An anonymous reader shares a report: The general trend of macOS releases over the past few years is that it has been moving closer and closer to the look and feel of iOS. The icons have become iOS icons, and their shape has become the iOS shape, and you can now use your iPhone as the Mac's webcam, etc. etc. This occasionally comes at the expense of other functionality (ask me how I feel about the new Settings menu), but it is the direction that Apple has clearly been heading in since (arguably) Big Sur. Every so often, other splashy features are announced (Stage Manager, Universal Control, Quick Notes) that I write a lot about and then never end up using ever again. So, good news for Continuity fans: that's basically what's going on with Sonoma. Ventura looked a heck of a lot like iOS, and Sonoma looks even more like iOS. I turned my office's Mac Studio on after installing the developer beta and thought, for a second, that I might be hallucinating my iPhone's lockscreen. It's remarkably reminiscent.

But in case that wasn't enough of an iPhone vibe for you, the other big update that comes with this public beta is that you can now put widgets on your desktop. Widgets! They intelligently tint based on the color of your desktop, and they're available for various Apple apps, including Safari, Contacts, and Podcasts. Now, this is neat. It also strikes me as one of those iOS carryovers that doesn't make a whole lot of sense on a computer. Personally, I find the benefit of widgets on iPhone largely to be that you glance at them while you're grocery shopping or waiting for the bus or whatever and don't have time to open the actual app. The use case for having them on a computer desktop is not as clear to me -- I don't have the occasion to quickly glance at my computer's blank desktop while doing something else nearly as commonly. I suspect that the primary impact of having widgets on the desktop is that it makes your Mac look a lot more like your iPhone. I have hope that third-party developers might figure out fun and exciting use cases for desktop widgets by the time Sonoma is fully released (but honestly, you never really know with that).

Microsoft is replacing its Calibri default font with Aptos, a new sans-serif typeface that's inspired by mid-20th-century Swiss typography. From a report: Previously known as Bierstadt, Microsoft has been on the hunt for its new Aptos default font over the past couple of years. The software giant commissioned five new custom fonts for Office in 2021, and the Aptos font was picked as the default after years of feedback.

"Today we begin the final phase of this major change where Aptos will start appearing as the new default font across Word, Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel for hundreds of millions of users," explains Si Daniels, a principal program manager at Microsoft, in a design blog post today. "And, over the next few months it will roll out to be the default for all our customers." Aptos was created by Steve Matteson, a leading type designer. Matteson previously created Segoe, which was licensed by Microsoft to be used as the Windows default font. Microsoft first started using the Segoe UI font subfamily in Windows Vista, and it's still used in Windows 11 today. Matteson also worked on the development of the original Windows TrueType core fonts.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: The macOS Sonoma update that is in testing allows Mac owners who opt to use Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or another browser to use Apple's Password Manager for filling passwords. Developers and public beta testers running macOS Sonoma can use their iCloud Keychain passwords with non-Safari browsers at this time, autofilling passwords and one-time codes. Third-party browsers can also save new passwords.

Apple has made an iCloud Passwords Chrome extension available for macOS Sonoma users, and it can be downloaded and installed to access Apple passwords on the Chrome browser or any Chromium-based browser. Apple plans to release a similar extension for the Microsoft Edge browser in the near future. Google and other browser developers are also working on implementing support for Passkeys, the password alternative that Apple introduced last year.

Google Play announced a major shift in policy today, allowing developers to incorporate digital assets such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) into their apps and games in the store. From a report: Companies that decide to offer the ability to buy, sell or earn tokenized assets will be required to make it clear in the Play Console that there are blockchain-based elements in the app. In a blog post shared with CoinDesk, Joseph Mills, Google Play's Group Product Manager, wrote that this will allow partners to reimagine "traditional games with user-owned content" and boost "user loyalty through unique NFT rewards."

