An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Anova, a company that sells smart sous vide cookers, is getting backlash from customers after announcing that it will soon charge a subscription fee for the device's companion app. Anova was founded in 2013 and sells sous vide immersion circulators. Its current third-generation Precision Cooker 3.0 has an MSRP of $200. Anova also sells a $149 model and a $400 version that targets professionals. It debuted the free Anova Culinary App in 2014. In a blog post on Thursday, Anova CEO and cofounder Stephen Svajian announced that starting on August 21, people who sign up to use the Anova Culinary App with the cooking devices will have to pay $2 per month, or $10 per year. The app does various things depending on the paired cooker, but it typically offers sous vide cooking guides, cooking notifications, and the ability to view, save, bookmark, and share recipes. The subscription fee will only apply to people who make an account after August 21. Those who downloaded the app and made an account before August 21 won't have to pay. But everyone will have to make an account; some people have been using the app without one until now. "You helped us build Anova, and our intent is that you will be grandfathered in forever," Svajian wrote. According to Svajian, the subscription fees are necessary so Anova can "continue delivering the exceptional service and innovative recipes" and "maintain and enhance the app, ensuring it remains a valuable resource." As Digital Trends pointed out, the announcement follows an Anova statement saying it will no longer let users remotely control their kitchen gadgets via Bluetooth starting on September 28, 2025. This means that remote control via the app will only be possible for models offering and using Wi-Fi connectivity. Owners of affected devices will no longer be able to access their device via the Anova app, get notifications, or use status monitoring. Users will still be able to manually set the time, temperature, and timer via the device itself.

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IKEA is expanding its stock-counting drone system to operate alongside workers in the U.S., starting with its Perryville, Maryland distribution center. The Verge reports: The Verity-branded drones also come with a new AI-powered system that allows them to fly around warehouses 24/7. That means they'll now operate alongside human workers, helping to count inventory as well as identify if something's in the wrong spot. Previously, the drones only flew during nonoperational hours. Parag Parekh, the chief digital officer for Ikea retail, says in the press release that flights are prescheduled and that the drones use a "custom indoor positioning system to navigate higher levels of storage locations." They also have an obstacle detection system that allows them to reroute their paths to avoid collisions. Ikea is also working on several upgrades for the drones, including the ability to inspect unit loads and racks. So far, Ikea's fleet consists of more than 250 drones operating across 73 warehouses in nine countries. Ikea first launched its drone system in partnership with Verity in 2021 and expanded it to more locations throughout Europe last year. Now, Ikea plans on bringing its AI-upgraded drones to more distribution centers in Europe and North America, which the company says will help "reduce the ergonomic strain on [human] co-workers, allowing them to focus on lighter and more interesting tasks."

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A federal judge blocked the launch of Venu, a sports streaming joint venture by Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery, due to concerns it would substantially lessen competition and harm FuboTV. Variety reports: Fubo launched in 2015 as a start-up focused on streaming sports programming. [...] Venu, expected to launch in late August ahead of the start of the NFL's coming fall season and priced at an initial price tag of $42.99 per month, was to carry all of the sports offerings of ESPN, Fox Sports 1 and 2, and TNT for a price that is seen as more than a regional sports network but less than a full programming package available via YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV. The three parent companies are targeting a new generation of consumers who disdain the high costs of traditional cable packages are more at home with signing up for streaming venues that are relatively easy to get in and out of based on the availability of favorite entertainment programs or sporting events. Judge Garnett found that once Venu launches, FuboTV would face "a swift exodus" of large numbers of subscribers, and indicated she felt "that Fubo's bankruptcy and delisting of the company's stock will likely soon follow. These are quintessential harms that money cannot adequately repair." Fubo alleged that Venu's launch "will cause it to lose approximately 300,000 to 400,000 (or nearly 30%) of its subscribers, suffer a significant decline in its ability to attract new subscribers, lose between $75 and $95 million in revenue, and be transformed into a penny stock awaiting delisting from the New York Stock Exchange, all before year-end 2024," the judge said in her decision. "We respectfully disagree with the court's ruling and are appealing it," Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery said in a statement. "We believe that Fubo's arguments are wrong on the facts and the law, and that Fubo has failed to prove it is legally entitled to a preliminary injunction. Venu Sports is a pro-competitive option that aims to enhance consumer choice by reaching a segment of viewers who currently are not served by existing subscription options."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Artificial intelligence company OpenAI said Friday that an Iranian group had used its ChatGPT chatbot to generate content to be posted on websites and social media (Warning: source is paywalled; alternative source) seemingly aimed at stirring up polarization among American voters in the presidential election. The sites and social media accounts that OpenAI discovered posted articles and opinions made with help from ChatGPT on topics including the conflict in Gaza and the Olympic Games. They also posted material about the U.S. presidential election, spreading misinformation and writing critically about both candidates, a company report said. Some appeared on sites that Microsoft last week said were used by Iran to post fake news articles intended to amp up political division in the United States, OpenAI said. The AI company banned the ChatGPT accounts associated with the Iranian efforts and said their posts had not gained widespread attention from social media users. OpenAI found "a dozen" accounts on X and one on Instagram that it linked to the Iranian operation and said all appeared to have been taken down after it notified those social media companies. Ben Nimmo, principal investigator on OpenAI's intelligence and investigations team, said the activity was the first case of the company detecting an operation that had the U.S. election as a primary target. "Even though it doesn't seem to have reached people, it's an important reminder, we all need to stay alert but stay calm," he said.

