Yahoo Finance shares an interesting prediction. Amazon has an "under-the-radar robot push" that "could boost its profit margins big-time, Morgan Stanley managing director Brian Nowak said." Nowak said Amazon has quietly developed six significant next-generation fulfillment centers in the past three years that bring automation front and center... Amazon now has industrial robots that can increase efficiencies across the storage, inventory management, pick and packing, and sorting order fulfillment processes. Fulfillment costs make up about 20% of Amazon's retail revenue, so he reasoned that automation could have a significant impact on long-term operating profit potential. Nowak says if 30% to 40% of Amazon's US units were fulfilled through next-generation robotics-enabled warehouses by 2030, it could lead to $10 billion-plus of savings... The investments in robots may already be paying off. Amazon's North America retail operating margins on a trailing 12-month basis have risen for five straight quarters. North America operating margins improved to 6.2% from 4.6% a year ago. Nowak made the remarks on a Yahoo Finance podcast (at the top of their article) after touring one of Amazon's robot-enhanced sites in Louisiana. He believes robotics can drive down Amazon's costs compared to other retailers like Target (which he sees as lagging behind Amazon on robotics). Meanwhile workers at an Amazon facility in North Carolina held a vote Saturday on whether to unionize. But roughly 75% of the workers voted against unionization.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Luigi Mangione faces first-degree murder charges. On Valentine's Day he posted his first public comments online, reports People magazine, with Mangione saying he's grateful for the support he's receiving: Earlier this week, Mangione accepted $297,000 in donations to cover his legal bills from the December 4 Legal Committee, which is stewarding a fundraiser on GiveSendGo for his legal defense, according to a post shared by the group. (A source with knowledge of the situation confirmed to PEOPLE that the post was genuine.) The committee — named after the death date of Thompson — said the donations were offered by over 10,000 individual supporters. Mangione's lead attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, told the committee that Mangione "very much appreciates the outpouring of support...." His federal murder charges could land him the death penalty, and he also faces state murder charges that accuse him of committing an act of terrorism.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In January the TIOBE Index (estimating programming language popularity) declared Python their language of the year. (Though it was already #1 in their rankings, it had showed a 9.3% increase in their ranking system, notes InfoWorld.) TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen says this reflects how easy Python is to learn, adding that "The demand for new programmers is still very high" (and that "developing applications completely in AI is not possible yet.") In fact on February's version of the index, the top ten looks mostly static. The only languages dropping appear to be very old languages. Over the last 12 months C and PHP have both fallen on the index — C from the #2 to the #4 spot, and PHP from #10 all the way to #14. (Also dropping is Visual Basic, which fell from #9 to #10.) But TechRepublican cites another factor that seems to be affecting the rankings: language speed. Fast programming languages are gaining popularity, TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen said in the TIOBE Programming Community Index in February. Fast programming languages he called out include C++ [#2], Go [#8], and Rust [#13 — up from #18 a year ago]. Also, according to the updated TIOBE rankings... - C++ held onto its place at second from the top of the leaderboard. - Mojo and Zig are following trajectories likely to bring them into the top 50, and reached #51 and #56 respectively in February. "Now that the world needs to crunch more and more numbers per second, and hardware is not evolving fast enough, speed of programs is getting important. Having said this, it is not surprising that the fast programming languages are gaining ground in the TIOBE index," Jansen wrote. The need for speed helped Mojo [#51] and Zig [#56] rise... Rust reached its all-time high in the proprietary points system (1.47%.), and Jansen expects Go to be a common sight in the top 10 going forward.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bloomberg reports that Apple's long-promised overhaul for Siri "is facing engineering problems and software bugs, threatening to postpone or limit its release, according to people with knowledge of the matter...." Last June, Apple touted three major enhancements coming to Siri: - the ability to tap into a customer's data to better answer queries and take actions. - a new system that would let the assistant more precisely control apps. - the capability to see what's currently on a device's screen and use that context to better serve users.... The goal is to ultimately offer a more versatile Siri that can seamlessly tap into customers' information and communication. For instance, users will be able to ask for a file or song that they discussed with a friend over text. Siri would then automatically retrieve that item. Apple also has demonstrated the ability for Siri to quickly locate someone's driver's license number by reviewing their photos... Inside Apple, many employees testing the new Siri have found