At its Connect event earlier this week, Meta said it'll be adding conversational voices to its AI chatbot from celebrities like Awkwafina, John Cena, Dame Judi Dench, Keegan-Michael Key and Kristen Bell. The Verge reports: These celebrity voices will only be available to US users of Meta's apps to start. And if you prefer a voice that is a little more mundane, you can also pick from non-celeb voices with names like "Aspen," "Atlas," or "Clover." [...] Meta is explicitly announcing celebrity partnerships, which likely involve payment or some other deal. Meta hasn't shared those details, but the company has paid each celebrity "millions of dollars" for their voices, according to The Wall Street Journal. And in negotiations, some of the people reportedly wanted to limit what their voices could say and to make sure they weren't liable if Meta AI was used. [...]

Meta's AI updates aren't just about voice conversations. Its chatbot will also now "answer questions about your photos" when you upload images. Send a picture of a cake, ask how to make it, and it'll grab you a recipe that hopefully does just that. And if you want something "added, changed, or removed" from an image, Meta says you can describe anything from "changing your outfit to replacing the background with a rainbow," and it'll carry out that request.

Meta has been fined $101.5 million by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) for storing over half a billion user passwords in plain text for years, with some engineers having access to this data for over a decade. The issue, discovered in 2019, predominantly affected non-US users, especially those using Facebook Lite. AppleInsider reports: Meta Ireland was found guilty of infringing four parts of GDPR, including how it "failed to notify the DPC of a personal data breach concerning storage of user passwords in plain text." Meta Ireland did report the failure, but only some months after it was discovered. "It is widely accepted that user passwords should not be stored in plaintext, considering the risks of abuse that arise from persons accessing such data," said Graham Doyle, Deputy Commissioner at the DPC, in a statement about the fine. "It must be borne in mind, that the passwords the subject of consideration in this case, are particularly sensitive, as they would enable access to users' social media accounts."

Other than the fine and an official reprimand, the full extent of the DPC's ruling is yet to be released publicly. The details published so far do not reveal whether the passwords included any of US users as well as ones in Ireland or across the rest of the European Union. It's most likely that the issue concerns only non-US users, however. That's because in 2019, Facebook told CNN that the majority of the plain text passwords were for a service called Facebook Lite, which it described as being a cut-down service for areas of the world with slower connectivity.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by John Timmer: [P]art of the software stack that companies are developing to control their quantum hardware includes software that converts abstract representations of quantum algorithms into the series of commands needed to execute them. IBM's version of this software is called Qiskit (although it was made open source and has since been adopted by other companies). Recently, IBM made a couple of announcements regarding Qiskit, both benchmarking it in comparison to other software stacks and opening it up to third-party modules. [...] Right now, the company is supporting six third-party Qiskit functions that break down into two categories.

The first can be used as stand-alone applications and are focused on providing solutions to problems for users who have no expertise programming quantum computers. One calculates the ground-state energy of molecules, and the second performs optimizations. But the remainder are focused on letting users get more out of existing quantum hardware, which tends to be error prone. But some errors occur more often than others. These errors can be due to specific quirks of individual hardware qubits or simply because some specific operations are more error prone than others. These can be handled in two different ways. One is to design the circuit being executed to avoid the situations that are most likely to produce an error. The second is to examine the final state of the algorithm to assess whether errors likely occurred and adjust to compensate for any. And third parties are providing software that can handle both of these.

One of those third parties is Q-CTRL, and we talked to its CEO, Michael Biercuk. "We build software that is really focused on everything from the lowest level of hardware manipulation, something that we call quantum firmware, up through compilation and strategies that help users map their problem onto what has to be executed on hardware," he told Ars. (Q-CTRL is also providing the optimization tool that's part of this Qiskit update.) "We're focused on suppressing errors everywhere that they can occur inside the processor," he continued. "That means the individual gate or logic operations, but it also means the execution of the circuit. There are some errors that only occur in the whole execution of a circuit as opposed to manipulating an individual quantum device." Biercuk said Q-CTRL's techniques are hardware agnostic and have been demonstrated on machines that use very different types of qubits, like trapped ions. While the sources of error on the different hardware may be distinct, the manifestations of those problems are often quite similar, making it easier for Q-CTRL's approach to work around the problems.

