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Mozilla, which manages the open-source Firefox browser, announced today that Mitchell Baker is stepping down as CEO to focus on AI and internet safety as chair of the nonprofit foundation. Laura Chambers, a Mozilla board member and entrepreneur with experience at Airbnb, PayPal, and eBay, will step in as interim CEO to run operations until a permanent replacement is found. Fortune: Baker, a Silicon Valley pioneer who co-founded the Mozilla Project, says it was her decision to step down as CEO, adding that the move is motivated by a sense of urgency over the current state of the internet and public trust. "We want to offer an alternative for people to have better products," says Baker, who wants to draw more attention to policies, products and processes to challenge business models built on fueling outrage. "What are the connections between this global malaise and how humans are engaging with each other and technology?" Chambers says she plans to focus on building out new products that address growing privacy concerns while actively looking for a full-time CEO. Prior to being recruited to the Mozilla board three years ago, Chambers says she was feeling "pretty disillusioned" about society because of the influence of money in politics and the growing power of the tech giants. "I was confused about what to do and this felt like a genuine way to make an impact." Chambers says she won't be seeking a permanent CEO role because she plans to move back to Australia later this year for family reasons. "I think this is an example of Mozilla doing the right role modelling in how to manage a succession," says Chambers.

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The Biden administration on Thursday said leading AI companies are among more than 200 entities joining a new U.S. consortium to support the safe development and deployment of generative AI. From a report: Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced the U.S. AI Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC), which includes OpenAI, Alphabet's Google, Anthropic and Microsoft along with Facebook-parent Meta Platforms, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Palantir, Intel, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. "The U.S. government has a significant role to play in setting the standards and developing the tools we need to mitigate the risks and harness the immense potential of artificial intelligence," Raimondo said in a statement.

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Google has renamed its AI assistant to "Gemini" and unveiled a paid subscription tier offering. The $19.99/month "Gemini Advanced" includes a more powerful AI model and cloud storage integration, targeting users seeking advanced content creation and complex query resolution. Google is also leveraging its Android user base by making Gemini the default digital assistant, aiming to replicate the success of its billion-user products.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Microsoft-backed OpenAI is working on a type of agent software to automate complex tasks by taking over a users' device, The Information reported on Wednesday, citing a person with knowledge on the matter. The agent software will handle web-based tasks such as gathering public data about a set of companies, creating itineraries or booking flight tickets, according to the report, opens new tab. The new assistants -- often called "agents" -- promise to perform more complex personal and work tasks when commanded to by a human, without needing close supervision.

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James Felton reports via IFL Science: One of the deepest metal mines in Europe -- the Pyhasalmi Mine in central Finland -- is to be turned into an enormous gravity battery capable of storing 2 megawatts of energy. [...] Despite the cool name, the idea behind gravity batteries is really simple. During times when energy sources are producing more energy than the demand, the excess energy is used to move weights (in the form of water or sometimes sand) upwards, turning it into potential energy. When the power supply is low, these objects can then be released, powering turbines as our good friend (and deadly enemy) gravity sends them towards the Earth. Though generally gravity batteries take the form of reservoirs, abandoned mines moving sand or other weights up when excess power is being produced have also been suggested. Scottish company Gravitricity created a system of winches and hoists that can be installed in such disused mineshafts. The company will install the system in the 1,400-meter-deep (4,600 feet) zinc and copper mine in Pyhajarvi, Finland. "A study last year by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) estimated that gravity batteries in abandoned underground mines could store up to 70TWh of energy -- enough to meet global electricity demands," reports The Independent. "The repurposed mines could also provide economic benefits to the communities that previously relied on the mine for their livelihoods."