Reddit, which has seen enormous success with its Avatar NFTs, was one of the partners working with Google on the new policy. Matt Williamson, Reddit's senior engineering manager, was quoted in the post as saying that the updated guidelines are "aimed at creating a level playing field that promotes user trust, and responsible usage of blockchain technology." The post by Mills stressed the importance of user trust, noting "while tokenized assets are meant to build more enriched, immersive experiences, as an added user protection, developers may not promote or glamorize any potential earning from playing or trading activities."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Australian user data is accessible to TikTok employees based in China on a "very strict basis," the company's head of data security, Will Farrell, has said. In their first public appearance before Australian members of parliament since the government joined Canada, the US and the UK in banning TikTok from government-owned devices amid concerns about the company's connections to China, TikTok executives were questioned at length by a parliamentary committee examining foreign interference on social media. Liberal senator and chair of the committee James Paterson, who has led the opposition's push against the app, questioned how many times Australian user data had been accessed by TikTok staff based within China. Farrell could not provide the number immediately, but admitted it did happen.

Farrell said there were "a number of protections in place", including that employees only get the minimum amount of access to data to do their job, and when they access that data they need to provide a business justification that needs to be approved by their manager and the database owner within TikTok. If the data is being accessed across a national border, it has to be approved by the global security team based in the US, which also monitors all data access. "Employees can't get access without a clear justification and levels of approval," Farrell said. A similar security review would apply if an employee based in China tried to change the recommendations algorithm, he said.

The company's local head of public policy, Ella Woods-Joyce, said China's 2017 national security law -- which requires companies to give the government any personal data relevant to national security -- would apply to any company that had operations and staff in China. When asked on what ground TikTok would refuse to comply with the law, Woods-Joyce said TikTok had never been asked for personal data by the Chinese government and would refuse if asked. [...] It was revealed in December that employees had used the app to attempt to identify the source of a leak to journalists. Hunter told the committee that he stood by the sentiments expressed in his original article, and blamed "rogue employees" who had since been fired from the company for accessing the data. He said "serious misconduct from these rogue employees" had taken place. He said GPS location information was not collected in Australia.

Burger King is causing a stir in Thailand with its new offering: a burger with no meat and a jaw-dropping amount of cheese. From a report: This week, the Thai operator of the fast food chain introduced what it calls the "real cheeseburger," a bun filled with as many as 20 slices of American cheese. The item launched on Thai menus Sunday, at a reduced price of 109 Thai baht ($3.1), compared with the usual price of 380 baht ($10.9). It quickly went viral on social media in Thailand, with many users on TikTok posting videos of them trying the new sandwich.

"This is no joke. This is for real," Burger King said in a Sunday social media post. At one Burger King branch in Bangkok on Tuesday, a shift manager was overheard saying the outlet had to stop taking delivery orders so they could have enough stock left for walk-in diners.

Popular Science describes how NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) will use a pair of ramps to become the first rover to explore the Moon's south pole when it arrives in late 2024. From the report: "We all know how to work with ramps, and we just need to optimize it for the environment we're going to be in," says NASA's VIPER program manager Daniel Andrews. A VIPER test vehicle recently descended down a pair of metal ramps at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, as seen in the agency's recently published photos, with one beam for each set of the rover's wheels. Because the terrain where VIPER will land -- the edge of the massive Nobile Crater -- is expected to be rough, the engineering team has been testing VIPER's ability to descend the ramps at extreme angles. They have altered the steepness, as measured from the lander VIPER will descend from, and differences in elevation between the ramp for each wheel. "We have two ramps, not just for the left and right wheels, but a ramp set that goes out the back too," Andrews says. "So we actually get our pick of the litter, which one looks most safe and best to navigate as we're at that moment where we have to roll off the lander."

VIPER is a scientific successor to NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS mission, which in 2009 confirmed the presence of water ice on the lunar south pole. "It completely rewrote the books on the moon with respect to water," says Andrews, who also worked on the LCROSS mission. "That really started the moon rush, commercially, and by state actors like NASA and other space agencies." The ice, if abundant, could be mined to create rocket propellant. It could also provide water for other purposes at long-term lunar habitats, which NASA plans to construct in the late 2020s as part of the Artemis moon program.

