SharewareHeroes.com recreates all the fonts and cursor you'd see after dialing up a local bulletin-board system in the early 1990s. It's to promote a new book — successfully crowdfunded by 970 backers — to chronicle "a critical yet long overlooked chapter in video game history: the rise and eventual fall of the shareware model.

The book promises to explore "a hidden games publishing market" that for several years "had no powerful giants," with games instead distributed "across the nascent internet for anyone to enjoy (and, if they liked it enough, pay for)."

And the site features a free excerpt from the chapter about DOOM: It seemed there was no stopping id Software. Commander Keen had given them their freedom, and Wolfenstein 3D's mega-success had earned them the financial cushion to do anything. But all they wanted was to beat the last game — to outdo both themselves and everyone else. And at the centre of that drive was a push for ever-better technology. By the time Wolfenstein 3D's commercial prequel Spear of Destiny hit retail shelves, John Carmack had already built a new engine.

This one had texture-mapped floors and ceilings — not just walls. It supported diminished lighting, which meant things far away could recede into the shadows, disappearing into the distance. And it had variable-height rooms, allowing for elevated platforms where projectile-throwing enemies could hang out, and most exciting of all it allowed for non-orthogonal walls — which meant that rooms could be odd-shaped, with walls jutting out at any arbitrary angle from each other, rather than the traditional rectangular boxed design that had defined first-person-perspective games up until then.

It ran at half the speed of Wolfenstein 3D's engine, but they were thinking about doing a 3D Keen game next — so that wouldn't matter. At least not until they saw it in action. Everyone but Tom Hall suddenly got excited about doing another shooter, which meant Carmack would have to optimise the hell out of his engine to restore that sense of speed. Briefly they considered a proposal from 20th Century Fox to do a licensed Aliens shooter, but they didn't like the idea of giving up their creative independence, so they considered how they could follow up Wolfenstein 3D with something new. Fighting aliens in space is old hat. This time it could be about fighting demons in space. This time it could be called DOOM.
The book's title is Shareware Heroes: The Renegades Who Redefined Gaming at the Dawn of the Internet — here's a page listing the people interviewed, as well as the book's table of contents.

And this chapter culminates with what happened when the first version of DOOM was finally released. "BBSs and FTP servers around America crashed under the immense load of hundreds of thousands of people clamouring to download the game on day one.

"Worse for universities around the country, people were jumping straight into the multiplayer once they had the game — and they kept crashing the university networks..."

"A group of researchers at Stanford University and Google have created a miniature RPG-style virtual world similar to The Sims," writes Ars Technica, "where 25 characters, controlled by ChatGPT and custom code, live out their lives independently with a high degree of realistic behavior." "Generative agents wake up, cook breakfast, and head to work; artists paint, while authors write; they form opinions, notice each other, and initiate conversations; they remember and reflect on days past as they plan the next day," write the researchers in their paper... To pull this off, the researchers relied heavily on a large language model for social interaction, specifically the ChatGPT API. In addition, they created an architecture that simulates minds with memories and experiences, then let the agents loose in the world to interact.... To study the group of AI agents, the researchers set up a virtual town called "Smallville," which includes houses, a cafe, a park, and a grocery store.... Interestingly, when the characters in the sandbox world encounter each other, they often speak to each other using natural language provided by ChatGPT. In this way, they exchange information and form memories about their daily lives.

When the researchers combined these basic ingredients together and ran the simulation, interesting things began to happen. In the paper, the researchers list three emergent behaviors resulting from the simulation. None of these were pre-programmed but rather resulted from the interactions between the agents. These included "information diffusion" (agents telling each other information and having it spread socially among the town), "relationship memory" (memory of past interactions between agents and mentioning those earlier events later), and "coordination" (planning and attending a Valentine's Day party together with other agents).... "Starting with only a single user-specified notion that one agent wants to throw a Valentine's Day party," the researchers write, "the agents autonomously spread invitations to the party over the next two days, make new acquaintances, ask each other out on dates to the party, and coordinate to show up for the party together at the right time...."

To get a look at Smallville, the researchers have posted an interactive demo online through a special website, but it's a "pre-computed replay of a simulation" described in the paper and not a real-time simulation. Still, it gives a good illustration of the richness of social interactions that can emerge from an apparently simple virtual world running in a computer sandbox.
Interstingly, the researchers hired human evaluators to gauge how well the AI agents produced believable responses — and discovered they were more believable than when supplied their own responses.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam for sharing the article.

