A lawsuit is alleging Amazon was so desperate to keep up with the competition in generative AI it was willing to breach its own copyright rules. From a report: The allegation emerges from a complaint accusing the tech and retail mega-corp of demoting, and then dismissing, a former high-flying AI scientist after it discovered she was pregnant. The lawsuit was filed last week in a Los Angeles state court by Dr Viviane Ghaderi, an AI researcher who says she worked successfully in Amazon's Alexa and LLM teams, and achieved a string of promotions, but claims she was later suddenly demoted and fired following her return to work after giving birth. She is alleging discrimination, retaliation, harassment and wrongful termination, among other claims.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: There's a new Linux distro on the scene today, and it's a bit specialized. Its development was led by the automotive electronics supplier Elektrobit, and it's the first open source OS that complies with the automotive industry's functional safety requirements. [...] With Elektrobit's EB corbos Linux for Safety Applications (that sure is a long name), there's an open source Linux distro that finally fits the bill, having just been given the thumbs up by the German organization TUV Nord. (It also complies with the IEC 61508 standard for safety applications.) "The beauty of our concept is that you don't even need to safety-qualify Linux itself," said Moritz Neukirchner, a senior director at Elektrobit overseeing SDVs. Instead, an external safety monitor runs in a hypervisor, intercepting and validating kernel actions.

"When you look at how safety is typically being done, look at communication -- you don't safety-certify the communication specs or Ethernet stack, but you do a checker library on top, and you have a hardware anchor for checking down below, and you insure it end to end but take everything in between out of the certification path. And we have now created a concept that allows us to do exactly that for an operating system," Neukirchner told me. "So in the end, since we take Linux out of the certification path and make it usable in a safety-related context, we don't have any problems in keeping up to speed with the developer community," he explained. "Because if you start it off and say, 'Well, we're going to do Linux as a one-shot for safety,' you're going to have the next five patches and you're off [schedule] again, especially with the security regulation that's now getting toward effect now, starting in July with the UNECE R155 that requires continuous cybersecurity management vulnerability scanning for all software that ends up in the vehicle."

"In the end, we see roughly 4,000 kernel security patches within eight years for Linux. And this is the kind of challenge that you're being put up to if you want to participate in that speed of innovation of an open source community as rich as that of Linux and now want to combine this with safety-related applications," Neukirchner said. Elektrobit developed EB corbos Linux for Safety Applications together with Canonical, and together they will share the maintenance of keeping it compliant with safety requirements over time.

Apple's iPhone sales dropped sharply in China in the first quarter of this year as the company saw strong competition from domestic brand Huawei, according to a new report from market research firm Counterpoint Research. CNBC: Apple saw sales of its iPhones fall 19.1% in the first three months of the year, Counterpoint's data showed, as Chinese telecommunications and consumer electronics giant Huawei saw a resurgence in its smartphone business. The Shenzhen, China-based firm saw sales of its smartphones surge a whopping 69.7% in the first quarter, Counterpoint said.

An anonymous reader shares a report: For years, people who have found Google search frustrating have been adding "Reddit" to the end of their search queries. This practice is so common that Google even acknowledged the phenomenon in a post announcing that it will be scraping Reddit posts to train its AI. And so, naturally, there are now services that will poison Reddit threads with AI-generated posts designed to promote products.

A service called ReplyGuy advertises itself as "the AI that plugs your product on Reddit" and which automatically "mentions your product in conversations naturally." Examples on the site show two different Redditors being controlled by AI posting plugs for a text-to-voice product called "AnySpeech" and a bot writing a long comment about a debt consolidation program called Debt Freedom Now. A video demo shows a dashboard where a user adds the name of their company and URL they want to direct users to. It then auto-suggests keywords that "help the bot know what types of subreddits and tweets to look for and when to respond."

Moments later, the dashboard shows how Reply Guy is "already in the responses" of the comments section of different Reddit posts. "Many of our responses will get lots of upvotes and will be well-liked." The creator of the company, Alexander Belogubov, has also posted screenshots of other bot-controlled accounts responding all over Reddit. Begolubov has another startup called "Stealth Marketing" that also seeks to manipulate the platform by promising to "turn Reddit into a steady stream of customers for your startup."

General Motors (GM) has been selling data about the driving behavior of millions of people to insurance companies, leading to higher premiums for some drivers, according to a recent investigation. The affected drivers were not informed about the tracking, which was carried out through GM's OnStar connected services plan and the Smart Driver program. The New York Times reporter who broke the story discovered that her own driving data had been shared with data brokers working with the insurance industry, despite not being enrolled in the program. GM has since discontinued the Smart Driver product and stopped sharing data with LexisNexis and Verisk, following customer feedback and federal lawsuits filed by drivers across the country.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations."