But LCROSS only confirmed that ice was definitely present in a single crater at the moon's south pole. VIPER, a mobile rover, will probe the distribution of water ice in greater detail. Drilling beneath the lunar surface is one task. Another is to move into steep, permanently shadowed regions -- entering craters that, due to their sharp geometry, and the low angle of the sun at the lunar poles, have not seen sunlight in billions of years. The tests demonstrate the rover can navigate a 15-degree slope with ease -- enough to explore these hidden dark spots, avoiding the need to make a machine designed for trickier descents. "We think there's plenty of scientifically relevant opportunities, without having to make a superheroic rover that can do crazy things," Andrews says.

Developed by NASA Ames and Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic, VIPER is a square golf-cart-sized vehicle about 5 feet long and wide, and about 8 feet high. Unlike all of NASA's Mars rovers, VIPER has four wheels, not six. "A problem with six wheels is it creates kind of the equivalent of a track, and so you're forced to drive in a certain way," Andrews says. VIPER's four wheels are entirely independent from each other. Not only can they roll in any direction, they can be turned out, using the rover's shoulder-like joints to crawl out of the soft regolith of the kind scientists believe exists in permanently shadowed moon craters. The wheels themselves are very similar to those on the Mars rovers, but with more paddle-like treads, known as grousers, to carry the robot through fluffy regolith. [...] Together with Astrobotic, Andrews and his team have altered the ramps, and they now include specialized etchings down their lengths. The rover can detect this pattern along the rampway, using cameras in its wheel wells. "By just looking down there," the robot knows where it is, he says. "That's a new touch." Andrews is sure VIPER will be ready for deployment in 2024, however many tweaks are necessary. After all, this method is less complicated than a sky crane, he notes: "Ramps are pretty tried and true."

"The flow of lifesaving organs to 63 U.S. transplant centers could be disrupted..." reported the Washington Post on Monday, "by a dispute over the use of data."

Or, as a local news station WRIC puts it, "Two entities dedicated to fighting to save lives through organ transplant operations are now fighting with each other." Buckeye Transplant Services filed a lawsuit against the United Network for Organ Sharing — or UNOS — on July 3 after the Richmond-based non-profit accused the transplant screening service of putting donor and patient privacy at risk.

UNOS claimed Buckeye did so by using technology to gain unauthorized, improper access to a DonorNet database. Buckeye denied any wrongdoing and insisted that the company has always complied with data accessibility protocol... This isn't UNOS's first controversy, but the reason this particular debate has become high-profile is due to rumors that it could impact transplant operations. Prior to the lawsuit, UNOS threatened to cut off Buckeye's access to data necessary for its operation. UNOS still insists that no transplant program will experience any interruptions in receiving organ offers as a result of the dispute. However, Buckeye warned that if it loses access to crucial data, 63 hospitals across the country — two in Virginia — could have to take on extra burdens.

One of those healthcare systems, the University of Virginia's Transplant Center, told 8News that its team is closely monitoring the situation and is already coming up with plans to prevent any legal hiccups from interrupting the lifesaving organ donation process.
Buckeye was involved in over 13% of America's organ transplants in 2022, according to figures cited by the Washington Post. "Buckeye said it is doing nothing wrong," according to the article, "and that other organizations across the transplant system act similarly." Meanwhile, UNOS's general counsel "stressed that cutting off Buckeye is a last resort in a negotiation that has been underway for two months," the Washington Post reported. "Certain features of Buckeye's electronic systems are capable of and have collected from UNOS systems various large volumes of patient-specific and facility-specific information related to transplant services," a UNOS attorney wrote to Buckeye on June 21. Livingston, the UNOS general counsel, said in an interview that the data belongs to UNOS and that transplant centers are able to obtain it from the organization if they want it. But Buckeye is not allowed to collect it in bulk and sell it to its customers. He said if Buckeye retrieves and "scrapes" the data, UNOS does not know how well it is secured, whether it is being "misused or mishandled" and how it is being stored. He also said Buckeye could create an alternate database with the information.
On Tuesday the Washington Post reported that UNOS had issued a two-week extension (through July 19): Anne Paschke, a spokesperson for UNOS, said the group provided the extension to "allow the court an appropriate amount of time" to consider the company's request for a temp restraining order. "We are confident in our position," Paschke said... Buckeye sued UNOS in federal court on Monday seeking an injunction that would stop the nonprofit group from blocking its access to the national transplant database system...

