An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: Human-level artificial intelligence is close to finally being achieved, according to a lead researcher at Google's DeepMind AI division. Dr Nando de Freitas said "the game is over" in the decades-long quest to realize artificial general intelligence (AGI) after DeepMind unveiled an AI system capable of completing a wide range of complex tasks, from stacking blocks to writing poetry. Described as a "generalist agent," DeepMind's new Gato AI needs to just be scaled up in order to create an AI capable of rivaling human intelligence, Dr de Freitas said. Responding to an opinion piece written in The Next Web that claimed "humans will never achieve AGI," DeepMind's research director wrote that it was his opinion that such an outcome is an inevitability. "It's all about scale now! The Game is Over!" he wrote on Twitter. "It's all about making these models bigger, safer, compute efficient, faster at sampling, smarter memory, more modalities, innovative data, on/offline... Solving these challenges is what will deliver AGI." When asked by machine learning researcher Alex Dimikas how far he believed the Gato AI was from passing a real Turing test -- a measure of computer intelligence that requires a human to be unable to distinguish a machine from another human -- Dr de Freitas replied: "Far still." [...] Fielding further questions from AI researchers on Twitter, Dr de Freitas said "safety is of paramount importance" when developing AGI. "It's probably the biggest challenge we face," he wrote. "Everyone should be thinking about it. Lack of enough diversity also worries me a lot." DeepMind describes Gato in a blog post: "The agent, which we refer to as Gato, works as a multi-modal, multi-task, multi-embodiment generalist policy. The same network with the same weights can play Atari, caption images, chat, stack blocks with a real robot arm and much more, deciding based on its context whether to output text, joint torques, button presses, or other tokens.

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Apple today informed developers that it is implementing a new subscription feature that will allow customers to be charged automatically when an app's subscription price goes up, which is not the way that subscriptions work at the current time. MacRumors reports: Right now, customers must explicitly agree to a pricing change when the cost of a subscription increases through an "Agree to New Price" interface. If a customer does not tap on agree when the warning comes up, their subscription is automatically canceled, but that's changing. Going forward, developers will be able to increase the price of a subscription and have it auto renew, with customers simply being informed rather than needing to outright agree. Apple says that "under specific conditions and with advance user notice" developers can offer an auto-renewable subscription price increase without the user needing to take action and without their subscription being impacted. There are specific limits that Apple is placing on developers to make sure this functionality is not abused. A pricing increase cannot occur more than once per year, and it cannot exceed $5 and 50 percent of the subscription price, or $50 and 50 percent for an annual subscription price. Apple says that it will always notify users of the pricing increase in advance, via email, push notification, and a message within the app. Apple will also provide instructions on how to view, manage, and cancel subscriptions. [...] In situations where prices increase more often than once a year or exceed Apple's thresholds, subscribers will need to opt in as usual before the pricing increase is applied. Apple says that this will also happen in territories where the law requires it.

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Top Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co. says demand for mobile phones, personal computers and home appliances has dropped "like a rock" and shows no signs of recovering. From a report: Speaking to investors on Friday, CEO Zhao Haijun said the Russia-Ukraine war and China's COVID lockdowns have massively dented demand for consumer electronics and home appliances, which in turn has led to a "serious" adjustment in chip orders for those segments. "Many smartphone, PC and home appliance companies had exposure in Russia and Ukraine, and their revenues [from those markets] are now gone. Sales in their home market [of China] have also fallen due to the COVID situation domestically," Zhao said. "We cannot yet see an end to the downtrends in these segments," Zhao added. "There are at least 200 million units of smartphones that will disappear suddenly this year and the majority of them are from our domestic Chinese phone makers." Demand for consumer electronics "dropped like a rock, very seriously," the executive said. "Some of our customers are holding more than five months of that type of inventory." However, Zhao said SMIC's factories are still running at 100% capacity, as the company has been allocating resources to products that are still in great shortage, such as power management chips and microcontrollers used in green energy, electric vehicles and industrial applications.

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Han Bing, a former database administrator for Lianjia, a Chinese real-estate brokerage giant, has been sentenced to 7 years in prison for logging into corporate systems and deleting the company's data. BleepingComputer reports: Bing allegedly performed the act in June 2018, when he used his administrative privileges and "root" account to access the company's financial system and delete all stored data from two database servers and two application servers. This has resulted in the immediate crippling of large portions of Lianjia's operations, leaving tens of thousands of its employees without salaries for an extended period and forcing a data restoration effort that cost roughly $30,000. The indirect damages from the disruption of the firm's business, though, were far more damaging, as Lianjia operates thousands of offices, employs over 120,000 brokers, owns 51 subsidiaries, and its market value is estimated to be $6 billion.

