An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fast Company's Jared Newman: With its new Pixel 9 phones, Google Assistant is getting a demotion. In its place, Google's will ship Gemini as the default voice assistant on its flagship phones. Gemini uses large language models to interpret questions and generate answers, which means it can respond in a more conversational way. But while Google is eager to showcase Gemini as an answer to OpenAI's ChatGPT, tossing out Assistant is a mistake. Too often, Gemini fails at performing basic tasks, and it's going to cause lots of frustration for folks who depend on their phone's voice control features. Although Google says Gemini can now handle many of the same instructions as Assistant, that hasn't been my experience at all. As evidence, I submit a list of useful Google Assistant actions that either aren't possible or don't work properly with Gemini. Here is a summary of the challenges Gemini faces, as documented by Newman:

1. Local results are worse: Gemini provides less useful information for local business queries compared to Google Assistant, lacking context and formatting.
2. Gemini can't take notes: Unlike Google Assistant, Gemini cannot take voice notes or save them in an app like Google Keep.
3. No-can-do on to-do lists: Gemini does not support adding items to to-do lists, a feature that Google Assistant handles efficiently.
4. Weather doesn't work right: Gemini struggles with weather forecasts, often giving incorrect locations, unlike Google Assistant which works reliably.
5. Turn-by-turn directions don't load: Gemini fails to provide direct turn-by-turn navigation, only offering a preview, whereas Google Assistant launches navigation immediately.
6. Music and podcast requests are YouTube-only: Gemini only supports YouTube Music, unlike Google Assistant which supports multiple streaming services.
7. Video (in)capabilities: Gemini cannot directly access streaming apps for movies or shows, only suggesting content with no direct links.
8. No photo search: Gemini cannot search for photos in Google Photos, a task that Google Assistant can easily handle.
9. Bye-bye to a useful news feature: Gemini fails to play or provide recent news effectively, unlike Google Assistant's useful daily news briefing feature.
10. No Routines: Gemini does not support the automation of multiple actions through Routines, a feature present in Google Assistant.
11. So much for Shortcuts: Gemini lacks the Shortcuts feature available in Google Assistant, offering no replacement for quick actions in third-party apps.
12. A slower experience: Responses from Gemini are slower by a second or two compared to Google Assistant when answering queries.

"AT&T has been told to stop running ads that claim the carrier is already offering cellular coverage from space," reports Ars Technica: AT&T intends to offer Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS) and has a deal with AST SpaceMobile, a Starlink competitor that plans a smartphone service from low-Earth-orbit satellites. But AST SpaceMobile's first batch of five satellites isn't scheduled to launch until September.

T-Mobile was annoyed by AT&T running an ad indicating that its satellite-to-cellular service was already available, and filed a challenge with the advertising industry's self-regulatory system run by BBB National Programs. The BBB National Advertising Division (NAD) ruled against AT&T last month and the carrier appealed to the National Advertising Review Board (NARB), which has now also ruled against AT&T...

AT&T, which is also famous for renaming its 4G service "5GE," reluctantly agreed to comply with the recommendation and released a new version of the satellite-calling commercial with more specific disclaimers.
The 30-second ad — titled "Epic Bad Golf Day" — featured Ben Stiller golfing chasing a badly-hit golf ball all the way into the desert (accompanied by the Pixies' song "Where is My Mind").

But according to the article, T-Mobile filed an official complaint with the advertising review board that "the use of humor does not shield an advertiser from its obligation to ensure that claims are truthful and non-misleading." The ad originally included small text that described the depicted satellite call as a "demonstration of evolving technology." The text was changed this week to say that "satellite calling is not currently available...."

The original version also had text that said, "the future of help is an AT&T satellite call away." The NARB concluded that this "statement can be interpreted reasonably as stating that 'future' technology has now arrived... In the updated version of the ad, AT&T changed the text to say that "the future of help will be an AT&T satellite call away."

Slashdot reader sciencehabit shared this report from Science magazine: One of the classic tropes of science fiction is terraforming Mars: warming up our cold neighbor so it could support human civilization. The idea might not be so far-fetched, research published today in Science Advances suggests...