The Python Software Foundation is "concerned that proposed EU cybersecurity laws will leave open source organizations and individuals unfairly liable for distributing incorrect code," according to the Register. The PSF reviewed the EU's proposed "Cyber Resilience Act" and "Product Liability Act" and reports "issues that put the mission of our organization and the health of the open-source software community at risk."

From the Register's report: "If the proposed law is enforced as currently written, the authors of open-source components might bear legal and financial responsibility for the way their components are applied in someone else's commercial product," the PSF said in a statement shared on Tuesday by executive director Deb Nicholson. "The existing language makes no differentiation between independent authors who have never been paid for the supply of software and corporate tech behemoths selling products in exchange for payments from end-users...."

The PSF argues the EU lawmakers should provide clear exemptions for public software repositories that serve the public good and for organizations and developers hosting packages on public repositories. "We need it to be crystal clear who is on the hook for both the assurances and the accountability that software consumers deserve," the PSF concludes. The PSF is asking anyone who shares its concerns to convey that sentiment to an appropriate EU Member of Parliament by April 26, while amendments focused on protecting open source software are being considered.

Bradley Kuhn, policy fellow at the Software Freedom Conservancy, told The Register that the free and open source (FOSS) community should think carefully about the scope of the exemptions being sought. "I'm worried that many in FOSS are falling into a trap that for-profit companies have been trying to lay for us on this issue," he said. "While it seems on the surface that a blanket exception for FOSS would be a good thing for FOSS, in fact, this an attempt for companies to get the FOSS community to help them skirt their ordinary product liability. For profit companies that deploy FOSS should have the same obligations for security and certainty for their users as proprietary software companies do."
The article points out that numerous tech organizations are urging clarifications in the proposed regulations, including NLnet Labs and the Eclipse Foundation.

The Washington Post found a new tranche of "top-secret intelligence documents" on Discord, and based on them reported Friday that U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of at least two additional Chinese spy balloons.

Based on the classified documents, the Post also reports that "questions lingered about the true capabilities of the one that flew over the continental United States in January and February." The Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States this year, called Killeen-23 by U.S. intelligence agencies, carried a raft of sensors and antennas the U.S. government still had not identified more than a week after shooting it down, according to a document allegedly leaked to a Discord chatroom by Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard.

Another balloon flew over a U.S. carrier strike group in a previously unreported incident, and a third crashed in the South China Sea, a second top-secret document stated, though it did not provide specific information for launch dates.... [Chinese spy balloon] Bulger-21 carried sophisticated surveillance equipment and circumnavigated the globe from December 2021 until May 2022, the NGA document states. Accardo-21 carried similar equipment as well as a "foil-lined gimbaled" sensor, it says....

Annotating what appear to be detailed photos of the balloon that flew over the United States, presumably taken from a U-2 spy plane, intelligence analysts assessed that it could generate enough power to operate "any" surveillance and reconnaissance technology, including a type of radar that can see at night and through clouds and thin materials [including tarps].... China's military has operated a vast surveillance balloon project for several years, partly out of Hainan province off China's south coast, U.S. officials have previously told The Post.

But the NGA document is notable as much for what it doesn't say, reflecting the government's possible lack of insight, at least in mid-February, into the balloons' capabilities... The lack of detailed conclusions about the balloon's surveillance capabilities raises questions about the decision to let it fly over the United States before shooting it down, an action the Defense Department justified at the time as an opportunity to collect additional intelligence.
The Post also reports that another leaked document (relying on intercepted communications) assessed that within the Chinese military the balloon surveillance program lacked "strong leadership" oversight.

An anonymous reader shares a report from KrebsOnSecurity: KrebsOnSecurity received a nice bump in traffic this week thanks to tweets from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about "juice jacking," a term first coined here in 2011 to describe a potential threat of data theft when one plugs their mobile device into a public charging kiosk. It remains unclear what may have prompted the alerts, but the good news is that there are some fairly basic things you can do to avoid having to worry about juice jacking.

The term juice jacking crept into the collective paranoia of gadget geeks in the summer of 2011, thanks to the headline for a story here about researchers at the DEFCON hacker convention in Vegas who'd set up a mobile charging station designed to educate the unwary to the reality that many mobile devices were set up to connect to a computer and immediately sync data by default. Since then, Apple, Google and other mobile device makers have changed the way their hardware and software works so that their devices no longer automatically sync data when one plugs them into a computer with a USB charging cable. Instead, users are presented with a prompt asking if they wish to trust a connected computer before any data transfer can take place. On the other hand, the technology needed to conduct a sneaky juice jacking attack has become far more miniaturized, accessible and cheap. And there are now several products anyone can buy that are custom-built to enable juice jacking attacks. [...]