that these features don't yet work consistently... The control enhancements — an upgraded version of something called App Intents — are central to the operation of the company's upcoming smart home hub. That product, an AI device for controlling smart home appliances and FaceTime, is slated for release later this year. And Amazon is also struggling with an AI upgrade for its digital assistant, reports the Washington Post: The "smarter and more conversational" version of Alexa will not be available until March 31 or later, the employee said, at least a year and a half after it was initially announced in response to competition from OpenAI's ChatGPT. Internal messages seen by The Post confirmed the launch was originally scheduled for this month but was subsequently moved to the end of March... According to internal documents seen by The Post, new features of the subscriber-only, AI-powered Alexa could include the ability to adopt a personality, recall conversations, order takeout or call a taxi. Some of the new Alexa features are similar to Alexa abilities that were previously available free through partnerships with companies like Grubhub and Uber... The AI-enhanced version of Alexa in development has been repeatedly delayed due to problems with incorrect answers, the employee working on the launch told The Post. As a popular product that is a decade old, the Alexa brand is valuable, and the company is hesitant to risk customer trust by launching a product that is not reliable, the person said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader shanen has been testing AI clients. (They report that China's DeepSeek "turned out to be extremely good at explaining why I should not trust it. Every computer security problem I ever thought of or heard about and some more besides.") Then they wondered if there's also government censorship: It's like the accountant who gets asked what 2 plus 2 is. After locking the doors and shading all the windows, the accountant whispers in your ear: "What do you want it to be...?" So let me start with some questions about DeepSeek in particular. Have you run it locally and compared the responses with the website's responses? My hypothesis is that your mileage should differ... It's well established that DeepSeek doesn't want to talk about many "political" topics. Is that based on a distorted model of the world? Or is the censorship implemented in the query interface after the model was trained? My hypothesis is that it must have been trained with lots of data because the cost of removing all of the bad stuff would have been prohibitive... Unless perhaps another AI filtered the data first? But their real question is: what would it take to trust an AI? "Trust" can mean different things, including data-collection policies. ("I bet most of you trust Amazon and Amazon's secret AIs more than you should..." shanen suggests.) Can you use an AI system without worrying about its data-retention policies? And they also ask how many Slashdot readers have read Ken Thompson's "Reflections on Trusting Trust", which raises the question of whether you can ever trust code you didn't create yourself. So is there any way an AI system can assure you its answers are accurate and trustworthy, and that it's safe to use? Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. What would it take for you to trust an AI?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Reddit Answers" uses generative AI to answer questions using what past Reddittors have posted. Announced in December, Reddit now plans to integrate it into their search results, reports TechCrunch, with Reddit's CEO saying the idea has "incredible monetization potential." And yet Reddit's stock fell 14% this week. CNBC's headline? "Reddit shares plunge after Google algorithm change contributes to miss in user numbers." A Google search algorithm change caused some "volatility" with user growth in the fourth quarter, but the company's search-related traffic has since recovered in the first quarter, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in a letter to shareholders. "What happened wasn't unusual — referrals from search fluctuate from time to time, and they primarily affect logged-out users," Huffman wrote. "Our teams have navigated numerous algorithm updates and did an excellent job adapting to these latest changes effectively...." Reddit has said it is working to convince logged-out users to create accounts as logged-in users, which are more lucrative for its business. As Yahoo Finance once pointed out, Reddit knew this day would come, acknowledging in its IPO filing that "changes in internet search engine algorithms and dynamics could have a negative impact on traffic for our website and, ultimately, our business." And in the last three months of 2024 Reddit's daily active users dropped, Yahoo Finance reported this week. But logged-in users increased by 400,000 — while logged-out users dropped by 600,000 (their first drop in almost two years). Marketwatch notes that analyst Josh Beck sees this as a buying opportunity for Reddit's stock: Beck pointed to comments from Reddit's management regarding a sharp recovery in daily active unique users. That was likely driven by Google benefiting from deeper Reddit crawling, by the platform uncollapsing comments in search results and by a potential benefit from spam-reduction algorithm updates, according to the analyst. "While the report did not clear our anticipated bar, we walk away encouraged by international upside," he wrote.