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Microsoft is getting ready to place Teams meeting reminders on the Start menu in Windows 11. From a report: The software giant has started testing a new build of Windows 11 with Dev Channel testers that includes a Teams meeting reminder in the recommended section of the Start menu. Microsoft is also testing an improved way to instantly access new photos and screenshots from Android devices. [...] The Teams meeting reminders will be displayed alongside the regular recently used and recommended file list on the Start menu, and they won't be displayed for non-business users of Windows 11.

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A new survey of thousands of game development professionals finds a near-majority saying generative AI tools are already in use at their workplace. But a significant minority of developers say their company has no interest in generative AI tools or has outright banned their use. From a report: The Game Developers Conference's 2024 State of the Industry report, released Thursday, aggregates the thoughts of over 3,000 industry professionals as of last October. While the annual survey (conducted in conjunction with research partner Omdia) has been running for 12 years, this is the first time respondents were asked directly about their use of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, GitHub Copilot, and Adobe Generative Fill. Forty-nine percent of the survey's developer respondents said that generative AI tools are currently being used in their workplace. That near-majority includes 31 percent (of all respondents) that say they use those tools themselves and 18 percent that say their colleagues do. The survey also found that different studio departments showed different levels of willingness to embrace AI tools. Forty-four percent of employees in business and finance said they were using AI tools, for instance, compared to just 16 percent in visual arts and 13 percent in "narrative/writing."

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Malware threat from third-party cartridges nothing compared to threat to HP's bottom line

HP CEO Enrique Lores admitted this week that the company's long-term objective is "to make printing a subscription" when he was questioned about the company's approach to third-party replacement ink suppliers.…

The credibility of the Cop28 agreement to "transition away" from fossil fuels rides on the world's biggest historical polluters like the US, UK and Canada rethinking current plans to expand oil and gas production, according to the climate negotiator representing 135 developing countries. The Guardian: In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Pedro Pedroso, the outgoing president of the G77 plus China bloc of developing countries, warned that the landmark deal made at last year's climate talks in Dubai risked failing. "We achieved some important outcomes at Cop28 but the challenge now is how we translate the deal into meaningful action for the people," Pedroso said. "As we speak, unless we lie to ourselves, none of the major developed countries, who are the most important historical emitters, have policies that are moving away from fossil fuels, on the contrary, they are expanding," said Pedroso. These countries must also deliver adequate finance for poorer nations to transition -and adapt to the climate crisis. In Dubai, Sultan Al Jaber, Cop28 president and chief of the Emirates national oil company, was subject to widespread scrutiny -- understandable given that the UAE is the world's seventh biggest oil producer with the fifth largest gas reserves. Yet the US was by far the biggest oil and gas producer in the world last year -- setting a new record, during a year that was the hottest ever recorded. The US, UK, Canada, Australia and Norway account for 51% of the total planned oil and gas expansion by 2050, according to research by Oil Change International. "It's very easy to label some emerging economies, especially the Gulf states, as climate villains, but this is very unfair by countries with historic responsibilities -- who keep trying to scapegoat and deviate the attention away from themselves. Just look at US fossil fuel plans and the UK's new drilling licenses for the North Sea, and Canada which has never met any of its emission reduction goals, not once," said Pedroso, a Cuban diplomat.

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More details emerge as Horizon IT scandal inquiry continues

The Post Office proposed suing Fujitsu over missing data from its audit trail that could be used in the prosecution of victims of the Horizon scandal, one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in UK history.…

