An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Figma has sent a cease-and-desist letter to popular no-code AI startup Lovable, Figma confirmed to TechCrunch. The letter tells Lovable to stop using the term "Dev Mode" for a new product feature. Figma, which also has a feature called Dev Mode, successfully trademarked that term last year, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark office. What's wild is that "dev mode" is a common term used in many products that cater to software programmers. It's like an edit mode. Software products from giant companies like Apple's iOS, Google's Chrome, Microsoft's Xbox have features formally called "developer mode" that then get nicknamed "dev mode" in reference materials. Even "dev mode" itself is commonly used. For instance Atlassian used it in products that pre-date Figma's copyright by years. And it's a common feature name in countless open source software projects. Figma tells TechCrunch that its trademark refers only to the shortcut "Dev Mode" -- not the full term "developer mode." Still, it's a bit like trademarking the term "bug" to refer to "debugging." Since Figma wants to own the term, it has little choice but send cease-and-desist letters. (The letter, as many on X pointed out, was very polite, too.) If Figma doesn't defend the term, it could be absorbed as a generic term and the trademarked becomes unenforceable.

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Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick thinks AI is about to shake up consulting -- and for "traditional" professionals, not in a good way. From a report: The former Uber CEO said consultants who mostly follow instructions or do repetitive tasks are at risk of being replaced by AI. "If you're a traditional consultant and you're just doing the thing, you're executing the thing, you're probably in some big trouble," he said. He joked about what that future of consultancy might look like: "Push a button. Get a consultant." However, Kalanick said the professionals who would come out ahead would be the ones who build tools rather than just use them. "If you are the consultant that puts the things together that replaces the consultant, maybe you got some stuff," he said. "You're going to profitable companies with competitive moats, making that moat bigger," he explained. "Making their profit bigger is probably pretty interesting from a financial point of view."