How seriously should we take the recent FBI warning? An investigation by the myth-busting site Snopes suggests the FBI tweet was just a public service announcement based on a dated advisory. Snopes reached out to both the FBI and the FCC to request data about how widespread the threat of juice jacking is in 2023. "The FBI replied that its tweet was a 'standard PSA-type post' that stemmed from the FCC warning," Snopes reported. "An FCC spokesperson told Snopes that the commission wanted to make sure that their advisory on "juice-jacking," first issued in 2019 and later updated in 2021, was up-to-date so as to ensure 'the consumers have the most up-to-date information.' The official, who requested anonymity, added that they had not seen any rise in instances of consumer complaints about juice-jacking." The best way to protect yourself from juice jacking is by using your own gear to charge and transfer data from your device(s) to another.

"Juice jacking isn't possible if a device is charged via a trusted AC adapter, battery backup device, or through a USB cable with only power wires and no data wires present," says security researcher Brian Krebs. "If you lack these things in a bind and still need to use a public charging kiosk or random computer, at least power your device off before plugging it in."

Virginia Norwood, an aerospace pioneer who invented the scanner that has been used to map and study the earth from space for more than 50 years, has died at her home in Topanga, Calif. She was 96. The New York Times reports: Her death was announced by the United States Geological Survey, whose Landsat satellite program relies on her invention. Her daughter, Naomi Norwood, said her mother was found dead in her bed on the morning of March 27. The Landsat satellites, speeding 438 miles above the surface, orbit the earth every 99 minutes and have captured a complete image of the planet every 16 days since 1972. These images have provided powerful visual evidence of climate change, deforestation and other shifts affecting the planet's well-being.

Ms. Norwood, a physicist, was the person primarily responsible for designing and championing the scanner that made the program possible. NASA has called her "the mother of Landsat." At the dawn of the era of space exploration in the 1950s and '60s, she was working at Hughes Aircraft Company developing instruments. One of a small group of women in a male-dominated industry, she stood out more for her acumen. "She said, 'I was kind of known as the person who could solve impossible problems,'" Naomi Norwood told NASA for a video on its website. "So people would bring things to her, even pieces of other projects." [...]

Over the next 50 years, new Landsat satellites replaced earlier ones. Ms. Norwood oversaw the development of Landsat 2, 3, 4 and 5. Currently, Landsat 8 and 9 are orbiting the earth, and NASA plans to launch Landsat 10 in 2030. Each generation satellite has added more imaging capabilities, but always based on Ms. Norwood's original concept. The Landsat program has mapped changes in the planet brought on by climate change and by human actions. They include the near disappearance of the Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the shrinking of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, the evolving shape of the Mississippi Delta, and the deforestation and increasing agricultural use of land in Turkey and Brazil.

The official in charge of a secretive Pentagon effort to investigate unexplained aerial incursions has co-authored an academic paper that presents an out-of-this-world theory: Recent objects could actually be alien probes from a mothership sent to study Earth. Politico reports: In a draft paper dated March 7 (PDF), Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, and Harvard professor Avi Loeb teamed up to write that the objects, which appear to defy all physics, could be "probes" from an extraterrestrial "parent craft." It's unusual for government officials, especially those involved in the nascent effort to collect intelligence on recent sightings, to discuss the possibility of extraterrestrial life, although top agency officials don't rule it out when asked. After Loeb posted it online, the paper gained notoriety from a post on Military Times and has also circulated among science-focused news outlets.

More than half of the five-page paper is devoted to discussing the possibility that the unexplained objects DoD is studying could be the "probes" in the mothership scenario, including most of the page-long introduction. One section is titled: "The Extraterrestrial Possibility" and another "Propulsion Methods." Kirkpatrick's involvement in the academic paper demonstrates that the Pentagon is open to scientific debate of the origins of UFOs, an important signal to send to the academic world, experts said. But they add that his decision to attach his name to a theory considered in most academic circles to be highly unsubstantiated also raises questions about AARO's credibility.

The paper explains that interstellar objects such as the cigar-shaped "Oumuamua" that scientists spotted flying through the galaxy in 2017 "could potentially be a parent craft that releases many small probes during its close passage to Earth." The paper goes on to compare the probes to "dandelion seeds" that could be separated from the parent craft by the sun's gravitational force. It examines the physics of how the smaller craft could move through the Earth's atmosphere to reach the surface, where they could be spotted by humans. The paper notes that the "probes" could use starlight to "charge their batteries" and the Earth's water as fuel. It also speculates on the motive for aliens to send exploratory probes to Earth. "What would be the overarching purpose of the journey? In analogy with actual dandelion seeds, the probes could propagate the blueprint of their senders," the authors write. "As with biological seeds, the raw materials on the planet's surface could also be used by them as nutrients for self-replication or simply scientific exploration."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: About a year ago, Ben found out that one of his friends had quietly started to work multiple jobs at the same time. The idea had become popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, when working from home became normalized, making the scheme easier to pull off. A community of multi-job hustlers, in fact, had come together online, referring to themselves as the "overemployed." The idea excited Ben, who lives in Toronto and asked that Motherboard not use his real name, but he didn't think it was possible for someone like him to pull it off. He helps financial technology companies market new products; the job involves creating reports, storyboards, and presentations, all of which involve writing. There was "no way," he said, that he could have done his job two times over on his own.

