Earlier this week Google Maps stopped storing user location histories in the cloud. But why did Google make this move? Bloomberg reports that it was "so that the company no longer has access to users' individual location histories, cutting off its ability to respond to law enforcement warrants that ask for data on everyone who was in the vicinity of a crime." The company said Thursday that for users who have it enabled, location data will soon be saved directly on users' devices, blocking Google from being able to see it, and, by extension, blocking law enforcement from being able to demand that information from Google. "Your location information is personal," said Marlo McGriff, director of product for Google Maps, in the blog post. "We're committed to keeping it safe, private and in your control."

The change comes three months after a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation that found police across the US were increasingly using warrants to obtain location and search data from Google, even for nonviolent cases, and even for people who had nothing to do with the crime. "It's well past time," said Jennifer Lynch, the general counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that defends digital civil liberties. "We've been calling on Google to make these changes for years, and I think it's fantastic for Google users, because it means that they can take advantage of features like location history without having to fear that the police will get access to all of that data."

Google said it would roll out the changes gradually through the next year on its own Android and Apple Inc.'s iOS mobile operating systems, and that users will receive a notification when the update comes to their account. The company won't be able to respond to new geofence warrants once the update is complete, including for people who choose to save encrypted backups of their location data to the cloud.
The EFF general counsel also pointed out to Bloomberg that "nobody else has been storing and collecting data in the same way as Google." (Apple, for example, is technically unable to provide the same data to police.)

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Verge: On Friday, two days after Threads finally started publicly testing ActivityPub integration, Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared a thread on Threads detailing the company's plans for its continued integration with the fediverse. Right now, it's possible to follow a few Threads accounts (including Mosseri's) from other platforms, but Meta has much bigger plans for Threads interoperability that Mosseri says will take "the better part of a year" to realize...

Mosseri says that the Threads team wants to make it so the option to follow a Threads account on other platforms is available to "all public accounts on Threads, not just a handful of testers." The Threads team wants to let replies from other platforms show up inside of Threads.
According to the article, Threads is also planning to support the ability to follow non-Threads fediverse accounts — and even taking that openness in the other direction.

"Eventually, it should also be possible to enable creators to leave Threads and take their followers with them to another app / server," Mosseri writes.

Flipboard and Wordpress already allow ActivityPub integration, according to NBC News. They estimate there's 11 million users of the Fediverse now, "the vast majority of them on Mastodon."

"Unlike automobiles, jumbo jets cannot run on batteries," notes the Washington Post.

So Friday the White unveiled a plan for "subsidizing sustainable aviation fuels" — which could also give the U.S. a leg up in a brand new industry: Senior White House officials said the program would make the airline industry cleaner while bringing prosperity to rural America. But environmental groups and some scientists expressed reservations about the plan, which would award subsidies based on a scientific model that has previously been used to justify incentives for corn-based ethanol. Studies have found the gasoline additive is exacerbating climate change.

The new tax credits, created through President Biden's signature climate law, are meant to spur production of jet fuels that create no more than half the emissions of the petroleum-based product. Each gallon of such fuel qualifies for a tax credit up to $1.75 per gallon. "The concern is they will end up subsidizing fuels that take an enormous amount of land to produce," said Tim Searchinger, a senior research scholar at Princeton University... Administration officials said on a call with reporters Thursday that they are carefully weighing such concerns. Agencies are in the process of updating the scientific model for gauging climate friendliness of jet fuels, they said, and it will be revised to factor in the emissions impact of cropland converted from food to fuel production. Federal agencies plan to complete their revisions by March 1.

"The sustainable aviation fuel industry is a potential 36 billion gallon industry that for all intents and purposes is just getting started," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on the call. "This is a big, big deal."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A NASA telescope has captured the biggest solar flare in years, which temporarily knocked out radio communication on Earth. The sun spit out the huge flare on Thursday, resulting in two hours of radio interference in parts of the U.S. and other sunlit parts of the world. Scientists said it was the biggest flare since 2017. Multiple pilots reported communication disruptions, with the impact felt across the country, said the government's Space Weather Prediction Center.

Scientists are now monitoring this sunspot region and analyzing for a possible outburst of plasma from the sun, also known as a coronal mass ejection, directed at Earth. The eruption occurred in the far northwest section of the sun, according to the center. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the action in extreme ultraviolet light, recording the powerful surge of energy as a huge, bright flash. Launched in 2010, the spacecraft is in an extremely high orbit around Earth, where it constantly monitors the sun. The sun is nearing the peak of its 11-year or so solar cycle. Maximum sunspot activity is predicted for 2025.