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Eric Schmidt, at a recent talk where he also talked -- and then walked back the comment -- on Google's work-culture: If TikTok is banned, here's what I propose each and every one of you do: Say to your LLM the following: "Make me a copy of TikTok, steal all the users, steal all the music, put my preferences in it, produce this program in the next 30 seconds, release it, and in one hour, if it's not viral, do something different along the same lines." That's the command. Boom, boom, boom, boom. So, in the example that I gave of the TikTok competitor -- and by the way, I was not arguing that you should illegally steal everybody's music -- what you would do if you're a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, which hopefully all of you will be, is if it took off, then you'd hire a whole bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up, right? But if nobody uses your product, it doesn't matter that you stole all the content. And do not quote me.

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Jimmy Miller, programmer and co-host of the future of coding podcast, writes in a blog: When I started programming as a kid, I didn't know people were paid to program. Even as I graduated high school, I assumed that the world of "professional development" looked quite different from the code I wrote in my spare time. When I lucked my way into my first software job, I quickly learned just how wrong and how right I had been. My first job was a trial by fire, to this day, that codebase remains the worst and the best codebase I ever had the pleasure of working in. While the codebase will forever remain locked by proprietary walls of that particular company, I hope I can share with you some of its most fun and scary stories. [...] Every morning at 7:15 the employees table was dropped. All the data completely gone. Then a csv from adp was uploaded into the table. During this time you couldn't login to the system. Sometimes this process failed. But this wasn't the end of the process. The data needed to be replicated to headquarters. So an email was sent to a man, who every day would push a button to copy the data. [...] But what is a database without a codebase. And what a magnificent codebase it was. When I joined everything was in Team Foundation Server. If you aren't familiar, this was a Microsoft-made centralized source control system. The main codebase I worked in was half VB, half C#. It ran on IIS and used session state for everything. What did this mean in practice? If you navigated to a page via Path A or Path B you'd see very different things on that page. But to describe this codebase as merely half VB, half C# would be to do it a disservice. Every javascript framework that existed at the time was checked into this repository. Typically, with some custom changes the author believed needed to be made. Most notably, knockout, backbone, and marionette. But of course, there was a smattering of jquery and jquery plugins.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Traffic along some of Seattle's stop-and-go streets is running a little smoother after Google tested out a new machine-learning system to optimize stoplight timing at five intersections. The company launched this test as part of its Green Light pilot program in 2023 in Seattle and a dozen other cities, including some notoriously congested places such as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Kolkata, India. Across these test sites, local traffic engineers use Green Light's suggestions -- based on artificial intelligence and Google Maps data -- to adjust stoplight timing. Google intends for these changes to curb waiting at lights while increasing vehicle flow across busy throughways and intersections -- and, ultimately, to reduce greenhouse gases. "We have seen positive results," says Mariam Ali, a Seattle Department of Transportation spokesperson. Green Light has provided "specific, actionable recommendations," she adds, and it has identified bottlenecks (and confirmed known ones) within the traffic system. Managing the movement of vehicles through urban streets requires lots of time, money and consideration of factors such as pedestrian safety and truck routes. Google's foray into the field is one of many ongoing attempts to modernize traffic engineering by incorporating GPS app data, connected cars and artificial intelligence. Preliminary data suggest the system could reduce stops by up to 30 percent and emissions at intersections by up to 10 percent as a result of reduced idling, according to Google's 2024 Environmental Report. The company plans to expand to more cities soon. The newfangled stoplight system doesn't come close to replacing human decision-making in traffic engineering, however, and it may not be the sustainability solution Google claims it is.