Then, last year, he started to hear more and more about ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by the research lab OpenAI. Soon enough, he was trying to figure out how to use it to do his job faster and more efficiently, and what had been a time-consuming job became much easier. ("Not a little bit more easy," he said, "like, way easier.") That alone didn't make him unique in the marketing world. Everyone he knew was using ChatGPT at work, he said. But he started to wonder whether he could pull off a second job. Then, this year, he took the plunge, a decision he attributes to his new favorite online robot toy. "That's the only reason I got my job this year," Ben said of OpenAI's tool. "ChatGPT does like 80 percent of my job if I'm being honest." He even used it to generate cover letters to apply for jobs.

Over the last few months, the exploding popularity of ChatGPT and similar products has led to growing concerns about AI's potential effects on the international job market -- specifically, the percentage of jobs that could be automated away, replaced by a well-oiled army of chatbots. But for a small cohort of fast-thinking and occasionally devious go-getters, AI technology has turned into an opportunity not to be feared but exploited, with their employers apparently none the wiser. The people Motherboard spoke with for this article requested anonymity to avoid losing their jobs. For clarity, Motherboard in some cases assigned people aliases in order to differentiate them, though we verified each of their identities. Some, like Ben, were drawn into the overemployed community as a result of ChatGPT. Others who were already working multiple jobs have used recent advancements in AI to turbocharge their situation, like one Ohio-based technology worker who upped his number of jobs from two to four after he started to integrate ChatGPT into his work process. "I think five would probably just be overkill," he said.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Sega parent company Sega Sammy Holdings is nearing a deal to purchase "Angry Birds" maker Rovio for $1 billion. Polygon reports: Rovio is best known for Angry Birds, the physics puzzle game that launched on iOS in 2009. Rovio has delivered multiple sequels, spinoffs, and tie-ins with other brands, including Star Wars, Transformers, and the animated movie Rio. Sega and Rovio also teamed up in 2015 to bring Sonic the Hedgehog characters to Angry Birds Epic, a turn-based RPG. An animated series and two feature films were also released using Angry Birds characters.

Angry Birds' global success hasn't translated to Rovio's other games, which include action-role-playing game Darkfire Heroes and colorful matching games Small Town Murders and Sugar Blast. Sega's current mobile game lineup includes a variety of Sonic the Hedgehog running games and retro games from the Sega Genesis era.

A proposed Indian government unit to fact-check news on social media is not about censoring journalism nor will it have any impact on media reportage, a federal minister said on Friday. Reuters reports: Recently amended IT regulation requires online platforms like Meta's Facebook and Twitter to "make reasonable efforts" to not "publish, share or host" any information relating to the government that is "fake, false or misleading." Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India minister of state for IT, said in an online discussion it was "not true" that the government-appointed unit, which press freedom advocates strongly oppose, was aimed at "censoring journalism." The Editors Guild of India last week described the move as draconian and akin to censorship.

Global sales of semiconductor fab equipment grew by 5 percent during 2022 to hit an all-time high, with China the largest buyer despite a fall in its investment amid the standoff with the US over access to chips and other technology. The Register reports: The figures come from SEMI, the industry body for electronics manufacturing and supply chain, in a new Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Market Statistics (WWSEMS) report. According to the report, sales of chipmaking kit hit $107.6 billion last year, up from $102.6 billion in 2021, as semiconductor companies invested to add more capacity, despite the downturn that took hold in the latter half of last year as inflation gripped many economies.

"The record high for semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales in 2022 stems from the industry's drive to add the fab capacity required to support long-term growth and innovations in key end markets including high-performance computing and automotive," claimed SEMI president and CEO Ajit Manocha. These results also reflect a desire by chipmakers in multiple regions to avoid any repetition of the supply chain issues that surfaced during the pandemic, he added. Many companies cut investment then, in response to falling orders, leading to shortages when demand picked up again.

