At Apple's developer conference earlier this week, the company said it has tweaked the iPhone's autocorrect feature to prevent it from replacing the common expletive with "ducking." Craig Federighi, Apple's software chief, mentioned that the keyboard will now learn and adapt to users typing the intended word. From a report: The iPhone keyboard autocorrect feature has always had its quirks, sometimes taking a misspelled word while texting and substituting what it deems a logical option that ends up changing the meaning of a particular phrase or sentence. Such occurrences generally produce follow-up texts along the lines of "damn autocorrect!" But the "ducking" substitution is a long-standing source of mirth or frustration, depending on how many times one has had to rewrite their own texts or scream at one's own device (the iPhone cannot correct one's verbal epithets).

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. senators on Thursday introduced two separate bipartisan artificial intelligence bills on Thursday amid growing interest in addressing issues surrounding the technology. One would require the U.S. government to be transparent when using AI to interact with people and another would establish an office to determine if the United States is remaining competitive in the latest technologies. Senators Gary Peters, a Democrat who chairs the Homeland Security committee, introduced a bill along with Senators Mike Braun and James Lankford, both Republicans, which would require U.S. government agencies to tell people when the agency is using AI to interact with them. The bill also requires agencies to create a way for people to appeal any decisions made by AI. "The federal government needs to be proactive and transparent with AI utilization and ensure that decisions aren't being made without humans in the driver's seat," said Braun in a statement. Senators Michael Bennet and Mark Warner, both Democrats, introduced a measure along with Republican Senator Todd Young that would establish an Office of Global Competition Analysis that would seek to ensure that the United States stayed in the front of the pack in developing artificial intelligence. "We cannot afford to lose our competitive edge in strategic technologies like semiconductors, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence to competitors like China," Bennet said. Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he had scheduled three briefings for senators on artificial intelligence, including the first classified briefing on the topic so lawmakers can be educated on the issue. The briefings include a general overview on AI, examining how to achieve American leadership on AI and a classified session on defense and intelligence issues and implications. Further reading: Ask Slashdot: What Are Some Good AI Regulations?

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According to research company Antenna, Netflix's password crackdown in the U.S. has resulted in the "four single largest days of U.S. user sign-ups since January 2019, when Antenna first began tracking the metric," reports Variety. "On May 23, Netflix began notifying U.S. customers that users on their accounts who live outside their households would need to be added as an 'extra member' (or get their own subscriptions)." From the report: Based on the most current Antenna data available, Netflix average daily sign-ups reached 73,000 from May 25-28, a 102% increase from the prior 60-day average. That was more than the spikes in subscriber sign-ups Antenna recorded during the initial U.S. COVID-19 lockdowns in March and April 2020. Netflix U.S. cancelations also increased over May 25-28 -- a phenomenon the company told investors it expected -- but those were less than the number of sign-ups, according to Antenna. The ratio of sign-ups to cancelations since May 23 increased 25.6% compared with the previous 60-day period. In the U.S., Netflix has told customers they must buy an "extra member" at an additional $7.99/month for anyone who doesn't live with them that currently uses their account. The streamer has said it will start blocking devices that attempt to access a Netflix account without having legitimate account access. According to New York-based Antenna, its estimates are based on millions of permission-based, consumer opt-in, raw transaction records, which are sourced "from a variety of data collection partners." The data includes online purchase receipts, credit, debit and banking data, and "bill-scrape data."

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Logitech is merging its gaming headset maker, Astro, and microphone manufacturer, Blue Microphones, into its Logitech G brand. While the Astro brand will continue as a premium console audio product series under Logitech G, the Blue brand will be phased out. The Verge reports: You can already see the transition playing out on Logitech's website, which still sells Yeti and even Snowball microphones that merely come "with Blue VO!CE" but no longer links to a distinct Blue website or product page. Astrogaming.com, however, still exists. It's not clear why Logitech is minimizing its influential brands Astro and Blue, which defined the high-end gaming headset category and the microphone-for-streamers category, respectively, but I wonder if Logitech simply decided it had to choose between Blue and Yeti -- and Yeti was the name that rang out. However, Logitech's simply pitching it as a synergy play: you'll be able to control all your formerly Blue, Astro, and Logitech Creator products in the Logitech G software suite when all's said and done. Logitech bought gaming headset maker Astro for $85 million in 2017 and purchased mic manufacturer Blue Microphones for $177 million one year later.

