An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: If you're tired of Google's AI Overview extracting all value from the web while also telling people to eat glue or run with scissors, you can turn it off -- sort of. Google has been telling people its AI box at the top of search results is the future, and you can't turn it off, but that ignores how Google search works: A lot of options are powered by URL parameters. That means you can turn off AI search with this one simple trick! (Sorry.) Our method for killing AI search is defaulting to the new "web" search filter, which Google recently launched as a way to search the web without Google's alpha-quality AI junk. It's actually pretty nice, showing only the traditional 10 blue links, giving you a clean (well, other than the ads), uncluttered results page that looks like it's from 2011. Sadly, Google's UI doesn't have a way to make "web" search the default, and switching to it means digging through the "more" options drop-down after you do a search, so it's a few clicks deep.

Check out the URL after you do a search, and you'll see a mile-long URL full of esoteric tracking information and mode information. We'll put each search result URL parameter on a new line so the URL is somewhat readable [...]. Most of these only mean something to Google's internal tracking system, but that "&udm=14" line is the one that will put you in a web search. Tack it on to the end of a normal search, and you'll be booted into the clean 10 blue links interface. While Google might not let you set this as a default, if you have a way to automatically edit the Google search URL, you can create your own defaults. One way to edit the search URL is a proxy site like udm14.com, which is probably the biggest site out there popularizing this technique. A proxy site could, if it wanted to, read all your search result queries, though (your query is also in the URL), so whether you trust this site is up to you.

Minnesota this week eliminated two laws that made it harder for cities and towns to build their own broadband networks. From a report: The state-imposed restrictions were repealed in an omnibus commerce policy bill signed on Tuesday by Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat. Minnesota was previously one of about 20 states that imposed significant restrictions on municipal broadband. The number can differ depending on who's counting because of disagreements over what counts as a significant restriction. But the list has gotten smaller in recent years because states including Arkansas, Colorado, and Washington repealed laws that hindered municipal broadband. The Minnesota bill enacted this week struck down a requirement that municipal telecommunications networks be approved in an election with 65 percent of the vote. The law is over a century old, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Community Broadband Network Initiative wrote yesterday.

Apple has shed more light on the bizarre iOS 17.5 bug that caused long-deleted photos to mysteriously reappear on users' devices. In a statement to 9to5Mac, the iPhone maker clarified that the issue stemmed from a corrupted database on the device itself, not iCloud Photos. This means the photos were never fully erased from the device, but they also weren't synced to iCloud. Interestingly, these files could have hitched a ride to new devices through backups or direct transfers.

ICQ, a once-popular IM, is shutting down on June 26, it says on its website. It once served tens of millions of users daily.

fjo3 quotes a report from Reuters: SpaceX on Wednesday launched an inaugural batch of operational spy satellites it built as part of a new U.S. intelligence network designed to significantly upgrade the country's space-based surveillance powers, the first deployment of several more planned this year. The spy network was revealed in a pair of Reuters reports earlier this year showing SpaceX is building hundreds of satellites for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, an intelligence agency, for a vast system in orbit capable of rapidly spotting ground targets almost anywhere in the world.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Southern California at 4 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, carrying into space what the NRO said was the "first launch of the NRO's proliferated systems featuring responsive collection and rapid data delivery." "Approximately half a dozen launches supporting NRO's proliferated architecture are planned for 2024, with additional launches expected through 2028," the agency said, without naming the number of satellites deployed.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: Mark Zuckerberg has assembled some of his fellow tech chiefs into an advisory council to guide Meta on its artificial intelligence and product developments. The Meta Advisory Group will periodically meet with Meta's management team, Bloomberg reported. Its members include: Stripe CEO and co-founder Patrick Collison, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke, and former Microsoft executive and investor Charlie Songhurst.

"I've come to deeply respect this group of people and their achievements in their respective areas, and I'm grateful that they're willing to share their perspectives with Meta at such an important time as we take on new opportunities with AI and the metaverse," Zuckerberg wrote in an internal note to Meta employees, according to Bloomberg. The advisory council differs from Meta's 11-person board of directors because its members are not elected by shareholders, nor do they have fiduciary duty to Meta, a Meta spokesperson told Bloomberg. The spokesperson said that the men will not be paid for their roles on the advisory council. TechCrunch notes that the council features "only white men on it." This "differs from Meta's actual board of directors and its Oversight Board, which is more diverse in gender and racial representation," reports TechCrunch.