Dan Rockmore, the director of the Neukom Institute for Computational Sciences at Dartmouth College, writing for The New Yorker: Recently, statistical modelling has taken on a new kind of importance as the engine of artificial intelligence -- specifically in the form of the deep neural networks that power, among other things, large language models, such as OpenAI's G.P.T.s. These systems sift vast corpora of text to create a statistical model of written expression, realized as the likelihood of given words occurring in particular contexts. Rather than trying to encode a principled theory of how we produce writing, they are a vertiginous form of curve fitting; the largest models find the best ways to connect hundreds of thousands of simple mathematical neurons, using trillions of parameters.They create a vast data structure akin to a tangle of Christmas lights whose on-off patterns attempt to capture a chunk of historical word usage. The neurons derive from mathematical models of biological neurons originally formulated by Warren S. McCulloch and Walter Pitts, in a landmark 1943 paper, titled "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity." McCulloch and Pitts argued that brain activity could be reduced to a model of simple, interconnected processing units, receiving and sending zeros and ones among themselves based on relatively simple rules of activation and deactivation. The McCulloch-Pitts model was intended as a foundational step in a larger project, spearheaded by McCulloch, to uncover a biological foundation of psychiatry. McCulloch and Pitts never imagined that their cartoon neurons could be trained, using data, so that their on-off states linked to certain properties in that data. But others saw this possibility, and early machine-learning researchers experimented with small networks of mathematical neurons, effectively creating mathematical models of the neural architecture of simple brains, not to do psychiatry but to categorize data. The results were a good deal less than astonishing. It wasn't until vast amounts of good data -- like text -- became readily available that computer scientists discovered how powerful their models could be when implemented on vast scales. The predictive and generative abilities of these models in many contexts is beyond remarkable. Unfortunately, it comes at the expense of understanding just how they do what they do. A new field, called interpretability (or X-A.I., for "explainable" A.I.), is effectively the neuroscience of artificial neural networks. This is an instructive origin story for a field of research. The field begins with a focus on a basic and well-defined underlying mechanism -- the activity of a single neuron. Then, as the technology scales, it grows in opacity; as the scope of the field's success widens, so does the ambition of its claims. The contrast with climate modelling is telling. Climate models have expanded in scale and reach, but at each step the models must hew to a ground truth of historical, measurable fact. Even models of covid or elections need to be measured against external data. The success of deep learning is different. Trillions of parameters are fine-tuned on larger and larger corpora that uncover more and more correlations across a range of phenomena. The success of this data-driven approach isn't without danger. We run the risk of conflating success on well-defined tasks with an understanding of the underlying phenomenon -- thought -- that motivated the models in the first place. Part of the problem is that, in many cases, we actually want to use models as replacements for thinking. That's the raison detre of modelling -- substitution. It's useful to recall the story of Icarus. If only he had just done his flying well below the sun. The fact that his wings worked near sea level didn't mean they were a good design for the upper atmosphere. If we don't understand how a model works, then we aren't in a good position to know its limitations until something goes wrong. By then it might be too late. Eugene Wigner, the physicist who noted the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics," restricted his awe and wonder to its ability to describe the inanimate world. Mathematics proceeds according to its own internal logic, and so it's striking that its conclusions apply to the physical universe; at the same time, how they play out varies more the further that we stray from physics. Math can help us shine a light on dark worlds, but we should look critically, always asking why the math is so effective, recognizing where it isn't, and pushing on the places in between.

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Airbus cemented its position last week as the world's biggest plane maker for the fifth straight year, announcing that it had delivered more aircraft and secured more orders than Boeing in 2023. At the same time, Boeing was trying to put out a huge public-relations and safety crisis caused by a harrowing near disaster involving its 737 Max line of airliners. In the long-running duel between the two aviation rivals, Airbus has pulled far ahead. The New York Times: "What used to be a duopoly has become two-thirds Airbus, one-third Boeing," said Richard Aboulafia, the managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory in Washington, D.C. "A lot of people, whether investors, financiers or customers, are looking at Airbus and seeing a company run by competent people," he said. "The contrast with Boeing is fairly profound." The incident involving the 737 Max 9, in which a hole blew open in the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines flight in midair, was the latest in a string of safety lapses in Boeing's workhorse aircraft -- including two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 -- that are indirectly helping propel the fortunes of the European aerospace giant. As the Federal Aviation Administration widens its scrutiny of Max 9 production, Airbus's edge is likely to sharpen. Airlines are embarking on massive expansions of their fleets to meet a postpandemic surge in the demand for global air travel, and are considering which company to turn to.

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Shipments alleged to have gone to a sanctioned company

A businessman has been arrested in the US and charged with unlawfully exporting sensitive technology including semiconductors to a sanctioned business with ties to Russia's military and intelligence agencies.…

Apple committed to address antitrust concerns posed by the European Commission surrounding its popular Apple Pay app, including allowing access to third-party mobile wallet and payment services. WSJ: The U.S. tech giant has agreed to allow companies' apps to make contactless payments on devices that use the iOS system, such as iPhones, for free without the need to use Apple Pay or Apple Wallet, the EU's executive arm said Friday.

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An anonymous reader shares an essay: No one clicks a webpage hoping to learn which cat can haz cheeseburger. Weirdos, maybe. Sickos. No, we get our content from a For You Page now -- algorithmically selected videos and images made by our favorite creators, produced explicitly for our preferred platform. Which platform doesn't matter much. So long as it's one of the big five. Creators churn out content for all of them. It's a technical marvel, that internet. Something so mindblowingly impressive that if you showed it to someone even thirty years ago, their face would melt the fuck off. So why does it feel like something's missing? Why are we all so collectively unhappy with the state of the web? A tweet went viral this Thanksgiving when a Twitter user posed a question to their followers. (The tweet said: "It feels like there are no websites anymore. There used to be so many websites you could go on. Where did all the websites go?") A peek at the comments, and I could only assume the tweet struck a nerve. Everyone had their own answer. Some comments blamed the app-ification of the web. "Everything is an app now!," one user replied. Others point to the death of Adobe Flash and how so many sites and games died along with it. Everyone agrees that websites have indeed vanished, and we all miss the days we were free to visit them.

