An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Alphabet's self-driving unit Waymo announced on Wednesday it plans to expand testing of its autonomous driving technology in over 10 new cities in 2025. After testing the Waymo Driver in multiple cities, the company says the technology is adapting successfully to new environments, leading to the expansion. In addition to ongoing trips to Truckee, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Upstate New York and Tokyo, the expansion includes testing in San Diego and Las Vegas, with more cities yet to be announced.

"During these trips, we'll send a limited fleet of vehicles to each city, where trained human autonomous specialists will be behind the wheel at all times," a spokeswoman for Waymo said. The testing will begin with manual driving through the densest and most complex parts of each city, including city centers and freeways. Waymo plans to send less than 10 vehicles to each city, where they will be manually driven around for a couple of months, according to The Verge, which first reported the news.

Comcast is deploying "Low Latency, Low Loss, Scalable Throughput" (L4S) technology across its Xfinity internet network in six U.S. cities, a system that reduces the time data packets take to travel between users and servers. Initial trials showed a 78% reduction in working latency under normal home conditions. The technology will first support FaceTime calls, Nvidia's GeForce Now cloud gaming, and Steam games, with planned expansion to Meta's mixed reality applications.

Virgin Money's AI-powered chatbot has reprimanded a customer who used the word "virgin," underlining the pitfalls of rolling out external AI tools. From a report: In a post last week on social media site LinkedIn, David Birch, a fintech commentator and Virgin Money customer, shared a picture of his online conversation with the bank in which he asked: "I have two ISAs with Virgin Money, how do I merge them?" The bank's customer service tool responded: "Please don't use words like that. I won't be able to continue our chat if you use this language," suggesting that it deemed the word "virgin" inappropriate.

Google has appealed a record $4.5 billion EU antitrust fine to the European Court of Justice, arguing that the European Commission's decision punished its innovation and imposed unfair penalties for agreements requiring pre-installation of its apps on Android devices. Reuters reports: Google's appeal to the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union comes two years after a lower tribunal sided with the European Commission which said the company used its Android mobile operating system to quash rivals. The lower court trimmed the fine to 4.1 billion euros.

"Google does not contest or shy away from its responsibility under the law, but the Commission also has a responsibility when it runs investigations, when it seeks to reshape markets and second-guess pro-competitive business models, and when it imposes multi-billion-euro fines," Google lawyer Alfonso Lamadrid told the court. "In this case, the Commission failed to discharge its burden and its responsibility and, relying on multiple errors of law, punished Google for its superior merits, attractiveness and innovation," he said. The final ruling is expected in the coming months and cannot be appealed.

The XB-1, a civilian supersonic jet developed by Boom Supersonic, successfully broke the sound barrier during a test flight over the Mojave Desert. It reached an altitude of 35,290 feet before accelerating to Mach 1.22, the company said in a press release. CBS News reports: It marks the first time an independently developed jet has broken the sound barrier, Boom Supersonic said, and the plane is the "first supersonic jet made in America." The sound barrier was broken for the first time in 1947, when Air Force pilot Capt. Chuck Yeager flew a rocket-propelled experimental aircraft across the Mojave Desert -- taking off from the Mojave Air and Space Port just as the XB-1 did. [...]

The company will next focus its attention on Overture, a supersonic airliner that will ultimately "bring the benefits of supersonic flight to everyone," Boom Supersonic founder and CEO Blake Scholl said in a statement. The XB-1 jet will be the foundation for Overture, Boom Supersonic said, and many features present on the jet will also be incorporated into the supersonic airliner. The airliner will also use Boom Supersonic's bespoke propulsion system, Symphony, to run on "up to 100% sustainable aviation fuel."

The company said the goal for the plane is for it to be able to carry between 64 and 80 passengers at Mach 1.7, or about 1,295 miles per hour. Existing subsonic airliners fly at between 550 and 600 miles per hour, according to charter company Bitlux. About 130 Overture planes have been pre-ordered, the company said. Airlines including American Airlines, United Airlines and Japan Airlines have placed pre-orders. The company finished building a "superfactory" in North Carolina in 2024, and will eventually produce 66 planes per year.