[The U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration] unveiled plans in March to overhaul the transplant system, including changes to the 37-year monopoly UNOS has held as manager of the organ database... Buckeye is potentially interested in bidding for a part of the contract UNOS now holds, according to company representatives. Its lawsuit contends UNOS "has monopolistic intent to squash the development of technology that could eventually supplant" the UNOS transplant system.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader belmolis for sharing the article.

williamyf writes: Today, Mozilla released Firefox 115. Changes most visible to users include:

But the most important feature is that this release is the new ESR. Why this is important? y'all ask, well:

Reactions continue to Red Hat's announcement that they'd start limiting access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux sources, reports Ars Technica: Rocky Linux, launched by CentOS co-founder Greg Kurtzer as a replacement RHEL-compatible distro, announced Thursday that it believes Red Hat's moves "violate the spirit and purpose of open source." Using a few different methods (Universal Base Image containers, pay-per-use public cloud instances), Rocky Linux intends to maintain what it considers legitimate access to RHEL code under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and make the code public as soon as it exists.
"These methods are possible because of the power of GPL," explains Rocky Linux's blog post. "No one can prevent redistribution of GPL software. To reiterate, both of these methods enable us to legitimately obtain RHEL binaries and SRPMs without compromising our commitment to open source software or agreeing to TOS or EULA limitations that impede our rights. Our legal advisors have reassured us that we have the right to obtain the source to any binaries we receive, ensuring that we can continue advancing Rocky Linux in line with our original intentions.... [O]ur unwavering dedication and commitment to open source and the Enterprise Linux community remain steadfast."

"In the unfortunate event that Red Hat decides to ramp up efforts to negatively impact the community, Rocky Linux will persist to continue serving the best interests of the entire open source community. As a reminder, we welcome everyone to contribute to our efforts. You can learn more about how you can join us and all of the various ways to contribute on our wiki."

Ars Technica notes that AlmaLinux is "also working to keep providing RHEL-compatible updates and downstream rebuilds." "The process is more labor intensive as we require gathering data and patches from several sources, comparing them, testing them, and then building them for release," wrote Jack Aboutboul, community manager for AlmaLinux, in a blog post. "But rest assured, updates will continue flowing just as they have been."

The Software Freedom Conservancy's Bradley M. Kuhn weighed in last week with a comprehensive overview of RHEL's business model and its tricky relationship with GPL compliance. Red Hat's business model "skirts" GPL violation but had only twice previously violated the GPL in newsworthy ways, Kuhn wrote. Withholding Complete Corresponding Source (CCS) from the open web doesn't violate the GPL itself, but by doing so, Red Hat makes it more difficult for anyone to verify the company's GPL compliance.

Kuhn expressed sadness that "this long road has led the FOSS community to such a disappointing place."
Red Hat argued that they "do not find value in a RHEL rebuild." Rocky Linux dismissed this view as "narrow-minded," and RHEL-derived AlmaLinux even responded with specific examples, also noting its contributions to the RHEL and CentOS communities. AlmaLinux's community manager wrote "When executed properly, downstream rebuilds provide tremendous value and are a tremendous asset to upstream projects."