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You should still learn to code, says GitHub's CEO. And you should start as soon as possible. From a report: "I strongly believe that every kid, every child, should learn coding," Thomas Dohmke said in a recent podcast interview with EO. "We should actually teach them coding in school, in the same way that we teach them physics and geography and literacy and math and what-not." Coding, he added, is one such fundamental skill -- and the only reason it's not part of the curriculum is because it took "us too long to actually realize that." Dohmke, who's been a programmer since the 90s, said he's never seen "anything more exciting" than the current moment in engineering -- the advent of AI, he believes, has made the field that much easier to break into, and is poised to make software more ubiquitous than ever. "It's so much easier to get into software development. You can just write a prompt into Copilot or ChatGPT or similar tools, and it will likely write you a basic webpage, or a small application, a game in Python," Dohmke said. "And so, AI makes software development so much more accessible for anyone who wants to learn coding." AI, Dohmke said, helps to "realize the dream" of bringing an idea to life, meaning that fewer projects will end up dead in the water, and smaller teams of developers will be enabled to tackle larger-scale projects. Dohmke said he believes it makes the overall process of creation more efficient. "You see some of the early signs of that, where very small startups -- sometimes five developers and some of them actually only one developer -- believe they can become million, if not billion dollar businesses by leveraging all the AI agents that are available to them," he added.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: None of the frontier AI research labs have presented any evidence that they are on the brink of achieving artificial general intelligence, no matter how they define that goal, but Google is already planning for a "Post-AGI" world by hiring a scientist for its DeepMind AI lab to research the "profound impact" that technology will have on society. "Spearhead research projects exploring the influence of AGI on domains such as economics, law, health/wellbeing, AGI to ASI [artificial superintelligence], machine consciousness, and education," Google says in the first item on a list of key responsibilities for the job. Artificial superintelligence refers to a hypothetical form of AI that is smarter than the smartest human in all domains. This is self explanatory, but just to be clear, when Google refers to "machine consciousness" it's referring to the science fiction idea of a sentient machine. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Elon Musk, and other major and minor players in the AI industry are all working on AGI and have previously talked about the likelihood of humanity achieving AGI, when that might happen, and what the consequences might be, but the Google job listing shows that companies are now taking concrete steps for what comes after, or are at least are continuing to signal that they believe it can be achieved.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI is working on its own X-like social network, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. While the project is still in early stages, we're told there's an internal prototype focused on ChatGPT's image generation that has a social feed. CEO Sam Altman has been privately asking outsiders for feedback about the project, our sources say. It's unclear if OpenAI's plan is to release the social network as a separate app or integrate it into ChatGPT, which became the most downloaded app globally last month. Launching a social network in or around ChatGPT would likely increase Altman's already-bitter rivalry with Elon Musk. In February, after Musk made an unsolicited offer to purchase OpenAI for $97.4 billion, Altman responded: "no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want." Entering the social media market also puts OpenAI on more of a collision course with Meta, which we're told is planning to add a social feed to its coming standalone app for its AI assistant. When reports of Meta building a rival to the ChatGPT app first surfaced a couple of months ago, Altman shot back on X again by saying, "ok fine maybe we'll do a social app."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: A silent update rolling out to virtually all Android devices will make your phone more secure, and all you have to do is not touch it for a few days. The new feature implements auto-restart of a locked device, which will keep your personal data more secure. It's coming as part of a Google Play Services update, though, so there's nothing you can do to speed along the process. Google is preparing to release a new update to Play Services (v25.14), which brings a raft of tweaks and improvements to myriad system features. First spotted by 9to5Google, the update was officially released on April 14, but as with all Play Services updates, it could take a week or more to reach all devices. When 25.14 arrives, Android devices will see a few minor improvements, including prettier settings screens, improved connection with cars and watches, and content previews when using Quick Share.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg considered resetting all Facebook users' friend connections to boost the platform's declining relevance, according to internal emails revealed Monday in a landmark FTC antitrust trial. In a 2022 message to executives, Zuckerberg proposed "wiping everyone's graphs and having them start again," referring to users' friend networks. Facebook head Tom Alison questioned the idea's viability, citing Instagram's reliance on friend connections. Zuckerberg later testified that the plan was never implemented and that Facebook has "evolved" from its original purpose. The FTC argues Meta violated competition laws by acquiring Instagram ($1B) and WhatsApp ($19B) as part of a "buy or bury" strategy outlined in Zuckerberg's 2008 email stating, "It is better to buy than compete."

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FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has issued a stark ultimatum to European allies, telling them to choose between US and Chinese communications technology. In an interview with Financial Times, Carr urged "allied western democracies" to "focus on the real long-term bogey: the rise of the Chinese Communist party." The warning comes as European governments question Starlink's reliability after Washington threatened to switch off its services in Ukraine. UK telecoms BT and Virgin Media O2 are currently trialing Starlink's satellite internet technology but haven't signed full agreements. "If you're concerned about Starlink, just wait for the CCP's version, then you'll be really worried," said Carr. Carr claimed Europe is "caught" between Washington and Beijing, with a "great divide" emerging between "CCP-aligned countries and others" in AI and satellite technology. He also accused the European Commission of "protectionism" and an "anti-American" attitude while suggesting Nokia and Ericsson should relocate manufacturing to the US to avoid Trump's import tariffs.

