Meta is betting that characters generated by AI will fill its social media platforms in the next few years as it looks to the fast-developing technology to drive engagement with its 3 billion users. From a report: The Silicon Valley group is rolling out a range of AI products, including one that helps users create AI characters on Instagram and Facebook [non-paywalled source], as it battles with rival tech groups to attract and retain a younger audience.

"We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do," said Connor Hayes, vice-president of product for generative AI at Meta. "They'll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform ... that's where we see all of this going," he added. Hayes said a "priority" for Meta over the next two years was to make its apps "more entertaining and engaging," which included considering how to make the interaction with AI more social.

A wave of fraudulent copyright takedowns on YouTube has exposed vulnerabilities in the platform's content moderation system, enabling anonymous users to threaten creators' channels through false legal claims, The Verge is reporting. Several gaming content creators, including a channel with 1.5 million subscribers, received takedown notices from someone impersonating Nintendo's legal team. Though YouTube acknowledged the false claims, the company declined to explain how it verifies takedown requests or detail measures to prevent abuse of its copyright system.

Facial recognition technology is poised to replace traditional passports globally, marking the biggest shift in travel documentation since World War 1. Airports across Finland, Canada, Netherlands, UAE, UK, Italy, US, and India are testing passport-free systems, with Singapore already implementing the technology for its residents and departing visitors.

The systems typically store passport data digitally on smartphones, using face recognition cameras at airports to match travelers against stored photos. Singapore officials report over 1.5 million people have used their system, while Finnish trials showed identity checks taking just eight seconds.

theodp writes: In 2012, now-Microsoft President Brad Smith unveiled Microsoft's National Talent Strategy, a two-pronged strategy that called for tech visa restrictions to be loosened to allow tech companies to hire non-U.S. citizens to fill jobs until more American schoolchildren could be made tech-savvy enough to pass hiring standards. Shortly thereafter, tech-backed nonprofit Code.org emerged (led by Smith's next-door neighbor Hadi Partovi with Smith as a founding Board member) with a mission to ensure that U.S. schoolchildren started receiving 'rigorous' computer science education instruction. Around the same time, Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC launched (with support from Smith, Partovi, and other tech leaders) with a mission to reform tech visa policy to meet tech's need for talent.

Fast forward to 2024, and Newsweek reports the debate over tech immigration policy has been revived, spurred by the recent appointment of Sriram Krishnan as senior policy adviser for AI at the Trump White House. Comments by far-right political activist Laura Loomer on Twitter about Krishnan's call for loosening Green Card restrictions were met with rebuttals from prominent tech leaders who are also serving as members of the Trump transition team. Entrepreneur David Sacks, who Trump has tapped as his cryptocurrency and AI czar, took to social media to clarify that Krishnan advocates for removing country caps on green cards, not eliminating caps entirely, aiming to create a more merit-based system. However, the NY Times reported that Sacks discussed a much broader visa reform proposal with Trump during a June podcast ("What I will do is," Trump told Sacks, "you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country"). Elon Musk, the recently appointed co-head of Trump's new Dept. of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had Sacks' and Krishnan's backs (not unexpected -- both were close Musk advisors on his Twitter purchase), tweeting out "Makes sense" to his 209 million followers, lamenting that "the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low," reposting claims crediting immigrants for 36% of the innovation in the U.S., and taking USCIS to task for failing to immediately recognize his own genius with an Exceptional Ability Green Card (for his long-defunct Zip2 startup).

Vivek Ramaswamy, who Trump has tapped to co-lead DOGE with Musk, agreed and fanned the Twitter flames with a pinned Tweet of his own explaining, "The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born -- first-generation engineers over "native" Americans isn't because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy -- wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture." (Colorado Governor Jared Polis also took to Twitter to agree with Musk and Ramaswamy on the need to import 'elite engineers'). And Code.org CEO Partovi joined the Twitter fray, echoing the old we-need-H1B-visas-to-make-US-schoolchildren-CS-savvy argument of Microsoft's 2012 National Talent Strategy. "Did you know 2/3 of H1B visas are for computer scientists?" Partovi wrote in reply to Musk, Loomer, and Sachs. "The H1B program raises $500M/year (from its corporate sponsors) and all that money is funneled into programs at Labor and NSF without focus to grow local CS talent. Let's fund CS education." The NYT also cited Zuckerberg's earlier efforts to influence immigration policy with FWD.us (which also counted Sacks and Musk as early supporters), taking note of Zuck's recent visit to Mar-a-Lago and Meta's $1 million donation to Trump's upcoming inauguration.

So, who is to be believed? Musk, who attributes any tech visa qualms to "a 'fixed pie' fallacy that is at the heart of much wrong-headed economic thinking" and argues that "there is essentially infinite potential for job and company creation ['We should let anyone in the country who is hardworking and honest and will be a contributor to the United States,' Musk has said]"? Or economists who have found that immigration and globalization is not quite the rising-tide-that-raises-all-boats it's been cracked up to be?