The Federal Communications Commission will abandon a proposal that would have banned mandatory internet service charges for apartment and condominium residents. FCC Chair Brendan Carr halted the Biden-era plan that sought to prevent landlords from requiring tenants to pay for specific broadband providers. Housing industry groups said they welcomed the decision, arguing bulk billing arrangements help secure discounted rates. They claim these agreements can reduce internet costs by up to 50%. However, public interest advocates, who backed the original proposal, contend that landlords don't always pass these savings to tenants.

Google says it will end Chrome Sync support for browser versions more than four years old starting in early 2025. Users running outdated Chrome versions will see error messages prompting them to update their browsers to maintain access to synced data across devices. Those unable to update to newer versions will permanently lose the syncing feature, according to the firm.

Nvidia shares plunged 17% on Monday, wiping nearly $600 billion from its market value, after Chinese AI firm DeepSeek's breakthrough, but analysts are questioning the cost narrative. DeepSeek said to have trained its December V3 model for $5.6 million, but chip consultancy SemiAnalysis suggested this figure doesn't reflect total investments. "DeepSeek has spent well over $500 million on GPUs over the history of the company," Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis said. "While their training run was very efficient, it required significant experimentation and testing to work."

The steep sell-off led to the Philadelphia Semiconductor index's worst daily drop since March 2020 at 9.2%, generating $6.75 billion in profits for short sellers, according to data group S3 Partners. DeepSeek's engineers also demonstrated they could write code without relying on Nvidia's Cuda software platform, which is widely seen as crucial to the Silicon Valley chipmaker's dominance of AI development.

After observing 20 chimpanzees for over 600 hours, researchers in Japan found that chimps are more likely to urinate after witnessing others do so. "[T]he team meticulously recorded the number and timing of 'urination events' along with the relative distances between 'the urinator and potential followers,'" writes 404 Media's Becky Ferreira. "The results revealed that urination is, in fact, socially contagious for chimps and that low-dominant individuals were especially likely to pee after watching others pee. Call it: pee-r pressure." The findings have been published in the journal Cell Biology. From the study: The decision to urinate involves a complex combination of both physiological and social considerations. However, the social dimensions of urination remain largely unexplored. More specifically, aligning urination in time (i.e. synchrony) and the triggering of urination by observing similar behavior in others (i.e. social contagion) are thought to occur in humans across different cultures (Figure S1A), and possibly also in non-human animals. However, neither has been scientifically quantified in any species.

Contagious urination, like other forms of behavioral and emotional state matching, may have important implications in establishing and maintaining social cohesion, in addition to potential roles in preparation for collective departure (i.e. voiding before long-distance travel) and territorial scent-marking (i.e. coordination of chemosensory signals). Here, we report socially contagious urination in chimpanzees, one of our closest relatives, as measured through all-occurrence recording of 20 captive chimpanzees across >600 hours. Our results suggest that socially contagious urination may be an overlooked, and potentially widespread, facet of social behavior.

In conclusion, we find that in captive chimpanzees the act of urination is socially contagious. Further, low-dominance individuals had higher rates of contagion. We found no evidence that this phenomenon is moderated by dyadic affiliation. It remains possible that latent individual factors associated with low dominance status (e.g. vigilance and attentional bias, stress levels, personality traits) might shape the contagion of urination, or alternatively that there are true dominance-driven effects. In any case, our results raise several new and important questions around contagious urination across species, from ethology to psychology to endocrinology. [...]

chicksdaddy share a report from the Security Ledger: Vulnerabilities in Subaru's STARLINK telematics software enabled two, independent security researchers to gain unrestricted access to millions of Subaru vehicles deployed in the U.S., Canada and Japan. In a report published Thursday researchers Sam Curry and Shubham Shah revealed a now-patched flaw in Subaru's STARLINK connected vehicle service that allowed them to remotely control Subarus and access vehicle location information and driver data with nothing more than the vehicle's license plate number, or easily accessible information like the vehicle owner's email address, zip code and phone number. (Note: Subaru STARLINK is not to be confused with the Starlink satellite-based high speed Internet service.)