"It's telling that the AI advisory council is composed entirely of businesspeople and entrepreneurs, not ethicists or anyone with an academic or deep research background. ... it's been proven time and time again that AI isn't like other products. It's a risky business, and the consequences of getting it wrong can be far-reaching, particularly for marginalized groups."

Speaking of Samsung, samleecole shares a report about the contract the South Korean firm requires repair shops to sign: In exchange for selling them repair parts, Samsung requires independent repair shops to give Samsung the name, contact information, phone identifier, and customer complaint details of everyone who gets their phone repaired at these shops, according to a contract obtained by 404 Media. Stunningly, it also requires these nominally independent shops to "immediately disassemble" any phones that customers have brought them that have been previously repaired with aftermarket or third-party parts and to "immediately notify" Samsung that the customer has used third-party parts.

"Company shall immediately disassemble all products that are created or assembled out of, comprised of, or that contain any Service Parts not purchased from Samsung," a section of the agreement reads. "And shall immediately notify Samsung in writing of the details and circumstances of any unauthorized use or misappropriation of any Service Part for any purpose other than pursuant to this Agreement. Samsung may terminate this Agreement if these terms are violated."

Ben Schoon reports via 9to5Google: After first appearing earlier this year, YouTube once again appears to be rolling out a new redesign for its website that everyone hates. In mid-April, Google started testing a redesign to YouTube's website, which moved the title of the video, its description, and the comments to the side of the screen. In their place, video recommendations were moved directly underneath the video being watched with much larger thumbnails and titles. The change was widely hated by almost everyone who got it, but it didn't show up for all users. In the weeks to follow, YouTube reverted the redesign. Now, the YouTube redesign is back.

As spotted by many users, YouTube has started rolling out this redesign yet again. The new look has been appearing over the past few days, though it doesn't seem like it's a wide rollout. Rather, it appears to still be a test more than anything else. What does this second attempt mean? It's still unclear if YouTube intends to make this new look the default experience, but a second round of testing certainly implies more data is being gathered.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Did your company recently send you a phishing email? Employers will sometimes simulate phishing messages to train workers on how to spot the hacking threat. But one Google security manager argues the IT industry needs to drop the practice, calling it counterproductive. "PSA for Cybersecurity folk: Our co-workers are tired of being 'tricked' by phishing exercises y'all, and it is making them hate us for no benefit," tweeted Matt Linton, a security incident manager at Google.

Linton also published a post on the Google Security blog about the pitfalls of today's simulated phishing tests. The company is required to send fake phishing emails to its employees to meet the US government's security compliance requirements. In these tests, Google sends an employee a phishing email. If the worker clicks a link in the email, they'll be told they failed the test and will usually be required to take some sort of training course. However, Linton argues that simulated phishing tests can lead to harmful side effects, which can undermine a company's security. "There is no evidence that the tests result in fewer incidences of successful phishing campaigns," Linton said, noting that phishing attacks continue to help hackers gain a foothold inside networks, despite such training. He also pointed to a 2021 study that ran for 15 months and concluded that these phishing tests don't "make employees more resilient to phishing."

Google pays Reddit $60 million a year to train its AI on posts on Reddit, and it looks like Google's AI is now pulling directly from the dregs of the internet. Google's AI overview for "cheese not sticking to pizza" is brilliant information it got from an 11-year-old Reddit post.

Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: The latest RISC-V port updates have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.10 kernel. Most notable with today's RISC-V merge to Linux 6.10 is now supporting the Rust programming language within the Linux kernel. RISC-V joins the likes of x86_64, LoongArch, and ARM64 already supporting the use of the in-kernel Rust language support. The use of Rust within the mainline Linux kernel is still rather limited with just a few basic drivers so far and a lot of infrastructure work taking place, but there are a number of new drivers and other subsystem support on the horizon. RISC-V now supporting Rust within the Linux kernel will become more important moving forward.

The RISC-V updates for Linux 6.10 also add byte/half-word compare-and-exchange, support for Zihintpause within hwprobe, a PR_RISCV_SET_ICACHE_FLUSH_CTX prctl(), and support for lockless lockrefs. More details on these RISC-V updates for Linux 6.10 via this Git merge.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Hopes that replacement fuels for airplanes will slash carbon pollution are misguided and support for these alternatives could even worsen the climate crisis, a new report has warned. There is currently "no realistic or scalable alternative" to standard kerosene-based jet fuels, and touted "sustainable aviation fuels" are well off track to replace them in a timeframe needed to avert dangerous climate change, despite public subsidies, the report by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive thinktank, found. "While there are kernels of possibility, we should bring a high level of skepticism to the claims that alternative fuels will be a timely substitute for kerosene-based jet fuels," the report said. [...]