Samaneh Ansari [a Ph.D. student at Northwestern University and lead author on the new study] and her colleagues wanted to test the heat-trapping abilities of a substance Mars holds in abundance: dust. Martian dust is rich in iron and aluminum, which give it its characteristic red hue. But its microscopic size and roughly spherical shape are not conducive to absorbing radiation or reflecting it back to the surface. So the researchers brainstormed a different particle: using the iron and aluminum in the dust to manufacture 9-micrometer-long rods, about twice as big as a speck of martian dust and smaller than commercially available glitter. Ansari designed a simulation to test how these theoretical particles would interact with light. She found "unexpectedly huge effects" in how they absorbed infrared radiation from the surface and how they scattered that radiation back down to Mars — key factors that determine whether an aerosol particle creates a greenhouse effect.

Collaborators at the University of Chicago and the University of Central Florida then fed the particles into computer models of Mars's climate. They examined the effect of annually injecting 2 million tons of the rods 10 to 100 meters above the surface, where they would be lofted to higher altitudes by turbulent winds and settle out of the atmosphere 10 times more slowly than natural Mars dust. Mars could warm by about 10 degreesC within a matter of months, the team found, despite requiring 5000 times less material than other proposed greenhouse gas schemes...

Still, "Increasing the temperature of the planet is just one of the things that we would need to do in order to live on Mars without any assistance," says Juan Alday, a postdoctoral planetary science researcher at the Open University not involved with the work. For one, the amount of oxygen in Mars's atmosphere is only 0.1%, compared with 21% on Earth. The pressure on Mars is also 150 times lower than on Earth, which would cause human blood to boil. And Mars has no ozone layer, which means there is no protection from the Sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. What's more, even once warmed, martian soils may still be too salty or toxic to grow crops. In other words, McInnes says, upping the temperature "isn't some kind of magic switch" that would make Mars habitable.

That isn't stopping Ansari and her colleagues from investigating the possibilities.

Russia has blocked access to the encrypted Signal messaging app to "prevent the messenger's use of terrorist and extremist purposes." YouTube is also facing mass outages following repeated slowdowns in recent weeks. The Associated Press reports: Russian authorities expanded their crackdown on dissent and free media after Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. They have blocked multiple independent Russian-language media outlets critical of the Kremlin, and cut access to Twitter, which later became X, as well as Meta's Facebook and Instagram.

In the latest blow to the freedom of information, YouTube faced mass outages on Thursday following repeated slowdowns in recent weeks. Russian authorities have blamed the slowdowns on Google's failure to upgrade its equipment in Russia, but many experts have challenged the claim, arguing that the likely reason for the slowdowns and the latest outage was the Kremlin's desire to shut public access to a major platform that carries opposition views.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In Brazil, there was a [...] unbelievable display of public piracy last week that went on to make national headlines. The mayor of the municipality Acopiara, in the north-east of the country, invited citizens of the small town Trussu to join a screening of the blockbuster "Inside Out 2" at the local town square. With little more than a thousand inhabitants, many of whom have limited means, this appeared to be a kind gesture. The mayor, Anthony Almeida Neto, could use some positive marks too; he was removed from office three times on suspicion of being involved in corruption schemes, and was most recently reinstated in March. The mayor officially announced the public screening of 'Inside Out 2' via Instagram and Facebook, inviting people to join him. That worked well as a sizable crowd showed up, allowing the controversial mayor to proudly boast the event's popularity in public through his social media channels.

Taking place in an outside theater created just for this occasion, the screening was a unique opportunity for the small town's residents. There are no official movie theaters nearby, so locals would normally have to travel for several hours to see a film that's still in cinemas. Thanks to the mayor, people could see 'Inside Out 2' in their hometown instead. The mayor was pleased with the turnout too and proudly broadcasted it through a livestream on Instagram. Amidst all this joy, however, people started to notice a watermark on the film that was clearly associated with piracy. In addition, it was apparent that the copy had been sourced from pirate streaming site, Obaflix. All signs indicate that the public event wasn't authorized or licensed. Instead, it appeared to be an improvised screening of a low-quality TS release of the film, which is widely available through pirate sites. When this 'revelation' was picked up in the Brazilian press, mayor Anthony Almeida was quick to respond with assurances that he only had honest intentions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Unlike Tesla, which hopes to develop its own bipedal 'bot to work on its production line sometime next year, BMW has brought in a robot from Figure AI. The Figure 02 robot has hands with sixteen degrees of freedom and human-equivalent strength. "We are excited to unveil Figure 02, our second-generation humanoid robot, which recently completed successful testing at the BMW Group Plant Spartanburg. Figure 02 has significant technical advancements, which enable the robot to perform a wide range of complex tasks fully autonomously," said Brett Adcock, founder and CEO of Figure AI.