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Meta is planning to introduce AI-generated stickers on Messenger, allowing users to create stickers based on text prompts. The Verge reports: During a companywide meeting today that The Verge listened to, Ahmad Al-Dahle, Meta's vice president of AI, told employees that the company will leverage its image generation model to let users create stickers based on text prompts. Employees will begin testing the feature internally before it's made available to the public. "With AI-generated stickers, our users can have infinitely more options for self-expression, cultural representations, and even trend relevance," Al-Dahle says. "Of course, stickers are just the tip of the iceberg." Al-Dahle adds that the company is also "working on AI models that are going to transform any image you want in any way you want." That includes doing things like "changing the aspect ratio of your picture" or turning a picture of a corgi "into a painting."

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Binance.US, the U.S. affiliate of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, announced that it would halt dollar deposits and urged customers to withdraw their funds by Tuesday following a request from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to freeze its assets. Reuters reports: Binance.US, the purportedly independent partner of Binance, said in a tweet on Thursday that its banking partners were preparing to stop dollar withdrawal channels as early as June 13. The SEC sued Binance, its CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao, and Binance.US's operator on Monday, in a dramatic escalation of a crackdown on the industry by U.S. regulators. The SEC sued major U.S. exchange Coinbase a day later. Binance.US said in the tweeted customer notice that it would no longer accept dollar deposits as part of plans to change to a "crypto-only exchange". It called the SEC's civil charges "unjustified" and said it would "vigorously defend" itself. The SEC alleged in 13 charges on Monday that Binance had in a "web of deception" artificially inflated trading volumes and diverted customer funds, as well as failing to restrict U.S. customers from its platform. The SEC on Tuesday asked a federal court to freeze Binance's U.S. assets. Binance.US called the motion "unwarranted", saying it had addressed SEC concerns over the safety of customer assets. The SEC said it had not received "sufficient reassurance" that Binance.US's customer assets were controlled by its operator, BAM Trading, "rather than under the control or influence of Binance or Zhao, a person who has openly expressed his desire to avoid compliance with U.S. law." Zhao and Binance had "free reign" to handle Binance.US assets, the SEC said. "They have exercised this control over U.S. investor assets with no oversight or controls to ensure that those assets are properly secured," it added. . It has said it would "defend our platform vigorously," saying the SEC was limited in reach as Binance was not a U.S. exchange. Binance.US's customer assets total more than $2.2 billion held in crypto and some $377 million in U.S. dollar bank accounts, the SEC said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Mercedes-Benz received a permit from California regulators that will allow the German automaker to sell or lease vehicles in the state equipped with a conditional automated driving system that allows for hands-off, eyes-off driving on certain highways. The California Department of Motor Vehicles said Thursday it issued an autonomous vehicle deployment permit to Mercedes-Benz for its branded Drive Pilot system. The hands-off, eyes-off system can be used on designated California highways, including Interstate 15, under certain conditions without the active control of a human driver. This means drivers can watch videos, text or talk to a passenger (or even mess around with any number of third-party apps coming to new Mercedes models) without watching the road ahead or having their hands on the wheel. Mercedes-Benz is the fourth company to receive an autonomous vehicle deployment permit in California and the first authorized to sell or lease vehicles with an automated driving system to the public, according to the DMV, which regulates autonomous vehicles in the state. The deployment permit allows Drive Pilot to be used on highways in the Bay area, central valley, Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego. Drive Pilot is not the same as the fully autonomous systems developed by Waymo, Cruise, Motional and Zoox -- although some of the same principles apply. The Drive Pilot system uses a combination of sensors such as lidar, radar and camera coupled with software to handle driving tasks in certain conditions without the active control of a human driver. Mercedes' system is only available at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour, during daylight hours on certain highways. The system will not engage on city or county roads, in construction zones, during heavy rain or heavy fog, on flooded roads and during weather conditions that are determined to impact performance of the system, according to the DMV. The DMV has placed other conditions on Mercedes, including that vehicle owners must watch a mandatory video explaining the capabilities of the system and how to engage and disengage the technology before they can access it. Mercedes also has to meet a number of safety, insurance and vehicle registration requirements. Mercedes has taken a conservative approach to its Drive Pilot system, requesting approval from every U.S. state's regulatory body even in cases where there is not a direct restriction from using such technology. The automaker first deployed Drive Pilot in Germany. It received approval from Nevada earlier this year.