In the U.S., Joe Biden's administration has set a goal for 3 billion gallons of sustainable aviation fuel, which is made from non-petroleum sources such as food waste, woody biomass and other feedstocks, to be produced by 2030, which it said will cut aviation's planet-heating emissions by 20%. [...] Burning sustainable aviation fuels still emits some carbon dioxide, while the land use changes needed to produce the fuels can also lead to increased pollution. Ethanol biofuel, made from corn, is used in these fuels, and meeting the Biden administration's production goal, the report found, would require 114m acres of corn in the U.S., about a 20% increase in current land area given over to to the crop. In the UK, meanwhile, 50% of all agricultural land will have to be given up to sustain current flight passenger levels if jet fuel was entirely replaced. "Agricultural land use changes could threaten global food security as well as nature-based carbon sequestration solutions such as the preservation of forests and wetlands," the report states. "As such, SAF production may actively undermine the Paris agreement goal of achieving greatly reduced emissions by 2050." Chuck Collins, co-author of the report, said: "To bring these fuels to the scale needed would require massive subsidies, the trade-offs would be unacceptable and would take resources aware from more urgent decarbonization priorities."

"It's a huge greenwashing exercise by the aviation industry. It's magical thinking that they will be able to do this."

Phil Ansell, director of the Center for Sustainable Aviation at the University of Illinois, added: "There's an underappreciation of how big the energy problem is for aviation. We are still many years away from zero pollution flights. But it's true that the industry has been slow to pick things up. We are now trying to find solutions, but we are working at this problem and realizing it's a lot harder than we thought. We are late to the game. We are in the dark ages in terms of sustainability, compared to other sectors."

Microsoft is adding screenshot prevention controls in Edge to block you from taking screenshots at work. "It's all designed to prevent you from sharing screenshots with competitors, relatives, and journalists using Microsoft Edge for Business," reports PCWorld. From the report: Specifically, IT managers at corporations will be able to tag web pages as protected, as defined in various Microsoft policy engines in Microsoft 365, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Microsoft Intune Mobile Application Management and Microsoft Purview, Microsoft said. The screenshot prevention feature will be available to customers in the "coming months," Microsoft said. It's also unclear whether third-party tools will be somehow blocked from taking screenshots or recording video, too.

Microsoft will also roll out a way to force Edge for Business users to automatically update their browsers. The feature will enter a preview phase over the next few weeks, Microsoft said. "The Edge management service will enable IT admins to see which devices have Edge instances that are out of date and at risk," Microsoft said. "It will also provide mitigating controls, such as forcing a browser restart to install updates, enabling automatic browser updates or enabling enhanced security mode for added protections."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: People whose names get mangled by autocorrect have urged technology companies to fix the problem faster, with one person whose name gets switched to "Satan" saying: "I am tired of it." People with Irish, Indian and Welsh names are among those calling for improvements to the systems that operate on phones and computers as part of the "I am not a typo" campaign. "It is important that technology becomes more inclusive," said Savan-Chandni Gandecha, 34, a British Indian content creator whose name, which means monsoon moonlight, has been autocorrected to Satan. "My name has also been corrected to Savant," he said. "It is sometimes corrected to Savan, or the hyphen is not accepted by online forms and that irks me," he said. "Even in India my name gets corrected to "Sawan", and it's not just an English issue. It's a multi-language thing."

The campaign has estimated that four out of 10 names of babies born in England and Wales in 2021 were deemed "wrong" or "not accepted" when tested on Microsoft's English dictionary. Dhruti Shah, a journalist, has backed the campaign after seeing her name autocorrected to "Dirty" and "Dorito". She said: "My first name isn't even that long -- only six characters -- but yet when it comes up as an error or it's mangled and considered an unknown entity, it's like saying that it's not just your name that's wrong, but you are." The campaign group -- established by a group of people working in the creative industries in London -- wrote an open letter to technology companies, which pointed out that between 2017 and 2021, 2,328 people named Esmae were born, compared with 36 Nigels. Esmae gets autocorrected to Admar, while Nigel is unchanged. "There are so many diverse names in the global majority but autocorrect is western- and white-focused," said Gandecha. Rashmi Dyal-Chand, a professor at Northeastern University in the US whose name is sometimes corrected to Sashimi, is supporting the latest campaign and said: "For people with names like mine, autocorrect is not convenient and helpful. It is unhelpful. And yes -- it is harmful."