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Reddit Answers" uses generative AI to answer questions using what past Reddittors have posted. Announced in December, Reddit now plans to integrate it into their search results, reports TechCrunch, with Reddit's CEO saying the idea has "incredible monetization potential." And yet Reddit's stock fell 14% this week. CNBC's headline? "Reddit shares plunge after Google algorithm change contributes to miss in user numbers." A Google search algorithm change caused some "volatility" with user growth in the fourth quarter, but the company's search-related traffic has since recovered in the first quarter, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in a letter to shareholders. "What happened wasn't unusual — referrals from search fluctuate from time to time, and they primarily affect logged-out users," Huffman wrote. "Our teams have navigated numerous algorithm updates and did an excellent job adapting to these latest changes effectively...." Reddit has said it is working to convince logged-out users to create accounts as logged-in users, which are more lucrative for its business. As Yahoo Finance once pointed out, Reddit knew this day would come, acknowledging in its IPO filing that "changes in internet search engine algorithms and dynamics could have a negative impact on traffic for our website and, ultimately, our business." And in the last three months of 2024 Reddit's daily active users dropped, Yahoo Finance reported this week. But logged-in users increased by 400,000 — while logged-out users dropped by 600,000 (their first drop in almost two years). Marketwatch notes that analyst Josh Beck sees this as a buying opportunity for Reddit's stock: Beck pointed to comments from Reddit's management regarding a sharp recovery in daily active unique users. That was likely driven by Google benefiting from deeper Reddit crawling, by the platform uncollapsing comments in search results and by a potential benefit from spam-reduction algorithm updates, according to the analyst. "While the report did not clear our anticipated bar, we walk away encouraged by international upside," he wrote.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Security researchers say the Chinese government-linked hacking group, Salt Typhoon, is continuing to compromise telecommunications providers," reports TechCrunch, "despite the recent sanctions imposed by the U.S. government on the group." TechRadar reports that the Chinese state-sponsored threat actor is "hitting not just American organizations, but also those from the UK, South Africa, and elsewhere around the world." The latest intrusions were spotted by cybersecurity researchers from Recorded Future, which said the group is targeting internet-exposed web interfaces of Cisco's IOS software that powers different routers and switches. These devices have known vulnerabilities that the threat actors are actively exploiting to gain initial access, root privileges, and more. More than 12,000 Cisco devices were found connected to the wider internet, and exposed to risk, Recorded Future further explained. However, Salt Typhoon is focusing on a "smaller subset" of telecoms and university networks. "The hackers attempted to exploit vulnerabilities in at least 1,000 Cisco devices," reports NextGov, "allowing them to access higher-level privileges of the hardware and change their configuration settings to allow for persistent access to the networks they're connected on... Over half of the Cisco appliances targeted by Salt Typhoon were located in the U.S., South America and India, with the rest spread across more than 100 countries." Between December and January, the unit, widely known as Salt Typhoon, "possibly targeted" — based on devices that were accessed — offices in the University of California, Los Angeles, California State University, Loyola Marymount University and Utah Tech University, according to a report from cyber threat intelligence firm Recorded Future... The Cisco devices were mainly associated with telecommunications firms, but 13 of them were linked to the universities in the U.S. and some in other nations... "Often involved in cutting-edge research, universities are prime targets for Chinese state-sponsored threat activity groups to acquire valuable research data and intellectual property," said the report, led by the company's Insikt Group, which oversees its threat research. The cyberspies also compromised Cisco platforms at a U.S.-based affiliate of a prominent United Kingdom telecom operator and a South African provider, both unnamed, the findings added. The hackers also "carried out a reconnaissance of multiple IP addresses" owned by Mytel, a telecom operator based in Myanmar... "In 2023, Cisco published a security advisory disclosing multiple vulnerabilities in the web UI feature in Cisco IOS XE software," a Cisco spokesperson said in a statement. "We continue to strongly urge customers to follow recommendations outlined in the advisory and upgrade to the available fixed software release."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hackaday reports: Good news for everyone who cannot get enough from improbably shaped boats that get referred to as a bench: the current owner (NTI Group) of the copyright has announced that 3DBenchy has been released into the public domain. This comes not too long after Prusa's Printables website had begun to purge all derived models to adhere to the 'no derivatives' license. According to NTI, the removal of these derived models was not requested by NTI, but by a third-party report, unbeknownst to NTI or the original creator of the model. Recognizing its importance to the community, 3DBenchy can now be downloaded & modified freely. NTI worked together with the original creator [Daniel Norée] and former Creative Tools CEO [Paulo Kiefe] to transition 3DBenchy and the associated website to the public domain More details at Tom's Hardware and Fabbaloo.