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today unveiled new, stricter limits for PM2.5 (particulate smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter), commonly referred to as soot. As NPR notes, these particles are are "one of the deadliest types of air pollution." From the report: The agency lowered the allowable limit for annual PM2.5 levels from 12 micrograms per cubic meter to 9. That's a "significant reduction," says Regan Patterson, an air pollution expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. "The science is clear," says EPA Administrator Michal Regan. "Soot pollution is one of the most dangerous forms of air pollution and is linked to a range of serious and potentially deadly illnesses, including asthma and heart attacks." The new standard represents the first tightening of the rules since 2012, but states will have several years to reach the new limits. The EPA left the daily limits on PM2.5 pollution unchanged, at 35 micrograms per cubic meter, saying the same efforts that will reduce pollution under the revised annual standard will drive down short-term pollution exposures as well. Decades of research have demonstrated that tiny particles are dangerous to people's health at nearly any concentration. The sources vary: fossil fuel combustion, agriculture, and industrial processes all add to the load, as does wildfire smoke and dust. In aggregate, the tiny particles drive millions of premature deaths worldwide each year. The EPA estimates that the new, tighter standards will prevent about 4,500 premature deaths a year by 2032 in the U.S. and prevent about 800,000 asthma-related emergency visits. It estimates the lower pollution exposures could reduce healthcare costs by about $46 billion by that time.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Boston Globe: William Straus, like many others, saw the videos in recent days of people behind the wheel of a Tesla in Autopilot mode, sporting their new Apple Vision Pro headsets and typing on an invisible keyboard. "They're all over the Internet, these idiots driving Teslas with their hands up in the air," the state representative said. Some claimed their video was staged. No matter: Straus wants to make it illegal. The Legislature's transportation committee on Wednesday approved language that would ban the use of the new virtual reality headset, or other similar technologies, while behind the wheel in Massachusetts. Straus, the committee's House chair, said he crafted language with his staff over Monday night and Tuesday morning, and added it to an existing proposal that would, among other things, bar drivers from recording or broadcasting themselves while behind the wheel. That it advanced out of committee less than 48 hours later qualifies as light speed by Beacon Hill standards. (The bill must still pass the full House and Senate.) [...] "This is absolutely the correct time to wall this off," said Straus, a Mattapoisett Democrat. "People who operate motor vehicles already have too many distractions." Straus' proposal would explicitly not allow drivers to wear, hold, or "otherwise utilize or interact with a spatial computer," or an augmented reality or mixed reality device. It also would ban drivers from viewing any video, images or text unrelated to operating or navigating the car, be it displayed on a screen or "otherwise worn as a headset or elsewhere on the operator's body." Motorists would face the same fines they do now for using their phone to text while driving: $100 for a first violation, $250 for a second violation and $500 for every violation after that. The driver in the viral video posted on YouTube and linked above said that it was a "skit" that he had made with friends and that he wasn't arrested. "[I] was in the right place at the right time," he told Gizmodo. "That's why we filmed the police."

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Jakub Lewkowicz reports via SD Times: The Linux Foundation has recently launched the Post-Quantum Cryptography Alliance (PQCA), a collaborative effort aimed at advancing and facilitating the adoption of post-quantum cryptography in response to the emerging threats of quantum computing. This alliance assembles diverse stakeholders, including industry leaders, researchers, and developers, focusing on creating high-assurance software implementations of standardized algorithms. The initiative is also dedicated to supporting the development and standardization of new post-quantum cryptographic methods, aligning with U.S. National Security Agency's guidelines to ensure cryptographic security against quantum computing threats. The PQCA endeavors to serve as a pivotal resource for organizations and open-source projects in search of production-ready libraries and packages, fostering cryptographic agility in anticipation of future quantum computing capabilities. Founding members include AWS, Cisco, Google, IBM, IntellectEU, Keyfactor, Kudelski IoT, NVIDIA, QuSecure, SandboxAQ, and the University of Waterloo. [...] [T]he PQCA plans to launch the PQ Code Package Project aimed at creating high-assurance, production-ready software implementations of upcoming post-quantum cryptography standards, beginning with the ML-KEM algorithm. By inviting organizations and individuals to participate, the PQCA is poised to play a critical role in the transition to and standardization of post-quantum cryptography, ensuring enhanced security measures in the face of advancing quantum computing technology. You can learn more about the PQCA on its website or GitHub.

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Citing congressional budget gridlock, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announced that it will lay off 530 employees, or about 8% of its workforce. SpaceNews reports: In a statement, JPL said it would lay off about 530 employees, as well as 40 contractors, after exhausting other efforts to reduce costs given potential spending reductions for NASA and specifically for Mars Sample Return (MSR), a major program for the Pasadena, California-based center. "After exhausting all other measures to adjust to a lower budget from NASA, and in the absence of a [fiscal year 2024] appropriation from Congress, we have had to make the difficult decision to reduce the JPL workforce through layoffs," JPL stated. "While we still do not have an FY24 appropriation or the final word from Congress on our Mars Sample Return (MSR) budget allocation, we are now in a position where we must take further significant action to reduce our spending," JPL Director Laurie Leshin wrote in a memo. "In the absence of an appropriation, and as much as we wish we didn't need to take this action, we must now move forward to protect against even deeper cuts later were we to wait."