Alex Williams reports via The New York Times: Vera Molnar, a Hungarian-born artist who has been called the godmother of generative art for her pioneering digital work, which started with the hulking computers of the 1960s and evolved through the current age of NFTs, died on Dec. 7 in Paris. She was 99. Her death was announced on social media by the Pompidou Center in Paris, which is scheduled to present a major exhibition of her work in February. Ms. Molnar had lived in Paris since 1947. While her computer-aided paintings and drawings, which drew inspiration from geometric works by Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee, were eventually exhibited in major museums like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, her work was not always embraced early in her career.

Ms. Molnar in fact began to employ the principles of computation in her work years before she gained access to an actual computer. In 1959, she began implementing a concept she called "Machine Imaginaire" -- imaginary machine. This analog approach involved using simple algorithms to guide the placement of lines and shapes for works that she produced by hand, on grid paper. She took her first step into the silicon age in 1968, when she got access to a computer at a university research laboratory in Paris. In the days when computers were generally reserved for scientific or military applications, it took a combination of gumption and '60s idealism for an artist to attempt to gain access to a machine that was "very complicated and expensive," she once said, adding, "They were selling calculation time in seconds." [...]

Making art on Apollo-era computers was anything but intuitive. Ms. Molnar had to learn early computer languages like Basic and Fortran and enter her data with punch cards, and she had to wait several days for the results, which were transferred to paper with a plotter printer. One early series, "Interruptions," involved a vast sea of tiny lines on a white background. As ARTNews noted in a recent obituary: "She would set up a series of straight lines, then rotate some, causing her rigorous set of marks to be thrown out of alignment. Then, to inject further chaos, she would randomly erase certain portions, resulting in blank areas amid a sea of lines." Another series, "(Des)Ordres" (1974), involved seemingly orderly patterns of concentric squares, which she tweaked to make them appear slightly disordered, as if they were vibrating.

Over the years, Ms. Molnar continued to explore the tensions between machine-like perfection and the chaos of life itself, as with her 1976 plotter drawing "1% of Disorder," another deconstructed pattern of concentric squares. "I love order, but I can't stand it," she told Mr. Obrist. "I make mistakes, I stutter, I mix up my words." And so, she concluded, "chaos, perhaps, came from this." [...] Her career continued to expand in scope in the 1970s. She began using computers with screens, which allowed her to instantly assess the results of her codes and adjust accordingly. With screens, it was "like a conversation, like a real pictorial process," she said in a recent interview with the generative art creator and entrepreneur Erick Calderon. "You move the 'brush' and you see immediately if it suits you or not." [...] Earlier this year, she cemented her legacy in the world of blockchain with "Themes and Variations," a generative art series of more than 500 works using NFT technology that was created in collaboration with the artist and designer Martin Grasser and sold through Sotheby's. The series fetched $1.2 million in sales.

Firefox's Android browser now has over 450 new extensions available on Mozilla's Firefox Browser Add-ons page. "These extensions allow users to customize the mobile browser to their needs, whether that involves adding anti-tracking privacy tools, content blockers, productivity tools or other features that introduce new experiences, like streaming music, or those that allow users to personalize the browser's user interface -- like switching all websites to a dark mode or offering a better way to manage tabs," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The lack of extensions has been an issue for Firefox for Android users for years following the 2020 launch of a rebuilt version of the mobile browser that replaced the app's previous codebase with "GeckoView," a new, faster and more customizable browser engine. At the time, the company said it made a decision to limit the supported extensions to only those within the "Recommended Extensions" program -- meaning those that were commonly installed by end users. This choice allowed Mozilla to quickly get the new browser into consumers' hands, but squashed the long tail of extension development -- and opportunity for software developers focused on this market.

While Firefox's nightly builds later enabled more extensions, the publicly available Firefox for Android browser did not have access to these hundreds of extensions, meaning most of Firefox's mainstream users were also without. In August of this year, Mozilla said it had finally completed the infrastructure needed to bring the open extension ecosystem back to Firefox for Android. It then began to test and make hundreds more extensions available to Firefox for Android users, culminating in today's news that there are now 450+ extensions available.

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.