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SFGate shares the latest data on America's office-occupancy rates: According to Placer.ai's January 2025 Office Index, office visits nationwide were 40.2% lower in January 2025 compared with pre-pandemic numbers from January 2019. But San Francisco is dragging down the average, with a staggering 51.8% decline in office visits since January 2019 — the weakest recovery of any major metro. Kastle's 10-City Daily Analysis paints an equally grim picture. From Jan. 23, 2025, to Jan. 28, 2025, even on its busiest day (Tuesday), San Francisco's office occupancy rate was just 53.7%, significantly lower than Houston's (74.8%) and Chicago's (70.4%). And on Friday, Jan. 24, office attendance in [San Francisco] was at a meager 28.5%, the worst of any major metro tracked... Meanwhile, other cities are seeing much stronger rebounds. New York City is leading the return-to-office trend, with visits in January down just 19% from 2019 levels, while Miami saw a 23.5% decline, per Placer.ai data. "Placer.ai uses cellphone location data to estimate foot traffic, while Kastle Systems measures badge swipes at office buildings with its security systems..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Can the iPhone, AirPods, or the Apple Watch play a role in improving health? Apple says they want to find out. "In medical research, discoveries are often limited by the number of participants who can be recruited, the amount of data that can be captured, and the duration of a given study," the company said in a blog post this week. "But Apple devices expand the possibilities..." This new longitudinal, virtual study aims to understand how data from technology — including Apple and third-party devices — can be used to predict, detect, monitor, and manage changes in participants' health. Additionally, researchers will explore connections across different areas of health. CNBC reports: The new study will likely influence future product development. Apple CEO Tim Cook previously said he believes health features will be the company's "most important contribution to mankind...." The Apple Health Study will be available through the company's Research app, and participation is voluntary. Users will select each data type they are willing to share with researchers, and they can stop sharing or completely discontinue their participation at any time. Apple has no access to participants' identifiable information, the company said... The project will last at least five years and may expand beyond that. A Harvard Medical School professor and cardiologist — also a principal investigator on the Apple Health Study — says "We've only just begun to scratch the surface of how technology can improve our understanding of human health."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Magnus Carlsen, the world's top chess player, is bored of chess," the Washington Post wrote Friday: Carlsen has spent much of the past year appearing to dismiss the game he has mastered: It was no longer exciting to play, he told a podcast in March. In December, he withdrew from defending a world championship because he was penalized for wearing jeans to the tournament. How would the world's best player spice up the game? Change the rules, and add a touch of reality TV. Ten of the world's top players gathered in a German villa on the Baltic coast this week to play in the first tournament of a new chess circuit, the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, that Carlsen co-founded. The twist: The tour randomizes the starting positions of the chess board's most important pieces, so each game begins with the queen, rooks and knights in a jumble. [It's sometimes called "Chess960" or Fischer random chess — with both players starting with the same arrangement of pieces.] Players have to adapt on the fly. Carlsen is backed by a cadre of investors who see a chance to dramatize chess with the theatrics of a television show. Players wear heart-rate monitors and give confession-booth interviews mid-match where they strategize and fret to the audience. Some purists are skeptical. So is the International Chess Federation, which sent a barrage of legal threats to Freestyle Chess before it launched this week's event. At stake is a lucrative global market of hundreds of millions of chess players that has only continued to grow since the coronavirus pandemic launched a startling chess renaissance — and, perhaps, the authority to decide if and how a centuries-old game should evolve... The format is an antidote to the classical game, where patterns and strategies have been so rigorously studied that it's hard to innovate, Carlsen said. "It's still possible to get a [competitive] game, but you have to sort of dig deeper and deeper," Carlsen said. "I just find that there's too little scope for creativity." The article also includes this quote from American grand master Hikaru Nakamura who runs a chess YouTube channel with 2.7 million subscribers). "An integral part of regular chess is that when you play, you spend hours preparing your opening strategy before the game. But with Fischer Random ... it's a little bit looser and more enjoyable." And German entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner (one of the investors) says they hope to bring the drama of Formula One racecars. ("Cameras mounted at table level peer up at each player during games," the article notes at one point.) The first Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour (with a $750,000 prize pool) concluded Friday, according to the article, but "Carlsen did not play in it," the Post points out. "He was upset in the semifinals by German grand master Vincent Keymer." Carlsen's reaction? "I definitely find Freestyle harder." But Chess.com reports that Carlsen will be back to playing regular chess very soon: Global esports powerhouse Team Liquid has announced the signings of not just one, but two superstars of chess. Five-time World Champion and world number-one Magnus Carlsen and the 2018 challenger, world number-two Fabiano Caruana will represent the club ahead of the 2025 Esports World Cup (EWC)... Carlsen and Caruana, fresh from competing in the Weissenhaus Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, will first represent Team Liquid in the $150,000 Chessable Masters, which begins on February 16 and serves as the first of two qualifying events in the 2025 Champions Chess Tour. The top-12 players from the tour qualify for the EWC. In an announcement video Carlsen reportedly trolls the FIDE, according to Indian Express. "The announcement video sees Carlsen wear a Team Liquid jersey along with a jacket and jeans. He then asks: 'Do I have to change?' To this, someone responds: 'Don't worry, we're pretty chill in esports. Welcome to Team Liquid.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian: Thousands of artists are urging the auction house Christie's to cancel a sale of art created with artificial intelligence, claiming the technology behind the works is committing "mass theft". The Augmented Intelligence auction has been described by Christie's as the first AI-dedicated sale by a major auctioneer and features 20 lots with prices ranging from $10,000 to $250,000... The British composer Ed Newton-Rex, a key figure in the campaign by creative professionals for protection of their work and a signatory to the letter, said at least nine of the works appearing in the auction appeared to have used models trained on artists' work. However, other pieces in the auction do not appear to have used such models. A spokesperson for Christie's said that "in most cases" the AI used to create art in the auction had been trained on the artists' "own inputs". More than 6,000 people have now signed the letter, which states point-blank that "Many of the artworks you plan to auction were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a license." These models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment to build commercial AI products that compete with them. Your support of these models, and the people who use them, rewards and further incentivizes AI companies' mass theft of human artists' work. We ask that, if you have any respect for human artists, you cancel the auction. Last week ARTnews spoke to Nicole Sales Giles, Christie's vice-president and director of digital art sales (before the open letter was published). And Giles insisted one of the major themes of the auction is "that AI is not a replacement for human creativity." "You can see a lot of human agency in all of these works," Giles said. "In every single work, you're seeing a collaboration between an AI model, a robot, or however the artist has chosen to incorporate AI. It is showing how AI is enhancing creativity and not becoming a substitute for it." One of the auction's headline lots is a 12-foot-tall robot made by Matr Labs that is guided by artist Alexander Reben's AI model. It will paint a new section of a canvas live during the sale every time the work receives a bid. Reben told ARTnews that he understands the frustrations of artists regarding the AI debate, but he sees "AI as an incredible tool... AI models which are trained on public data are done so under the idea of 'fair use,' just as search engines once faced scrutiny for organizing book data (which was ultimately found to fall under fair use)," he said.... "AI expands creative potential, offering new ways to explore, remix, and evolve artistic expression rather than replace it. The future of art isn't about AI versus artists — it's about how artists wield AI to push boundaries in ways we've never imagined before...." Digital artist Jack Butcher has used the open letter to create a minted digital artwork called Undersigned Artists. On X he wrote that the work "takes a collective act of dissent — an appeal to halt an AI art auction — and turns it into the very thing it resists: a minted piece of digital art. The letter, originally a condemnation of AI-generated works trained on unlicensed human labor, now becomes part of the system it critiques." Christie's will accept cryptocurrency payments for the majority of lots in the sale.