The Federal Communications Commission is making up to $200 million available to help schools and libraries make their computer systems more secure. From a report: The Schools and Libraries Cybersecurity Pilot Program will be used to evaluate whether to fund this kind of program on a more permanent basis. The funding will come through a pool of money called the Universal Service Fund (USF), which is made up of contributions from telecommunications companies. Schools and libraries participating in the program will be able to reimburse things like advanced firewalls, identity protection and authentication services, malware protection, and VPNs.

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Amazon is set to roll out a greater number of ads [non-paywalled link] across its blockbuster television shows and movies on Prime Video next year as the US tech giant steps up its push into ad-funded streaming services. Financial Times: The company said it had not seen a sharp drop in subscribers since it introduced advertising to its Prime Video platform eight months ago, allaying fears among top executives of a customer backlash, as it attempts to win over more brands to its streaming service. Kelly Day, vice-president of Prime Video International, who oversees the streaming video business in global markets, told the Financial Times there would be an increasing number of ad slots for brands to target in 2025. Talking ahead of its first London "up front" on Wednesday evening -- when television companies present their plans to advertisers to attract money over the next year -- Day said its advertising "load" would "ramp up a little bit more into 2025."

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Financial Times has more details on the new fundraise closed by OpenAI. From the report: OpenAI has asked investors to avoid backing rival start-ups such as Anthropic and Elon Musk's xAI, as it secures $6.6bn in new funding and seeks to shut out challengers to its early lead in generative artificial intelligence. [...] During the negotiations, the company made clear that it expected an exclusive funding arrangement, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions. Seeking exclusive relationships with investors restricts rivals' access to capital and strategic partnerships. The move by the maker of ChatGPT risks inflaming existing tensions with competitors, especially Musk, who is suing OpenAI. Venture firms are party to sensitive information about the companies they invest in, and close relationships with one company can make it difficult or contentious to also back a rival. But exclusivity is rarely insisted on, according to VCs, and many leading firms have spread their bets in certain sectors. Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, for instance, have backed multiple AI start-ups, including both OpenAI and Musk's xAI.

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Apple's iOS 18 update has introduced changes to contact sharing that could significantly impact social app developers. The new feature allows users to selectively share contacts with apps, rather than granting access to their entire address book. While Apple touts this as a privacy enhancement, developers warn it may hinder the growth of new social platforms. Nikita Bier, a start-up founder, called it "the end of the world" for friend-based social apps. Critics argue the change doesn't apply to Apple's own services, potentially giving the tech giant an unfair advantage.

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OpenAI has completed a deal to raise over $6.5 billion in new funding, giving the artificial intelligence company a more than $150 billion valuation, and bolstering its efforts to build the world's leading generative AI technology. From a report: The deal is one of the largest-ever private investments, and makes OpenAI one of the three largest venture-backed startups, alongside Elon Musk's SpaceX and TikTok owner ByteDance, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The size of the investment underscores the tech industry's belief in the power of AI, and its appetite for the extremely costly research powering its advancement. The funding round was led by Thrive Capital, the venture capital firm headed up by Josh Kushner, Bloomberg previously reported, along with other global investors. Financial Times has reported that OpenAI has asked its investors to not back its rivals.

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Juno, an app designed for watching YouTube on the Vision Pro, has been removed from the App Store, developer Christian Selig said today. From a report: Back in April, YouTube emailed Selig and said that Juno was violating the YouTube Terms of Service and the YouTube API by modifying the native YouTube.com web user interface, and used YouTube trademarks and iconography that could be confusing to customers. In response, Selig switched from using the embed player to the website player, made it clear that Juno was an unofficial YouTube viewer, and explained to YouTube that as a web viewer, Juno is not using YouTube APIs. At the same time, though, YouTube filed a complaint with the App Store, and Selig went on to warn customers that he would not fight Google on any decision regarding Juno. Juno has now been removed from the App Store by Apple in response to YouTube's complaint. Selig says that he does not agree with the decision because Juno is a simple web view and that that modifies CSS to make the player look more "visionOS like," but he does not plan to appeal the decision.