As a result, Apple is expected to take a "conservative view" of headset demand when the Vision Pro launches in additional countries. Kuo previously said that Apple will introduce the Vision Pro in new markets before the June Worldwide Developers Conference, which suggests that we could see it available in additional areas in the next month or so.

The Federal Trade Commission is set to vote Tuesday afternoon on a proposal to ban noncompete agreements, which prevent workers from taking positions at competitors for a period of time after they leave a job. From a report: The ban could be a win for workers -- particularly at the low end of the income scale. Critics of these agreements say they stifle innovation and wage growth by restricting workers' ability to take new jobs that pay higher wages or offer some other opportunity. They also make it tougher for employers to hire strong talent, lessening competition.

Some states have laws limiting noncompetes to higher-income folks or banning them altogether -- but most don't. Experts told Axios that the final rule will likely look similar to the draft proposal, which was a broad prohibition on all noncompetes, even for executives. Any final rule is unlikely to take effect for many years -- if ever, as it will surely get tied up in court. The Chamber of Commerce, which opposes the ban, has already said it's ready and willing to file a lawsuit.

The U.S. publishing industry is driven by celebrity authors and repeat bestsellers, according to testimony from a blocked merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. Only 50 authors sell over 500,000 copies annually, with 96% of books selling under 1,000 copies. Publishing houses spend most of their advance money on celebrity books, which along with backlist titles like The Bible, account for the bulk of their revenue and fund less commercially successful books.

prisoninmate writes: Fedora Linux 40 distribution has been officially released -- powered by the latest Linux 6.8 kernel series, and featuring the GNOME 46 and KDE Plasma 6 desktop environments, reports 9to5Linux:

"Powered by the latest and greatest Linux 6.8 kernel series, the Fedora Linux 40 release ships with the GNOME 46 desktop environment for the flagship Fedora Workstation edition and the KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment for the Fedora KDE Spin, which defaults to the Wayland session as the X11 session was completely removed."

"Fedora Linux 40 also includes some interesting package management changes, such as dropping Delta RPMs and disabling support in the default configuration of DNF / DNF5. It also changes the DNF behavior to no longer download filelists by default. However, this release doesn't ship with the long-awaited DNF5 package manager. For AMD GPUs, Fedora Linux 40 ships with AMD ROCm 6.0 as the latest release of AMD's software optimized for AI and HPC workload performance, which enables support for the newest flagship AMD Instinct MI300A and MI300X datacenter GPUs."

Chinese tech giant Kuaishou is laying off employees in their mid-30s as part of a company-wide restructuring plan dubbed "Limestone," FT reported Tuesday, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter. The move highlights the pervasive ageism in China's tech sector, where younger workers are favored for their perceived willingness to work long hours and keep up with the latest technological developments, the report adds.

While China's labor law does not explicitly prohibit age discrimination, some have interpreted it as such. However, tech executives have openly expressed their preference for younger employees, with companies like ByteDance and Pinduoduo boasting some of the youngest workforces in the industry. The economic slowdown and regulatory crackdowns have exacerbated the problem, with tens of thousands of jobs cut across the sector in recent months. Those over 35 face significant challenges in finding new employment, as even the civil service and service sector prioritize younger applicants. The situation has left many older tech workers anxious about their future job prospects, the report adds.

Microsoft has launched Phi-3 Mini, a lightweight AI model with 3.8 billion parameters, as part of its plan to release three small models. Phi-3 Mini, trained on a smaller data set compared to large language models, is available on Azure, Hugging Face, and Ollama. Microsoft claims Phi-3 Mini performs as well as models 10 times its size, offering capabilities similar to GPT-3.5 in a smaller form factor. Smaller AI models are more cost-effective and perform better on personal devices.

Google has fired another 20 workers for participating in protests against its $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government, according to an activist group representing the workers. From a report: In total, the company has now fired around 50 employees over sit-in protests held in Google offices last week that were part of yearslong discontent among a group of Google and Amazon workers over claims that Israel is using the companies' services to harm Palestinians. Google has denied those claims, saying Project Nimbus, the cloud-computing contract, doesn't involve "highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services," and that Israeli government ministries that use its commercial cloud must agree to its terms of services and other policies.

No Tech For Apartheid, the group representing the workers, claimed in a statement that Google is attempting to "quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them." "That's because Google values its profit, and its $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military, more than people. And it certainly values it over its own workers," it said. The group said it will continue organizing until Google cancels Project Nimbus. Further reading: Google To Employees: 'We Are a Workplace'.