Those work-arounds include things like altering the properties of the microwave pulses that perform operations on IBM's hardware, and replacing the portion of Qiskit that converts an algorithm to a series of gate operations. The software will also perform operations that suppress errors that can occur when qubits are left idle during the circuit execution. As a result of all these differences, he claimed that using Q-CTRL's software allows the execution of more complex algorithms than are possible via Qiskit's default compilation and execution. "We've shown, for instance, optimization with all 156 qubits on [an IBM] system, and importantly -- I want to emphasize this word -- successful optimization," Biercuk told Ars. "What it means is you run it and you get the right answer, as opposed to I ran it and I kind of got close."

Meta Platforms' claims that Facebook doesn't polarize Americans came under new doubt as the journal Science raised questions about a prominent research paper the tech giant has cited to support its position. WSJ: In an editorial Thursday, Science said that Meta's emergency efforts to calm its platforms in the wake of the 2020 election may have swayed the conclusions of the paper, which the journal published in July 2023. The editorial, titled "Context matters in social media," was prompted by a letter that Science also published presenting new criticism of the paper. Because the study of Facebook's algorithms relied on data provided by Meta when it was undertaking extraordinary efforts to restrain incendiary political content, the letter's authors argue that the paper may have overstated the case that social media algorithms didn't contribute to political polarization.

Such criticisms of peer-reviewed research often appear below papers in academic journals, but Science's editors felt their editorial was needed to more prominently caveat this original paper's conclusions, said Holden Thorp, Science's editor in chief. "It was incumbent on us to come up with a way somehow that people who would come to the paper would know of these concerns,â Thorp said in an interview. While no correction was warranted, he said, "There's an election coming up, and we care about people citing this paper." Meta said it had been transparent with researchers about its actions during the time of the study, and the company and its research partners say it had no control over the Science paper's conclusions. Meta called debates of the sort aired on Thursday as part of the research process.

SpzToid shares a report: Today, a group of independent security researchers revealed that they'd found a flaw in a web portal operated by the carmaker Kia that let the researchers reassign control of the Internet-connected features of most modern Kia vehicles -- dozens of models representing millions of cars on the road -- from the smartphone of a car's owner to the hackers' own phone or computer. By exploiting that vulnerability and building their own custom app to send commands to target cars, they were able to scan virtually any Internet-connected Kia vehicle's license plate and within seconds gain the ability to track that car's location, unlock the car, honk its horn, or start its ignition at will.

After the researchers alerted Kia to the problem in June, Kia appears to have fixed the vulnerability in its web portal, though it told WIRED at the time that it was still investigating the group's findings and hasn't responded to WIRED's emails since then. But Kia's patch is far from the end of the car industry's web-based security problems, the researchers say. The web bug they used to hack Kias is, in fact, the second of its kind that they've reported to the Hyundai-owned company; they found a similar technique for hijacking Kias' digital systems last year. And those bugs are just two among a slew of similar web-based vulnerabilities they've discovered within the last two years that have affected cars sold by Acura, Genesis, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Toyota, and more.

wiredmikey writes: Three months after pulling previews of the controversial Windows Recall feature due to public backlash, Microsoft says it has completely overhauled the security architecture with proof-of-presence encryption, anti-tampering and DLP checks, and screenshot data managed in secure enclaves outside the main operating system.