BMW wanted to test how to integrate a humanoid robot into its production process -- how to have the robot communicate with the production line software and human workers and determine what requirements would be necessary to add robots to the mix. The Figure robot was given the job of inserting sheet metal parts into fixtures as part of the process of making a chassis. BMW says this required particular dexterity and that it's an ergonomically awkward and tiring task for humans.

Now that the trial is over, Figure's robot is no longer working at Spartanburg, and BMW says it has "no definite timetable established" to add humanoid robots to its production lines. "The developments in the field of robotics are very promising. With an early-test operation, we are now determining possible applications for humanoid robots in production. We want to accompany this technology from development to industrialization," said Milan Nedeljkovi, BMW's board member responsible for production. BMW Group published a video of the Figure 02 robot on YouTube.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has revealed technical details of its in-house data transfer tool, called Effingo, and bragged that it uses the project to move an average of 1.2 exabytes every day. As explained in a paper [PDF] and video to be presented on Thursday at the SIGCOMM 2024 conference in Sydney, bandwidth constraints and the stubbornly steady speed of light mean that not even Google is immune to the need to replicate data so it is located close to where it is processed or served.

Indeed, the paper describes managed data transfer as "an unsung hero of large-scale, globally-distributed systems" because it "reduces the network latency from across-globe hundreds to in-continent dozens of milliseconds." The paper also points out that data transfer tools are not hard to find, and asks why a management layer like Effingo is needed. The answer is that the tools Google could find either optimized for transfer time or handled point-to-point data streams -- and weren't up to the job of handling the 1.2 exabytes Effingo moves on an average day, at 14 terabytes per second. To shift all those bits, Effingo "balances infrastructure efficiency and users' needs" and recognizes that "some users and some transfers are more important than the others: eg, disaster recovery for a serving database, compared to migrating data from a cluster with maintenance scheduled a week from now."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hackers delivered malware to Windows and Mac users by compromising their Internet service provider and then tampering with software updates delivered over unsecure connections, researchers said. The attack, researchers from security firm Volexity said, worked by hacking routers or similar types of device infrastructure of an unnamed ISP. The attackers then used their control of the devices to poison domain name system responses for legitimate hostnames providing updates for at least six different apps written for Windows or macOS. The apps affected were the 5KPlayer, Quick Heal, Rainmeter, Partition Wizard, and those from Corel and Sogou.

Because the update mechanisms didn't use TLS or cryptographic signatures to authenticate the connections or downloaded software, the threat actors were able to use their control of the ISP infrastructure to successfully perform machine-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks that directed targeted users to hostile servers rather than the ones operated by the affected software makers. These redirections worked even when users employed non-encrypted public DNS services such as Google's 8.8.8.8 or Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 rather than the authoritative DNS server provided by the ISP. "That is the fun/scary part -- this was not the hack of the ISPs DNS servers," Volexity CEO Steven Adair wrote in an online interview. "This was a compromise of network infrastructure for Internet traffic. The DNS queries, for example, would go to Google's DNS servers destined for 8.8.8.8. The traffic was being intercepted to respond to the DNS queries with the IP address of the attacker's servers."

In other words, the DNS responses returned by any DNS server would be changed once it reached the infrastructure of the hacked ISP. The only way an end user could have thwarted the attack was to use DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS to ensure lookup results haven't been tampered with or to avoid all use of apps that deliver unsigned updates over unencrypted connections. As an example, the 5KPlayer app uses an unsecure HTTP connection rather than an encrypted HTTPS one to check if an update is available and, if so, to download a configuration file named Youtube.config. StormBamboo, the name used in the industry to track the hacking group responsible, used DNS poisoning to deliver a malicious version of the Youtube.config file from a malicious server. This file, in turn, downloaded a next-stage payload that was disguised as a PNG image. In fact, it was an executable file that installed malware tracked under the names MACMA for macOS devices or POCOSTICK for Windows devices. As for the hacked ISP, the security firm said "it's not a huge one or one you'd likely know."

"In our case the incident is contained but we see other servers that are actively serving malicious updates but we do not know where they are being served from. We suspect there are other active attacks around the world we do not have purview into. This could be from an ISP compromise or a localized compromise to an organization such as on their firewall."