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The San Francisco City Attorney's office is suing 16 of the most frequently visited AI-powered "undressing" websites, often used to create nude deepfakes of women and girls without their consent. From a report: The landmark lawsuit, announced at a press conference by City Attorney David Chiu, says that the targeted websites were collectively visited over 200 million times in the first six months of 2024 alone. The offending websites allow users to upload images of real, fully clothed people, which are then digitally "undressed" with AI tools that simulate nudity. One of these websites, which wasn't identified within the complaint, reportedly advertises: "Imagine wasting time taking her out on dates, when you can just use [the redacted website] to get her nudes."

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America's top colleges and finance-industry recruiters have long had their eye on teenage whiz-kids who compete in a prestigious high-school math contest. Now, allegations of cheating are threatening to disrupt it. WSJ: Online leaks of tests for the country's best-known math contest -- the 74-year-old American Mathematics Competition -- are upsetting students who have spent years preparing for the exams. Ahead of the coming school year and test season, angry parents and math coaches have pushed the contest's administrator to tighten controls. The incident is the latest byproduct of a high-pressure college-admissions race that can lead students to look for any edge to get ahead. [...] As early as elementary school, students interested in flexing their math knowledge beyond what is taught in school can participate in math clubs and competitions. Each year, more than 300,000 students through high school participate in the AMC's first round of multiple-choice tests. Several thousand top performers are invited to sit for a higher-level test, and from there, around 600 compete in national "math olympiads." The top six math students in the nation then represent the U.S. internationally; the U.S. won its ninth International Mathematical Olympiad title this summer. Murmurs about cheating in the AMC have circulated for a few years, participants say, but reached critical levels during the past school year. The entirety of exams at each level of the competition were available online hours or days before students sat for the tests, a spokeswoman for the Mathematical Association of America confirmed. Testing sites in the U.S. and abroad receive the questions online early to give proctors time to print them out for the in-person exams.

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Security researcher Bill Demirkapi unveiled a massive trove of leaked developer secrets and website vulnerabilities at the Defcon conference in Las Vegas. Using unconventional data sources, Demirkapi identified over 15,000 exposed secrets, including credentials for Nebraska's Supreme Court IT systems and Stanford University's Slack channels. The researcher also discovered 66,000 websites with dangling subdomain issues, making them vulnerable to attacks. Among the affected sites was a New York Times development domain. Demirkapi's tack involved scanning VirusTotal's database and passive DNS replication data to identify vulnerabilities at scale. He developed an automated method to revoke exposed secrets, working with companies like OpenAI to implement self-service deactivation of compromised API keys.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: California's bill to prevent AI disasters, SB 1047, has faced significant opposition from many parties in Silicon Valley. California lawmakers bent slightly to that pressure Thursday, adding in several amendments suggested by AI firm Anthropic and other opponents. On Thursday the bill passed through California's Appropriations Committee, a major step toward becoming law, with several key changes, Senator Wiener's office told TechCrunch. [...] SB 1047 still aims to prevent large AI systems from killing lots of people, or causing cybersecurity events that cost over $500 million, by holding developers liable. However, the bill now grants California's government less power to hold AI labs to account. Most notably, the bill no longer allows California's attorney general to sue AI companies for negligent safety practices before a catastrophic event has occurred. This was a suggestion from Anthropic. Instead, California's attorney general can seek injunctive relief, requesting a company to cease a certain operation it finds dangerous, and can still sue an AI developer if its model does cause a catastrophic event.