In an interview with SecurityWeek, Microsoft vice president David Weston said the company's engineers rewrote the security model of Windows Recall to reduce attack surface on Copilot+ PCs and minimize the risk of malware attackers targeting the screenshot data store.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) executives have dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's ambitious chip-making proposal as unrealistic, according to The New York Times. Altman, seeking to boost AI computing power, pitched a $7 trillion plan to build 36 semiconductor plants over several years during a visit to TSMC's Taiwan headquarters. TSMC leaders reportedly found Altman's proposal so far-fetched that they privately referred to him as a "podcasting bro," reflecting skepticism about his grasp of the semiconductor industry's complexities. The world's largest contract chipmaker, already grappling with multi-billion dollar expansion projects, viewed Altman's scheme as overly risky given the massive capital requirements and market uncertainties.

OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, is experiencing significant internal turmoil as a wave of high-profile departures, including Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, rocks the company. Over 20 researchers and executives have left this year, reflecting deepening tensions between the organization's original nonprofit mission and its new profit-driven focus, WSJ reported Friday.

Employees report rushed product launches and inadequate safety testing, raising concerns about OpenAI's technological edge. CEO Sam Altman's global promotional efforts have reportedly left him detached from daily operations. The shift towards a conventional business model, with new C-suite appointments and a $6.5 billion funding drive, has alienated longtime staff who fear the company is abandoning its founding principles.

Hot on the heels of United Airlines' Starlink announcement, Hawaiian Airlines said it, too, is offering "fast and free Starlink Wi-Fi" across its entire Airbus fleet. CNET reports: Hawaiian Airlines is now the first major carrier to use Elon Musk's satellite internet service, which taps more than 7,000 satellites in low earth orbit to deliver high-speed internet worldwide. "In Starlink's low earth orbit constellation of advanced satellites, the latest of which utilize a revolutionary laser mesh network, we found an ideal solution to ensure reliable, high-speed, low-latency Wi-Fi on transpacific flights," a Hawaiian Airlines representative told CNET. "Working with Starlink has allowed us to offer a fast and consistent in-flight connectivity experience that meets our high standard for guest service."

The company first debuted Starlink on its planes in February on a flight from Honolulu to Long Beach, California. It first struck a deal with Starlink in 2022 and has now completed installation across its entire Airbus fleet, which includes 24 A330 planes and 18 A321neos. Hawaiian Airlines will also deploy the service on its two Boeing 787-9 planes, but not its Boeing 717 aircraft, which are used on shorter flights between the Hawaiian Islands.

Mozilla has been hit with a complaint by EU privacy group noyb, accusing it of violating GDPR by tracking Firefox users by default without their consent. TechCrunch reports: Mozilla calls the feature at issue "Privacy Preserving Attribution" (PPA). But noyb argues this is misdirection. And if EU privacy regulators agree with the complaint the Firefox-maker could be slapped with orders to change tack -- or even face a penalty (the GDPR allows for fines of up to 4% of global revenue). "Contrary to its reassuring name, this technology allows Firefox to track user behaviour on websites," noyb wrote in a press release. "In essence, the browser is now controlling the tracking, rather than individual websites. While this might be an improvement compared to even more invasive cookie tracking, the company never asked its users if they wanted to enable it. Instead, Mozilla decided to turn it on by default once people installed a recent software update. This is particularly worrying because Mozilla generally has a reputation for being a privacy-friendly alternative when most other browsers are based on Google's Chromium."

Another component of noyb's objection is that Mozilla's move "doesn't replace cookies either" -- Firefox simply wouldn't have the market share and power to shift industry practices -- so all it's done is produce another additional way for websites to target ads. [...] The noyb-backed complaint (PDF), which has been filed with the Austrian data protection authority, accuses Mozilla of failing to inform users about the processing of their personal data and of using an opt-out -- rather than an affirmative "opt-in" -- mechanism. The privacy rights group also wants the regulator to order the deletion of all data collected so far. In a statement attributed to Christopher Hilton, its director of policy and corporate communications, Mozilla said that it has only conducted a "limited test" of a PPA prototype on its own websites.While acknowledging poor communication around the effort, the company emphasized that no user data has been collected or shared and expressed its commitment to engaging with stakeholders as it develops the technology further.