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last June two NASA astronauts flew to the International Space Station on the first crewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner. But they aren't stranded there, and they weren't abandoned, the astronauts reminded CNN this week in a rare space-to-earth interview: "That's been the rhetoric. That's been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck — and I get it. We both get it," [NASA astronaut Butch] Wilmore said. "But that is, again, not what our human spaceflight program is about. We don't feel abandoned, we don't feel stuck, we don't feel stranded." Wilmore added a request: "If you'll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative. Let's change it to 'prepared and committed.' "That's what we prefer," he said... [NASA astronaut Suni] Williams also reiterated a sentiment she has expressed on several occasions, including in interviews conducted before she left Earth. "Butch and I knew this was a test flight," she told CNN's Cooper, acknowledging the pair has been prepared for contingencies and understood that the stay in space might be extended. "We knew that we would probably find some things (wrong with Starliner) and we found some stuff, and so that was not a surprise," she said. When Cooper opened the interview by asking the astronauts how they're doing, Williams answers "We're doing pretty darn good, actually," pointing out they had plenty of food and great crew members. And Wilmore added that crews come to the space station on a careful cycle, and "to alter that cycle sends ripple effects all the way down the chain. We would never expect to come back just special for us or anyone unless it was a medical issue or something really out of the circumstances along those lines. So we need to come back and keep the normal cycle going..." CNN's article notes a new announcement from NASA Tuesday that the astronauts might return a couple weeks early "after opting to change the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule it will use." That mission's targeted launch date is now March 12. In the meantime, Williams says in the interview, "We do have some internet connection up here, so we can get some internet live. We've gotten football. It's been this crew's go-to this past fall. Also YouTube or something like that. It's not continuous — it has chunks of time that we get it. And we use that same system also to make phone calls home, so we can talk to our families, and do videoconferences even on the weekends as well. This place is a pretty nice place to live, for the most part." And they're also "working on with folks on the ground" to test the NASA's cube-shaped, free-flying robotic Astrobees.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Remember Jeep's new in-dash pop-up ads which reportedly appeared every time you stopped? "Since I'm a journalist, or at least close enough, I decided that I should at least get Stellantis/Jeep's side of things," writes car-culture site The Autopian: Would Stellantis do something so woefully misguided and annoying? I reached out to our Stellantis/Jeep contact to ask and was initially told that they were "investigating" on their end, which to me felt like a stalling tactic while the proper ass-covering plans were conceived. I eventually got this response from a Stellantis spokesperson: "This was an in-vehicle message designed to inform Jeep customers about Mopar extended vehicle care options. A temporary software glitch affected the ability to instantly opt out in a few isolated cases, though instant opt-out is the standard for all our in-vehicle messages. Our team had already identified and corrected the error, and we are following up directly with the customer to ensure the matter is fully resolved..." I suppose a glitch is possible, though I've not seen any examples of this ad popping up with the instant opt-out option available, but I guess it must exist, since not all Jeep owners seem to have had to deal with these ads. I suspect if this was happening to more people than these "few isolated cases" we'd still be cleaning up from the aftermath of the riots and uprisings. Because, as they write, "Really, I can't think of a quicker way to incur the wrath of nearly every human..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to The Intercept, the IRS is set to purchase an Nvidia SuperPod AI supercomputer to enhance its machine learning capabilities for tasks like fraud detection and taxpayer behavior analysis. From the report: With Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency installing itself at the IRS amid a broader push to replace federal bureaucracy with machine-learning software, the tax agency's computing center in Martinsburg, West Virginia, will soon be home to a state-of-the-art Nvidia SuperPod AI computing cluster. According to the previously unreported February 5 acquisition document, the setup will combine 31 separate Nvidia servers, each containing eight of the company's flagship Blackwell processors designed to train and operate artificial intelligence models that power tools like ChatGPT. The hardware has not yet been purchased and installed, nor is a price listed, but SuperPod systems reportedly start at $7 million. The setup described in the contract materials notes that it will include a substantial memory upgrade from Nvidia. Though small compared to the massive AI-training data centers deployed by companies like OpenAI and Meta, the SuperPod is still a powerful and expensive setup using the most advanced technology offered by Nvidia, whose chips have facilitated the global machine-learning spree. While the hardware can be used in many ways, it's marketed as a turnkey means of creating and querying an AI model. Last year, the MITRE Corporation, a federally funded military R&D lab, acquired a $20 million SuperPod setup to train bespoke AI models for use by government agencies, touting the purchase as a "massive increase in computing power" for the United States. How exactly the IRS will use its SuperPod is unclear. An agency spokesperson said the IRS had no information to share on the supercomputer purchase, including which presidential administration