news aggregator

A crock of what now?

Microsoft is reportedly preparing to unleash its latest product on the public: limited edition XP-themed Crocs.…

OpenAI will provide ChatGPT access to US federal agencies for $1 annually through the General Services Administration's new AI marketplace that also includes Google and Anthropic as approved vendors. The nominal pricing represents the deepest discount GSA has negotiated with software providers, surpassing previous deals with Adobe and Salesforce. OpenAI said it will not use federal worker data to train its models and agencies face no renewal requirements. The $1 rate applies only to the ChatGPT chatbot interface, not OpenAI's API for custom software development.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Trump and Apple are expected to announce a new $100 billion commitment by Apple to boost manufacturing in the U.S. CBS News: The new investment would increase Apple's commitment to U.S. manufacturing to $600 billion over the next four years, according to a White House official. And it's expected to include a new "American Manufacturing Program" focused on bringing more of Apple's supply chain and advanced manufacturing to the U.S. [...] In May, the president threatened to impose a 25% tariff on iPhones made outside the U.S., writing on Truth Social that he told Cook that he expects that iPhones that will be sold in the U.S. "will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Communication problems for recently launched small satellites

NASA is having trouble tracking down two of its spacecraft. One of the TRACERS spacecraft has lost contact with Earth while the Athena EPIC satellite failed to send an important beacon signal.…

Nvidia's chief security officer has published a blog post insisting that its GPUs "do not and should not have kill switches and backdoors." From a report: It comes amid pressure from both sides of the Pacific, with some US lawmakers pushing Nvidia to grant the government backdoors to AI chips, while Chinese officials have alleged that they already exist. David Reber Jr.'s post seems pointedly directed at US lawmakers. In May a bipartisan group introduced the Chip Security Act, a bill that would require Nvidia and other manufacturers to include tracking technology to identify when chips are illegally transported internationally, and leaves the door open for further security measures including remote kill switches. While Nvidia is expecting to be granted permits to once again sell certain AI chips in China, its most powerful hardware is still under strict US export controls there and elsewhere.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cloud giant erased decade of work – denies it was due to botched dry run of user-pruning tool

An open source developer is claiming AWS deleted his ten-year-old account, wiping all the data. He believes this was due to a botched test of a script designed to prune dormant accounts.…

Feds claim suspects talked about rerouting kit through Malaysia

Federal authorities in the US have charged two Chinese nationals with secretly exporting advanced AI chips to China.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: China's automakers have teamed up with software companies togo global with their driverless cars, which are poised to claim a big share of a growing market as Western manufacturers are still preparing to compete. The industry in China is expanding despite tariffs imposed last year by the European Union on electric cars, and despite some worries in Europe about the security implications of relying on Chinese suppliers. Baidu, one of China's biggest software companies, said on Monday that it would supply Lyft, an American ride-hailing service, with self-driving cars assembled by Jiangling Motors of China (source paywalled; alternative source). Lyft is expected to begin operating them next year in Germany and Britain, subject to regulatory approval, the companies said. The announcement comes three months after Uber and Momenta, a Chinese autonomous driving company, announced their own plans to begin offering self-driving cars in an unspecified European city early next year. Momenta will soon provide assisted driving technology to the Chinese company IM Motors for its cars sold in Britain. While Momenta has not specified the model that Uber will be using, it has already signaled it will choose a Chinese model. In China, "the pace of development and the pressure to deliver at scale push companies to improve quickly," said Gerhard Steiger, the chairman of Momenta Europe. China's state-controlled banking system has been lending money at low interest rates to the country's electric car industry in a bid for global leadership. [...] Expanding robotaxi services to new cities, not to mention new countries, is not easy. While the individual cars do not have drivers, they typically require one controller for every several cars to handle difficulties and answer questions from users. And the cars often need to be specially programmed for traffic conditions unique to each city. Lyft and Baidu nonetheless said that they had plans for "the fleet scaling to thousands of vehicles across Europe in the following years."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

October 14 is going to be a big day in the Redmond world

It isn't only Windows 10 due for the support axe on October 14. Other Microsoft products will soon be stashed in Redmond's cupboard of forgotten dreams, including the venerable Visual Studio 2015.…