Apple has introduced a new feature for Safari that allows users to block distracting elements on web pages, such as sign-in popups, some autoplay videos and even ads (temporarily). The feature is called "Distraction Control" and is rolling out today in iOS 18 beta 5. 9to5Mac reports: Distraction Control is accessible via the same Page Menu interface in Safari as Reader and Viewer. Here, users will find a new "Hide Distracting Items" option to enable Distraction Control. Users will then be prompted to select different elements on a webpage that they feel are distracting. Users will have to manually choose each item on a webpage that they wish to hide. Distraction Control will persist through page refreshes and reloads, assuming that the hidden item does not change. Apple says that nothing is proactively hidden with this feature; only items that a user manually selects are hidden.

Apple also emphasizes that this feature is not meant to serve as an ad blocker. While a user can technically use Distraction Control to hide an ad on a website temporarily, that ad will re-appear when the page is refreshed or otherwise reloaded. In fact, the first time a user activates Distraction Control, Safari will display a pop-up that emphasizes the feature will not permanently remove ads or other areas of a website that frequently change. If a user chooses to hide something like a GDPR banner or a cookies request pop-up, Distraction Control behaves in the same way as if the user manually clicked to dismiss that pop-up. This means Distraction Control will serve as neither an "Accept" nor "Decline" for that cookies request. Finally, if a user wishes to unhide an item, they can click back into the Page Menu interface in Safari and choose "Show Hidden Items."

Nvidia scraped videos from YouTube, Netflix and other online platforms to compile training data for its AI products, 404 Media reported Monday, citing internal documents. The tech giant used this content to develop various AI projects, including its Omniverse 3D world generator and self-driving car systems, the report said. Some employees expressed concerns about potential legal issues surrounding the use of such content, the report said, adding that the management assured them of executive-level approval. Nvidia defended its actions, asserting they were "in full compliance with the letter and the spirit of copyright law" and emphasizing that copyright protects specific expressions rather than facts or ideas.

Late Friday Elon Musk appeared on Lex Fridman's podcast for a special eight-hour episode about Neuralink.

It's already been viewed 1,702,036 times on YouTube — and resulted in this report from Reuters: Neuralink has successfully implanted in a second patient its device designed to give paralyzed patients the ability to use digital devices by thinking alone, according to the startup's owner Elon Musk... [Musk] gave few details about the second participant beyond saying the person had a spinal cord injury similar to the first patient, who was paralyzed in a diving accident.

Musk said 400 of the implant's electrodes on the second patient's brain are working. Neuralink on its website states that its implant uses 1,024 electrodes... Musk said he expects Neuralink to provide the implants to eight more patients this year as part of its clinical trials.
Neuralink's device "has allowed the first patient to play video games, browse the internet, post on social media and move a cursor on his laptop," according to the article: The first patient, Noland Arbaugh, was also interviewed on the podcast, along with three Neuralink executives, who gave details about how the implant and the robot-led surgery work. Before Arbaugh received his implant in January, he used a computer by employing a stick in his mouth to tap the screen of a tablet device. Arbaugh said with the implant he now can merely think about what he wants to happen on the computer screen, and the device makes it happen... Arbaugh has improved on his previous world record for the speed at which he can control a cursor with thoughts alone "with only roughly 10, 15% of the electrodes working," Musk said on the podcast.
Fridman said his interview with Musk was "the longest podcast I've ever done," calling their conversation "fascinating, super technical, and wide-ranging... I loved every minute of it."