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Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC announced plans to build a second chip factory in Japan by the end of 2027, bringing total investment in its Japan venture to more than $20 billion. "Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co announced plans in 2021 to build a $7 billion chip plant in Kumamoto in southern Japan's Kyushu," notes Reuters. From the report: In a statement, TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, said its majority-owned unit Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing in Kumamoto would build a second fabrication plant, or fab, in response to rising customer demand. The second fab will begin construction by the end of this year and with both factories the site is expected to have total monthly capacity of more than 100,000 12-inch wafers to be used for automotive, industrial, consumer and high performance computing-related applications, TSMC said. The capacity plan may be further adjusted based upon customer demand, it added. TSMC's expansion in Kyushu is central to the Japanese government's efforts to rebuild the country's position as a leading chip manufacturing centre and ensure the stable supply of chips amid trade tensions between the United States and China. The decision to build a second fab is a vote of confidence by TSMC in Japan where construction of the first fab has run smoothly and which, Reuters has reported, it sees as a source of diligent workers with a government that is easy to deal with.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Disney is investing $1.5 billion for an equity stake in Fortnite and Unreal Engine maker Epic Games as part of a broader partnership to create a new Disney gaming universe. The companies plan to create an expansive and open games and entertainment universe. I would say they're building a metaverse, if the word weren't so overused late and out of favor with some. They didn't actually use that word. Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, announced the investment in an interview with CNBC today. The companies will collaborate on a new games and entertainment universe that will further expand the reach of beloved Disney stories and experiences. It will be a multi-year project, built by Epic Games. "It's not just our parks where we're creating new opportunities for consumers to engage with the characters and franchises they love," Iger said in an analyst call. In our new relationship with Epic Games, we're creating a transformational games and entertainment universe that integrates Disney's world-class storytelling into Epic's cultural phenomenon Fortnite, enabling consumers to play, watch, create, and shop for both digital and physical goods. This marks Disney's biggest entry ever into the world of video games, and offers significant opportunities for growth and expansion. The new immersive universe will unleash their own creativity and experience the Disney stories that they love in groundbreaking new ways." Iger added, "Younger audiences in particular are huge consumers of video games. In fact, among millennials, Gen Z and Gen Z is a significant amount of time spent on screen-based platforms, playing video games. This new universe from Disney and Epic provides us with a tremendous opportunity to not only meet more consumers where they are and to allow more audiences to cultivate a bond with Disney's iconic brands and franchises, including Marvel, Star Wars, and much more." The $1.5 billion transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. In addition to being a world-class games experience and interoperating with Fortnite, the new persistent universe will offer a multitude of opportunities for consumers to play, watch, shop and engage with content, characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar and more. Fortnite teased the partnership in a new video posted on YouTube. The official announcement can be read here.

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In a recent interview with Bloomberg, 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki said the company was considering splitting its consumer and therapeutics businesses in an effort to boost its stock price and maintain its listing. From a report: Bloomberg noted that the stock has lost more than 90% of its value since the company went public in 2021 through a SPAC merger. Bloomberg said the therapeutics business could be an attractive asset for a larger healthcare company. The business currently has two drug candidates in clinical trials and just received approval to commence testing for a third. The company's DNA database of more than 14 million customers is one of the world's largest. Currently, 23andMe derives most of its revenue from its consumer business, Bloomberg added. 23andMe's stock has been trading below $1 since December, hurt by revelations that hackers were able to access the personal information of around 50% of its subscribers. The company is also facing mounting litigation over the incident. The company is expected to release its Q4 earnings report after market close on Wednesday.