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Publishers and law professors have filed amicus briefs supporting authors who sued Meta over its AI training practices, arguing that the company's use of "thousands of pirated books" fails to qualify as fair use under copyright law. The filings [PDF] in California's Northern District federal court came from copyright law professors, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), Copyright Alliance, and Association of American Publishers. The briefs counter earlier support for Meta from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and IP professors. While Meta's defenders pointed to the 2015 Google Books ruling as precedent, the copyright professors distinguished Meta's use, arguing Google Books told users something "about" books without "exploiting expressive elements," whereas AI models leverage the books' creative content. "Meta's use wasn't transformative because, like the AI models, the plaintiffs' works also increased 'knowledge and skill,'" the professors wrote, warning of a "cascading effect" if Meta prevails. STM is specifically challenging Meta's data sources: "While Meta attempts to label them 'publicly available datasets,' they are only 'publicly available' because those perpetuating their existence are breaking the law."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Car rental giant Hertz has begun notifying its customers of a data breach that included their personal information and driver's licenses. The rental company, which also owns the Dollar and Thrifty brands, said in notices on its website that the breach relates to a cyberattack on one of its vendors between October 2024 and December 2024. The stolen data varies by region, but largely includes Hertz customer names, dates of birth, contact information, driver's licenses, payment card information, and workers' compensation claims. Hertz said a smaller number of customers had their Social Security numbers taken in the breach, along with other government-issued identification numbers. Notices on Hertz's websites disclosed the breach to customers in Australia, Canada, the European Union, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Hertz also disclosed the breach with several U.S. states, including California and Maine. Hertz said at least 3,400 customers in Maine were affected but did not list the total number of affected individuals, which is likely to be significantly higher. Emily Spencer, a spokesperson for Hertz, would not provide TechCrunch with a specific number of individuals affected by the breach but said it would be "inaccurate to say millions" of customers are affected. The company attributed the breach to a vendor, software maker Cleo, which last year was at the center of a mass-hacking campaign by a prolific Russia-linked ransomware gang.

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Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares the news that China has halted all rare earth exports globally -- including to the U.S., Japan, and Germany. Fortune reports: After Trump unveiled his "Liberation Day" tariffs on April 2, China retaliated on April 4 with its own duties as well as export controls on several rare earth minerals and magnets made from them. So far, those export controls have translated to a halt across the board, cutting off the U.S. and other countries, according to the New York Times. That's because any exports of the minerals and magnets now require special licenses, but Beijing has yet to fully establish a system for issuing them, the report said. In the meantime, shipments of rare earths have been halted at many ports, with customs officials blocking exports to any country, including to the U.S. as well as Japan and Germany, sources told theÂTimes. China's Ministry of Commerce issued export restrictions alongside the General Administration of Customs, prohibiting Chinese businesses from any engagement with U.S. firms, especially defense contractors. While the Trump administration unveiled tariff exemptions on a range of key tech imports late Friday night, China's magnet exports were still halted through the weekend, industry sources told the Times. Beijing's export halt is notable because China has a stranglehold on global supplies of rare earths and magnets derived from them. They also represent an asymmetric advantage in that rare earths constitute a small share of China's exports but have an outsize impact on trade partners like the U.S., which relies on them as critical inputs for the auto, chip, aerospace, and defense industries.

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A new study projects that CT scans conducted in 2023 may result in around 103,000 future cancer cases in the U.S. due to low-dose ionizing radiation. "[I]t would put CT scans on par with other significant risk factors for cancer, like alcohol consumption, at least at a population level," reports ScienceAlert. From the report: At an individual level, the theoretical chance of developing cancer from a CT scan is thought to be very minimal, if it exists at all, and patients should not be scared of undergoing these tests if they are deemed medically necessary. However, the number of CT examinations performed each year in the US has increased by more than 30 percent since 2007, and researchers suggest that unwarranted tests are exposing the population to unnecessary radiation. [...] The anonymous data comes from 143 hospitals and outpatient facilities across the US, catalogued in the UCSF International CT Dose Registry. Using statistics from 2016 to 2022, researchers predicted 93 million CT examinations were carried out in 2023, on roughly 62 million patients. Based on the associated radiation risks, the team estimates that CT scans in 2023 may be tied to 103,000 future cancers. The findings have been published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

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Mark was debugging some database querying code, and got a bit confused about what it was actually doing. Specifically, it generated a query block like this:

$statement="declare @status int declare @msg varchar(30) exec @status=sp_doSomething 'arg1', ... select @msg=convert(varchar(10),@status) print @msg "; $result = sybase_query ($statement, $this->connection);

Run a stored procedure, capture its return value in a variable, stringify that variable and print it. The select/print must be for debugging, right? Leftover debugging code. Why else would you do something like that?

if (sybase_get_last_message()!=='0') { ... }

Oh no. sybase_get_last_message gets the last string printed out by a print statement. This is a pretty bonkers way to get the results of a function or procedure call back, especially when if there are any results (like a return value), they'll be in the $result return value.