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NASA chief Bill Nelson didn't mince words about the agency's budget crunch. "You can't put 10 pounds of potatoes in a five-pound sack," he told ArsTechnica in an interview, addressing $4.7 billion in cuts over two years. To scientists fretting over axed missions, Nelson offered a frank "I feel your pain." The Mars Sample Return's ballooning $11 billion price tag and 2040 timeline forced a reset. "We pulled the plug," Nelson admitted, but he's banking on cheaper, creative alternatives emerging by year's end. The moon rover Viper got the chop too, blowing its budget by 40%. "There comes a limit," Nelson said, defending the tough call. Viper lunar rover project was "running 40 percent over budget." He defended these decisions as necessary given the $2 billion cut to science funding alone. The cuts stem from the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Nelson expressed hope for a "reprieve" in fiscal year 2026, but noted uncertainty due to another looming debt ceiling issue.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Google now displays convenient AI-based answers at the top of its search pages -- meaning users may never click through to the websites whose data is being used to power those results. But many site owners say they can't afford to block Google's AI from summarizing their content. That's because the Google tool that sifts through web content to come up with its AI answers is the same one that keeps track of web pages for search results, according to publishers. Blocking Alphabet's Google the way sites have blocked some of its AI competitors would also hamper a site's ability to be discovered online. Google's dominance in search -- which a federal court ruled last week is an illegal monopoly -- is giving it a decisive advantage in the brewing AI wars, which search startups and publishers say is unfair as the industry takes shape. The dilemma is particularly acute for publishers, which face a choice between offering up their content for use by AI models that could make their sites obsolete and disappearing from Google search, a top source of traffic.

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Microsoft has removed an arbitrary 32GB size limit for FAT32 partitions in the latest Windows 11 Canary build, now allowing for a maximum size of 2TB. The change, implemented in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27686, allows users to create larger FAT32 partitions using the command-line format tool. Previously, Windows systems could read larger FAT32 file systems created on other platforms or through alternative methods, but were limited to creating 32GB partitions natively.

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Epic Games launched its digital app store on iOS and Android devices on Friday, marking Fortnite's return to Apple's platform in the European Union after a four-year absence. The move follows the implementation of the EU's Digital Markets Act, which mandates Apple to allow third-party app stores. Epic's store is available globally on Android and in the EU for iOS devices running iOS 17.6 or later. Fortnite, along with Rocket League Sideswipe and Fall Guys, are now accessible through Epic's mobile store and the EU's AltStore. This marks Fall Guys' mobile debut. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney hailed the development as "tangible progress" but noted challenges remain, including Apple's new fees for third-party app distribution. The company aims for 100 million mobile store installations by year-end and plans to offer third-party games by December, with self-publishing slated for early 2025. Epic's 88/12 revenue split model will extend to mobile, potentially disrupting the mobile gaming marketplace dominated by Apple and Google.

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A 43-year-old Jordanian national, Hashem Younis Hashem Hnaihen, was arrested in Orlando, Florida, and charged with threatening to use explosives and destroying a solar power facility. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the charges could result in up to 60 years in prison. Gizmodo reports: Hashem Younis Hashem Hnaihen allegedly smashed windows at local businesses in Florida, leaving behind threatening letters about their perceived support of Israel, and broke into a solar power generation facility in Wedgefield, Florida back in June. Hnaihen allegedly spent hours smashing solar panels, cutting various wires, and destroying critical electronic equipment, according to a press release from the DOJ issued Thursday. Hnaihen was wearing a mask when he allegedly smashed the glass front doors of businesses that he thought supported Israel in June, the DOJ says, leaving behind "warning letters" that included lines like a desire to, "destroy or explode everything here in whole America. Especially the companies and factories that support the racist state of Israel." [...] Hnaihen was arrested on July 11, though news of his arrest was only made public today. Hnaihen entered a plea of not guilty and faces a maximum of 10 years in prison for each threat made against the Florida businesses and a maximum of 20 years for the destruction of an energy facility, according to the DOJ.