[Curry and Shah downloaded a year's worth of vehicle location data for Curry's mother's 2023 Impreza (Curry bought her the car with the understanding that she'd let him hack it.) The two researchers also added themselves to a friend's STARLINK account without any notification to the owner and used that access to remotely lock and unlock the friend's Subaru.] The details of Curry and Shah's hack of the STARLINK telematics system bears a strong resemblance to hacks documented in his 2023 report Web Hackers versus the Auto Industry as well as a September, 2024 discovery of a remote access flaw in web-based applications used by KIA automotive dealers that also gave remote attackers the ability to steal owners' personal information and take control of their KIA vehicle. In each case, Curry and his fellow researchers uncovered publicly accessible connected vehicle infrastructure intended for use by [employees and dealers was found to be trivially vulnerable to compromise and lack even basic protections around account creation and authentication].

Facebook has banned posts mentioning Linux-related topics, with the popular Linux news and discussion site, DistroWatch, at the center of the controversy. Tom's Hardware reports: A post on the site claims, "Facebook's internal policy makers decided that Linux is malware and labeled groups associated with Linux as being 'cybersecurity threats.' We tried to post some blurb about distrowatch.com on Facebook and can confirm that it was barred with a message citing Community Standards. DistroWatch says that the Facebook ban took effect on January 19. Readers have reported difficulty posting links to the site on this social media platform. Moreover, some have told DistroWatch that their Facebook accounts have been locked or limited after sharing posts mentioning Linux topics.

If you're wondering if there might be something specific to DistroWatch.com, something on the site that the owners/operators perhaps don't even know about, for example, then it seems pretty safe to rule out such a possibility. Reports show that "multiple groups associated with Linux and Linux discussions have either been shut down or had many of their posts removed." However, we tested a few other Facebook posts with mentions of Linux, and they didn't get blocked immediately. Copenhagen-hosted DistroWatch says it has tried to appeal against the Community Standards-triggered ban. However, they say that a Facebook representative said that Linux topics would remain on the cybersecurity filter. The DistroWatch writer subsequently got their Facebook account locked... DistroWatch points out the irony at play here: "Facebook runs much of its infrastructure on Linux and often posts job ads looking for Linux developers."

UPDATE: Facebook has admited they made a mistake and stopped blocking the posts.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: TechCrunch gathered data from several sources and found similar trends. In 2024, 966 startups shut down, compared to 769 in 2023, according to Carta. That's a 25.6% increase. One note on methodology: Those numbers are for U.S.-based companies that were Carta customers and left Carta due to bankruptcy or dissolution. There are likely other shutdowns that wouldn't be accounted for through Carta, estimates Peter Walker, Carta's head of insights. [...] Meanwhile, AngelList found that 2024 saw 364 startup winddowns, compared to 233 in 2023. That's a 56.2% jump. However, AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli has a fairly optimistic take, noting that winddowns "are still very low relative to the number of companies that were funded across both years."

Layoffs.fyi found a contradicting trend: 85 tech companies shut down in 2024, compared to 109 in 2023 and 58 in 2022. But as founder Roger Lee acknowledges, that data only includes publicly reported shutdowns "and therefore represents an underestimate." Of those 2024 tech shutdowns, 81% were startups, while the rest were either public companies or previously acquired companies that were later shut down by their parent organizations. So many companies got funded in 2020 and 2021 at heated valuations with famously thin diligence, that it's only logical that up to three years later, an increasing number couldn't raise more cash to fund their operations. Taking investment at too high of a valuation increases the risk such that investors won't want to invest more unless business is growing extremely well. [...]

Looking ahead, Walker also expects we'll continue to see more shutdowns in the first half of 2025, and then a gradual decline for the rest of the year. That projection is based mostly on a time-lag estimate from the peak of funding, which he estimates was the first quarter of 2022 in most stages. So by the first quarter of 2025, "most companies will have either found a new path forward or had to make this difficult choice." "Tech zombies and a startup graveyard will continue to make headlines," said Dori Yona, CEO and co-founder of SimpleClosure. "Despite the crop of new investments, there are a lot of companies that have raised at high valuations and without enough revenue."