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Russia is not planning to block Alphabet's YouTube, the minister for digital development said on Tuesday, acknowledging that such a move would likely see Russian users suffer and should therefore be avoided. From a report: Russia has blocked other foreign social media platforms, but despite months of fines and threats against YouTube for failing to delete content Moscow deems illegal and for restricting access to some Russian media, it has stopped short of delivering a killer blow to the video-hosting service.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), a non-profit organization that promotes open-source software and defends the free software General Public License (GPL), recently sued major TV vendor Vizio for abusing the GPL with its Linux-based SmartCast OS. Vizio replied that the SFC had no right to ask for the source code. On May 13, however, the SFC succeeded in federal court with its motion to have its lawsuit against Vizio remanded back to Superior Court in Orange County, CA. Doesn't sound like that big a deal? Think again. The important part of the decision by U.S. District Court Judge Josephine L. Staton stated that SFC's claim "that the [GPLv2] enforcement of 'an additional contractual promise separate and distinct from any rights provided by the copyright laws' amounts to an 'extra element,' and therefore, SFC's claims are not preempted." Karen M. Sandler, SFC's executive director, explained, "The ruling is a watershed moment in the history of copyleft licensing. This ruling shows that the GPL agreements function both as copyright licenses and as a contractual agreement." Sandler added that even in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) legal community people argue incorrectly that the GPL and other copyleft licenses only function as copyright licenses. This decision clearly states that the GPL also acts as a contract. Further, this decision makes it the first case to show individual consumers have rights to the source code as third-party beneficiaries of the GPL.

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A ransomware gang that infiltrated some Costa Rican government computer systems has upped its threat, saying its goal is now to overthrow the government. From a report: Perhaps seizing on the fact that President Rodrigo Chaves had only been in office for a week, the Russian-speaking Conti gang tried to increase the pressure to pay a ransom by raising its demand to $20 million. Chaves suggested Monday in a news conference that the attack was coming from inside as well as outside Costa Rica. "We are at war and that's not an exaggeration," Chaves said. He said officials were battling a national terrorist group that had collaborators inside Costa Rica. Chaves also said the impact was broader than previously known, with 27 government institutions, including municipalities and state-run utilities, affected. He blamed his predecessor Carlos Alvarado for not investing in cybersecurity and for not more aggressively dealing with the attacks in the waning days of his government. In a message Monday, Conti warned that it was working with people inside the government.

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Microsoft blog: The steep rise in cryptocurrency market capitalization, not surprisingly, mirrors a marked increase in threats and attacks that target or leverage cryptocurrencies. But Microsoft researchers are observing an even more interesting trend: the evolution of related malware and their techniques, and the emergence of a threat type we're referring to as cryware. Cryware are information stealers that collect and exfiltrate data directly from non-custodial cryptocurrency wallets, also known as hot wallets. Because hot wallets, unlike custodial wallets, are stored locally on a device and provide easier access to cryptographic keys needed to perform transactions, more and more threats are targeting them.

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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell acknowledged in an interview with Marketplace on Thursday that the central bank could have moved faster to raise interest rates and cut inflation, as the central bank comes under increasing scrutiny over whether it waited too long to act on prices. From a report: "If you had perfect hindsight you'd go back, and it probably would have been better for us to have raised rates a little sooner," Powell said in an interview released Thursday with Marketplace's Kai Ryssdal. "I'm not sure how much difference it would have made, but we have to make decisions in real time, based on what we know then, and we did the best we could." Powell's comments mark a sharper sentiment of regret than his past remarks when it comes to whether the Fed should have stepped in sooner. The Fed has faced criticism, primarily from Republicans and some prominent economists, such as Lawrence H. Summers, for delaying interest rate hikes and ending stimulus-era financial supports, which work together to cool off the economy and bring inflation down. Powell, who was confirmed by the Senate for a second term as Fed chair earlier Thursday, lost a handful of votes from lawmakers who said their constituents were suffering too much from high prices on his watch. For much of the last year, the Fed stuck to its message that rising inflation would be "transitory," or temporary, and more limited to pockets of the economy hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and related shutdowns and supply chain disruptions. At WSJ conference on Tuesday, Powell emphasized his resolve to get inflation down, saying he won't hesitate to back interest rate increases until prices start falling back toward a healthy level. "We'll go to that point. There won't be any hesitation about that," he added.

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Two senior U.S. defense intelligence officials said on Tuesday the Pentagon is committed to determining the origins of what it calls "unidentified aerial phenomena" -- commonly termed UFOs -- but acknowledged many remain beyond the government's ability to explain. From a report: The two officials, Ronald Moultrie and Scott Bray, appeared before a House of Representatives intelligence subcommittee for the first public U.S. congressional hearing on the subject in a half century. It came 11 months after a government report documented more than 140 cases of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, that U.S. military pilots had observed since 2004. Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence, said the number of UAPs officially cataloged by a newly formed Pentagon task force has grown to 400 cases. Both officials chose their words carefully in describing the task force's work, including the question of possible extraterrestrial origins, which Bray said defense and intelligence analysts had not ruled out. Bray did say that "we have no material, we have detected no emanations, within the UAP task force that would suggest it is anything non-terrestrial in origin."