And ITWire shares one more reaction: German open source vendor SUSE says it will not be making any changes to its policies on source code access, emphasising "that the freedom to access, modify, and distribute software should remain open to all".

Long-time Slashdot reader internet-redstar writes: In little longer than 1 year, RHEL7 and CentOS 7 will go EOL. Large enterprises with thousands of these servers are struggling to meet that deadline. Now they also have the option to use Project78 from Linux Belgium which offers a Cloud and OnPrem version to aid in the transition to RHEL 8 or Rocky Linux 8. It promises a 100% success rate for in-place OS upgrading and a 95% success rate for application migrations in a Upgrade-as-a-Service package.
In April Red Hat's senior technical marketing manager shared their thoughts about next year's end of life for CentOS Linux and the End-of-Maintenance for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (along with some tips): The good news is that these events won't require a complete infrastructure overhaul. Tools are available to move from your current configuration to a place where you'll have years of support. While June of '24 may sound a ways off, do not delay. It will be here faster than you think. Start planning now. Start moving soon. Give yourself plenty of runway, and don't forget that we aren't just your software vendor at Red Hat. We are your partners and are here to help you with these transitions.
UPDATE (7/3): Thursday Red Hat announced an add-on option for four more years of "extended support" for RHEL 7: As we near the end of the standard 10-year life cycle of RHEL 7, some IT organizations are finding that they cannot complete their planned migrations before June 30, 2024. To support IT teams while they catch up on their migration schedules, Red Hat is announcing a one-time, 4 year ELS maintenance period for RHEL 7 ELS. While Red Hat is providing more time, we strongly recommend customers migrate to a newer version of RHEL to take advantage of new features and enhancements...

For organizations that need to remain on a major release beyond the standard life cycle, we offer the Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS) Add-On. This add-on currently extends support of major releases for up to 2 years after the end of the standard release life cycle. As an optional, add-on subscription, ELS gives you access to troubleshooting for the last minor release, selected urgent priority bug fixes and certain Red Hat-defined security fixes...

ELS for RHEL 7 is now available for 4 years, starting on July 1, 2024. Organizations must be on RHEL 7.9 to take advantage of this. Compared to previous major releases, ELS for RHEL 7 (RHEL 7.9) expands the scope of security fixes by including updates that address Important CVEs. It also includes maintenance for Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions and Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Availability and Resilient Storage add-ons. And to help you create your long-term IT infrastructure strategy, Red Hat plans to offer ELS for 3 years for both RHEL 8 and 9.

When you're ready to upgrade from RHEL 7 — or any other version — Red Hat is here to help. We offer in-place upgrade tools and detailed guidance to streamline upgrades and application migrations. You can also engage Red Hat Consulting to plan and execute your upgrade projects.

Discord is introducing new ways to generate revenue, including server subscriptions, tiered subscriptions, and the ability for server owners to sell digital products. This move has raised concerns among some users who feel that Discord is becoming less welcoming and more like the paywalled internet it was once an escape from. PC Gamer reports: "To date, we've paid out millions of dollars to thousands of creators and communities, and we're seeing more creators and communities earning on their Discord servers every day," wrote product manager Derek Yang in a blog post published today. "...Today, we're excited to share new tools that help you get started earning money faster."

The nickel-and-dime-ification of Discord servers begins this week with "media channels," a new type of channel (currently in beta) designed to host subscriber-only content, including, for instance, "exclusive memes and wallpapers." You could see an art creator using this Discord feature to post subscriber-only illustrations, as many comic creators and other illustrators already use Patreon to do.

