view your Location History and Timeline at a glance. It allows you to tweak what you share and store on Maps, all without having to dive into the settings. Currently, the blue dot only gives you some neat shortcuts for parking saves and location sharing.

According to Reuters, General Motors' Cruise robotaxi unit dismissed nine executives amid an ongoing safety investigation, which the company confirmed included Chief Operating Officer Gil West. The company conducted a full safety review following an incident in San Francisco where a pedestrian was struck and dragged by one of its cars. GM already halted service nationwide and removed its cars from public roads. Reuters reports: CEO Kyle Vogt and co-founder Dan Kan both resigned in recent weeks and Cruise is preparing for a round of layoffs this month. "Following an initial analysis of the October 2 incident and Cruise's response to it, nine individuals departed Cruise," according to the memo. "We are committed to full transparency and are focused on rebuilding trust and operating with the highest standards when it comes to safety, integrity, and accountability," the memo said. "As a result, we believe that new leadership is necessary to achieve these goals."

The Cruise spokesperson confirmed that among those dismissed was also Chief Legal and Policy Officer Jeff Bleich and Senior Vice President of Government Affairs David Estrada. Cruise's troubles are also a setback for an industry dependent on public trust and the cooperation of regulators. The unit had in recent months touted ambitious plans to expand to more cities, offering fully autonomous taxi rides. The investigation, led by law firm Quinn Emmanuel, is expected to last until January, GM has said. "The personnel decisions made today are a necessary step for Cruise to move forward as it focuses on accountability, trust and transparency," GM said in a statement.

Earlier this year, General Motors announced plans to phase out Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, shifting instead to built-in infotainment systems developed with Google. Now, the company has explained why it made that decision to MotorTrend: Tim Babbitt, GM's head of product for infotainment, gave MT a better explanation at a press event for the new Chevrolet Blazer EV, the flagship vehicle in the no CarPlay or Android Auto strategy. According to him, there's an important factor that didn't make it into the fact sheet: safety. Specifically, he cited driver distraction caused by cell phone usage behind the wheel. According to Babbitt, CarPlay and Android Auto have stability issues that manifest themselves as bad connections, poor rendering, slow responses, and dropped connections. And when CarPlay and Android Auto have issues, drivers pick up their phones again, taking their eyes off the road and totally defeating the purpose of these phone-mirroring programs. Solving those issues can sometimes be beyond the control of the automaker. You can start to see GM's frustration. Babbitt's thesis is that if drivers were to do everything through the vehicle's built-in systems, they'd be less likely to pick up their phones and therefore less distracted and safer behind the wheel. He admits, though, GM hasn't tested this thesis in the lab or real world yet but believes it has potential, if customers go for it.

The issues Babbitt cited with CarPlay and Android Auto seem like they'd be mostly linked to using those programs wirelessly, and while he says that's true, just plugging the phone into a USB data port doesn't solve all the problems. Babbitt says even when using a physical connection, Android phones are prone to compatibility issues between the vehicle and all the various phone manufacturers running Android. iPhones, meanwhile, suffer from backwards compatibility issues that cause older iPhone models to have trouble running CarPlay consistently. He points to J.D. Power data that shows issues with CarPlay and Android Auto are common owner complaints, and that customers tend to blame the automaker rather than the phone manufacturer or phone software. In that way, eliminating CarPlay and Android Auto potentially relieves GM of a key customer complaint dragging down their perceived quality scores. After MotorTrend's story was published, GM issued the following statement: "We wanted to reach out to clarify that comments about GM's position on phone projection were misrepresented and to reinforce our valued partnerships with Apple and Google and each company's commitment to driver safety. GM's embedded infotainment strategy is driven by the benefits of having a system that allows for greater integration with the larger GM ecosystem and vehicles."

Google's making the second generation of Imagen, its AI model that can create and edit images given a text prompt, more widely available -- at least to Google Cloud customers using Vertex AI who've been approved for access. From a report: But the company isn't disclosing which data it used to train the new model -- nor introducing a way for creators who might've inadvertently contributed to the data set to opt out or apply for compensation.

Called Imagen 2, Google's enhanced model -- which was quietly launched in preview at the tech giant's I/O conference in May -- was developed using technology from Google DeepMind, Google's flagship AI lab. Compared to the first-gen Imagen, it's "significantly" improved in terms of image quality, Google claims (the company bizarrely refused to share image samples prior to this morning), and introduces new capabilities including the ability to render text and logos. "If you want to create images with a text overlay -- for example, advertising -- you can do that," Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said during a press briefing on Tuesday.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Two years after the Log4Shell vulnerability in the open source Java-based Log4j logging utility was disclosed, circa one in four applications are dependent on outdated libraries, leaving them open to exploitation. Research from security shop Veracode revealed that the vast majority of vulnerable apps may never have updated the Log4j library after it was implemented by developers as 32 percent were running pre-2015 EOL versions. Prior investigations from Veracode also showed that 79 percent of all developers never update third-party libraries after first introducing them into projects, and given that Log4j2 -- the specific version of Log4j affected by the vulnerability -- dates back to 2014, this could explain the large proportion of unpatched apps.

A far smaller minority are running versions that were vulnerable at the time of the Log4j vulnerability's disclosure in December 2021. Only 2.8 percent are still using versions 2.0-beta9 through 2.15.0 -- post-EOL versions that remain exposed to Log4Shell, the industry-coined moniker of the vulnerability's exploit. Some 3.8 percent are still running version 2.17, a post-patch version of the Java logger that's not exposed to Log4Shell attacks, but is vulnerable to a separate remote code execution (RCE) bug (CVE-2021-44832).