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Google announced a new initiative Tuesday aimed at securing the open-source software supply chain by curating and distributing a security-vetted collection of open-source packages to Google Cloud customers. From a report: The new service, branded Assured Open Source Software, was introduced in a blog post from the company. In the post, Andy Chang, group product manager for security and privacy at Google Cloud, pointed to some of the challenges of securing open-source software and stressed Google's commitment to open source. "There has been an increasing awareness in the developer community, enterprises, and governments of software supply chain risks," Chang wrote, citing last year's major log4j vulnerability as an example. "Google continues to be one of the largest maintainers, contributors, and users of open source and is deeply involved in helping make the open source software ecosystem more secure." Per Google's announcement, the Assured Open Source Software service will extend the benefits of Google's own extensive software auditing experience to Cloud customers. All open-source packages made available through the service are also used internally by Google, the company said, and are regularly scanned and analyzed for vulnerabilities.

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Apple delayed a plan to require workers to come back to the office three days a week, citing a resurgence in Covid-19 cases, marking the latest setback in its efforts to return to normal. From a report: The company informed employees Tuesday that it's delaying the requirement, which had been slated to go into effect on May 23, according to a memo seen by Bloomberg. However, the company is still expecting workers to come to the office two days per week. The company said the requirement is being delayed for "the time being" and didn't provide a new date. Apple was set to require employees to work from the office on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays beginning next week -- a policy that had been controversial among some staff. Already, employees have been coming in two days a week as part of a ramp-up effort that began in April. For now, that mandate isn't changing.

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Mental health startup Cerebral will no longer prescribe most controlled substances, The Wall Street Journal reported. From a report: The embattled company is facing investigations from the US Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration over its prescribing practices, which, until this week, included offering prescriptions for stimulants like Adderall. Company co-founder Kyle Robertson wrote in an email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that it would stop prescribing most controlled substances to new customers on Friday and transition existing patients off of the drug or out of its care by October. Cerebral will still offer drugs that treat opioid-use disorder, like Suboxone. Robertson said in the email that the company only started prescribing controlled substances to customers in 2020 because people weren't able to get in-person care. It's stopping that program, he said, because of "the ability for patients to return to an in-person or hybrid care model for this treatment."

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The White House slammed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Monday after the billionaire accused President Biden of "misdirection" in his comments on inflation and corporate taxes. From a report: Biden tweeted Friday that the wealthiest corporations must "pay their fair share" to help bring down record-high inflation. Biden also recently met with Amazon labor organizers after their union victory. Bezos responded to Biden claiming inflation and corporate taxes aren't related. "Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection," he tweeted. "It doesn't require a huge leap to figure out why one of the wealthiest individuals on Earth opposes an economic agenda for the middle class that cuts some of the biggest costs families face, fights inflation for the long haul, and adds to the historic deficit reduction the President is achieving by asking the richest taxpayers and corporations to pay their fair share," deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement per the Washington Post. "It's also unsurprising that this tweet comes after the President met with labor organizers, including Amazon employees." Bezos fired back shortly after, saying the White House is trying to "muddy the topic." "They know inflation hurts the neediest the most. But unions aren't causing inflation and neither are wealthy people. Remember the Administration tried their best to add another $3.5 TRILLION to federal spending," he tweeted. "They failed, but if they had succeeded, inflation would be even higher than it is today, and inflation today is at a 40 year high."

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Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has reined in a plan to triple its headcount this year in response to turbulent market conditions. From a report: Emilie Choi, Coinbase's president and chief operating officer, said in a blog post on Tuesday that the firm would be slowing hiring to "reprioritize our hiring needs against our highest-priority business goals." The note had been circulated among staff earlier. "Heading into this year, we planned to triple the size of the company. Given current market conditions, we feel it's prudent to slow hiring and reassess our headcount needs against our highest-priority business goals," she said. "Headcount growth is a key input to our financial model, and this is an important action to ensure we manage our business to the scenarios we planned for, specifically the potential adjusted Ebitda we are aiming to manage to."