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Two Harvard students have developed smart glasses with facial recognition capabilities, sparking debate over privacy and surveillance. The project, dubbed I-XRAY, uses Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses coupled with facial recognition software to identify strangers and retrieve personal information about them. AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, the creators, tested the technology on unsuspecting individuals in public spaces. The glasses scan faces, match them against online databases, and display personal details on a smartphone within seconds. The students claim their project aims to raise awareness about potential privacy risks.

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Anduril founder Palmer Luckey advocated for a "warrior class" and autonomous weapons during a talk at Pepperdine University. The defense tech entrepreneur, known for his Hawaiian shirts and mullet, argued that societies need people "excited about enacting violence on others in pursuit of good aims." Luckey revealed that Anduril supplied weapons to Ukraine two weeks into the Russian invasion, lamenting that earlier involvement could have made "a really big difference." He criticized Western hesitancy on AI development, claiming adversaries are waging a "shadow campaign" against it in the United Nations. Contradicting his co-founder's stance, Luckey endorsed fully autonomous weapons, comparing them favorably to indiscriminate landmines.

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Microsoft is releasing a new version of Office this week, designed for people that don't want to subscribe to Microsoft 365. From a report: The standalone Microsoft Office 2024 release is now available for both consumers and small businesses, and includes locked-in-time versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook across both Mac and PC. Office 2024 includes a lot of the updates that Microsoft has been delivering to Microsoft 365 subscribers over the past few years. Microsoft last released a standalone version of Office in 2021, and this new Office 2024 release includes improvements to the core apps, as well as accessibility and UI changes. Office 2024 has a new default theme, with Microsoft's latest Fluent Design principles that match the visual changes to Windows 11. Microsoft has also added accessibility-focused improvements to help Office users find potential accessibility issues in documents, slideshows, workbooks, and emails.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Somewhere over the streets of San Francisco's Mission, a microphone sits surveilling ... for banger songs. Bop Spotter is a project by technologist Riley Walz in which he has hidden an Android phone in a box on a pole, rigged it to be solar powered, and has set it to record audio and periodically sends it to Shazam's API to determine which songs people are playing in public. Walz describes it as ShotSpotter, but for music. "This is culture surveillance. No one notices, no one consents. But it's not about catching criminals," Walz's website reads. "It's about catching vibes. A constant feed of what's popping off in real-time." ShotSpotter, of course, is the microphone-based, "gunshot detection" surveillance company that cities around the country have spent millions of dollars on. ShotSpotter is often inaccurate, and sometimes detects things like fireworks or a car backfiring as gunshots. Chicago, one of ShotSpotter's biggest clients, is finally allowing its contract with the company to end. Bop Spotter, on the other hand, is designed to figure out what cool music people are blasting from their cars or as they walk down the street. "I am a chronic Shazam-er. Most songs I listen to come from first hearing them at a party, store, or on the street," Walz told 404 Media. "Years ago I had the thought that it'd be cool to Shazam 24/7 from a fixed location, and I recently learned about ShotSpotter, and thought it'd be amusing to do what they do with music instead of gunshots. Was a great weekend project." Walz said that the phone itself is rigged to a solar panel, and that it records audio in 10-minute blocks while in airplane mode. "Then it connects to WiFi to send the file to my server, which then split it into 20-second chunks that get passed to Shazam's API. The device doesn't Shazam directly, that would use way too much power. Probably $100 of parts," he said. BopSpotter's website has a constant feed of songs it hears, as well as links to play the songs in Spotify or Apple Music. As I'm writing this, BopSpotter has picked up "Not Like Us" by Kendrick Lamar, "The Next Episode" by Dr. Dre, and "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley (a Rick Roll already?) among dozens of songs in the last few hours. The site also has a constant feed of the device's power levels. So far in three days, it has detected 380 songs. "I thought the solar panel would be annoying but it provides 4 times more power than the phone needs," Walz said. "The hardest part was scoping out which pole to actually put it up on. I had to balance finding a busy location where lots of music could be picked up, with enough sunlight, and good connection to a public wifi network." Walz didn't say where exactly the phone is located.

