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Demand described as a 'soft layoff'

IBM has begun what a source describes as a soft layoff for its Finance & Operations business unit, in the form of a return-to-office (RTO) order.…

OpenAI has canceled the release of o3 in favor of a "simplified" product lineup. CEO Sam Altman said in a post on X that, in the coming months, OpenAI will release a model called GPT-5 that "integrates a lot of [OpenAI's] technology," including o3. TechCrunch reports: The company originally said in December that it planned to launch o3 sometime early this year. Just a few weeks ago, Kevin Weil, OpenAI's chief product officer, said in an interview that o3 was on track for a "February-March" launch. "We want to do a better job of sharing our intended roadmap, and a much better job simplifying our product offerings," Altman wrote in the post. "We want AI to 'just work' for you; we realize how complicated our model and product offerings have gotten. We hate the model picker [in ChatGPT] as much as you do and want to return to magic unified intelligence." Altman also announced that OpenAI plans to offer unlimited chat access to GPT-5 at the "standard intelligence setting," subject to "abuse thresholds," once the model is generally available. (Altman declined to provide more detail on what this setting -- and these abuse thresholds -- entail.) Subscribers to ChatGPT Plus will be able to run GPT-5 at a "higher level of intelligence," Altman said, while ChatGPT Pro subscribers will be able to run GPT-5 at an "even higher level of intelligence." "These models will incorporate voice, canvas, search, deep research, and more," Altman said, referring to a range of features OpenAI has launched in ChatGPT over the past few months. "[A] top goal for us is to unify [our] models by creating systems that can use all our tools, know when to think for a long time or not, and generally be useful for a very wide range of tasks." Before GPT-5 launches, OpenAI plans to release its GPT-4.5 model, code-named "Orion," in the next several weeks, according to Altman's post on X. Altman says this will be the company's last "non-chain-of-thought model." Unlike o3 and OpenAI's other so-called reasoning models, non-chain-of-thought models tend to be less reliable in domains like math and physics.

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GOP lawyer Sean Cairncross will be learning on the fly, as we also say hi to new intelligence boss Tulsi Gabbard

President Trump has reportedly chosen a candidate for National Cyber Director — another top tech appointee with no professional experience in that role.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last night, Apple posted a new support document about migrating purchases between accounts, something that Apple users with long online histories have been waiting on for years, if not decades. If you have movies, music, or apps orphaned on various iTools/.Mac/MobileMe/iTunes accounts that preceded what you're using now, you can start the fairly involved process of moving them over. "You can choose to migrate apps, music, and other content you've purchased from Apple on a secondary Apple Account to a primary Apple Account," the document reads, suggesting that people might have older accounts tied primarily to just certain movies, music, or other purchases that they can now bring forward to their primary, device-linked account. The process takes place on an iPhone or iPad inside the Settings app, in the "Media & Purchases" section in your named account section. There are a few hitches to note. You can't migrate purchases from or into a child's account that exists inside Family Sharing. You can only migrate purchases to an account once a year. There are some complications if you have music libraries on both accounts and also if you have never used the primary account for purchases or downloads. And migration is not available in the EU, UK, or India. The process is also one direction, so you have to give some real thought to which account is your "primary" account going forward. If you goof it up, you can undo the migration. "The list of things you need to do on both the primary and secondary accounts to enable this migration is almost comically long and detailed: two-factor authentication must be turned on, there can be no purchases or rentals in the last 15 days, payment methods must be updated, and so on," notes Ars' Kevin Purdy.

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300+ US companies, 70+ individuals hit by the fraudsters

An Arizona woman who created a "laptop farm" in her home to help fake IT workers pose as US-based employees has pleaded guilty in a scheme that generated over $17 million for herself... and North Korea.…

Analysts tell El Reg why Russia's operators aren't that careful, and why North Korea wants money AND data

Feature Ransomware gangsters and state-sponsored online spies fall on opposite ends of the cyber-crime spectrum.…

Oracle co-founder and chairman Larry Ellison said governments should consolidate all national data for consumption by AI models, calling this step the "missing link" for them to take full advantage of the technology. From a report: Fragmented sets of data about a population's health, agriculture, infrastructure, procurement and borders should be unified into a single, secure database that can be accessed by AI models, Ellison said in an on-stage interview with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the World Government Summit in Dubai. Countries with rich population data sets, such as the UK and United Arab Emirates, could cut costs and improve public services, particularly health care, with this approach, Ellison said. Upgrading government digital infrastructure could also help identify wastage and fraud, Ellison said. IT systems used by the US government are so primitive that it makes it difficult to identify "vast amounts of fraud," he added, pointing to efforts by Elon Musk's team at the Department of Government Efficiency to weed it out.

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Property group startup Opendoor has cut 65 jobs, mostly in India, and is shifting technical hiring to Bay Area and Krakow (Poland). Opendoor said in a statement: "As part of our ongoing efforts to enhance efficiency, optimize talent, and streamline operations, we have made the decision to consolidate our Engineering, Product, and Design (EPD) team structure. Moving forward, we will focus our technical hiring efforts in two main hubs: the Bay Area, California and Krakow, Poland."