Meta's AI chatbot will now use personal data from users' Facebook and Instagram accounts for personalized responses in the United States and Canada, the company said in a blog post. The upgraded Meta AI can remember user preferences from previous conversations across Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp, such as dietary choices and interests. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the feature helps create personalized content like bedtime stories based on his children's interests. Users cannot opt out of the data-sharing feature, a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Meta has set up four war rooms to analyze DeepSeek's technology, including two focusing on how High-Flyer reduced training costs, and one on what data High-Flyer may have used, The Information's Kalley Huang and Stephanie Palazzolo report. China's DeepSeek is a large-language open source model that claims to rival offerings from OpenAI's ChatGPT and Meta Platforms, while using a much smaller budgets.

At December's "Microsoft Excel World Championship" in Las Vegas, "finance professionals fluent in spreadsheets were treated like minor celebrities," writes the New York Times, "as they gathered to solve devilishly complex Excel puzzles in front of an audience of about 400 people, and more watching an ESPN3 livestream."

The Times notes that "many fans find out about the Excel championship through ESPN's annual obscure sports showcase, where it is sandwiched between competitions like speed chess and the World Dog Surfing Championships." But the contest's organizer envisions tournaments with "more spectators, bigger sponsors and a million-dollar prize" — even though this year's prize was $5,000 and a pro wrestling-style championship belt. The format for the finals was a mock-up of World of Warcraft, an online role-playing game. It required the 12 men (this particular nerdfest was mostly a guy thing) to design Excel formulas for tracking 20 avatars and their vital signs... To prepare, [competitor Diarmuid] Early adjusted the width of his Excel columns with the precision of a point guard lining up a 3-point shot. [Andrew] Ngai queued up a YouTube compilation of "focus music". After an announcer kicked off the 40-minute event — "Five, four, three, two, one, and Excel!" — the 12 players leaned over their keyboards and began plugging in formulas. One example: "=CountChar (Lower (D5),"W")" allowed one competitor, Michael Jarman, to figure out how many times the letter "W" appeared in a spreadsheet.
ZDNet points out that there's a seven-hour livestream of the event that's "worth checking out for the opening theme song alone."

The New York Times closes their article with a quote from super-fan Erik Oehm, a software developer from San Francisco who called the event "the Super Bowl for Excel nerds". Oehm watched excitedly from the front row as this year's winner — Michael Jarman — finally raised the championship belt overhead while someone dumped glitter on him. And then he said...

"You'd never see this with Google Sheets. You'd never get this level of passion."

"An underwater data cable between Sweden and Latvia was damaged early on Sunday," reports the Financial Times, "in at least the fourth episode of potential sabotage in the Baltic Sea that has caused concern in Nato about the vulnerability of critical infrastructure..." Criminal investigations have started in Latvia and Sweden, and a ship has been seized as part of the probes, according to Swedish prosecutors, who did not identify the vessel. Previous incidents have been linked to Russian and Chinese ships...

The latest incident comes as the three Baltic states are preparing to disconnect their electricity systems from the former Soviet network in early February and integrate themselves into the continental European grid, with some fearing further potential disruption ahead of that. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have joined the EU and Nato since regaining their independence after their forced annexation by the Soviet Union, and see their switch to the European electricity system as their final integration into the west. KÄ(TM)stutis Budrys, Lithuania's foreign minister, said navigation rules in the Baltic Sea needed to be reviewed "especially when it comes to the use of anchors" and added there were now so many incidents that there was little chance they could all be accidents.

Repair of data cables has tended to take much less time than that for gas or electricity connections, and the Latvian state radio and television centre said it had found alternative routes for its communications.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press: Perplexity AI has presented a new proposal to TikTok's parent company that would allow the U.S. government to own up to 50% of a new entity that merges Perplexity with TikTok's U.S. business, according to a person familiar with the matter... The new proposal would allow the U.S. government to own up to half of that new structure once it makes an initial public offering of at least $300 billion, said the person, who was not authorized to speak about the proposal. The person said Perplexity's proposal was revised based off of feedback from the Trump administration. If the plan is successful, the shares owned by the government would not have voting power, the person said. The government also would not get a seat on the new company's board.

Under the plan, ByteDance would not have to completely cut ties with TikTok, a favorable outcome for its investors. But it would have to allow a "full U.S. board control," the person said.