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Google Flights is offering train routes as an alternative to airlines, thanks to a new partnership with Amtrak. 9to5Google reports: In the US, this option surfaces routes and pricing directly provided by Amtrak, as the rail service announced recently: "Amtrak and Google have joined forces to help travelers choose more sustainable transportation options when searching for intercity travel. Thanks to a newly launched, direct data integration, travelers using Google can now view the most up-to-date Amtrak departure times, trip durations and fares directly on the Google Search results page. Amtrak's new integration with Google also means that once customers select a train, they can click through to Amtrak.com to complete the booking for their chosen itinerary without needing to re-enter their trip details." Amtrak says that choosing a train route over a flight can cut a customer's carbon footprint by up to 72%. Of course, train routes in the US often take considerably longer than flights, but this new option should make it far easier to make the comparison.

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California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law giving the California Energy Commission the authority to require bidirectional charging in electric vehicles (EVs) in the future -- although no timeline is set. Bidirectional charging allows EVs to not only charge from the grid but also supply electricity back to the grid, potentially enhancing grid resiliency, supporting renewable energy, and reducing peak electricity demand. Electrek reports: The idea started in 2023 when state Senator Nancy Skinner introduced a bill which would require EVs to have bidirectional charging by 2027. As this bill made its way through the legislative process, it got watered down from that ambitious timeline. So the current form of the bill, which is now called SB 59, took away that timeline and instead gave the California Energy Commission (CEC) the go-ahead to issue a requirement whenever they see it fit. The bill directs the CEC, the California Air Resources Board, and the California Public Utilities Commission to examine the use cases of bidirectional charging and give them the power to require specific weight classes of EVs to be bidirectional-capable if a compelling use case exists. The state already estimates that integrating EVs into the grid could save $1 billion in costs annually, so there's definitely a use case there, but the question is the cost and immediacy of building those vehicles into the grid. The reason this can't be done immediately is that cars take time to design, and while adding bidirectional charging to an EV isn't the most difficult process, it also only really becomes useful with a whole ecosystem of services around the vehicle. And that ecosystem has been a bit of a hard sell so far. It's all well and good to tell someone they can make $500/year by selling energy to the grid, but then you have to convince them to buy a more expensive charging unit and keep their car plugged in all the time, with someone else managing its energy storage. Some consumers might push back against that, so part of CEC's job is to wait to pull the trigger until it becomes apparent that people are actually interested in the end-user use case for V2G -- otherwise, no sense in requiring a feature that nobody is going to use.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney opened the Unreal Fest Seattle event today with an update on news that included a blistering criticism of monopolistic platform owners. Sweeney is a big proponent of open platforms and the open metaverse. In fact, he will talk about that subject in a virtual talk at our GamesBeat Next 2024 event on October 28-29 in San Francisco. (You can use this code for a 25% discount: gbn24dean). And so Sweeney continues to pressure the major platforms to give more favorable terms to game developers. He started out on that front by giving a price cut for users of Unreal Engine 5, Epic's tools for making games. For those who release games first or simultaneously on the Epic Games Store, Epic is cutting its royalty rate from 5% to 3.5% for Unreal developers. He noted that Epic is in better financial shape than it was a year ago, when Epic had to lay off a lot of staff. Sweeney said the company spent the last year rebuilding. "We're at a point now where game development is expensive. It's low margin, and game companies are suffering. Apple and Google make way more profit from most games than the developers make themselves, while contributing nothing," Sweeney said. Sweeney reminisced about programming on early Apple computers, aligning with Steve Wozniak's vision for Apple where users had complete freedom without corporate restrictions. He contrasted this with today's mobile platforms, accusing Apple and Google of acting as gatekeepers that stifle innovation. "Among the fights we've taken on here, he noted the case with Apple is still an ongoing fight to open up payments so developers can process payments without Apple mediation and without Apple fees," he said, noting the "massive victory" against Google in a jury trial late last year.