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Mastercard is launching a "controversial" biometric payments programme in stores, as the card company tries to keep pace with nimble fintechs and bigger competitors such as Amazon. From a report: Retailers that sign up to its pilot scheme can allow customers to pay in-store with a gesture such as a smile or a wave. The system, which requires customers to enrol first, could also be connected to loyalty programmes and purchase history. "Payments is a wide space, and we are trying to offer what customers want," Ajay Bhalla, Mastercard's president of cyber and intelligence, told the Financial Times. He said that Mastercard could act as the "enabler of the ecosystem," setting unified privacy and security standards for a technology that has raised the hackles of privacy and data protection campaigners. "It's important that we make sure that data is handled properly and the transaction is safe," said Bhalla. "Everything is done with consumer consent." The facial recognition software itself will come from companies including Japan's NEC, Brazil's Payface and California-based PopID. The first pilots are launching this week at five supermarkets run by the St Marche chain in Brazil. The ambition is to eventually allow consumers to use a single enrolment to pay across different stores, says Bhalla, with further pilots planned across regions including Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: On Feb. 2, the city of Miami cashed out its cryptocurrency MiamiCoin for the first time, depositing $5.25 million into city coffers. Miami mayor Francis Suarez hailed it as a "historic moment" and predicted the cryptocurrency could one day even replace municipal taxes as the government's primary source of funding. MiamiCoin's creator, an organization called CityCoins, has been no less enthusiastic, portraying the coin as a financial experiment that will empower citizens with a "community-driven revenue stream" while spurring new digital city services. Miami is not the only city with big cryptocurrency dreams. CityCoins announced a similar cryptocurrency for New York in November 2021, and plans to release a coin for Austin, Texas, soon. Other cities have launched their own crypto ventures: Forth Worth, Texas, for example, will soon be running bitcoin mining rigs in city hall. But only Miami's mayor has thrown his full endorsement behind a CityCoin-branded cryptocurrency so far. After promoting MiamiCoin to residents and investors since its launch in August, the city of Miami received millions of dollars through its agreement with CityCoins. Over the last nine months, however, MiamiCoin has lost nearly all of its value, falling about 95% from its September peak to just $0.0032 as of May 13. Its rapid descent has burned investors on the way down, muting the dreams of Miami's city leaders, and possibly raising red flags for regulators now investigating cryptocurrency transactions.

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Researchers have linked spending more time playing video games with a boost in intelligence in children, which goes some way to contradicting the narrative that gaming is bad for young minds. ScienceAlert reports: While the difference in cognitive abilities was a small one and isn't enough to show a causal relationship, it is enough to be notable -- and the study was careful to factor in variables including differences in genetics and the child's socio-economic background. Meanwhile, watching TV and using social media didn't seem to have a positive or negative effect on intelligence. The research should prove useful in the debate over how much screen time is suitable for young minds. The researchers looked at screen time records for 9,855 kids in the ABCD Study, all in the US and aged 9 or 10. On average, the youngsters reported spending 2.5 hours a day watching TV or online videos, 1 hour playing video games, and half an hour socializing over the internet. Researchers then accessed data for more than 5,000 of those children two years later. Over the intervening period, those in the study who reported spending more time than the norm on video games saw an increase of 2.5 IQ points above the average rise. The IQ point increase was based on the kids' performance on tasks that included reading comprehension, visual-spatial processing, and a task focused on memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. The report notes that the study "only looked at children in the US and did not differentiate between video game types (mobile versus console games)." The research has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Last summer, a deadly wave of heat struck the Pacific Northwest, causing temperatures to soar more than 30 degrees Fahrenheit above normal and killing more than a thousand people. A new study has uncovered the sequence of events that precipitated the disaster, providing information that could further our understanding of heat formation on the North American continent. By reviewing large-scale weather conditions and formations before the heat wave, University of Chicago scientists discovered that a cyclone spawned an "anticyclone," which combined to produce and then trap heat near the surface of the region. [...] Using data collected from satellites and on the ground, UChicago scientists set out to re-create the sequence of events. They found that in the week prior, a cyclone had formed over the Gulf of Alaska. Cyclones are large, spiral-shaped systems that form around a center of low pressure. (Think of the spiral clouds you see during hurricanes.) When clouds form out of water vapor, the process actually releases heat, which accumulated in the atmosphere. Then, as the cyclone moved slowly away, it triggered the formation of an anticyclone to the east -- a system that rotates slowly around a center of high pressure instead of low. These are known as "blocking" systems because they disrupt the normal eastward movement of weather systems. A blocking anticyclone acts like a blanket, trapping heat in a region. The result was a warm, stagnant column of air that made it difficult for surface heat to escape to the upper atmosphere as it normally does. The study has been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

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All-in summit -- a conference hosted by Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks and David Friedberg, who also operate a popular weekly podcast by the same name -- interviewed Elon Musk on Monday. In the wide-ranging interview, Musk talked about Twitter's bot problem, governments, immigration, and among other things, gave more insight into the scale and ambitions of Tesla and SpaceX.

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