Not a bad deal for creators, but that's only the start of the new revenue streams Discord, who currently takes a 10% cut of server subscriptions, plans to implement. Here's a full list of what the free (now with three asterisks) chat app has in the works:

- Tier Templates: Formalized subscription tiers with prices set by Discord ($3.99, $4.99, $7.99, and $9.99)
- Downloadables: One-time purchasable digital products or subscriptions sold by server owners, which will be accessed via ...
- Server Shops: "A single home for server owners to sell Server Subscriptions, Downloadables and Premium Roles"

According to the Wall Street Journal, Uber plans to introduce full-length video ads across a variety of its platforms for the first time this week. Insider reports: Riders will encounter ads that are up to 90 seconds long on Uber's app while waiting for pickup and during rides. Similar to New York City taxis, which introduced TV screens in 2007, select Uber cars will have tablets that auto-play ads as well, the WSJ reported. Video ads will also be incorporated across Uber Eats and Drizly, an alcohol delivery service acquired by Uber for over $1 billion in 2021, the WSJ reported. On Uber Eats, ads will display while customers wait for their deliveries, and on Drizly, ads will play on search results pages.

While this development is not exactly out of the blue -- Uber announced it would launch an advertising division to connect brands with customers in October -- the move to begin implementing them so swiftly shows how serious the company is about its goal of growing its advertising business to more than $1 billion in sales by 2024. Part of Uber's pitch to brands is its cache of user data. The company has information on where its users go, how often they travel to their destinations, and how long they spend in the car. "We have two minutes of your attention," Mark Grether, vice president and general manager of Uber Technologies' advertising division, told the WSJ. "We know where you are, we know where you are going to, we know what you have eaten."

Grether added that Uber can use all of that data "to then basically target a video ad towards you."

Alphabet's Google may have to sell part of its lucrative adtech business to address concerns about anti-competitive practices, EU regulators said on Wednesday, threatening the company with its harshest regulatory penalty to date. From a report: The European Commission set out its charges in a statement of objections to Google two years after opening an investigation into behaviours such as favouring its own advertising services, which could also lead to a fine of as much as 10% of Google's annual global turnover. The stakes are higher for Google in this latest clash with regulators as it concerns the company's biggest money maker, with the adtech business accounting for 79% of total revenue last year.

Its 2022 advertising revenue, including from search services, Gmail, Google Play, Google Maps, YouTube adverts, Google Ad Manager, AdMob and AdSense, amounted to $224.5 billion. EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said Google may have to sell part of its adtech business because a behavioural remedy is unlikely to be effective at stopping the anti-competitive practices.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When should you be concerned about a NAS hard drive failing? Multiple factors are at play, so many might turn to various SMART (self-monitoring, analysis, and reporting technology) data. When it comes to how long the drive has been active, there are backup companies like Backblaze using hard drives that are nearly 8 years old. That may be why some customers have been panicked, confused, and/or angered to see their Western Digital NAS hard drive automatically given a warning label in Synology's DiskStation Manager (DSM) after they were powered on for three years. With no other factors considered for these automatic flags, Western Digital is accused of age-shaming drives to push people to buy new HDDs prematurely. The practice's revelation is the last straw for some users. Western Digital already had a steep climb to win back NAS customers' trust after shipping NAS drives with SMR (shingled magnetic recording) instead of CMR (conventional magnetic recording). Now, some are saying they won't use or recommend the company's hard drives anymore.

As users have reported online, including on Synology-focused and Synology's own forums, as well as on Reddit and YouTube, Western Digital drives using Western Device Digital Analytics (WDDA) are getting a "warning" stamp in Synology DSM once their power-on hours count hits the three-year mark. WDDA is similar to SMART monitoring and rival offerings, like Seagate's IronWolf, and is supposed to provide analytics and actionable items. The recommended action says: "The drive has accumulated a large number of power on hours [throughout] the entire life of the drive. Please consider to replace the drive soon." There seem to be no discernible problems with the hard drives otherwise.