"We all increasingly rely on smartphones, tablets, word processors, and apps that use autocorrect. Yet autocorrect incorporates a set of defaults -- including dictionaries -- that help some of its users to communicate seamlessly at the expense of others who cannot."

Karen Fox, whose children are called Eoin and Niamh, said of autocorrect: "The red line bothers me -- I didn't choose the 'wrong' name for my child. Tech companies update dictionaries with slang all the time and I think it should be an easy thing to do and definitely a priority."

Microsoft's Windows Recall feature is attracting controversy before even venturing out of preview. From a report: The principle is simple. Windows takes a snapshot of a user's active screen every few seconds and dumps it to disk. The user can then scroll through the snapshots and, when something is selected, the user is given options to interact with the content.

Mozilla's Chief Product Officer, Steve Teixeira, told The Register: "Mozilla is concerned about Windows Recall. From a browser perspective, some data should be saved, and some shouldn't. Recall stores not just browser history, but also data that users type into the browser with only very coarse control over what gets stored. While the data is stored in encrypted format, this stored data represents a new vector of attack for cybercriminals and a new privacy worry for shared computers.

"Microsoft is also once again playing gatekeeper and picking which browsers get to win and lose on Windows -- favoring, of course, Microsoft Edge. Microsoft's Edge allows users to block specific websites and private browsing activity from being seen by Recall. Other Chromium-based browsers can filter out private browsing activity but lose the ability to block sensitive websites (such as financial sites) from Recall. "Right now, there's no documentation on how a non-Chromium based, third-party browser, such as Firefox, can protect user privacy from Recall. Microsoft did not engage our cooperation on Recall, but we would have loved for that to be the case, which would have enabled us to partner on giving users true agency over their privacy, regardless of the browser they choose."

An anonymous reader shares a report: For those of us who came of age in the early days of personal computing, the names "Intel 486" and "Windows XP" evoke a nostalgic whirlwind of memories. The 486 was the hot new CPU of the early 90s, while Windows XP became a household name and Microsoft's most popular OS over a decade later. But did you ever imagine these two icons of different eras could be merged into an unholy union? Well, start brushing off those vintage 486 rigs, because a modder has actually made it happen. Going by the name Dietmar on the MSFN forums, he has somehow managed to get Microsoft's beloved Windows XP running on the ancient 486 architecture.

It's worth mentioning that these two were never meant to coexist. The first 486 chips hit the market way back in 1989, while Windows XP landed over a decade later in 2001. The 486 represented a major breakthrough when Intel unveiled it in 1989. Packing over a million transistors, it remained Intel's primary x86 chip until the arrival of the Pentium in 1993. Such was the processor's longevity that Intel continued manufacturing it for embedded systems until 2007. Still, 486 systems were simply too underpowered to run XP, which needed at least a Pentium-class processor from the 586 generation - or any compatible chip that ran at 233MHz or higher. Meanwhile, the i486 could only do 133MHz. It also needed at least 64MB of RAM and at least 1.5GB of storage.

Amazon is upgrading its decade-old Alexa voice assistant with generative AI and plans to charge a monthly subscription fee to offset the cost of the technology, CNBC reported Wednesday, citing people with knowledge of Amazon's plans. From the report: The Seattle-based tech and retail giant will launch a more conversational version of Alexa later this year, potentially positioning it to better compete with new generative AI-powered chatbots from companies including Google and OpenAI, according to two sources familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the discussions were private. Amazon's subscription for Alexa will not be included in the $139-per-year Prime offering, and Amazon has not yet nailed down the price point, one source said.

While Amazon wowed consumers with Alexa's voice-driven tasks in 2014, its capabilities could seem old-fashioned amid recent leaps in artificial intelligence. Last week, OpenAI announced GPT-4o, with the capability for two-way conversations that can go significantly deeper than Alexa. For example, it can translate conversations into different languages in real time. Google launched a similar generative-AI-powered voice feature for Gemini.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: ASML Holding NV and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. have ways to disable the world's most sophisticated chipmaking machines in the event that China invades Taiwan, according to people familiar with the matter. Officials from the US government have privately expressed concerns to both their Dutch and Taiwanese counterparts about what happens if Chinese aggression escalates into an attack on the island responsible for producing the vast majority of the world's advanced semiconductors, two of the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity. ASML reassured officials about its ability to remotely disable the machines when the Dutch government met with the company on the threat, two others said. The Netherlands has run simulations on a possible invasion in order to better assess the risks, they added.