ordered it. A 2024 report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration identified 68 different AI-related projects underway at the IRS; the Nvidia cluster is not named among them, though many were redacted. But some clues can be gleaned from the purchase materials. "The IRS requires a robust and scalable infrastructure that can handle complex machine learning (ML) workloads," the document explains. "The Nvidia Super Pod is a critical component of this infrastructure, providing the necessary compute power, storage, and networking capabilities to support the development and deployment of large-scale ML models." The document notes that the SuperPod will be run by the IRS Research, Applied Analytics, and Statistics division, or RAAS, which leads a variety of data-centric initiatives at the agency. While no specific uses are cited, it states that this division's Compliance Data Warehouse project, which is behind this SuperPod purchase, has previously used machine learning for automated fraud detection, identity theft prevention, and generally gaining a "deeper understanding of the mechanisms that drive taxpayer behavior."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new study suggests that frequent consumption of food from plastic takeout containers significantly increases the risk of congestive heart failure due to gut biome changes that trigger inflammation and circulatory damage. The Guardian reports: The authors used a two-part approach, first looking into the frequency with which over 3,000 people in China ate from plastic takeout containers, and whether they had heart disease. They then exposed rats to plastic chemicals in water that was boiled and poured in carryout containers to extract chemicals. "The data revealed that high-frequency exposure to plastics is significantly associated with an increased risk of congestive heart failure," the authors wrote. [...] They put boiling water in the containers for one, five or 15 minutes because plastic chemicals leach at much higher rates when hot contents are placed in containers -- the study cited previous research that found as many as 4.2m microplastic particles per sq cm can leach from plastic containers that are microwaved. The authors then gave rats the water contaminated with leachate to drink for several months, then analyzed the gut biome and metabolites in the feces. It found notable changes. "It indicated that ingestion of these leachates altered the intestinal microenvironment, affected gut microbiota composition, and modified gut microbiota metabolites, particularly those linked to inflammation and oxidative stress," the authors wrote. They then checked the rats' heart muscle tissue and found it had been damaged. The study did not find a statistical difference in the changes and damage among rats that were exposed to water that had been in contact with plastic for one minute versus five or fifteen. The study has been published in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Leveraging AI tools like RFDiffusion and PLACER, researchers were able to design a novel enzyme capable of breaking down plastic by targeting ester bonds, a key component in polyester. Ars Technica reports: The researchers started out by using the standard tools they developed to handle protein design, including an AI tool named RFDiffusion, which uses a random seed to generate a variety of protein backgrounds. In this case, the researchers asked RFDiffusion to match the average positions of the amino acids in a family of ester-breaking enzymes. The results were fed to another neural network, which chose the amino acids such that they'd form a pocket that would hold an ester that breaks down into a fluorescent molecule so they could follow the enzyme's activity using its glow. Of the 129 proteins designed by this software, only two of them resulted in any fluorescence. So the team decided they needed yet another AI. Called PLACER, the software was trained by taking all the known structures of proteins latched on to small molecules and randomizing some of their structure, forcing the AI to learn how to shift things back into a functional state (making it a generative AI). The hope was that PLACER would be trained to capture some of the structural details that allow enzymes to adopt more than one specific configuration over the course of the reaction they were catalyzing. And it worked. Repeating the same process with an added PLACER screening step boosted the number of enzymes with catalytic activity by over three-fold. Unfortunately, all of these enzymes stalled after a single reaction. It turns out they were much better at cleaving the ester, but they left one part of it chemically bonded to the enzyme. In other words, the enzymes acted like part of the reaction, not a catalyst. So the researchers started using PLACER to screen for structures that could adopt a key intermediate state of the reaction. This produced a much higher rate of reactive enzymes (18 percent of them cleaved the ester bond), and two -- named "super" and "win" -- could actually cycle through multiple rounds of reactions. The team had finally made an enzyme. By adding additional rounds alternating between structure suggestions using RFDiffusion and screening using PLACER, the team saw the frequency of functional enzymes increase and eventually designed one that had an activity similar to some produced by actual living things. They also showed they could use the same process to design an esterase capable of digesting the bonds in PET, a common plastic. The research has been published in the journal Science.