Now that said, reading through those functions, it's a little unclear if you can actually get the return value of a stored procedure this way. Without testing it myself (and no, I'm not doing that), we're in a world where this might actually be the best way to do this.

So I'm not 100% sure where the WTF lies. In the developer? In the API designers? Sybase being TRWTF is always a pretty reliable bet. I suppose there's a reason why all those functions are listed as "REMOVED IN PHP 7.0.0", which was was rolled out through 2015. So at least those functions have been dead for a decade.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Generative AI offers remarkable efficiency gains while presenting a profound challenge for the global IT services industry -- a sector concentrated in India and central to its export economy. For decades, Indian technology firms thrived by deploying their engineering talent to serve primarily Western clients. Now they face a critical question. Will AI's productivity dividend translate into revenue growth? Or will fierce competition see these gains competed away through price reductions? Industry soundings suggest the deflationary dynamic may already be taking hold. JPMorgan's conversations with executives, deal advisors and consultants across India's technology hubs reveal growing concern -- AI-driven efficiencies are fuelling pricing pressures. This threatens to constrain medium-term industry growth to a modest 4-5%, with little prospect of acceleration into fiscal year 2026. This emerging reality challenges the earlier narrative that AI would primarily unlock new revenue streams.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: Robotaxi development is speeding at a fast pace in China, but we don't hear much about it in the USA, where the news focuses mostly on Waymo, with a bit about Zoox, Motional, May, trucking projects and other domestic players. China has 4 main players with robotaxi service, dominated by Baidu (the Chinese Google.) A recent session at last week's Ride AI conference in Los Angeles revealed some details about the different regulatory regime in China, and featured a report from a Chinese-American YouTuber who has taken on a mission to ride in the different vehicles. Zion Maffeo, deputy general counsel for Pony.AI, provided some details on regulations in China. While Pony began with U.S. operations, its public operations are entirely in China, and it does only testing in the USA. Famously it was one of the few companies to get a California "no safety driver" test permit, but then lost it after a crash, and later regained it. Chinese authorities at many levels keep a close watch over Chinese robotaxi companies. They must get approval for all levels of operation which control where they can test and operate, and how much supervision is needed. Operation begins with testing with a safety driver behind the wheel (as almost everywhere in the world,) with eventual graduation to having the safety driver in the passenger seat but with an emergency stop. Then they move to having a supervisor in the back seat before they can test with nobody in the vehicle, usually limited to an area with simpler streets. The big jump can then come to allow testing with nobody in the vehicle, but with full time monitoring by a remote employee who can stop the vehicle. From there they can graduate to taking passengers, and then expanding the service to more complex areas. Later they can go further, and not have full time remote monitoring, though there do need to be remote employees able to monitor and assist part time. Pony has a permit allowing it to have 3 vehicles per remote operator, and has one for 15 vehicles in process, but they declined comment on just how many vehicles they actually have per operator. Baidu also did not respond to queries on this. [...] In addition, Chinese jurisdictions require that the system in a car independently log any "interventions" by safety drivers in a sort of "black box" system. These reports are regularly given to regulators, though they are not made public. In California, companies must file an annual disengagement report, but they have considerable leeway on what they consider a disengagement so the numbers can't be readily compared. Chinese companies have no discretion on what is reported, and they may notify authorities of a specific objection if they wish to declare that an intervention logged in their black box should not be counted. On her first trip, YouTuber Sophia Tung found Baidu's 5th generation robotaxi to offer a poor experience in ride quality, wait time, and overall service. However, during a return trip she tried Baidu's 6th generation vehicle in Wuhan and rated it as the best among Chinese robotaxis, approaching the quality of Waymo.