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One of Waymo's driverless vehicles struck a cyclist in San Francisco on February 6th, causing minor injuries. "It was the latest incident in the city at a time when tensions around autonomous vehicles are particularly high after a driverless Cruise vehicle injured a pedestrian," reports The Verge. From the report: The incident, which was first reported by Reuters, occurred at 3:02PM on February 6th at the intersection of 17th and Mississippi streets in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. A Google Maps Street View of the intersection shows a flat, well-lit area surrounded by warehouses with unprotected bike lanes on both streets. Police officers arriving at the scene found an autonomous vehicle had struck a cyclist, who only reported "non-life threatening injuries," according to Eve Laokwansathitaya, public information officer with SFPD. A passenger in the Waymo vehicle at the time of the crash was uninjured. The incident remains under investigation, Laokwansathitaya noted. Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina had more details to share. The Waymo vehicle was stopped at a four-way stop, as an oncoming large truck began to turn into the intersection. The vehicle waited until it was its turn and then also began to proceed through the intersection, failing to notice the cyclist who was traveling behind the truck. "The cyclist was occluded by the truck and quickly followed behind it, crossing into the Waymo vehicle's path," Ilina said. "When they became fully visible, our vehicle applied heavy braking but was not able to avoid the collision." After the incident, Waymo contacted the police, but the cyclist left on their own, reporting only "minor scratches," Ilina added.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: While the world awaits closing arguments later this year in the US government's antitrust case over Google's search dominance, a California judge has dismissed a lawsuit from 26 Google users who claimed that Google's default search agreement with Apple violates antitrust law and has ruined everyone's search results. Users had argued (PDF) that Google struck a deal making its search engine the default on Apple's Safari web browser specifically to keep Apple from competing in the general search market. These payments to Apple, users alleged, have "stunted innovation" and "deprived" users of "quality, service, and privacy that they otherwise would have enjoyed but for Google's anticompetitive conduct." They also allege that it created a world where users have fewer choices, enabling Google to prefer its own advertisers, which users said caused an "annoying and damaging distortion" of search results. In an order (PDF) granting the tech companies' motion to dismiss, US District Judge Rita Lin said that users did not present enough evidence to support claims for relief. Lin dismissed some claims with prejudice but gave leave to amend others, allowing users another chance to keep their case -- now twice-dismissed -- at least partially alive. Under Lin's order, users will not be able to amend claims that Google and Apple executives allegedly sealed the default search deal on the condition that Apple would not create its own general search engine through "private, secret, and clandestine personal meetings." Because plaintiffs showed no evidence pinpointing exactly when Apple allegedly agreed to stay out of the general search market, these meetings, Lin reasoned, could just as easily indicate "rational, legal business behavior," rather than an "illegal conspiracy." Users attempted to argue that Google and Apple intentionally hid these facts from the public, but Lin wrote that their "conclusory and vague allegations that defendants 'secretly conducted meetings' and 'engaged in conduct to obfuscate internal communications' are plainly insufficient." Sharing bystander photos documenting Google's Sundar Pichai and Apple's Tim Cook meeting at a restaurant with a manila folder tucked under Pichai's elbow did not help users' case. Lin was also not moved by users demonstrating that Google has a history of destroying evidence, because "they put forth no specific factual allegations that defendants did so in this case." However, users will have 30 days to amend currently "inadequately" alleged claims that "Google's exclusive default agreement, under which Apple set Google as the default search engine for its Safari web browser, foreclosed competition in the general search services market in the United States," Lin wrote. If users miss that deadline, the case will be tossed with no opportunities to further amend claims.

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The farmers' protests in Europe are a harbinger of the next big political challenge in global climate action: How to grow food without further damaging Earth's climate and biodiversity. From a report: On Tuesday, after weeks of intense protests in several cities across the continent, came the most explicit sign of that difficulty. The European Union's top official, Ursula von der Leyen, abandoned an ambitious bill to reduce the use of chemical pesticides and softened the European Commission's next raft of recommendations on cutting agricultural pollution. "We want to make sure that in this process, the farmers remain in the driving seat," she said at the European Parliament. "Only if we achieve our climate and environmental goals together will farmers be able to continue to make a living." The farmers argue they're being hit from all sides: high fuel costs, green regulations, unfair competition from producers in countries with fewer environmental restrictions. Nonetheless, agriculture accounts for 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and it's impossible for the European Union to meet its ambitious climate targets, enshrined in law, without making dramatic changes to its agricultural system, including how farmers use chemical pesticides and fertilizers, as well as its vast livestock industry. It also matters politically. Changing Europe's farming practices is proving to be extremely difficult, particularly as parliamentary elections approach in June. Farmers are a potent political force, and food and farming are potent markers of European identity. Agriculture accounts for just over 1 percent of the European economy and employs 4 percent of its population. But it gets one-third of the E.U. budget, mostly as subsidies.