The remote shut-off applies to Netherlands-based ASML's line of extreme ultraviolet machines, known within the industry as EUVs, for which TSMC is its single biggest client. EUVs harness high-frequency light waves to print the smallest microchip transistors in existence -- creating chips that have artificial-intelligence uses as well as more sensitive military applications. About the size of a city bus, an EUV requires regular servicing and updates. As part of that, the company can remotely force a shut-off which would act as a kill switch, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Veldhoven-based company is the world's only manufacturer of these machines, which sell for more than $217 million apiece.

Android Authority's Mishaal Rahman reports that the group speaker volume controls feature is back in Android 15 Beta 2. "Google intentionally disabled this functionality on Pixel phones back in late 2021 due to a legal dispute with Sonos," reports Rahman. "In late 2023, Google announced it would bring back several features they had to remove, following a judge's overturning of a jury verdict that was in favor of Sonos." From the report: When you create a speaker group consisting of one or more Assistant-enabled devices in the Google Home app, you're able to cast audio to that group from your phone using a Cast-enabled app. For example, let's say I make a speaker group named "Nest Hubs" that consists of my bedroom Nest Hub and my living room Nest Hub. If I open the YouTube Music app, start playing a song, and then tap the cast icon, I can select "Nest Hubs" to start playback on both my Nest Hubs simultaneously.

If I keep the YouTube Music app open, I can control the volume of my speaker group by pressing the volume keys on my phone. This functionality is available no matter what device I use. However, if I open another app while YouTube Music is casting, whether I'm able to still control the volume of my speaker group using my phone's volume keys depends on what phone I'm using and what software version it's running. If I'm using a Pixel phone that's running a software version before Android 15 Beta 2, then I'm unable to control the volume of my speaker group unless I re-open the YouTube Music app. If I'm using a phone from any other manufacturer, then I won't have any issues controlling the volume of my speaker group.

The reason for this weird discrepancy is that Google intentionally blocked Pixel devices from being able to control the volume of Google Home speaker groups while casting. Google did this out of an abundance of caution while they were fighting a legal dispute. [...] With the release of last week's Android 15 Beta 2, we can confirm that Google finally restored this functionality.

Hybrid and electric cars are more likely to hit pedestrians than petrol or diesel vehicles, due to their quieter engines that make them harder for pedestrians to hear. Other contributing factors include the tendency for drivers of electric cars to be younger and less experienced, and the vehicles' heavier weight and swift acceleration, increasing stopping distances. The Guardian reports: Data from 32 billion miles of battery-powered car travel and 3 trillion miles of petrol and diesel car trips showed that mile-for-mile electric and hybrid cars were twice as likely to hit pedestrians than fossil fuel-powered cars, and three times more likely to do so in urban areas. "Electric cars are a hazard to pedestrians because they are less likely to be heard than petrol or diesel cars," said Phil Edwards, first author on the study and professor of epidemiology and statistics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. "The government needs to mitigate these risks if they are going to phase out the sale of petrol and diesel cars." "If you're moving to an electric car, remember it's a new kind of vehicle," Edwards added. "They are much quieter than the old-fashioned cars, and pedestrians have learned to navigate roads by listening for traffic. Drivers of these vehicles need to be extra cautious."

Most vehicles on the road are petrol or diesel and these were involved in three-quarters of pedestrian collisions. But for the same distance travelled, battery-powered cars were more dangerous. The average annual pedestrian casualty rate per 100m miles travelled was 5.16 for electric and hybrid cars compared with 2.4 for petrol and diesel cars, according to the study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. In rural settings, battery-powered cars were no more dangerous than petrol or diesel, but in towns and cities they were three times more likely to collide with pedestrians, the researchers found. Since July 2019, all new hybrid and electric vehicles sold in Europe have been required to have an acoustic vehicle alerting system that emits sound when the car is travelling slowly, but there are hundreds of thousands of electric cars on the road without the devices. "If government made sure these systems were installed in all electric vehicles and retrofitted them to older electric cars, that would be a good start," Edwards said, adding that the Green Cross Code also "probably needs updating."