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AT&T and Verizon are urging the FCC to reject SpaceX's plan to offer cellular service with T-Mobile, arguing that it would cause harmful interference to terrestrial mobile networks. Ars Technica reports: Filings urging the Federal Communications Commission to deny SpaceX's request for a waiver were submitted by AT&T and Verizon this week. The plan by SpaceX's Starlink division also faces opposition from satellite companies EchoStar (which owns Dish and Hughes) and Omnispace. SpaceX and T-Mobile plan to offer Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS) for T-Mobile's cellular network using SpaceX satellites. As part of that plan, SpaceX is seeking a waiver of FCC rules regarding out-of-band emission limits. AT&T's petition to deny the SpaceX waiver request said the FCC's "recent SCS order appropriately recognized that SCS deployments should not present any risk to the vital terrestrial mobile broadband networks upon which millions of Americans rely today. The Commission authorized SCS as secondary to terrestrial mobile service, correctly explaining that the SCS framework must 'retain service quality of terrestrial networks, protect spectrum usage rights, and minimize the risk of harmful interference.'" AT&T said SpaceX's requested "ninefold increase" to the allowable power flux-density limits for out-of-band emissions "would cause unacceptable harmful interference to incumbent terrestrial mobile operations. Specifically, AT&T's technical analysis shows that SpaceX's proposal would cause an 18% average reduction in network downlink throughput in an operational and representative AT&T PCS C Block market deployment." Verizon's opposition to the waiver request similarly said that SpaceX's proposal "would subject incumbent, primary terrestrial licensee operations in adjacent bands to harmful interference." Wireless phone performance will suffer, Verizon said [...]. SpaceX and T-Mobile told FCC staff that their plan will not harm other wireless operations and predicted that competitors will make misleading claims. SpaceX also argued that the FCC's emissions limit is too strict and should be changed.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Melted capsules. Cloudy insulin. Pills that may no longer work. Doctors and pharmacists say the scorching temperatures enveloping the country could be endangering people's health in an unexpected way: by overheating their medications. Millions of Americans now receive their prescription medications through mail-order shipments, either for convenience or because their health plans require it. But the temperatures inside the cargo areas of delivery trucks can reach 150 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, according to drivers -- far exceeding the range of 68 to 77 degrees recommended by the national organization that sets standards for drug handling. Mail-order pharmacies say that their packaging is weather resistant and that they take special precautions when medication "requires specific temperature control." But in a study published last year, independent pharmaceutical researchers who embedded data-logging thermometers inside simulated shipments found that the packages had spent more than two-thirds of their transit time outside the appropriate temperature range, "regardless of the shipping method, carrier, or season." Extreme temperatures can alter the components in many medications, from pancreatic enzymes to the thyroid replacement drug levothyroxine to oral contraceptives, medical experts say. Dr. Mike Ren, a primary care physician and an assistant professor in the department of family and community medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, said that liquid medications like insulin or AUVI-Q, the epinephrine injection for allergic reactions, are often at heightened risk of degradation because excessive heat exposure can cause the evaporation of liquid components that were compounded at precise ratios. Aerosolized medications, too, are uniquely vulnerable because of the risk of pressure changes in the canister. "Doctors recommend picking up your prescriptions at a local pharmacy whenever possible during hot summer months, particularly if your medication is liquid or aerosolized," notes the report. "If you are enrolled in an insurance program that requires using a mail-order pharmacy, ask for an exception during the summer or, at the very least, contact the on-call pharmacist at the mail-order company to get more information about shipping practices and to ask for temperature-controlled packaging. You should do this even if the drug does not require refrigeration." Once you do get your medication, you should make sure to preserve it in a cool, dry environment, away from direct sunlight. If you're flying, your prescriptions should be stored in your carry-on bag. They should never be left in a parked car.

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sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: A species of lungfish found in South America has claimed the title of the animal with the biggest genome sequenced so far. The DNA of Lepidosiren paradoxa comprises a staggering 91 billion chemical letters or "bases," 30 times as many as the human genome, researchers report today in Nature. However, those 91 billion bases of DNA only contain about the same number of genes that humans have -- roughly 20,000 -- with the rest consisting of noncoding, perhaps even "junk" DNA. By comparing this genome with those of other lungfishes, the researchers determined that L. paradoxa adds the equivalent of a human genome to its DNA every 10 million years.

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According to Kaspersky, hackers linked to Chinese threat actors have targeted Russian state agencies and tech companies in a campaign named EastWind. The Record reports: [T]he attackers used the GrewApacha remote access trojan (RAT), an unknown PlugY backdoor and an updated version of CloudSorcerer malware, which was previously used to spy on Russian organizations. The GrewApacha RAT has been used by the Beijing-linked hacking group APT31 since at least 2021, the researchers said, while PlugY shares many similarities with tools used by the suspected Chinese threat actor known as APT27. According to Kaspersky, the hackers sent phishing emails containing malicious archives. In the first stage of the attack, they exploited a dynamic link library (DLL), commonly found in Windows computers, to collect information about the infected devices and load the additional malicious tools. While Kaspersky didn't explicitly attribute the recent attacks to APT31 or APT27, they highlighted links between the tools that were used. Although PlugY malware is still being analyzed, it is highly likely that it was developed using the DRBControl backdoor code, the researchers said. This backdoor was previously linked to APT27 and bears similarities to PlugX malware, another tool typically used by hackers based in China.

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