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Posing as cyber samaritans, scumbags are kicking folks when they're down

Ransomware victims already reeling from potential biz disruption and the cost of resolving the matter are now being subjected to follow-on extortion attempts by criminals posing as helpful security researchers.…

The global music industry surpassed 4 trillion streams in 2023, a new single-year record, Luminate's 2023 Year-End Report found. Global streams were also up 34% from last year, reflective of an increasingly international music marketplace. From a report: Stateside, three genres saw the biggest growth in 2023: country (23.7%), Latin (which encompasses all Latin musical genres, up 24.1%) and world (a catchall that includes J-pop, K-pop and Afrobeats, up 26.2%.) It seems that more Americans are listening to non-English music. By the end of 2023, Luminate found that Spanish-language music's share of the top 10,000 songs streamed in the U.S. grew 3.8%, and English-language music's share dropped 3.8%.

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What a cowboy!

More used to farming data via his social media empire, Mark Zuckerberg is expanding his horizons to raise cattle at his Ko’olau Ranch in Hawaii - the one where he’s also preparing for the end of the world.…

Fans of the tech dinosaur have a few months to fill their drives with software

Bad news for OS/2 fans: the Hobbes OS/2 software archive is to be shuttered once and for all in April.…

Valve has issued new rules about how game developers can publish games that use AI technology on Steam. From a report: Writing in a blog post, the company says that it is "making changes to how we handle games that use AI technology" which mean that developers will need to disclose when their games use it. The changes "will enable us to release the vast majority of games that use" AI, Valve's post says. The changes appear designed to increase transparency around the use of AI in Steam games, while offering protections against the risks of using AI generated content and allowing customers to make an informed choice about whether to buy a game that uses AI technology. Under the new rules, developers will need to disclose when games contain pre-generated content (like art, code, or sound) created with the help of AI and promise that it's not "illegal or infringing." They'll also need to say if their game has AI content that is generated "live" while it is running. It's in the latter case when developers will need to detail the safety measures they put in place to stop their AI from generating illegal content. Players will be able to see on a game's store page if it contains AI, and have new options to report illegal AI-generated content if they encounter it in-game.

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Sebastien Raoult developed various credential-harvesting websites over more than 2 years

A key member of the ShinyHunters cybercrime group is facing three years in the slammer and being forced to return $5 million in criminal proceeds.…

A U.S.-born chip technology called RISC-V has become critical to China's ambitions. Washington is debating whether and how to limit the technology. From a report: It evolved from a university computer lab in California to a foundation for myriad chips that handle computing chores. RISC-V essentially provides a kind of common language for designing processors that are found in devices like smartphones, disk drives, Wi-Fi routers and tablets. RISC-V has ignited a new debate in Washington in recent months about how far the United States can or should go as it steadily expands restrictions on exporting technology to China that could help advance its military. That's because RISC-V, which can be downloaded from the internet for free, has become a central tool for Chinese companies and government institutions hoping to match U.S. prowess in designing semiconductors. Last month, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party -- in an effort spearheaded by Representative Mike Gallagher, Republican of Wisconsin -- recommended that an interagency government committee study potential risks of RISC-V. Congressional aides have met with members of the Biden administration about the technology, and lawmakers and their aides have discussed extending restrictions to stop U.S. citizens from aiding China on RISC-V, according to congressional staff members. The Chinese Communist Party is "already attempting to use RISC-V's design architecture to undermine our export controls," Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the House select committee, said in a statement. He added that RISC-V's participants should be focused on advancing technology and "not the geopolitical interests of the Chinese Communist Party." Arm Holdings, a British company that sells competing chip technology, has also lobbied officials to consider restrictions on RISC-V, three people with knowledge of the situation said. Biden administration officials have concerns about China's use of RISC-V but are wary about potential complications with trying to regulate the technology, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The debate over RISC-V is complicated because the technology was patterned after open-source software, the free programs like Linux that allow any developer to view and modify the original code used to make them. Such programs have prompted multiple competitors to innovate and reduce the market power of any single vendor.

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Magnetosheath jets found around Earth may be present on other planets after Jupiter discovery

Researchers, after discovering magnetosheath jets around Jupiter, now believe these phenomena may exist on all solar system planets.…

The head of Google DeepMind believes its drug discovery spinout will halve the time taken to find new medicines, attracting the attention of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies which are looking to artificial intelligence to revolutionise the lengthy process. From a report: Speaking to the Financial Times, Demis Hassabis, who co-founded Google's AI unit and also leads the drugs offshoot Isomorphic Labs, said the goal was to reduce the discovery stage -- when potential drugs are identified before clinical trials -- from the average of five years to two. "I think that would be success for us and be very meaningful," he said. Hassabis stated the goal days after announcing Isomorphic Lab's first two pharmaceutical partnerships with Eli Lilly and Novartis, which came to a combined value of up to $3bn, in deals set to transform the finances of the unprofitable group. Isomorphic Labs uses an AI platform to predict biochemical structures, which aids the creation of new drugs by recommending which potential compounds will have the desired impact in the body. Including clinical trials, it often takes up to a decade to discover and develop a new drug, costing on average about $2.7bn, according to research by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. Large drugmakers, under pressure to fill their pipelines with new potential medicines while existing ones face patent cliffs, when they will face far cheaper generic competition, are eager for new ways to shorten the process. As healthcare systems around the world put pressure on drug prices, pharma companies are also looking for ways to cut costs in research and development. Hassabis said that many drugmakers had also been eager to partner with Isomorphic but the company wanted to focus on collaborations that could improve its technology.