"Five years ago, Brian Frye set an elaborate trap," writes Decrypt.co. "Now the law professor is teaming up with a singer-songwriter to finally spring it" on America's Security and Exchange Commission "in a novel lawsuit — and in the process, prevent the regulator from ever coming after NFT art projects again." Over and again, the SEC has sued cherry-picked NFT projects it says qualify as unregistered securities — but never once has the regulator defined what types of NFT projects are legal and which are not, casting a chill over the nascent industry... [In 2019] Frye, an expert in securities law and a fan of novel technologies, minted an NFT of a letter he sent to the SEC in which he declared his art project to constitute an illegal, unregistered security. If the conceptual art project wasn't a security, Frye challenged the agency, then it needed to say so. The SEC never responded to Frye — not then, and not after several more self-incriminating correspondences from the professor. But in due time, the agency began vigorously pursuing, and suing, NFT projects.
So 10 months ago, Jonathan Mann — who writes a new song every day and shares it online — crafted a song titled "This Song is A Security." As a seller of NFTs himself, Mann wrote the song "to fight back against the SEC, and defend his right — plus the rights of other artists like him — to earn revenue," according to the article: Frye, who'd practically been salivating for such an opportunity for half a decade, was a natural fit.... In the lawsuit filed against the SEC in Louisiana earlier this week, they challenged the SEC's standing to regulate their NFT-backed artworks as securities, and demanded the agency declare that their respective art projects do not constitute illegal, unregistered securities offerings.
More from the International Business Times: The complaint asked the court to clarify whether the SEC should regulate art and whether artists were supposed to "register" their artworks before selling the pieces to the general public. The complaint also asked whether artists should be "forced to make public disclosures about the 'risks' of buying their art," and whether artists should be "required to comply" with federal securities laws...

The Blockchain Association, a collective crypto group that includes some of the biggest digital asset firms, asserted that the SEC has no authority over NFT art. "We support the plaintiffs in their quest for legal clarity," the group said.
In an interview with Slashdot, Mann says he started his "Song a Day" project almost 17 years ago (when he was 26 years old) — and his interest in NFTs is sincere: "Over the years, I've always sought a way to make Song A Day sustainable financially, through video contests, conference gigs, ad revenue, royalties, Patreon and more.

"When I came across NFTs in 2017, they didn't have a name. We just called them 'digital collectibles'. For the last 2+ years, NFTs have become that self-sustaining model for my work.

"I know most people believe NFTs are a joke at best and actively harmful at worst. Even most people in the crypto community have given up on them. Despite all that, I still believe they're worth pursuing.

"Collecting an NFT from an artist you love is the most direct way to support them. There's no multinational corporation, no payment processor, and no venture capitalists between you and the artist you want to support."
Slashdot also tracked down the SEC's Office of Public Affairs, and got an official response from SEC public affairs specialist Ryan White.

Slashdot: The suit argues that the SEC's approach "threatens the livelihoods of artists and creators that are simply experimenting with a novel, fast-growing technology," and seeks guidance in the face of a "credible threat of enforcement". Is the SEC going to respond to this lawsuit? And if you don't have an answer at this time, can you give me a general comment on the issues and concerns being raised?

SEC Public Affairs Specialist Ryan White: We would decline comment.

Decrypt.co points out that the lawsuit "has no guarantee of offering some conclusive end to the NFT regulation question... That may only come with concrete legislation or a judgment by the Supreme Court."

But Mann's song still makes a very public show out of their concerns — with Mann even releasing a follow-up song titled "I'm Suing the SEC." (Its music video mixes together wacky clips of Mila Kunis's Stoner Cats and Fonzie jumping a shark with footage of NFT critics like Elizabeth Warren and SEC chairman Gary Gensler.)

And an earlier song also used auto-tune to transform Gensler's remarks about cryptocurrencies into the chorus of a song titled "Hucksters, Fraudsters, Scam Artists, Ponzi Schemes".

Mann later auctioned an NFT of the song — for over $3,000 in Ethereum.

Apple's elaborate new ad campaign promises that Safari is "a browser that protects your privacy." And the Washington Post says Apple "deserves credit for making many privacy protections automatic with Safari..."

"But Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said Safari is no better than the fourth-best web browser for your privacy." "If browser privacy were a sport at the Olympics, Apple isn't getting on the medal stand," Cahn said. (Apple did not comment about this.)

Safari stops third-party cookies anywhere you go on the web. So do Mozilla's Firefox and the Brave browser... Chrome allows third-party cookies in most cases unless you turn them off... Even without cookies, a website can pull information like the resolution of your computer screen, the fonts you have installed, add-on software you use and other technical details that in aggregate can help identify your device and what you're doing on it. The measures, typically called "fingerprinting," are privacy-eroding tracking by another name. Nick Doty with the Center for Democracy & Technology said there's generally not much you can do about fingerprinting. Usually you don't know you're being tracked that way. Apple says it defends against common fingerprinting techniques but Cahn said Firefox, Brave and the Tor Browser all are better at protecting you from digital surveillance. That's why he said Safari is no better than the fourth-best browser for privacy.
Safari's does offer extra privacy protections in its "private" mode, the article points out. "When you use this option, Apple says it does more to block use of 'advanced' fingerprinting techniques. It also steps up defenses against tracking that adds bits of identifying information to the web links you click."