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The Indian government will not consider any proposals for new coal plants for the next five years and focus on growing its renewables sector, according to an updated national electricity plan released Wednesday evening. From a report: The temporary pause in the growth of the dirty fuel was hailed by energy experts as a positive step for a country that is currently reliant on coal for around 75% of its electricity. Updated every five years, the plan serves as a guideline for India's priorities in its electricity sector. India is the world's third highest emitter and most populous country. It plans to reach net zero emissions by 2070, which would mean significantly slashing coal use and ramping up renewable energy. In a draft of the plan released in September, the Central Electricity Authority, which is in charge of planning for India's electricity needs, projected that nearly 8,000 megawatts of new coal capacity was required by 2027. But Wednesday's strategy proposes the build out of more than 8,600 megawatts of battery energy storage systems instead. Battery storage is crucial for round-the-clock use of renewable energy.

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Required Snark writes: Acer is selling computers in Russia even though they claimed they would abide by the Taiwanese government's commitment to the international embargo on western technology. The sales are through their Swiss subsidiary Acer Sales International SA. This subterfuge means Acer's position is nominally true even while they are breaking the embargo. Neither Russian, Swiss or Taiwanese government officials would comment on the report. According to Reuters, "Taiwan-based computer manufacturer Acer supplied at least $70.4 million worth of computer hardware to Russia between April 8, 2022 and March 31, 2023." The actions aren't illegal because the shipments originated outside Taiwan, circumventing Taipei's sanctions against Russia. "Nor did they involve items restricted at the time of export by Switzerland's sanctions regime, which mirrors that of the European Union," adds Reuters. It does, however, contradict the company's statement on April 8 last year when it said it would "suspend its business in Russia."

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TV's streaming model is broken. It's also not going away. For Hollywood, figuring that out will be a horror show. From a report: Across the town, there's despair and creative destruction and all sorts of countervailing indicators. Certain shows that were enthusiastically green-lit two years ago probably wouldn't be made now. Yet there are still streamers burning mountains of cash to entertain audiences that already have too much to watch. Netflix has tightened the screws and recovered somewhat, but the inarguable consensus is that there is still a great deal of pain to come as the industry cuts back, consolidates, and fumbles toward a more functional economic framework. The high-stakes Writers Guild of America strike has focused attention on Hollywood's labor unrest, but the really systemic issue is streaming's busted math. There may be no problem more foundational than the way the system monetizes its biggest hits: It doesn't. Just ask Shawn Ryan. In April, the veteran TV producer's latest show, the spy thriller The Night Agent, became the fifth-most-watched English-language original series in Netflix's history, generating 627 million viewing hours in its first four weeks. As it climbed to the heights of such platform-defining smashes as Stranger Things and Bridgerton, Ryan wondered how The Night Agent's success might be reflected in his compensation. "I had done the calculations. Half a billion hours is the equivalent of over 61 million people watching all ten episodes in 18 days. Those shows that air after the Super Bowl -- it's like having five or ten of them. So I asked my lawyer, 'What does that mean?'" recalls Ryan. As it turns out, not much. "In my case, it means that I got paid what I got paid. I'll get a little bonus when season two gets picked up and a nominal royalty fee for each additional episode that gets made. But if you think I'm going out and buying a private jet, you're way, way off." Ryan says he'll probably make less money from The Night Agent than he did from The Shield, the cop drama he created in 2002, even though the latter ran on the then-nascent cable channel FX and never delivered Super Bowl numbers. "The promise was that if you made the company billions, you were going to get a lot of millions," he says. "That promise has gone away." Nobody is crying for Ryan, of course, and he wouldn't want them to. ("I'm not complaining!" he says. "I'm not unaware of my position relative to most people financially.") But he has a point. Once, in a more rational time, there was a direct relationship between the number of people who watched a show and the number of jets its creator could buy. More viewers meant higher ad rates, and the biggest hits could be sold to syndication and international markets. The people behind those hits got a cut, which is why the duo who invented Friends probably haven't flown commercial since the 1990s. Streaming shows, in contrast, have fewer ads (or none at all) and are typically confined to their original platforms forever. For the people who make TV, the connection between ratings and reward has been severed.

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The chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday strongly rebutted criticism that the agency is trying to crush the crypto industry, and said many companies in the space had made a "calculated economic decision" to flout its rules. From a report: Speaking at a Piper Sandler conference in New York, Gary Gensler also reiterated his view that the "vast majority" of crypto tokens meet the test for being a security and should be registered with the SEC. That means most crypto exchanges have to comply with the securities laws too, he added. "When crypto asset market participants go on Twitter or TV and say they lacked 'fair notice' that their conduct could be illegal, don't believe it," he said. "They may have made a calculated economic decision to take the risk of enforcement as the cost of doing business." The crypto industry has attacked Gensler in recent days after the SEC sued two of the world's largest crypto exchanges, Coinbase and Binance, for allegedly breaking securities laws by failing to register their operations with the agency.