Microsoft is warning that Windows 11 installations using USB or CD media created with October or November 2024 security updates may be unable to receive future security patches.

The bug affects version 24H2 installations made between October 8 and November 12, but does not impact systems updated through Windows Update or the Microsoft Update Catalog. Microsoft advised users to rebuild installation media using December 2024 patches while it works on a permanent fix for the issue, which primarily affects business and education environments.

Apple's $3,499 Vision Pro headset has failed to gain widespread adoption despite advanced technology, with consumers preferring discreet wearables like smartwatches. The Verge: Nearly a year from launch, though, Apple hasn't done enough to demonstrate why the Vision Pro should be a potential showcase of the future of computing. It's taking a long time to put together its immersive content library, and while those are great demonstrations of what's possible, the videos have been short and isolating. There aren't many great games, either.

Yes, Apple keeps adding cool new software features. The wide and ultra widescreen settings for using a Mac display seem exceptionally useful. But those are pretty specific options for pretty specific use cases. There still isn't an immediate, obvious reason to buy a Vision Pro the way there usually is with the company's newest iPhones and Macs. If I bought a Vision Pro today, I wouldn't know what to do with it besides give myself a bigger Mac screen or watch movies, and I don't think either of those are worth the exorbitant price.

Airports are facing a growing nuisance as travelers increasingly watch videos and take calls on speakerphone without headphones, creating tension among passengers at gates and lounges.

Flight attendants at American Airlines, Alaska Air, and Delta have begun addressing the issue through announcements and website notices, though enforcement remains challenging, WSJ reports. Passengers report confrontations rarely end well, with offenders often dismissive or hostile when asked to use headphones. The story adds: The headphones-optional attitude isn't limited to air travel. Podcasts and sports games blare in open-plan offices. You can catch snippets of conversations on the sidewalk, some phones held aloft for video calls. Transit authorities in big cities have struggled to get passengers to keep their music to themselves on subways and commuter trains.

Witnesses say offenders span the generational and socioeconomic spectrum, from grandparents on speakerphone to toddlers on iPads and from first class to coach.

Air travel already overloads the senses with a cacophony of boarding announcements, beeping vehicles and crying babies. U.S. airlines generally don't allow voice and video calls in the air. But by takeoff, the damage has been done.

Apple may be worth one and a half Googles now, but the world's most valuable company needs its relationship with the world's largest search engine to keep clicking. From a report: Such was evident Monday when Apple filed papers seeking to participate in the penalty phase of the Justice Department's antitrust case against Google. The search giant lost that case in August and is now battling the government over what remedies are appropriate. The DOJ has a long wish list that includes breaking the company up, forcing Google to make key search and user data available to potential rivals, and stopping the payments Google makes to partners such as Apple.

The payments to Apple alone now reportedly equate to about $20 billion annually, and make Google the default search engine on devices like the iPhone. Apple didn't confirm any specific amounts in its filing, but did say the company feels compelled to "protect its commercial interests." Analysts widely estimate that the payments from Google are nearly pure profit for Apple, given relatively little incremental cost to generate that revenue. For Apple, $20 billion is about 16% of the operating income reported for the company's fiscal year that ended in September.

Modern LED headlights are significantly brighter and more glaring than traditional halogen bulbs, creating dangerous driving conditions, lighting experts report. The newer lights produce an intense, concentrated beam that is bluer and more disorienting, particularly affecting older drivers. "Headlights are getting brighter, smaller and bluer. All three of those things increase a particular kind of glare. It's called discomfort glare," said Daniel Stern, chief editor of Driving Vision News.

The annual defense policy bill signed by President Joe Biden Monday evening allocates $3 billion to help telecom firms remove and replace insecure equipment in response to recent incursions by Chinese-linked hackers. From a report: The fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act outlines Pentagon policy and military budget priorities for the year and also includes non-defense measures added as Congress wrapped up its work in December. The $895 billion spending blueprint passed the Senate and House with broad bipartisan support.

The $3 billion would go to a Federal Communications Commission program, commonly called "rip and replace," to get rid of Chinese networking equipment due to national security concerns. The effort was created in 2020 to junk equipment made by telecom giant Huawei. It had an initial investment of $1.9 billion, roughly $3 billion shy of what experts said was needed to cauterize the potential vulnerability.