The article concludes that Safari users can "feel reasonably good about the privacy (and security) protections, but you can probably do better — either by tweaking your Apple settings or using a web browser that's even more private than Safari."

Google has pulled its "Dear Sydney" Olympics ad after it garnered significant backlash. (You can still watch the ad on YouTube, but comments have been turned off.) According to Ad Age, the ad was "meant to promote Google's Gemini AI platform, but viewers had a difficult time looking past its miscalculated storyline." From the report: In the ad, a father wants to help his daughter write a letter to her idol, Olympic track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. But instead of encouraging her to take part in such a personal moment, he delegates Gemini to write the letter for her. Viewers and ad leaders lambasted the spot on social media for being tone-deaf. Some were upset over Google evidently seeing no problem with an AI co-opting a formative childhood act, while others alluded to its reinforcing of a more existential fear, that AI is bound to replace meaningful work. The ad got significant airplay during NBCU's TV coverage of the Olympics this week, including on NBC in primetime, as well as on E!, CNBC and USA, according to iSpot.tv. It last ran on national TV around midnight of July 30 on USA, according to iSpot.TV. "While the ad tested well before airing, given the feedback, we've decided to phase the ad out of our Olympics rotation," a Google spokesperson told Ad Age today.

The company earlier this week defended the ad in a statement: "We believe that AI can be a great tool for enhancing human creativity, but can never replace it. Our goal was to create an authentic story celebrating Team USA. It showcases a real-life track enthusiast and her father, and aims to show how the Gemini app can provide a starting point, thought starter, or early draft for someone looking for ideas for their writing."

For the first time, an AI-controlled autonomous robot performed an entire dental procedure on a human patient, completing the task eight times faster than a human dentist could. New Atlas reports: The system, built by Boston company Perceptive, uses a hand-held 3D volumetric scanner, which builds a detailed 3D model of the mouth, including the teeth, gums and even nerves under the tooth surface, using optical coherence tomography, or OCT. This cuts harmful X-Ray radiation out of the process, as OCT uses nothing more than light beams to build its volumetric models, which come out at high resolution, with cavities automatically detected at an accuracy rate around 90%. At this point, the (human) dentist and patient can discuss what needs doing -- but once those decisions are made, the robotic dental surgeon takes over. It plans out the operation, then jolly well goes ahead and does it.

The machine's first specialty: preparing a tooth for a dental crown. Perceptive claims this is generally a two-hour procedure that dentists will normally split into two visits. The robo-dentist knocks it off in closer to 15 minutes. Here's a time-lapse video of the drilling portion, looking very much like a CNC machine at work. Remarkably, the company claims the machine can take care of business safely "even in the most movement-heavy conditions," and that dry run testing on moving humans has all been successful. [...] The robot's not FDA-approved yet, and Perceptive hasn't placed a timeline on rollout, so it may be some years yet before the public gets access to this kind of treatment.

Longtime Slashdot reader ArchieBunker shares a report from Jalopnik: YouTube's Rich Rebuilds has been taking electric vehicles apart to see what makes them tick for years, so when a bargain-priced Fisker Ocean came on his radar, he had to buy it. Even if it was totally bricked. This car was purchased new for over $70,000, had several thousand dollars of paint protection and tint applied, was driven for 300 miles, and traded in. It sat on the dealer lot for long enough for the battery to die, and the techs at the dealer couldn't figure it out. So they sold it to Rich for just 10 grand!

As Rich notes in the video, the car is worth way more than ten grand in parts alone, as current Fisker owners will be looking for ways to keep their cars on the road for years to come. The company has gone the way of the dodo, and parts supply and software updates are never going to come. What you see is what you get, and what you get is kind of shitty. In June, Fisker filed for bankruptcy, months after the electric-vehicle startup stopped production of its only model, the oft-malfunctioning Ocean SUV.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A group of researchers said they found that vulnerabilities in the design of some dating apps, including the popular Bumble and Hinge, allowed malicious users or stalkers to pinpoint the location of their victims down to two meters. In a new academic paper, researchers from the Belgian university KU Leuven detailed their findings (PDF) when they analyzed 15 popular dating apps. Of those, Badoo, Bumble, Grindr, happn, Hinge and Hily all had the same vulnerability that could have helped a malicious user to identify the near-exact location of another user, according to the researchers. While neither of those apps share exact locations when displaying the distance between users on their profiles, they did use exact locations for the "filters" feature of the apps. Generally speaking, by using filters, users can tailor their search for a partner based on criteria like age, height, what type of relationship they are looking for and, crucially, distance.