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Nintendo has convinced Ryujinx's lead developer to shut down the project. According to The Verge, the Switch emulator's download page is empty and its GitHub is gone. The Verge reports: "Yesterday, gdkchan was contacted by Nintendo and offered an agreement to stop working on the project, remove the organization and all related assets he's in control of," writes developer and moderator ripinperiperi on Discord. "While awaiting confirmation on whether he would take this agreement, the organization has been removed, so I think it's safe to say what the outcome is." The rest of ripinperiperi's message is a eulogy for the project, including a pair of videos showing the Ryujinx team's progress on iOS and Android ports of the Nintendo Switch emulator, among other core changes -- ones that will now presumably never ship. Nintendo would not confirm or deny to The Verge that it made a deal with the developer. Instead, Nintendo spokesperson Eddie Garcia mysteriously pointed me to the Entertainment Software Association's head of public affairs Aubrey Quinn -- who said she couldn't speak on behalf of Nintendo.

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At its DevDay event today, OpenAI announced that it is giving third-party developers access to its speech-to-speech engine that powers ChatGPT's advanced voice mode. "The move paves the way for a wave of AI apps that offer conversational voice interfaces," reports Axios. From the report: Early testers of the feature include nutrition and fitness app Healthify and Speak, a language learning app. Other new features being made available to developers include the ability to fine tune models based on pictures. In a demo for reporters, OpenAI executives showed an example of the new audio capabilities combined with Twilio's API to allow an AI assistant to call a fictional candy shop and place an order for 400 chocolate covered strawberries. Developers will only be able to use the voices provided by OpenAI -- the same ones that are options within ChatGPT. While the voice won't be watermarked in any way and developers won't have to make the AI system identify itself, OpenAI says it's against the company's terms of service to use its systems to spam or mislead people.

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The Firefox extension for the uBlock Origin Lite content blocker is no longer available. According to Neowin, "Raymond Hill, the maker of the extension, pulled support and moved uBlock Origin Lite to self-hosting after multiple encounters with a 'nonsensical and hostile' review process from the store review team." From the report: It all started in early September when Mozilla flagged every version of the uBlock Origin Lite extension as violating its policies. Reviewers then claimed the extension apparently collected user data and contained "minified, concatenated or otherwise machine-generated code." The developer seemingly debunked those allegations, saying that "it takes only a few seconds for anyone who has even basic understanding of JavaScript to see the raised issues make no sense." Raymond Hill decided to drop the extension from the store and move it to a self-hosted version. This means that those who want to continue using uBlock Origin Lite on Firefox should download the latest version from GitHub (it can auto-update itself). The last message from the developer in a now-closed GitHub issue shows an email from Mozilla admitting its fault and apologizing for the mistake. However, Raymond still pulled the extension from the Mozilla Add-ons Store, which means you can no longer find it on addons.mozilla.org. It is worth noting that the original uBlock Origin for Firefox is still available and supported.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A federal judge dismissed a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit accusing eBay of violating environmental laws by allowing the sale of hundreds of thousands of harmful products on its platform, including pesticides and devices to evade motor vehicle pollution controls. U.S. District Judge Orelia Merchant in Brooklyn ruled on Monday that Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which protects online platforms from liability over user content, shielded eBay from liability in the civil lawsuit. The judge said eBay's administrative and technical support to sellers "does not materially contribute to the products' alleged unlawfulness" and does not make the San Jose, California, company a "publisher or speaker" on sellers' behalf. Merchant also said eBay was not a "seller" of some of the challenged products, because it did not physically possess them or hold title. She rejected the government's argument that eBay was a seller because it exchanged the products for money. The U.S. government argued eBay violated the Clean Air Act by allowing the sale of harmful products, including more than 343,000 aftermarket "defeat" devices that help vehicles generate more power and get better fuel economy by evading emissions controls. The company also was accused of allowing sales of 23,000 unregistered, misbranded or restricted-use pesticides, as well as distributing more than 5,600 paint and coating removal products that contained methylene chloride, a chemical linked to brain and liver cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