Toyota's Mirai, a hydrogen-powered Fuel Cell EV initially heralded as the future of driving, has faced significant challenges due to inadequate hydrogen fueling infrastructure. As chronicled by InsideEVs, many owners have become disillusioned with the vehicle's high operational costs, unreliable refueling options, and significant depreciation, prompting lawsuits and calls for buybacks. Longtime Slashdot reader whoever57 writes: Toyota Mirai owners are fed up and disillusioned. Hydrogen fuel pumps are hard to find and, rather than new pumps opening, they are closing down. Owners feel misled about the costs and availability of hydrogen fuel stations. Even if a Mirai owner can find a fuel station, it may not be operating. Moreover, refueling is frequently a long and problematic process, with pumps taking over an hour to fill a tank and cars getting stuck to the fuel pump for hours. It would be quicker to charge a battery EV. Naturally, resale values of these cars are plummeting. Even without those problems, once the complimentary hydrogen fuel supply that Toyota gives new owners expires or runs out, the cost of hydrogen fuel becomes quite expensive. "Not in my wildest dreams or nightmares would I expect a purchase from a giant car company like Toyota would turn out to be such a terrible experience," said owner Shawn Hall. "The entire H2 vehicle experience is an experiment that is failing. I didn't expect to buy a vehicle from Toyota and feel duped, cheated, and misled."

Another user wrote on Reddit: "We all need to realize that we bought a vehicle that had, at best, a questionable future. Unfortunately in this instance, the gamble didn't pay off, and the technology of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles does not appear to be something the vehicle industry is invested in pursuing. Very similar to HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, there was one clear winner and in our instance, the battery-powered EV won out over H2. Its sucks, but it is what it is."

NASA last week formally approved a $3.35 billion mission to explore Saturn's largest moon with a quadcopter drone. "Dragonfly is a spectacular science mission with broad community interest, and we are excited to take the next steps on this mission," said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA's science mission directorate. "Exploring Titan will push the boundaries of what we can do with rotorcraft outside of Earth." The mission has a launch date of July 2028. Ars Technica reports: After reaching Titan, the eight-bladed rotorcraft lander will soar from place to place on Saturn's hazy moon, exploring environments rich in organic molecules, the building blocks of life. Dragonfly will be the first mobile robot explorer to land on any other planetary body besides the Moon and Mars, and only the second flying drone to explore another planet. NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on Mars was the first. Dragonfly will be more than 200 times as massive as Ingenuity and will operate six times farther from Earth.

Despite its distant position in the cold outer Solar System, Titan appears to be reminiscent of the ancient Earth. A shroud of orange haze envelops Saturn's largest moon, and Titan's surface is covered with sand dunes and methane lakes. Titan's frigid temperatures -- hovering near minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 179 degrees Celsius) -- mean water ice behaves like bedrock. NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which flew past Titan numerous times before its mission ended in 2017, discovered weather systems on the hazy moon. Observations from Cassini found evidence for hydrocarbon rains and winds that appear to generate waves in Titan's methane lakes. Clearly, Titan is an exotic world. Most of what scientists know about Titan comes from measurements collected by Cassini and the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, which Cassini released to land on Titan in 2005. Huygens returned the first pictures from Titan's surface, but it only transmitted data for 72 minutes.

Dragonfly will explore Titan for around three years, flying tens of kilometers about once per month to measure the prebiotic chemistry of Titan's surface, study its soupy atmosphere, and search for biosignatures that could be indications of life. The mission will visit more than 30 locations within Titan's equatorial region, according to a presentation by Elizabeth Turtle, Dragonfly's principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. "The Dragonfly mission is an incredible opportunity to explore an ocean world in a way that we have never done before," Turtle said in a statement. "The team is dedicated and enthusiastic about accomplishing this unprecedented investigation of the complex carbon chemistry that exists on the surface of Titan and the innovative technology bringing this first-of-its-kind space mission to life."

quonset writes: Just over two weeks ago, NASA figured out why its Voyager 1 spacecraft stopped sending useful data. They suspected corrupted memory in its flight data system (FDS) was the culprit. Today, for the first time since November, Voyager 1 is sending useful data about its health and the status of its onboard systems back to NASA. How did NASA accomplish this feat of long distance repair? They broke up the code into smaller pieces and redistributed them throughout the memory.

From NASA: "... So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well. The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft's engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22 1/2 hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 1/2 hours for a signal to come back to Earth. When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they have been able to check the health and status of the spacecraft. During the coming weeks, the team will relocate and adjust the other affected portions of the FDS software. These include the portions that will start returning science data.