The researchers believe this illustrates a minority of developers that acted quickly when the vulnerability was first disclosed, as was the advice at the time, had returned to older habits of leaving libraries untouched. Altogether, just shy of 35 percent remain vulnerable to Log4Shell, and nearly 40 percent are vulnerable to RCE flaws. The EOL versions of Log4j are also vulnerable to three additional critical bugs announced by Apache, bringing the total to seven high and critical-rated issues. "At a surface level, the numbers above show that the massive effort to remediate the Log4Shell vulnerability was effective in mitigating risk of exploitation of the zero-day vulnerability. That should not be surprising," said Chris Eng, chief research officer at Veracode.

"The bigger story at the two-year anniversary, however, is that there is still room for improvement when it comes to open source software security. If Log4Shell was another example in a long series of wake-up calls to adopt more stringent open source security practices, the fact that more than one in three applications currently run vulnerable versions of Log4j shows there is more work to do.

"The major takeaway here is that organizations may not be aware of how much open source security risk they are exposed to and how to mitigate it."

According to Reuters, Ukraine's biggest mobile network was hit by "what appeared to be the largest cyber attack of the war with Russia so far," severing mobile and internet services for millions of people and knocking out the air raid alert system in parts of Kyiv. From the report: Kyivstar has 24.3 million mobile subscribers - more than half of Ukraine's population - as well as over 1.1 million home internet subscribers. Its CEO Oleksandr Komarov said the attack was "a result of" the war with Russia, although he did not say which Russian body he believed to be responsible, and that the company's IT infrastructure had been "partially destroyed." "(The attack) significantly damaged (our) infrastructure, limited access, we could not counter it at the virtual level, so we shut down Kyivstar physically to limit the enemy's access," Komarov said.

A source close to Ukraine's cyber defense also said that Russia was suspected to be the source of the attack, but no specific group had been identified. "It's definitely a state actor," said the source, who asked not to be identified because of the delicacy of the issue, adding that data cable interception showed "a lot of Russian controlled traffic directed at these networks." "There's no ransom. It's all destruction. So it's not a financially motivated attack," said the source. Ukrainian officials said that air raid alert systems in more than 75 settlements in the central Kyiv region were affected by the cyber attack.

Komarov said two databases containing customer data had been damaged and were currently locked. "The most important thing is that the personal data of users has not been compromised," Kyivstar said in its statement, promising to compensate customers for loss of access to services. Meanwhile, Ukraine's defense intelligence director (GUR) said it infected thousands of servers belonging to Russia's state tax service with malware, and destroyed databases and backups. "According to GUR's statement published Tuesday, the attack led to the 'complete destruction' of the agency's infrastructure," reports The Record. "GUR claimed they destroyed configuration files 'which for years ensured the functioning of Russia's tax system.'"

Ed Targett reports via The Stack: Broadcom is killing off VMware's on-premises perpetual licenses -- and getting set to strong-arm VMware customers onto subscriptions, by also ending the sale of Support and Subscription renewals for such customers. VMware described this to customers as part of its plan to "complete the transition of all VMware by Broadcom solutions to subscription licenses." "We are [also] ending the sale of Support and Subscription (SnS) renewals for perpetual offerings beginning today" SVP Krish Prasad said in a FAQ.

VMware perpetual licenses were described by its own Office of the CTO earlier this year in a short blog as its "most renowned licenses." The on-premises licenses for the virtualization software come with a license key, with SnS separately licensing users for support and software updates. Perpetual license keys never expire but the SnS lapses and now will not, seemingly, be renewed -- meaning that customers reluctant to shift to an alternative licensing model will be left without support or updates.

VMware customers "may continue using perpetual licenses with active support contracts. We will continue to provide support as defined in contractual commitments. We encourage customers to review their inventory of perpetual licenses, including Support Services renewal and expiration dates," Broadcom said rather menacingly, on December 10. The company is also announcing a new "bring-your-own-subscription license option, providing license portability to VMware validated hybrid cloud endpoints running VMware Cloud Foundation," it added, without initially sharing details.

Nearly 1 in 5 teenagers in the U.S. say they use YouTube and TikTok "almost constantly," according to a Pew Research Center survey. CNBC reports: The survey showed that YouTube was the most "widely used platform" for U.S.-based teenagers, with 93% of survey respondents saying they regularly use Google's video-streaming service. Of that 93% figure, about 16% of the teenage respondents said they "almost constantly visit or use" YouTube, underscoring the video app's immense popularity with the youth market. TikTok was the second-most popular app, with 63% of teens saying they use the ByteDance-owned short-video service, followed by Snapchat and Meta's Instagram, which had 60% and 59%, respectively. About 17% of the 63% of respondents who said they use TikTok indicated they access the short-video service "almost constantly," the report noted.

Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter, now known as X, are not as popular with U.S.-based teenagers as they were a decade ago, the Pew Research study detailed. Regarding Facebook in particular, the Pew Research authors wrote that the share of teens who use the Meta-owned social media app "has dropped from 71% in 2014-2015 to 33% today." During the same period, Meta-owned Instagram's usage has not made up the difference in share, increasing from 52% in 2014-15 to a peak of 62% last year, then dropping to 59% in 2023, according to the firm.