Synology confirmed this to Ars Technica and noted that the labels come from Western Digital, not Synology. A spokesperson said the "WDDA monitoring and testing subsystem is developed by Western Digital, including the warning after they reach a certain number of power-on-hours." The practice has caused some, like YouTuber SpaceRex, to stop recommending Western Digital drives for the foreseeable future. In May, the YouTuber and tech consultant described his outrage, saying three years is "absolutely nothing" for a NAS drive and lamenting the flags having nothing to do with anything besides whether or not a drive has been in use for three years. A user on SynoForum discussed their "panic" upon seeing the label. And SpaceRex said one of its clients also panicked and quickly replaced the "warning" drives out of fear of losing business-critical data. "It is clearly predatory tactics by Western Digital trying to sell more hard drives," SpaceRex said in a June 10 video. "Users are also concerned that this could prevent people from noticing serious problems with their drive," adds Ars. "Further, you can't repair a pool with a drive marked with a warning label."

Some of the affected products with WDDA include the WD Red Pro, WD Red Plus, and WD Purple. A discussion post about how to disable WDDA via SSH can be found here.

We already have automated processes that detect bugs, test solutions, and generate documentation, notes a new post on Stack Overflow's blog. But beyond that, several developers "have written in the past on the idea of self-healing code. Head over to Stack Overflow's CI/CD Collective and you'll find numerous examples of technologists putting this ideas into practice."

Their blog post argues that self-healing code "is the future of software development." When code fails, it often gives an error message. If your software is any good, that error message will say exactly what was wrong and point you in the direction of a fix. Previous self-healing code programs are clever automations that reduce errors, allow for graceful fallbacks, and manage alerts. Maybe you want to add a little disk space or delete some files when you get a warning that utilization is at 90% percent. Or hey, have you tried turning it off and then back on again?

Developers love automating solutions to their problems, and with the rise of generative AI, this concept is likely to be applied to both the creation, maintenance, and the improvement of code at an entirely new level... "People have talked about technical debt for a long time, and now we have a brand new credit card here that is going to allow us to accumulate technical debt in ways we were never able to do before," said Armando Solar-Lezama, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. "I think there is a risk of accumulating lots of very shoddy code written by a machine," he said, adding that companies will have to rethink methodologies around how they can work in tandem with the new tools' capabilities to avoid that.
Despite the occasional "hallucination" of non-existent information, Stack Overflow's blog acknowledges that large-language models improve when asked to review their response, identify errors, or show its work.

And they point out the project manager in charge of generative models at Google "believes that some of the work of checking the code over for accuracy, security, and speed will eventually fall to AI." Google is already using this technology to help speed up the process of resolving code review comments. The authors of a recent paper on this approach write that, "As of today, code-change authors at Google address a substantial amount of reviewer comments by applying an ML-suggested edit. We expect that to reduce time spent on code reviews by hundreds of thousands of hours annually at Google scale. Unsolicited, very positive feedback highlights that the impact of ML-suggested code edits increases Googlers' productivity and allows them to focus on more creative and complex tasks...."

Recently, we've seen some intriguing experiments that apply this review capability to code you're trying to deploy. Say a code push triggers an alert on a build failure in your CI pipeline. A plugin triggers a GitHub action that automatically send the code to a sandbox where an AI can review the code and the error, then commit a fix. That new code is run through the pipeline again, and if it passes the test, is moved to deploy... Right now his work happens in the CI/CD pipeline, but [Calvin Hoenes, the plugin's creator] dreams of a world where these kind of agents can help fix errors that arise from code that's already live in the world. "What's very fascinating is when you actually have in production code running and producing an error, could it heal itself on the fly?" asks Hoenes...

For now, says Hoenes, we need humans in the loop. Will there come a time when computer programs are expected to autonomously heal themselves as they are crafted and grown? "I mean, if you have great test coverage, right, if you have a hundred percent test coverage, you have a very clean, clean codebase, I can see that happening. For the medium, foreseeable future, we probably better off with the humans in the loop."
Last month Stack Overflow themselves tried an AI experiment that helped users to craft a good title for their question.

This week the Linux Foundation and the National Spectrum Consortium "announced formal collaboration" on developing software prototypes and demonstrations for Open RAN (open radio access network):

The two organizations have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to solidify their working relationship and commitment to minimizing barriers to further R&D necessary for OpenRAN acceleration within the United States.