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New moves follow year where customers complained it broke their trust

Global ERP giant SAP has announced two changes to its executive board in order to spur its quest to shift customers to the cloud.…

Streamlines from 3 product groups to 2 as Automotive chief leaves the building

Euro chipmaker STMicroelectronics is reorganizing into two product groups, down from three, saying it wants to boost efficiency and get closer to customers in a decision that will also cut overhead.…

Karl Bode, reporting for TechDirt: Back in 2019 we noted how the streaming sector risked driving consumers back to piracy if they didn't heed the lessons of the past. We explored how the rush to raise rates, nickel-and-dime users, implement arbitrary restrictions, and force users toward hunting and pecking their way through a confusing platter of exclusives and availability windows risked driving befuddled users back to piracy. And lo and behold, that's exactly what's happening. After several decades of kicking and screaming, studio and music execs somewhere around 2010 finally realized they needed to offer users affordable access to easy-to-use online content resources. They finally realized they needed to compete with piracy and focus on consumer satisfaction whether they liked the concept or not. And unsurprisingly, once they learned that lesson piracy began to dramatically decrease. That was until 2021, when piracy rates began to climb slowly upward again in the U.S. and EU. As the Daily Beast notes, users have grown increasingly frustrated at having to hunt and peck through a universe of different, often terrible streaming services just to find a single film or television program. As every last broadcaster, cable company, broadband provider, and tech company got into streaming they began to lock down "must watch" content behind an ever-shifting number of exclusivity silos, across an ocean of sometimes substandard "me too" services. Initially competition worked, but as the market saturated and the most powerful companies started to silo content, those benefits have been muted. Now users have to hunt and peck between Disney+, Netflix, Starz, Max, Apple+, Acorn, Paramount+, Hulu, Peacock, Amazon Prime, and countless other services in the hopes that a service has the rights to a particular film or program. When you already pay for five different services, you're not keen to sign up to fucking Starz just to watch a single 90s film. And availability is constantly shifting, confusing things further.

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Farewell IA64, hello snapshots and Rusty refinements

The latest stable Linux kernel, 6.7, is out and finally includes the new next-gen copy-on-write (COW) bcachefs file system.…

Roll up, roll up. See Ouroboros-3 eating its own fuselage

Interview The concept of a self-eating rocket is rearing its head once again as engineers showcase their work at the AIAA SciTech Forum.…

AI can't cite cases, fully grok the law, or reason about it effectively study finds

Interview Top large language models tend to generate inaccurate legal information and should not be relied upon for litigation, according to new research.…

Singular alleges AI accelerators built from ripped-off blueprints

Allegations that Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) were developed using stolen designs are being put to the test as a jury trial brought against the search giant by Singular Computing kicks off this week.…

No human will set foot on Moon for 2+years now

NASA's Moon mission launch dates have slid by about a year – Artemis II to September 2025 and Artemis III to September 2026. Artemis IV, the first mission to the Gateway lunar space station, remains scheduled for September 2028.…

Jansen can let someone else worry about nationwide fiber rollout now

UK telco giant BT is confirming a start date for Allison Kirkby, who will become its chief executive on February 1, facing down the challenge of the company's nationwide fiber rollout and trying to reverse its declining share price.…

Researchers have designed an app to reduce the impact of tinnitus, an often debilitating condition that manifests via a ringing sound or perpetual buzzing. The Guardian reports: While there is no cure, there are a number of ways of managing the condition, including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). This helps people to reduce their emotional connection to the sound, allowing the brain to learn to tune it out. However, CBT can be expensive and difficult for people to access. Researchers have created an app, called MindEar, that provides CBT through a chatbot with other approaches such as sound therapy. "What we want to do is empower people to regain control," said Dr Fabrice Bardy, the first author of the study from the University of Auckland -- who has tinnitus. Writing in the journal Frontiers in Audiology and Otology, Bardy and colleagues report how 28 people completed the study, 14 of whom were asked to use the app's virtual coach for 10 minutes a day for eight weeks. The other 14 participants were given similar instructions with four half-hour video calls with a clinical psychologist. The participants completed online questionnaires before the study and after the eight-week period. The results reveal six participants given the app alone, and nine who were also given video calls, showed a clinically significant decrease in the distress caused by tinnitus, with the extent of the benefit similar for both groups. After a further eight weeks, a total of nine participants in both groups reported such improvements.

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Minister says Fujitsu could be 'on the hook' for compensation pending inquiry

Former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells, at the center of a media storm in recent days, is returning her CBE* following multiple calls for her to be stripped of the title.…