Under the proposal, the China-based tech company would contribute TikTok's U.S. business without the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app, according to a document seen by the Associated Press.

Since launching in 2020, the nonprofit site RestofWorld.org has been covering tech news from 100 countries. And they've just announced the winners in their 2024 international photography contest.

"From Cape Verde to Bhutan, we received 227 entries from over 45 countries around the world, featuring everything from sprawling mines to biometric facial scans." Like last year, the majority of the entries in our 2024 photography contest captured on-the-ground realities of how technology is transforming lives in every corner of the world. We received submissions from over 45 countries, showcasing a stunning variety of perspectives on the intersection of technology and daily life.

Beyond striking visuals, the photographs tell us stories of how tech plays a role in local communities, from iris-scanning payment systems inside refugee camps to EV battery-powered music gatherings. The 227 entries we received from contestants — including from Mongolia, the Philippines, Argentina, and Jordan — not only celebrate these stories but reaffirm our commitment at Rest of World to challenge stereotypes about how people use technology in their daily lives.
An "honorable mention" photo shows immigrants from Africa arriving on the Italian island of Lampedusa after a perilous boat journey. ("Upon their arrival, these refugees borrowed a smartphone from a bystander and started a video call to let their relatives know they survived the journey.") And the top photo shows a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent using a cellphone to collect facial scans from migrants entering the country from Mexico. ("After they make the crossing into the U.S., migrants are subjected to further data collection, including DNA samples.")

Biometric data collection was a recurring theme. A photo from Jordan shows a Syrian boy paying for groceries with an iris scanner at a supermarket "run jointly by the World Food Programme and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees." Eye-scanning technology is being used there "to ensure people use only their own credit and not borrowed or stolen cards. After having their iris scanned, Syrian refugees living in the camp can make use of services such as health care and shopping, using just their eyes."

Another recurring theme was energy. There's a lovely "honorable mention" photo from the Philippines showing two young people on a beach playing basketball "under the towering blades of the windmills in Bangu... Renewable energy has transformed this community, cutting household expenses and powering opportunities once thought to be out of reach." The third-place photo shows six children in a distant tent in "a mountainous, subarctic forest" in Mongolia" — all gathered around a laptop "to watch a documentary about a Norwegian reindeer herder" who had visited their region. ("Modern technology such as solar panels, car batteries, and the occasional Wi-Fi connection allows these families to stay connected with the world.") One photo shows a young boy carrying a solar panel down from the roof in a remote village in Jharkhand, India.

Another photo documents the largest salt flat in Argentina, part of the so-called "lithium triangle" with parts of Chile and Bolivia. A salt miner says "They started looking for lithium there in 2010. We made them stop; it was hurting the environment and affecting the water. But now they are back and I am afraid. Everything we have could be lost."

And a photo from Nigeria shows two people wearing traditional African attire but adorned with "goggles crafted from repurposed VHS tapes". RestofWorld says the goggles "represent how individuals and communities reclaim and reinterpret technology for art, commentary, and resilience. This practice reflects a community's ability to find new life in what others might discard, highlighting a deep relationship with both old and new technologies."

For the first time in America, an empty self-driving car has been involved in a fatal collision. But it was "hit from behind by a speeding car that was going about 98 miles per hour," a local news site reports, citing comments from Waymo. ("Two other victims were taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. A dog also died in the crash, according to the San Francisco Fire Department.")

Waymo's self-driving car "is not being blamed," notes NBC Bay Area. Instead the Waymo car was one of six vehicles "struck when a fast-moving vehicle slammed into a line of cars stopped at a traffic light..." The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requires self-driving car companies, like Waymo, to report each time their vehicles are involved in an accident, regardless of whether the autonomous vehicle was at fault. According to NHTSA, which began collecting such data in July 2021, Waymo's driverless vehicles have been involved in about 30 different collisions resulting in some type of injury. Waymo, however, has noted that nearly all those crashes, like Sunday's collision, were the fault of other cars driven by humans. While NHTSA's crash data doesn't note whether self-driving vehicles may have been to blame, Waymo has previously noted that it only expects to pay out insurance liability claims for two previous collisions involving its driverless vehicles that resulted in injuries.