The Verge's Emma Roth reports: NotebookLM, Google's AI note-taking app, can now summarize and help you dig deeper into YouTube videos. The new capability works by analyzing the text in a YouTube video's transcript, including autogenerated ones. Once you add a YouTube link to NotebookLM, it will use AI to provide a brief summary of key topics discussed in the transcript. You can then click on these topics to get more detailed information as well as ask questions. (If you're struggling to come up with something to ask, NotebookLM will suggest some questions.)

After clicking on some of the topics, I found that NotebookLM backs up the information provided in its chat window with a citation that links you directly to the point in the transcript where it's mentioned. You can also create an Audio Overview based on the content, which is a podcast-style discussion hosted by AI. I found that the feature worked on most of the videos I tried, except for ones published within the past two days or so. [...] In addition to adding support for YouTube videos, Google announced that NotebookLM now supports audio recordings as well, allowing you to search transcribed conversations for certain information and create study guides.

A New York federal court has ordered (PDF) the operators of shadow library LibGen to pay $30 million in copyright damages to publishers. The default judgment also comes with a broad injunction that affects third-party services including domain registries, browser extensions, CDN providers, IPFS gateways, advertisers, and more. These parties must restrict access to the pirate site. An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon granted the default judgment without any changes. The anonymous LibGen defendants are responsible for willful copyright infringement and their activities should be stopped. "Plaintiffs have been irreparably harmed as a result of Defendants' unlawful conduct and will continue to be irreparably harmed should Defendants be allowed to continue operating the Libgen Sites," the order reads. The order requires the defendants to pay the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work, a total of $30 million, for which they are jointly and severally liable. While this is a win on paper, it's unlikely that the publishers will get paid by the LibGen operators, who remain anonymous.

To address this concern, the publishers' motion didn't merely ask for $30 million in damages, they also demanded a broad injunction. Granted by the court yesterday, the injunction requires third-party services such as advertising networks, payment processors, hosting providers, CDN services, and IPFS gateways to restrict access to the site. [...] The injunction further targets "browser extensions" and "other tools" that are used to provide direct access to the LibGen Sites. While site blocking by residential Internet providers is mentioned in reference to other countries, ISP blocking is not part of the injunction itself. In addition to the broad measures outlined above, the order further requires domain name registrars and registries to disable or suspend all active LibGen domains, or alternatively, transfer them to the publishers. This includes Libgen.is, the most used domain name with 16 million monthly visits, as well as Libgen.rs, Libgen.li and many others.

At the moment, it's unclear how actively managed the LibGen site is, as it has shown signs of decay in recent years. However, when faced with domain seizures, sites typically respond by registering new domains. The publishers are aware of this risk. Therefore, they asked the court to cover future domain names too. The court signed off on this request, which means that newly registered domain names can be taken over as well; at least in theory. [...] All in all, the default judgment isn't just a monetary win, on paper, it's also one of the broadest anti-piracy injunctions we've seen from a U.S. court.

Google has restricted the creation of new accounts for Russian users, state news agencies cited Russia's digital ministry as saying on Thursday. Reuters: Google has been under pressure in Russia for several years, particularly for not taking down content Moscow considers illegal and for blocking the YouTube channels of Russian media and public figures since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. "The ministry confirms that Google has restricted the creation of new accounts," Interfax quoted the digital ministry as saying. "Telecom operators have also recorded a significant reduction in the number of SMS messages sent by the company to Russian users."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google Maps is reeling in business pages engaging in fake reviews, and highlighting such activity to its users. Google will now impose restrictions against business profiles that violate the search giant's Fake Engagement policy, such as temporarily removing reviews, blocking new reviews or ratings, and displaying a warning message on profiles that have had fake reviews deleted.