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian: Microscopic particles emitted from brake pads can be more toxic than those emitted in diesel vehicle exhaust, a study has found. This research shows that even with a move to electric vehicles, pollution from cars may not be able to be eradicated. The researchers found that a higher concentration of copper in some commonly used brake pads was associated with increased harmful effects on sensitive cells from people's lungs, as a result of particles being breathed in. Exposure to pollution generated by cars, vans and lorries has been previously been linked to an increased risk of lung and heart disease. While past attention has mainly concentrated on exhaust emissions, particles are also released into the air from tyre, road and brake pad wear. These emissions are largely unregulated by legislation and the study found that these âoenon-exhaustâ pollution sources are now responsible for the majority of vehicle particulate matter emissions in the UK and parts of Europe, with brake dust the main contributor among them. [...] The scientists examined the effects on lung health of particulate matter from four different types of brake pad with differing chemical compositions; low metallic, semi-metallic, non-asbestos organic and hybrid-ceramic. Results showed that of the four types of brake pads, non-asbestos organic pads were the most potent at inducing inflammation and other markers of toxicity, and were found to be more toxic to human lung cells than diesel exhaust particles. Ceramic pads were the second most toxic. Dr. Ian Mudway, senior lecturer at the school of public health at Imperial College London, cautioned that while the research on brake pad emissions appears sound, it is premature to conclude they are worse than diesel exhaust due to "uncontrolled variables" like brake disc types and particle composition. Slashdot reader Bruce66423 also notes it "doesn't discuss the significance of regenerative breaking, which is a feature of at least some electric cars [that reduces brake pad wear by using the electric motor to slow down the vehicle and recover energy]." The research has been published in the journal Particle and Fibre Technology.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Most virtual meeting platforms these days include AI-powered notetaking tools or bots that join meetings as guests, transcribe discussions, and/or summarize key points. "The tech companies behind them might frame it as a step forward in efficiency, but the technology raises troubling questions around etiquette and privacy and risks undercutting the very communication it's meant to improve (paywalled; alternative source)," writes Chris Stokel-Walker in a Weekend Essay for Bloomberg. From the article: [...] The push to document every workplace interaction and utterance is not new. Having a paper trail has long been seen as a useful thing, and a record of decisions and action points is arguably what makes a meeting meaningful. The difference now is the inclusion of new technology that lacks the nuance and depth of understanding inherent to human interaction in a meeting room. In some ways, the prior generation of communication tools, such as instant messaging service Slack, created its own set of problems. Messaging that previously passed in private via email became much more transparent, creating a minefield where one wrong word or badly chosen emoji can explode into a dispute between colleagues. There is a similar risk with notetaking tools. Each utterance documented and analyzed by AI includes the potential for missteps and misunderstandings. Anyone thinking of bringing an AI notetaker to a meeting must consider how other attendees will respond, says Andrew Brodsky, assistant professor of management at the McCombs School of Business, part of the University of Texas at Austin. Colleagues might think you want to better focus on what is said without missing out on a definitive record of the discussion. Or they might think, "You can't be bothered to take notes yourself or remember what was being talked about," he says. For the companies that sell these AI interlopers, the upside is clear. They recognize we're easily nudged into different behaviors and can quickly become reliant on tools that we survived without for years. [...] There's another benefit for tech companies getting us hooked on AI notetakers: Training data for AI systems is increasingly hard to come by. Research group Epoch AI forecasts there will be a drought of usable text possibly by next year. And with publishers unleashing lawsuits against AI companies for hoovering up their content, the tech firms are on the hunt for other sources of data. Notes from millions of meetings around the world could be an ideal option. For those of us who are the source of such data, however, the situation is more nuanced. The key question is whether AI notetakers make office meetings more useless than so many already are. There's an argument that meetings are an important excuse for workers to come together and talk as human beings. All that small talk is where good ideas often germinate -- that's ostensibly why so many companies are demanding staff return to the office. But if workers trade in-person engagement for AI readbacks, and colleagues curb their words and ideas for fear of being exposed by bots, what's left? If the humans step back, all that remains is a series of data points and more AI slop polluting our lives.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.