In December, Waymo touted the findings of its latest safety analysis, which determined its fleet of driverless cars continue to outperform human drivers across major safety metrics. The report, authored by Waymo and its partners at the Swiss Reinsurance Company, reviewed insurance claim data to explore how often human drivers and autonomous vehicles are found to be liable in car collisions. According to the study, Waymo's self-driving vehicles faced about 90% fewer insurance claims relating to property damage and bodily injuries compared to human drivers... The company's fleet of autonomous vehicles have traveled more than 33 million miles and have provided more than five million rides across San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin...

In California, there are more than 30 companies currently permitted by the DMV to test driverless cars on the open road. While most are still required to have safety drivers sitting in the front seat who can take over when needed, Waymo remains the only fleet of robotaxis in California to move past the state's testing phase to, now, regularly offer paid rides to passengers.
Their article adds that while Sunday's collision marks the first fatal crash involving a driverless car, "it was nearly seven years ago when another autonomous vehicle was involved in a deadly collision with a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, though that self-driving car had a human safety driver behind the wheel. The accident, which occurred in March 2018, involved an autonomous car from Uber, which sold off its self-driving division two years later to a competitor."

In other news, an unoccupied Waymo vehicle was attacked by a mob in Los Angeles last night, according to local news reports. "Video footage of the incident appears to show the vehicle being stripped of its door, windows shattered, and its Jaguar emblems removed. The license plate was also damaged, and the extent of the vandalism required the vehicle to be towed from the scene."

The Los Angeles Times reminds its readers that "Last year, a crowd in San Francisco's Chinatown surrounded a Waymo car, vandalized it and then set it ablaze..."

This weekend Cory Doctorow delved into "the two factors that make services terrible: captive users, and no constraints." If your users can't leave, and if you face no consequences for making them miserable (not solely their departure to a competitor, but also fines, criminal charges, worker revolts, and guerrilla warfare with interoperators), then you have the means, motive and opportunity to turn your service into a giant pile of shit... Every economy is forever a-crawl with parasites and monsters like these, but they don't get to burrow into the system and colonize it until policymakers create rips they can pass through.
Doctorow argues that "more and more critics are coming to understand that lock-in is the root of the problem, and that anti-lock-in measures like interoperability can address it." Even more important than market discipline is government discipline, in the form of regulation. If Zuckerberg feared fines for privacy violations, or moderation failures, or illegal anticompetitive mergers, or fraudulent advertising systems that rip off publishers and advertisers, or other forms of fraud (like the "pivot to video"), he would treat his users better. But Facebook's rise to power took place during the second half of the neoliberal era, when the last shreds of regulatory muscle that survived the Reagan revolution were being devoured... But it's worse than that, because Zuckerberg and other tech monopolists figured out how to harness "IP" law to get the government to shut down third-party technology that might help users resist enshittification... [Doctorow says this is "why companies are so desperate to get you to use their apps rather than the open web"] IP law is why you can't make an alternative client that blocks algorithmic recommendations. IP law is why you can't leave Facebook for a new service and run a scraper that imports your waiting Facebook messages into a different inbox. IP law is why you can't scrape Facebook to catalog the paid political disinformation the company allows on the platform...
But then Doctorow argues that "Legacy social media is at a turning point," citing as "a credible threat" new systems built on open standards like Mastodon (built on Activitypub) and Bluesky (built on Atproto): I believe strongly in improving the Fediverse, and I believe in adding the long-overdue federation to Bluesky. That's because my goal isn't the success of the Fediverse — it's the defeat of enshtitification. My answer to "why spend money fixing Bluesky?" is "why leave 20 million people at risk of enshittification when we could not only make them safe, but also create the toolchain to allow many, many organizations to operate a whole federation of Bluesky servers?" If you care about a better internet — and not just the Fediverse — then you should share this goal, too... Mastodon has one feature that Bluesky sorely lacks — the federation that imposes antienshittificatory discipline on companies and offers an enshittification fire-exit for users if the discipline fails. It's long past time that someone copied that feature over to Bluesky.
Doctorow argues that federated and "federatable" social media "disciplines enshittifiers" by freeing social media's captive audiences.

"Any user can go to any server at any time and stay in touch with everyone else."