China remained the largest market for semiconductor equipment despite seeing a 5 percent slowdown in investments compared with the previous year, according to SEMI. This drop is likely caused by US moves to curtail China's ability to make advanced chips, which has now extended beyond American companies such as Applied Materials to include others such as Dutch photolithography giant ASML, as Washington has browbeaten allied nations including the Netherlands and Japan to join its sanctions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, has declared that 2023 will be the "year of efficiency" at his company. So far, efficiency has translated into mass layoffs. He has conducted two rounds of cuts over the past six months, with two more to come; these will eliminate more than 21,000 people. Mr. Zuckerberg is also closing 5,000 open positions, which amounts to 30 percent of his company's work force. At the same time, some of Meta's top executives have moved away and are managing large parts of the Silicon Valley company from their new homes in places like London and Tel Aviv. The layoffs and absentee leadership, along with concerns that Mr. Zuckerberg is making a bad bet on the future, have devastated employee morale at Meta, according to nine current and former employees, as well as messages reviewed by The New York Times.

Employees at Meta, which not long ago was one of the most desirable workplaces in Silicon Valley, face an increasingly precarious future. The company's stock price has dropped 43 percent from its peak 19 months ago. More layoffs, Mr. Zuckerberg has said on his Facebook page, are coming this month. Some of those cuts could be in engineering groups, which would have been unthinkable before the trouble started last year, two employees said. "So many of the employees feel like they're in limbo right now," said Erin Sumner, a global director of human resources at DeleteMe, who was laid off from Facebook in November. "They're saying it's 'Hunger Games' meets 'Lord of the Flies,' where everyone is trying to prove their worth to management."

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is not the only big tech company that has hit the brakes on spending. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and others have laid off thousands of workers in recent months, shed office space, dropped perks and pulled back from experimental initiatives. But Meta appears to face the most challenges. Last year, the company reported consecutive quarters of declining revenue -- a first since it became a public company in 2012.

Back in 2021, Samsung brought SmartThings to Android Auto. Google is now opening the door for more smart home/Internet of Things (IoT) apps on Android Auto and Automotive. 9to5Google reports: Android Auto today supports media and mapping/navigation apps. Google is now "enabling developers to bring [IoT] apps to cars." This might include controlling home security and doors from a touchscreen UI rather than having to rely on voice commands (assuming Google Assistant supports your home ecosystem). Google offers driving-optimized templates in the Android for Cars App Library, with testing via the Automotive OS emulator for Android Automotive OS and the DHU for Android Auto. Expect a consistent grid-based layout throughout apps. In fact, "drivers of cars using Android Auto can now download IOT apps developed with the Android for Cars App Library immediately from Google Play."

Alphabet's Google received a mixed ruling on Thursday from a San Francisco federal judge in a patent lawsuit brought by Sonos over wireless audio technology, failing to invalidate all of the patents before a trial but narrowing Sonos' claims. Reuters reports: The case, set for trial May 8, is part of a contentious intellectual property dispute between the former business partners over their smart speakers that includes lawsuits in the United States, Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Sonos won a limited import ban on some Google devices from the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) last year, while Google has sued Sonos for patent infringement at the ITC and in California. [...]

Sonos accused Google in the San Francisco case of infringing four patents related to multi-room wireless speaker technology. U.S. District Judge William Alsup previously invalidated one of the patents and determined Google infringed another. Alsup found Thursday that a second Sonos patent was also invalid, but rejected Google's request to cancel the remaining two patents before trial. The judge also said Google did not infringe one of the surviving patents willfully, reducing Sonos' potential damages. Alsup also said he would hold a separate bench trial after the jury trial to determine whether Google's redesigned speakers infringe Sonos' patents.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Parler, the self-described "uncancelable free speech platform," has been sold and shut down while its new owner conducts a "strategic assessment." The platform will be back eventually, new owner Starboard says. The Parler website is now a simple page containing only today's press release announcing the acquisition, which was completed without financial terms being disclosed. "No reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more," the acquisition announcement said, promising a revamp.

"While the Parler app as it is currently constituted will be pulled down from operation to undergo a strategic assessment, we at Starboard see tremendous opportunities across multiple sectors to continue to serve marginalized or even outright censored communities -- even extending beyond domestic politics," the press release said. No timing for a return was mentioned. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Starboard founder and CEO Ryan Coyne said that Parler is "going to take a breath of fresh air." Ars notes that Starboard was formerly called Olympic Media and owns conservative news sites American Wire News and BizPac Review.

The previous owner, Parlement Technologies, tried to strike a deal to sell to Ye (formerly Kanye West) in mid-October but canceled the deal after Ye praised Hitler and Nazis. The company laid off a majority of its staff earlier this year.