More open and flexible wireless networks ultimately increase vendor diversity and competition, prevent vendor lock-in, increase innovation in wireless networking technology, lower deployment and operational costs, and even increase security and energy efficiency. "We are eager to work with the NSC in creating a stable, open, secure reference stack for Open RAN," said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge & IoT, the Linux Foundation. "By combining resources, we'll accelerate access to Open RAN and wireless technology across the United States across verticals and into government, academia, and small business."
The collaborations goals include:

• Establish an open source reference software architecture for Open RAN that will kickstart academic and commercial R&D by lowering the cost and complexity of entry

• Rally support from industry with guidance and funds to leap forward in a true open and secure RAN

Google has reversed the suspension of an Android TV app that was hit with a copyright complaint simply because it is able to load a pirate website that can also be loaded in any standard web browser. From a report: The Downloader app, which combines a web browser with a file manager, is back in the Google Play Store after an absence of nearly three weeks. As we previously reported, Google suspended the app based on a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint from several Israeli TV companies that said the app "allows users to view the infamous copyright infringing website known as SDAROT." But that same website could be viewed on any standard browser, including Google's own Chrome app.

"The app was removed on May 19th due to the DMCA takedown request," developer Elias Saba wrote in a blog post today. "Instead of recognizing the absurdity of the claim that a web browser is somehow liable for all the unauthorized use of copyrighted content on the Internet, Google took a backseat and denied my appeal to have the app reinstated." The free app has been downloaded over 5 million times on Google Play and is available on the Amazon app store for devices such as Fire TVs. In addition to the rejected appeal, Saba filed a DMCA counter notification with Google. That "started a 10-business-day countdown for the [TV companies'] law firm to file legal actions against me," Saba wrote today. "Due to the app being removed on a Friday and the Memorial Day holiday, 10 business days had elapsed with no word from the law firm on June 6th and I contacted Google to have the app reinstated."

Google's aiming to make it easier to use and secure passwords -- at least, for users of the Password Manager tool built into its Chrome browser. From a report: Today, the tech giant announced that Password Manager, which generates unique passwords and autofills them across platforms, will soon gain biometric authentication on PC. (Android and iOS have had biometric authentication for some time.) When enabled, it'll require an additional layer of security, like fingerprint recognition or facial recognition, before Chrome autofills passwords.

Exactly which types of biometrics are available in Password Manager on desktop will depend on the hardware attached to the PC, of course (e.g. a fingerprint reader), as well as whether the PC's operating system supports it. Beyond "soon," Google didn't say when to expect the feature to arrive.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: GameStop has fired CEO Matt Furlong, the company announced as part of its first quarter 2023 earnings on Wednesday. There's no immediate replacement, though board chairman Ryan Cohen has been appointed executive chairman, the company said in a short press release about Furlong's firing. Cohen, who founded the e-commerce site Chewy, has invested in a number of "memestocks" including GameStop and Bed, Bath and Beyond. His surprise sale of Bed, Bath, and Beyond stock in 2022 raised eyebrows and led to at least one lawsuit accusing him of pumping and dumping the stock. His initial investment in GameStop back in early 2021 led to an enormous rise in the stock and contributed to its status as a memestock beloved by the Reddit sub r/wallstreetbets.

Matthew Furlong was fired on June 5th without cause, the company wrote in the 10-Q. Furlong started at GameStop in June 2021 -- which was after the beginning of the chaos with GameStop's stock price -- and he oversaw things like the company's move into NFTs, November layoffs, and firing the company's CFO. GameStop has also made Mark Robinson the company's new "principal executive officer" with a title of general manager, according to a form 10-Q from the company. Robinson has been at GameStop for nearly eight years, according to his LinkedIn, and he most recently served as the company's general counsel. GameStop canceled its earnings call today. Shortly after the news broke, Ryan Cohen tweeted: "Not for long".