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The Chinese state-sponsored hacking group known as Volt Typhoon has been living in the networks of some critical industries for "at least five years," (non-paywalled link) according to a joint cybersecurity advisory issued by the US and its allies on Wednesday. From a report: The compromised environments are in the continental US and elsewhere, including Guam, the advisory said. It was published by US agencies and their security counterparts in Australia, Canada, the UK and New Zealand. The report comes a week after US officials announced an operation to disrupt Volt Typhoon by deleting malware from thousands of internet-connected devices the group had hijacked to gain access to the networks in critical parts of the economy. Among the sectors targeted were communications, energy, transportation and water systems.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: A new open-source language model has claimed the throne of the best in the world, according to the latest rankings from Hugging Face, one of the leading platforms for natural language processing (NLP) research and applications. The model, called "Smaug-72B," was released publicly today by the startup Abacus AI, which helps enterprises solve difficult problems in the artificial intelligence and machine learning space. Smaug-72B is technically a fine-tuned version of "Qwen-72B," another powerful language model that was released just a few months ago by Qwen, a team of researchers at Alibaba Group. What's most noteworthy about today's release is that Smaug-72B outperforms GPT-3.5 and Mistral Medium, two of the most advanced open-source large language models developed by OpenAI and Mistral, respectively, in several of the most popular benchmarks. Smaug-72B also surpasses Qwen-72B, the model from which it was derived, by a significant margin in many of these evaluations.

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Linux developers are in the process of patching a high-severity vulnerability that, in certain cases, allows the installation of malware that runs at the firmware level, giving infections access to the deepest parts of a device where they're hard to detect or remove. ArsTechnica: The vulnerability resides in shim, which in the context of Linux is a small component that runs in the firmware early in the boot process before the operating system has started. More specifically, the shim accompanying virtually all Linux distributions plays a crucial role in secure boot, a protection built into most modern computing devices to ensure every link in the boot process comes from a verified, trusted supplier. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability allows attackers to neutralize this mechanism by executing malicious firmware at the earliest stages of the boot process before the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface firmware has loaded and handed off control to the operating system. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-40547, is what's known as a buffer overflow, a coding bug that allows attackers to execute code of their choice. It resides in a part of the shim that processes booting up from a central server on a network using the same HTTP that the the web is based on. Attackers can exploit the code-execution vulnerability in various scenarios, virtually all following some form of successful compromise of either the targeted device or the server or network the device boots from. "An attacker would need to be able to coerce a system into booting from HTTP if it's not already doing so, and either be in a position to run the HTTP server in question or MITM traffic to it," Matthew Garrett, a security developer and one of the original shim authors, wrote in an online interview. "An attacker (physically present or who has already compromised root on the system) could use this to subvert secure boot (add a new boot entry to a server they control, compromise shim, execute arbitrary code)."

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An AI chatbot helped increase the number of patients referred for mental-health services through England's National Health Service (NHS), particularly among underrepresented groups who are less likely to seek help, new research has found. MIT Tech Review: Demand for mental-health services in England is on the rise, particularly since the covid-19 pandemic. Mental-health services received 4.6 million patient referrals in 2022 -- the highest number on record -- and the number of people in contact with such services is growing steadily. But neither the funding nor the number of mental-health professionals is adequate to meet this rising demand, according to the British Medical Association. The chatbot's creators, from the AI company Limbic, set out to investigate whether AI could lower the barrier to care by helping patients access help more quickly and efficiently. A new study, published this week in Nature Medicine, evaluated the effect that the chatbot, called Limbic Access, had on referrals to the NHS Talking Therapies for Anxiety and Depression program, a series of evidence-based psychological therapies for adults experiencing anxiety disorders, depression, or both. Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla comments on X: This landmark study codifies what we have believed for so long -- that AI will not only increase the quality of care but also massively improve its access, which is one of the largest barriers to good health in all corners of the globe.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Alibaba Group cut its staff by roughly 20,000 over the course of 2023, adding to a spate of layoffs spanning global tech companies from Silicon Valley to Hangzhou. China's e-commerce pioneer ended December with 219,260 employees, down from close to 240,000 a year earlier, it said in detailing its earnings for the holiday quarter on Wednesday. The company's pace of eliminating roles has been fairly steady, as it reduced headcount by roughly the same number over the course of 2022 as well. Mirroring US peers like Meta Platforms, Alibaba paired the reduction in staff with a significant buyback, extending its authorization for repurchases by another $25 billion on Wednesday. The company bought back $9.5 billion worth of shares in 2023.

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