Calls to replenish the fund have increased recently in the wake of two hacking campaigns by China, dubbed Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon, that saw hackers insert malicious code in U.S. infrastructure and break into at least eight telecom firms. The bill also includes a watered down requirement for the Defense Department to tap an independent third-party to study the feasibility of creating a U.S. Cyber Force, along with an "evaluation of alternative organizational models for the cyber forces" of the military branches.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: More than 140 Facebook content moderators have been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content including murders, suicides, child sexual abuse and terrorism. The moderators worked eight- to 10-hour days at a facility in Kenya for a company contracted by the social media firm and were found to have PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD), by Dr Ian Kanyanya, the head of mental health services at Kenyatta National hospital in Nairobi. The mass diagnoses have been made as part of lawsuit being brought against Facebook's parent company, Meta, and Samasource Kenya, an outsourcing company that carried out content moderation for Meta using workers from across Africa.

The images and videos including necrophilia, bestiality and self-harm caused some moderators to faint, vomit, scream and run away from their desks, the filings allege. The case is shedding light on the human cost of the boom in social media use in recent years that has required more and more moderation, often in some of the poorest parts of the world, to protect users from the worst material that some people post. The lawsuit claims that at least 40 moderators experienced substance misuse, marital breakdowns, and disconnection from their families, while some feared being hunted by terrorist groups they monitored. Despite being paid eight times less than their U.S. counterparts, moderators worked under intense surveillance in harsh, warehouse-like conditions.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Over the past year, OpenAI has dropped not-so-subtle hints about its revived interest in robotics: investing in startups developing hardware and software for robots such as Figure and Physical Intelligence and rebooting its internal robotics software team, which it had disbanded four years ago.

Now, OpenAI could be taking that interest to the next level. The company has recently considered developing a humanoid robot, according to two people with direct knowledge of the discussions. As a refresher, humanoid robots typically have two arms and two legs, distinguishing them from typical robots in a warehouse or factory that might have a single arm repeatedly performing the same task on an assembly line. Developers of humanoid robots think it will be easier for them to handle tasks in the physical world -- which is tailored to humans -- than it would be to change our physical environments to suit new robots.

Apple has long avoided directly purchasing Nvidia's chips and is now developing its own AI server chip with Broadcom, aiming for production by 2026, The Information reported Tuesday, shedding broader light on why the two companies don't get along so well.

The relationship deteriorated after a 2001 meeting where Steve Jobs accused Nvidia of copying technology from Pixar, which he then controlled. Relations worsened in 2008 when Nvidia's faulty graphics chips forced Apple to extend MacBook warranties without full compensation.

Rather than buying Nvidia's dominant AI processors directly like its tech peers, the Information reports, Apple rents them through cloud providers while also using Google's custom chips for training large AI models. The company's new chip project, code-named Baltra, marks its most ambitious effort yet to reduce reliance on external AI processors, despite being one of the largest indirect users of Nvidia chips through cloud services.

ASUS computer owners have been reporting widespread alarm after a Christmas-themed banner suddenly appeared on their Windows 11 screens, accompanied by a suspicious "Christmas.exe" process in Task Manager.

The promotional campaign, first reported by WindowsLatest, was delivered through ASUS' pre-installed Armoury Crate software. It displays a large wreath banner that covers one-third of users' screens. The unbranded holiday display, which can interrupt gaming sessions and occasionally crashes applications, has triggered security concerns among users who initially mistook it for malware.

PCWorld's Jon Phillips pays tribute to Gordon Mah Ung, "our hardware guru, host of The Full Nerd, exemplary tech journalist, and very good friend." He passed away over the weekend after a hard-fought battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 58. From the report: With more than 25 years' experience covering computer tech broadly and computer chips specifically, Gordon's dogged reporting, one-of-a-kind personality, and commitment to journalistic standards touched many, many lives. He will be profoundly missed by co-workers, industry sources, and the PC enthusiasts who read his words and followed him as a video creator.

Gordon studied journalism at San Francisco State University and then worked as a police reporter for the Contra Costa Times in the late 1990s. In 1997, he joined Computerworld (a PCWorld sister publication) before I recruited him to join boot magazine (later re-launched as Maximum PC), where he would ultimately lead hardware coverage for 16 years.

Researchers at Northwestern University have successfully achieved quantum teleportation over a standard fiber optic cable carrying regular internet traffic, demonstrating that quantum and classical communication can coexist on existing infrastructure. The research has been published in the journal Optica. TechSpot reports: Nobody thought it would be possible to achieve this, according to Professor Prem Kumar, who led the study. "Our work shows a path towards next-generation quantum and classical networks sharing a unified fiber optic infrastructure. Basically, it opens the door to pushing quantum communications to the next level." "By performing a destructive measurement on two photons -- one carrying a quantum state and one entangled with another photon -- the quantum state is transferred onto the remaining photon, which can be very far away," said Jordan Thomas, a Ph.D. candidate in Kumar's laboratory and the paper's first author. "The photon itself does not have to be sent over long distances, but its state still ends up encoded onto the distant photon."