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Previous NOM4D experiments have gone so well, says project leader, that it's time to get real

After several years of lab-testing ideas for orbital manufacturing technology, the US Department of Defense's research arm has decided to head into orbit for the latest round of experiments. …

Google will soon use machine learning to estimate the age of its users. From a report: In an update on Wednesday, Google said it's testing a machine learning model in the US to help determine whether someone is under 18, allowing it to "provide more age-appropriate experiences" across its platforms. The age estimation model will use existing data about users, including the sites they visit, what kinds of videos they watch on YouTube, and how long they've had an account to determine their age.

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'Near-global' initial access campaign active since 2021

An initial-access subgroup of Russia's Sandworm last year wriggled its way into networks within the US, UK, Canada and Australia, stealing credentials and data from "a limited number of organizations," according to Microsoft.…

Most corporate tech leaders are hesitant to deploy AI agents despite vendors' push for rapid adoption, according to a Wall Street Journal CIO Network Summit poll on Tuesday. While 61% of attendees at the Menlo Park summit said they are experimenting with AI agents, which perform automated tasks, 21% reported no usage at all. Reliability concerns and cybersecurity risks remain key barriers, with 29% citing data privacy as their primary concern. OpenAI, Microsoft and Sierra are urging businesses not to wait for the technology to be perfected. "Accept that it is imperfect," said Bret Taylor, Sierra CEO and OpenAI chairman. "Rather than say, 'Will AI do something wrong', say, 'When it does something wrong, what are the operational mitigations that we've put in place?'" Three-quarters of the polled executives said AI currently delivers minimal value for their investments. Some companies are "having hammers looking for nails," said Jim Siders, Palantir's chief information officer, describing firms that purchase AI solutions before identifying clear use cases.

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40 m or 90 m? The difference matters in the case of impact

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is to be pointed at asteroid 2024 YR4 to reduce uncertainty regarding the chances of the object impacting Earth in the coming years.…

Children working in India's fruit and vegetable markets can perform complex mental calculations with ease, yet struggle with basic written math tests that determine their academic future, according to new research that raises troubling questions about mathematics education worldwide. The study, published in Nature, reveals how traditional education systems are failing to tap into the mathematical talents of students who develop practical skills outside the classroom, particularly those from lower-income families. MIT economist Abhijit Banerjee, who grew up watching young market vendors deftly handle complicated transactions, led the research. His team found that while these children could rapidly perform mental arithmetic, they performed poorly on standard written assessments like long division problems. The findings come at a critical moment when mathematics education must evolve to meet modern demands, incorporating data literacy and computational skills alongside traditional mathematics. The research points to systemic issues, including a global shortage of trained mathematics teachers and assessment systems that reward memorization over reasoning. Without addressing these challenges, researchers warn, naturally talented students from disadvantaged backgrounds may never reach their potential in fields like research, entrepreneurship, or teaching.

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Supply chain and regulatory hurdles likely to shrink figures

US tech sanctions and supply chain readiness for racks of Nvidia's latest gear will likely cause AI server sales to cool-off in 2025.…

Apple is developing robots for its smart home ecosystem, though mass production is unlikely to begin before 2028, according to widely reliable TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The project remains in early proof-of-concept testing, with Apple exploring both humanoid and non-humanoid designs, he wrote in a post on X. The company is focusing on how users interact with robots rather than their physical appearance, prioritizing sensing hardware and software as core technologies, Kuo said. The tech giant has taken an unusual approach by publicly sharing some of its robotics research during this early stage, possibly to recruit talent, the analyst noted. The proof-of-concept phase, which precedes formal product development, serves as Apple's testing ground for product ideas and core technologies. Apple's foldable phone project is also currently in the proof-of-concept phase, he said.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has fixed two vulnerabilities that, when chained together, could expose the email addresses of YouTube accounts, causing a massive privacy breach for those using the site anonymously. The flaws were discovered by security researchers Brutecat (brutecat.com) and Nathan (schizo.org), who found that YouTube and Pixel Recorder APIs could be used to obtain user's Google Gaia IDs and convert them into their email addresses. The ability to convert a YouTube channel into an owner's email address is a significant privacy risk to content creators, whistleblowers, and activists relying on being anonymous online.

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'Stranded' Starliner astronauts set for a March homecoming

The crew of the Boeing Starliner test mission is set to return to Earth ahead of schedule after managers decided to swap the Crew Dragon originally planned for the Axiom-4 flight with Crew-10.…

Former Google chief Eric Schmidt has warned that western countries need to focus on building open-source AI models or risk losing out to China in the global race to develop the cutting-edge technology. From a report: The warning comes after Chinese startup DeepSeek shocked the world last month with the launch of R1, its powerful-reasoning open large language model, which was built in a more efficient way than its US rivals such as OpenAI. Schmidt, who has become a significant tech investor and philanthropist, said the majority of the top US LLMs are closed -- meaning not freely accessible to all -- which includes Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's GPT-4, with the exception being Meta's Llama. "If we don't do something about that, China will ultimately become the open-source leader and the rest of the world will become closed-source," Schmidt told the Financial Times. The billionaire said a failure to invest in open-source technologies would prevent scientific discovery from happening in western universities, which might not be able to afford costly closed models.

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Only lawmakers can stop them. Plus: software needs to be more secure, but what's in it for us?

Google says the the world's lawmakers must take action against the increasing links between criminal and state-sponsored cyber activity.…