The business profile restrictions were introduced in the UK earlier this year, but Search Engine Roundtable notes that the support page was updated in mid-September to seemingly apply globally. For the moment, however, only users in the UK are seeing the business warnings.

WordPress has escalated its feud with WP Engine, a hosting provider, by blocking the latter's servers from accessing WordPress.org resources -- and therefore from potentially vital software updates. From a report: WordPress is an open source CMS which is extensible using plugins. Its home is WordPress.org, which also hosts resources such as themes and plugins for the CMS. A vast ecosystem of plugins exists from numerous suppliers, but WordPress.org is the main source. Many WordPress users rely on several plugins. Preventing WP Engine users from accessing plugin updates is therefore serious, as it could mean users can't update plugins that have security issues, or other fixes.

WordPress co-founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg recently called WP Engine a "cancer" and accused it of profiting from WordPress without contributing to development of the CMS. Mullenweg has sought to have WP Engine pay trademark license fees -- a move he feels would represent a financial contribution commensurate with the benefits it derives from the project. WP Engine doesn't want or intend to pay. Mullenweg argued that if WP Engine won't pay, it should not be able to benefit from resources at WordPress.org.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced updates to the company's Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses at Meta Connect 2024 on Wednesday. [...] Meta says its smart glasses will soon have real-time AI video capabilities, meaning you can ask the Ray Ban Meta glasses questions about what you're seeing in front of you, and Meta AI will verbally answer you in real time. Currently, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses can only take a picture and describe that to you or answer questions about it, but the video upgrade should make the experience more natural, in theory at least. These multimodal features are slated to come later this year. In a demo, users could ask Ray-Ban Meta questions about a meal they were cooking, or city scenes taking place in front of them. The real-time video capabilities mean that Meta's AI should be able to process live action and respond in an audible way. This is easier said than done, however, and we'll have to see how fast and seamless the feature is in practice. We've seen demonstrations of these real-time AI video capabilities from Google and OpenAI, but Meta would be the first to launch such features in a consumer product.

Zuckerberg also announced live language translation for Ray-Ban Meta. English speaking users can talk to someone speaking French, Italian, or Spanish, and their Ray-Ban Meta glasses should be able to translate what the other person is saying into their language of choice. Meta says this feature is coming later this year and will include more language later on. The Ray-Ban Meta glasses are getting reminders, which will allow people to ask Meta AI to remind them about things they look at through the smart glasses. In a demo, a user asked their Ray-Ban Meta glasses to remember a jacket they were looking at, so they could share the image with a friend later on. Meta announced that integrations with Amazon Music, Audible, and iHeart are coming to its smart glasses. This should make it easier for people to listen to music on their streaming service of choice using the glasses' built-in speakers. The Ray-Ban Meta glasses will also gain the ability to scan QR codes or phone numbers from the glasses. Users can ask the glasses to scan something, and the QR code will immediately open on the person's phone with no further action required. Zuckerberg also unveiled the company's prototype AR glasses codenamed Orion, which feature a 70-degree field of view, Micro LED projectors, and silicon carbide lenses that beam graphics directly into the wearer's eyes.

Evan Prodromou, co-author of the ActivityPub protocol, has launched The Social Web Foundation to address the challenges of the ActivityPub ecosystem and foster the growth of the Fediverse. The foundation aims to support developers, organizations, and governments through advocacy, educational materials, and infrastructure, while maintaining a decentralized approach to improving the social web. We Distribute reports: "I wish I would've started it five years ago," Evan explains in a call, "We're seeing growth of ActivityPub in the commercial sector, we want to help guide that work, especially for devs that don't know how to engage with the Fediverse, or the work that happens in private spaces. As we're seeing a lot of growth, it's important to help push that growth forward, we're really filling in the crack no other organization is doing." The foundation launches with a dedicated team of three: Evan Prodromou is the Research Director, Mallory Knodel serves as the Executive Director, and Tom Coates acts as Product Director. The trio brings a wealth of knowledge regarding protocol development, open source development, technology policy, and product development for the Web.