Prior to this study, many researchers were skeptical about the feasibility of quantum teleportation in cables carrying classic communications. The concern was that the entangled photons would be overwhelmed by the millions of other light particles present in the fiber optic cables. However, Kumar and his team were able to devise a solution. Through extensive studies of light scattering within fiber optic cables, the researchers identified a less crowded wavelength of light to place their photons. They also implemented special filters to reduce noise from regular Internet traffic. Kumar explained that he and his team conducted a meticulous analysis of light scattering patterns and strategically positioned their photons at a critical point where the scattering effect was minimized.

To validate their method, the team set up a 30-kilometer-long (18.6 miles) fiber optic cable with a photon at each end. They simultaneously transmitted quantum information and high-speed Internet traffic through the cable. The quality of the quantum information was measured at the receiving end while executing the teleportation protocol by making quantum measurements at the mid-point. The results showed that the quantum information was successfully transmitted, even in the presence of busy internet traffic.

Vietnam's Decree 147 mandates social media users on platforms like Facebook and TikTok to verify their identities and requires tech companies to store and share user data with authorities upon request, sparking concerns over increased censorship, self-censorship, and threats to free expression. Furthermore, the decree imposes restrictions on gaming time for minors and limits livestreaming to verified accounts. It becomes effective on Christmas Day. The Guardian reports: Decree 147, as it is known, builds on a 2018 cybersecurity law that was sharply criticized by the US, EU and internet freedom advocates who said it mimics China's repressive internet censorship. [...] Critics say that decree 147 will also expose dissidents who post anonymously to the risk of arrest. "Many people work quietly but effectively in advancing the universal values of human rights," Ho Chi Minh City-based blogger and rights activist Nguyen Hoang Vi told AFP.

She warned that the new decree "may encourage self-censorship, where people avoid expressing dissenting views to protect their safety -- ultimately harming the overall development of democratic values" in the country. Le Quang Tu Do, of the ministry of information and communications (MIC), told state media that decree 147 would "regulate behavior in order to maintain social order, national security, and national sovereignty in cyberspace." [...]

Human Rights Watch is calling on the government to repeal the "draconian" new decree. "Vietnam's new Decree 147 and its other cybersecurity laws neither protect the public from any genuine security concerns nor respect fundamental human rights," said Patricia Gossman, HRW's associate Asia director. "Because the Vietnamese police treat any criticism of the Communist party of Vietnam as a national security matter, this decree will provide them with yet another tool to suppress dissent."

Sweden has accused China of denying a request for Swedish prosecutors to board a Chinese ship that has been linked to the cutting of two undersea cables in the Baltic despite Beijing pledging "cooperation" with regional authorities. From a report: The Yi Peng 3 left the waters it had been anchored in since last month on Saturday -- despite an ongoing investigation. The ship was tracked sailing over the two fibre-optic cables, one between Sweden and Lithuania, and the other linking Helsinki and Germany, at around the time that they were cut on 17 and 18 November in Swedish territorial waters close to the Swedish islands of Gotland and Oland.

For more than a month afterwards it was anchored in the Kattegat strait between Sweden and Denmark where it was being observed by multiple countries and was boarded by Swedish police and other authorities last week. The ship tracking site VesselFinder showed the Yi Peng 3 heading north out of the strait on Saturday and on Monday China confirmed the ship had left in order to "ensure the physical and mental wellbeing of the crew." The Swedish foreign minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, said on Monday that China had not cooperated with Sweden's request to allow Swedish prosecutors onboard.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Department of Justice's list of solutions for fixing Google's illegal antitrust behavior and restoring competition in the search engine market started with forcing the company to sell Chrome, and late Friday night, Google responded with a list of its own.

Instead of breaking off Chrome, Android, or Google Play as the DOJ's filing considers, Google's proposed fixes aim at the payments it makes to companies like Apple and Mozilla for exclusive, prioritized placement of its services, its licensing deals with companies that make Android phones, and contracts with wireless carriers. They don't address a DOJ suggestion about possibly forcing Google to share its valuable search data with other companies to help their products catch up.

Lilium, once a darling in the nascent industry of electric aircraft that raised more than $1 billion before going public, has ceased operations and laid off about 1,000 workers after efforts to gain financing and exit insolvency failed. From a report: Lilium co-founder and CEO Patrick Nathen confirmed on LinkedIn that the 10-year-old company had stopped operating. "After 10 years and 10 months, it is a sad fact that Lilium has ceased operations. The company that Daniel, Sebastian, Matthias and I founded can no longer pursue our shared belief in more environmentally friendly aviation. This is heartbreaking and the timing feels painfully ironic," wrote Nathen. The layoffs cover the bulk of the company's workforce and come a few days after about 200 workers were let go, according to a regulatory filing on December 16.