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The climate crisis has tripled the length of ocean heatwaves, a study has found, supercharging deadly storms and destroying critical ecosystems such as kelp forests and coral reefs. From a report: Half of the marine heatwaves since 2000 would not have happened without global heating, which is caused by burning fossil fuels. The heatwaves have not only become more frequent but also more intense: 1C warmer on average, but much hotter in some places, the scientists said. The research is the first comprehensive assessment of the impact of the climate crisis on heatwaves in the world's oceans, and it reveals profound changes. Hotter oceans also soak up fewer of the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving temperatures up. "Here in the Mediterranean, we have some marine heatwaves that are 5C hotter," said Dr Marta Marcos at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies in Mallorca, Spain, who led the study. "It's horrible when you go swimming. It looks like soup." As well as devastating underwater ecosystems such as sea grass meadows, Marcos said: "Warmer oceans provide more energy to the strong storms that affect people at the coast and inland."

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Apple will begin analyzing data on customers' devices in a bid to improve its AI platform, a move designed to safeguard user information while still helping it catch up with AI rivals. From a report: Today, Apple typically trains AI models using synthetic data -- information that's meant to mimic real-world inputs without any personal details. But that synthetic information isn't always representative of actual customer data, making it harder for its AI systems to work properly. The new approach will address that problem while ensuring that user data remains on customers' devices and isn't directly used to train AI models. The idea is to help Apple catch up with competitors such as OpenAI and Alphabet, which have fewer privacy restrictions. The technology works like this: It takes the synthetic data that Apple has created and compares it to a recent sample of user emails within the iPhone, iPad and Mac email app. By using actual emails to check the fake inputs, Apple can then determine which items within its synthetic dataset are most in line with real-world messages.

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Samsung has paused the global rollout of its One UI 7 update after a serious bug was reported that prevented some Galaxy S24 owners from unlocking their phones. The Verge reports: While the complaints seem to have specifically come from South Korean owners of Galaxy S24 series handsets, Samsung has played it safe and paused the rollout across all models worldwide. While some users will have already downloaded the update to One UI 7, using the app CheckFirm we've confirmed that the update is no longer listed on Samsung's servers as the latest firmware version across several Galaxy devices, with older patches appearing instead. Samsung hasn't confirmed the pause in the rollout, nor plans to issue a fix for users who have already downloaded the One UI 7 update. We've reached out to the company for comment.

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A new investigation reveals that children as young as five can easily access inappropriate content and interact unsupervised with adults on Roblox, despite the platform's child-friendly image and recent safety updates. The Guardian reports: Describing itself as "the ultimate virtual universe," Roblox features millions of games and interactive environments, known collectively as "experiences." Some of the content is developed by Roblox, but much of it is user-generated. In 2024, the platform had more than 85 million daily active users, an estimated 40% of whom are under 13. While the company said it "deeply sympathized" with parents whose children came to harm on the platform, it said "tens of millions of people have a positive, enriching and safe experience on Roblox every day." However, in an investigation shared with the Guardian, the digital-behavior experts Revealing Reality discovered "something deeply disturbing ... a troubling disconnect between Roblox's child-friendly appearance and the reality of what children experience on the platform." [...] Despite new tools launched last week aimed at giving parents more control over their children's accounts, the researchers concluded: "Safety controls that exist are limited in their effectiveness and there are still significant risks for children on the platform."

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Intel will sell a 51% stake in its Altera programmable chip unit to private equity firm Silver Lake for $4.46 billion, aiming to cut costs, raise cash, and streamline the company's focus as it shifts toward becoming a contract chip manufacturer. CNBC reports: The deal, announced on Monday, values Altera at $8.75 billion, a sharp decline from the $17 billion Intel paid in 2015. [...] Since last year, Intel has taken steps to spin Altera out as a separate unit and said it planned to sell a portion of its stake. "Today's announcement reflects our commitment to sharpening our focus, lowering our expense structure and strengthening our balance sheet," [CEO Lip-Bu Tan], who took the helm after former top boss Pat Gelsinger's ouster, said. Altera makes programmable chips that can be used for various purposes from telecom equipment to military. Reuters had first reported in November that Silver Lake was among potential suitors competing for a minority stake in Altera. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2025, after which Intel expects to deconsolidate Altera's financial results from Intel's financial statements, the company said.

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