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But what kind of info was actually compromised? None of your business

VF Corporation, parent company of clothes and footwear brands including Vans and North Face, says 35.5 million customers were impacted in some way when criminals broke into their systems in December.…

Sacrificing its academic backups for the sake of the environment

Microsoft's decision to cut the storage in its Microsoft 365 Education line is having some real-world consequences, with a Canadian university imposing draconian measures partly in response to the restrictions.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday said an energy breakthrough is necessary for future artificial intelligence, which will consume vastly more power than people have expected. Speaking at a Bloomberg event on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Altman said the silver lining is that more climate-friendly sources of energy, particularly nuclear fusion or cheaper solar power and storage, are the way forward for AI. "There's no way to get there without a breakthrough," he said. "It motivates us to go invest more in fusion." In 2021, Altman personally provided $375 million to private U.S. nuclear fusion company Helion Energy, which since has signed a deal to provide energy to Microsoft in future years. Microsoft is OpenAI's biggest financial backer and provides it computing resources for AI. Altman said he wished the world would embrace nuclear fission as an energy source as well. Further reading: Microsoft Needs So Much Power to Train AI That It's Considering Small Nuclear Reactors

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A Boeing cargo plane headed for Puerto Rico was diverted Thursday night after taking off from Miami International Airport because of engine trouble, according to an official and flight data. From a report: Atlas Air Flight 5Y095 landed safely after experiencing an "engine malfunction" shortly after departure, the airline said early Friday. It was unclear what kind of cargo the plane was carrying. Data collected by FlightAware, a flight tracking company, showed the aircraft was a Boeing 747-8 that left its gate at Miami International at 10:11 p.m. on Thursday and returned to the airport about 50 minutes later. The website also showed that the plane traveled 60 miles in total. Reuters adds: The Atlas Air Flight 5Y095 was on its way to San Juan, Puerto Rico from Miami International Airport on late Thursday evening. The pilot made a Mayday call around 0333 GMT to report an engine fire and requested to return back to the airport, according to multi-channel recordings of conversations between the air traffic control and the plane available on liveatc.net. "We have a engine fire," one of the plane crew said, disclosing that there were five people on board.

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El Reg talks to the project's founder

Interview The last units of the second batch of the ZX Spectrum Next are heading off to their owners. If you missed out, we have good news.…

David Mills, the man who invented NTP and wrote the implementation, has passed away. He also created the Fuzzballs and EGP, and helped make global-scale internetworking possible. Vint Cerf, sharing the news on the Internet Society mail group: His daughter, Leigh, just sent me the news that Dave passed away peacefully on January 17, 2024. He was such an iconic element of the early Internet. Network Time Protocol, the Fuzzball routers of the early NSFNET, INARG taskforce lead, COMSAT Labs and University of Delaware and so much more. R.I.P.

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A peek back at the wobbly Windows of yesteryear

Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen has taken us back to the era of 16-bit Windows and the definition of a "hard error" compared to something a bit softer and easier.…

Researchers have developed a way to apply quantum measurement to something no matter its mass or energy. "Our proposed experiment can test if an object is classical or quantum by seeing if an act of observation can lead to a change in its motion," says physicist Debarshi Das from UCL. ScienceAlert reports: Quantum physics describes a Universe where objects aren't defined by a single measurement, but as a range of possibilities. An electron can be spinning up and down, or have a high chance of existing in some areas more than others, for example. In theory, this isn't limited to tiny things. Your own body can in effect be described as having a very high probability of sitting in that chair and a very (very!) low probability of being on the Moon. There is just one fundamental truth to remember -- you touch it, you've bought it. Observing an object's quantum state, whether an electron, or a person sitting in a chair, requires interactions with a measuring system, forcing it to have a single measurement. There are ways to catch objects with their quantum pants still down, but they require keeping the object in a ground state -- super-cold, super-still, completely cut off from its environment. That's tricky to do with individual particles, and it gets a lot more challenging as the size of the scale goes up. The new proposal uses an entirely novel approach, one that uses a combination of assertions known as Leggett-Garg Inequalities and No-Signaling in Time conditions. In effect, these two concepts describe a familiar Universe, where a person on a chair is sitting there even if the room is dark and you can't see them. Switching on the light won't suddenly reveal they're actually under the bed. Should an experiment find evidence that somehow conflicts with these assertions, we just might be catching a glimpse of quantum fuzziness on a larger scale. The team proposes that objects can be observed as they oscillate on a pendulum, like a ball at the end of a piece of string. Light would then be flashed at the two halves of the experimental setup at different times -- counting as the observation -- and the results of the second flash would indicate if quantum behavior was happening, because the first flash would affect whatever was moving. We're still talking about a complex setup that would require some sophisticated equipment, and conditions akin to a ground state -- but through the use of motion and two measurements (light flashes), some of the restrictions on mass are removed. [...] "The next step is to try this proposed setup in an actual experiment," concludes the reports. "The mirrors at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the US have already been proposed as suitable candidates for examination." "Those mirrors act as a single 10-kilogram (22-pound) object, quite a step up from the typical size of objects analyzed for quantum effects -- anything up to about a quintillionth of a gram." The findings have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

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Pause comes after controversial supplier wins another 9-figure deal paid for by taxpayers

Fujitsu has written to UK Government to confirm it will no longer tender for business in the public sector amid the ongoing inquiry into the Post Office scandal – weeks after winning a £485 million ($614 million) contract.…

Disrespect for physics saw the datacenter, and a career, come tumbling down

On Call Welcome once again to On Call, The Register’s weekly column that tries to balance your diet of industry news with your peers’ experiences of the messes they confront at the coalface of IT.…