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The Register's Simon Sharwood reports: AT&T has claimed that Broadcom made it an offer to increase prices by 1,050 percent, and may be influencing other vendors to make a migration harder. The claim of the colossal price hike came in an email [PDF] filed in evidence by AT&T in its case alleging Broadcom hasn't honored a contract that would allow the carrier to acquire an additional two years of support services for its VMware estate. The email was penned by AT&T executive vice president and general manager Susan A Johnson and appears to be addressed to Broadcom CEO Hock Tan. "After a 10 plus year strategic relationship with Broadcom ... I am sad to report that we appear to be at an impasse on our VMware deal," Johnson wrote on August 19. "The latest offer that we have received would put us at an average of $REDACTED per year for a 5 year deal, where we currently pay $REDACTED per year to support previously purchased perpetual licenses with a right to renew support through September, 2026. This proposed annual increase of +1,050 percent in one year is extreme and certainly not how we expect strategic partners to engage in doing business with AT&T."

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OpenAI co-founder Durk Kingma announced that he'll be joining Anthropic. "Anthropic's approach to AI development resonates significantly with my own beliefs," Kingma wrote in a post on X. "[L]ooking forward to contributing to Anthropic's mission of developing powerful AI systems responsibly. Can't wait to work with their talented team, including a number of great ex-colleagues from OpenAI and Google, and tackle the challenges ahead!" TechCrunch reports: Kingma, who has a Ph.D. in machine learning from the University of Amsterdam, spent several years as a doctoral fellow at Google before joining OpenAI's founding team as a research scientist. At OpenAI, Kingma focused on basic research, leading the algorithms team to develop techniques and methods primarily for generative AI models, including image generators (e.g. DALL-E 3) and large language models (e.g. ChatGPT). In 2018, Kingma left to become a part-time angel investor and advisor for AI startups. He rejoined Google in July of that year, and started at Google Brain, which became one of the tech giant's premiere AI R&D labs before it merged with DeepMind in 2023.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Federal prosecutors have charged a man for an alleged "hack-to-trade" scheme that earned him millions of dollars by breaking into the Office365 accounts of executives at publicly traded companies and obtaining quarterly financial reports before they were released publicly. The action, taken by the office of the US Attorney for the district of New Jersey, accuses UK national Robert B. Westbrook of earning roughly $3.75 million in 2019 and 2020 from stock trades that capitalized on the illicitly obtained information. After accessing it, prosecutors said, he executed stock trades. The advance notice allowed him to act and profit on the information before the general public could. The US Securities and Exchange Commission filed a separate civil suit against Westbrook seeking an order that he pay civil penalties and return all ill-gotten gains. [...] By obtaining material information, Westbrook was able to predict how a company's stock would perform once it became public. When results were likely to drive down stock prices, he would place "put" options, which give the purchaser the right to sell shares at a specific price within a specified span of time. The practice allowed Westbrook to profit when shares fell after financial results became public. When positive results were likely to send stock prices higher, Westbrook allegedly bought shares while they were still low and later sold them for a higher price. The prosecutors charged Westbrook with one count each of securities fraud and wire fraud and five counts of computer fraud. The securities fraud count carries a maximum penalty of up to 20 years' prison time and $5 million in fines The wire fraud count carries a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison and a fine of either $250,000 or twice the gain or loss from the offense, whichever is greatest. Each computer fraud count carries a maximum five years in prison and a maximum fine of either $250,000 or twice the gain or loss from the offense, whichever is greatest. "The SEC is engaged in ongoing efforts to protect markets and investors from the consequences of cyber fraud," Jorge G. Tenreiro, acting chief of the SEC's Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit, said in a statement. "As this case demonstrates, even though Westbrook took multiple steps to conceal his identity -- including using anonymous email accounts, VPN services, and utilizing bitcoin -- the Commission's advanced data analytics, crypto asset tracing, and technology can uncover fraud even in cases involving sophisticated international hacking."

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