In terms of fulfilling its goals, the organization has a few specific areas of focus: People, Policy, Protocol, and Plumbing. The SWF has deemed these areas as critical to their mission statement, and will start with these core focuses. [...] At launch, The Social Web Foundation has announced 12 partner organizations, who serve as a pool of knowledge, resources, and stakeholders. The majority of these entities are either building for the Fediverse directly, or providing infrastructure and services indirectly. Aside from Meta being an early supporter, one surprise is the inclusion of The Ford Foundation, a social justice organization dedicated to supporting next-generation solutions for the social good. At time of launch, the SWF will have access to more than 20 dedicated advisors, who will guide the organization on current problem areas their own efforts are facing, and provide insights on how to move forward and make progress. "The Fediverse is too big and too diverse for anyone to claim to speak for the Fediverse. That's not what we want to do or who we want to be," Evan says, "We may do things that people on the network disagree with, like encouraging media organizations to join the network, but what we want to do is help the mission of growing and improving the Fediverse over time."

Meta unveiled prototype AR glasses codenamed Orion on Wednesday, featuring a 70-degree field of view, Micro LED projectors, and silicon carbide lenses that beam graphics directly into the wearer's eyes. In an interview with The Verge, CEO Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated the device's capabilities, including ingredient recognition, holographic gaming, and video calling, controlled by a neural wristband that interprets hand gestures through electromyography.

Despite technological advances, Meta has shelved Orion's commercial release, citing manufacturing complexities and costs reaching $10,000 per unit, primarily due to difficulties in producing the silicon carbide lenses. The company now aims to launch a refined, more affordable version in coming years, with executives hinting at a price comparable to high-end smartphones and laptops.

Zuckerberg views AR glasses as critical to Meta's future, potentially freeing the company from its reliance on smartphone platforms controlled by Apple and Google. The push into AR hardware comes as tech giants and startups intensify competition in the space, with Apple launching Vision Pro and Google partnering with Magic Leap and Samsung on headset development.

Alphabet unit Google filed a complaint to the European Commission on Wednesday against what it said were Microsoft's anti-competitive practices to lock customers into Microsoft's cloud platform Azure. From a report: Google, whose biggest cloud computing rivals are Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, said Microsoft was exploiting its dominant Windows Server operating system to prevent competition. Google Cloud Vice President Amit Zavery told a briefing that Microsoft made customers pay a 400% mark-up to keep running Windows Server on rival cloud computing operators. This did not apply if they used Azure. Users of rival cloud systems would also get later and more limited security updates, Zavery said.

Google pointed to a 2023 study by cloud services organization CISPE which found that European businesses and public sector bodies were paying up to 1 billion euros ($1.12 billion) per year on Microsoft licensing penalties. Microsoft in July clinched a 20-million-euro deal to settle an antitrust complaint about its cloud computing licensing practices with CISPE, averting an EU investigation. However, the settlement did not include Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and AliCloud, prompting criticism from the first two companies.

At a time when tech companies are paying eye-popping sums to hire the best minds in artificial intelligence, Google's deal to rehire Noam Shazeer has left others in the dust. From a report: A co-author of a seminal research paper that kicked off the AI boom, Shazeer quit Google in 2021 to start his own company after the search giant refused to release a chatbot he developed. When that startup, Character.AI, began to flounder, his old employer swooped in.

Google wrote Character a check for around $2.7 billion, according to people with knowledge of the deal. The official reason for the payment was to license Character's technology. But the deal included another component: Shazeer agreed to work for Google again. Within Google, Shazeeer's return is widely viewed as the primary reason the company agreed to pay the multibillion-dollar licensing fee. The arrangement has thrust him into the middle of a debate in Silicon Valley about whether tech giants are overspending in the race to develop cutting-edge AI, which some believe will define the future of computing.