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The House of Representatives in the United States plans to hold a hearing to investigate claims made by a whistleblower former intelligence official, David Grusch, that the US government possesses "intact and partially intact" alien vehicles. The Guardian reports: "There will be oversight of that," Comer told NewsNation. "We plan on having a hearing." Comer said he had heard about Grusch's claims, but added: "I don't know anything about it." The timing of the hearing is not yet determined, but a source familiar with the matter said a date is expected to be announced in the next few weeks. Tim Burchett and Anna Paulina Luna, Republican members of Congress from Florida and Tennessee, respectively, will lead the oversight committee investigation. Burchett is working closely with House oversight committee leaders to prepare for a hearing, the congressman's office said. The witness list for the hearing has not yet been set, so it is unclear whether Grusch will publicly testify before the oversight committee. "Congressman Burchett's office is working through logistics, including a witness list of the most credible witnesses and sources who would be able to speak openly at an unclassified hearing," a spokesperson said. Austin Hacker, a spokesman for the committee, told the Guardian in a statement: "In addition to recent claims by a whistleblower, reports continue to surface regarding unidentified aerial phenomena. The House oversight committee is following these UAP reports and is in the early stages of planning a hearing," Hacker said in a statement. "The National Defense Authorization Act for 2022 created the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office which coordinates among the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, Nasa, and other federal agencies to study UAPs. Americans, who continue to fund this federal government work, expect transparency and meaningful oversight from Congress."

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A new study suggests that long missions and frequent voyages to space may have an impact on astronaut brains. Space.com reports: The most enduring spaceflight-related changes in the brain yet detected are the way cavities in the brain known as ventricles can enlarge by up to 25%. Ventricles are filled with cerebrospinal fluid, which helps protect, nourish and remove waste from the brain. The absence of a gravitational pull leads the brain to shift upward in the skull and causes the ventricles to expand. It remains uncertain what the long-term consequences of this ventricle expansion might be. "How this impacts performance and long-term health is an open question," study senior author Rachael Seidler, a space health researcher at the University of Florida in Gainesville, told Space.com. One mystery regarding this ventricle expansion is whether it differs with factors such as varying mission length, the number of previous missions flown, or time between missions. To find out, Seidler and her colleagues scanned the brains of 30 astronauts using MRI before and after spaceflight. They looked at eight astronauts who went on two-week missions, 18 on six-month missions, and four who went on longer missions of up to one year. The scientists found that longer spaceflight missions resulted in greater ventricle swelling, most of which happened during the first six months in space. "The biggest jump comes when you go from two weeks to six months in space," Seidler said in a statement. "There is no measurable change in the ventricles' volume after only two weeks." Given the rise in space tourism in recent years, these findings may prove welcome, as shorter space trips appear to cause little physical change to the brain. In addition, the rate of ventricle enlargement tapered off after six months in space, which may also be good news â" these changes don't continue to increase over time, Seidler said. "This is important to know for future longer duration missions, such as to Mars," she noted. The scientists also found that less than three years between spaceflights may not provide enough time to give the ventricles enough time to fully recover to how they were before spaceflight. "This is a surprisingly long time," Seidler said. The researchers plan to examine long-term health in astronauts, "including testing crewmembers out to five years post-flight," said Seidler. "This will help enormously in terms of understanding the potential implications of the current results. But the work is expected to take 10 years." The research has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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On a hazy evening, bookended by a pair of mouses, we bring you classic examples of the genre.

The first Anon E. Mous with a better trap beat it straight to our door, crowing "I have to admit, 'Add a Catchy Header' is a pretty catchy header."

 

Nostalgic LAK screeched in square-waves "The single VIC-20 that Blizzard is using as a login server seems overwhelmed. A bit after this it got over 2400."

 

Gamer Daniel D. might have gamed this one, accusing "Steam app has errored out with 'your browser does not support...' for some random game in its store. Steam, maybe it's time to migrate to Electric?" Or maybe Daniel has some meddleware installed somewhere? Disabled Javascript? What says the peanut gallery?

 

Valued contributor Marc Würth sent in a sample of a classic test-in-production situation, cheering "Yes, you are, Jason. Whoo!"

 

And the final entry from Herr Anon E. Maus sagt "Let me check: April, then August, then December...QA is done, sorting Intel Security Advisories by release date works just fine!" Frankly, these bug me the worst.

 

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