To pinpoint the exact location of a target user, the researchers used a novel technique they call "oracle trilateration." In general, trilateration, which for example is used in GPS, works by using three points and measuring their distance relative to the target. This creates three circles, which intersect at the point where the target is located. Oracle trilateration works slightly differently. The researchers wrote in their paper that the first step for the person who wants to identify their target's location "roughly estimates the victim's location," for example, based on the location displayed in the target's profile. Then, the attacker moves in increments "until the oracle indicates that the victim is no longer within proximity, and this for three different directions. The attacker now has three positions with a known exact distance, i.e., the preselected proximity distance, and can trilaterate the victim," the researchers wrote.

"It was somewhat surprising that known issues were still present in these popular apps," Karel Dhondt, one of the researchers, told TechCrunch. While this technique doesn't reveal the exact GPS coordinates of the victim, "I'd say 2 meters is close enough to pinpoint the user," Dhondt said. The good news is that all the apps that had these issues, and that the researchers reached out to, have now changed how distance filters work and are not vulnerable to the oracle trilateration technique. The fix, according to the researchers, was to round up the exact coordinates by three decimals, making them less precise and accurate.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Multiple YouTube users are now reporting on social media that YouTube is serving them with blank ads or black screens before a video when they are using an ad-blocker extension. The black screens appear for the length of a typical YouTube pre-roll or ad insert before displaying the actual content of the video the viewer wants to watch.

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger writes: Have you ever wondered if it's true you can instantly get malware? In this video, a person connects an XP instance directly to the internet with no firewall to see just how fast it gets compromised by malware, rootkits, malicious services and new user accounts. The answer — fast!
Malwarebytes eventually finds eight different viruses/Trojan horses -- and a DNS changer. (One IP address leads back to the Russian federation.) Itâ(TM)s fun to watch -- within just a few hours a new Windows user has even added themself. And for good measure, he also opens up Internet Explorer...

âoeWindows XP -- very insecure,â they conclude at the end of the video. âoeVery easy for random software from the internet to get more privileges than you, and it is very hard to solve that.

âoeAlso, just out of curiosity I tried this on Windows 7. And even with all of the same settings, nothing happened. I let it run for 10 hours. So it seems like this may be a problem in historical Windows.â

CNET visits a leading-edge company making an implantable brain-computer-interface that's "experimenting with ChatGPT integration..." We previously covered Synchron's unique approach to implanting its brain-computer-interface (BCI) without the need for open brain surgery. Now the company has integrated OpenAI's ChatGPT into its software, something it says is a world's first for a BCI company...

Typing out messages word by word with the help of a BCI is still time consuming. The addition of AI is seen as a way to make communication faster and easier by taking in the relevant context, like what was last said in a conversation, and anticipating answers a person might want to respond with, providing them with a menu of possible options. Now, instead of typing out each word, answers can be filled in with a single "click." There's a refresh button in case none of the AI answers are right... [ALS patient Mark, one of 10 people in the world testing Synchron's brain implant in a clinical trial] has noticed the AI getting better at providing answers that are more in line with things he might say. "Every once in a while it'll drop an f-bomb, which I tend to do occasionally," he says with a laugh.

Synchron CEO Tom Oxley tells me the company has been experimenting with different AI models for about a year, but the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT-4o in May raised some interesting new possibilities. The "o" in ChatGPT-4o stands for "omni," representative of the fact that this latest version is capable of taking in text, audio and visual inputs all at once to inform its outputs... Oxley envisions the future of BCIs as... having large language models like ChatGPT take in relevant context in the form of text, audio and visuals to provide relevant prompts that users can select with their BCI... Synchron's BCI is expected to cost between $50,000 and $100,000, comparable with the cost of other implanted medical devices like cardiac pacemakers or cochlear implants.
CNET has also released a video — titled "What It's Like Using a Brain Implant With ChatGPT."