A former Google employee said the company has lost its way, writing in a recent blog post that Google is inefficient, plagued by mismanagement and paralyzed by risk. Praveen Seshadri joined the Alphabet-owned company at the start of 2020 when Google Cloud acquired AppSheet, which Seshadri co-founded. He left in January, according to his LinkedIn profile. CNBC reports: Seshadri argued it's a "fragile moment" for Google, particularly because of the recent pressures it is facing to compete with Microsoft's artificial intelligence initiatives. Seshadri said Google's problems are not rooted in its technology, but in its culture. "The way I see it, Google has four core cultural problems," Seshadri said. "They are all the natural consequences of having a money-printing machine called 'Ads' that has kept growing relentlessly every year, hiding all other sins. (1) no mission, (2) no urgency, (3) delusions of exceptionalism, (4) mismanagement."

Instead of working to serve customers, Seshadri argued most employees ultimately serve other Google employees. He described the company as a "closed world" where working extra hard isn't necessarily rewarded. Seshadri said feedback is "based on what your colleagues and managers think of your work." Seshadri said Google is hyper-focused on risk and that "risk mitigation trumps everything else." Every line of code, every launch, nonobvious decisions, changes from protocol and disagreements are all risks that Googlers have to approach with caution, Seshadri wrote. He added that employees are also "trapped" in a long line of approvals, legal reviews, performance reviews and meetings that leave little room for creativity or true innovation.

"Overall, it is a soft peacetime culture where nothing is worth fighting for," Seshadri wrote "The people who are inclined to fight on behalf of customers or new ideas or creativity soon learn the downside of doing so." Seshadri said Google has also been hiring at a rapid pace, which makes it difficult to nurture talent and leads to "bad hires." Many employees also believe the company is "truly exceptional," Seshadri said, which means that a lot of antiquated internal processes continue to exist because "that's the way we do it at Google." Seshadri said Google has a chance to turn things around, but he doesn't think the company can continue to succeed by merely avoiding risk. He argues that Google needs to "lead with commitment to a mission," reward people who fight for "ambitious causes" and trim the layers of middle management. "There is hope for Google and for my friends who work there, but it will require an intervention," he wrote.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: ASML, one of the world's most critical semiconductor firms, said Wednesday that it recently discovered that a former employee in China had misappropriated data related to its proprietary technology. The Dutch firm said that it does not believe the alleged misappropriation is material to its business. "We have experienced unauthorized misappropriation of data relating to proprietary technology by a (now) former employee in China," ASML said in its annual report. "However, as a result of the security incident, certain export control regulations may have been violated. ASML has therefore reported the incident to relevant authorities." The data that was misappropriated involved documents. ASML did not expand on the details.

The security incident comes at a sensitive time for ASML and the government of the Netherlands which has been caught in the middle of a battle for tech supremacy between the U.S. and China. Semiconductors are very much part of that rivalry. ASML holds a unique position in the chip supply chain. The company makes a tool called an extreme ultraviolet lithography machine that is required to make the most advanced semiconductors, such as those manufactured by TSMC. ASML is the only company in the world that produces this piece of kit. The U.S. is worried that if ASML ships the machines to China, chipmakers in the country could begin to manufacture the most advanced semiconductors in the world, which have extensive military and advanced artificial intelligence applications. "With ASML's unique position and the growing geopolitical tensions in the semiconductor industry, we see increasing security risk trends, ranging from ransomware and phishing attacks to attempts to acquire intellectual property or disrupt business continuity," a spokesperson for the company said.

Customers of Spotify's audiobook narration firm say that they were not adequately informed of a contract clause that they agreed to, that ultimately allowed Apple to use their voices in its AI training. From a report: Apple quietly released a range of audio Apple Books in early January 2023, which were narrated by voices entirely generated by Artificial Intelligence. Publishers and professional voice actors objected that this was removing a major source of income, but Apple claimed it was still committed to artists.

Specifically, Apple said that the new AI audiobooks were only done for titles where it was not economic to hire an actor. So that would be low-circulation ones such as textbooks, small presses, and self-published titles. Now according to Wired, voiceover artists and authors working with a company called Findaway have complained about Apple using them to train their own AI replacements. Findaway is effectively a self-publishing audio company that is owned by Spotify, where authors pay to have audiobooks produced. As yet, it appears that no actors working for traditionally published titles -- where the audiobook is produced by the publisher without a charge to the author -- have complained.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai sent an internal memo to Googlers on Wednesday asking them to contribute 2-4 hours of their time to helping improve Bard, the company's AI chatbot that it intends to integrate into search. From a report: The email signals how Google's urgency in moving to win the next generation of AI-based search. The company has found itself on its back foot as Microsoft took the spotlight for its investment in OpenAI. OpenAI created the popular ChatGPT, a chatbot released in late 2022 which can respond to broad, open-ended questions with human-like answers. Last week, Microsoft unveiled a revamped version of its Bing search engine with ChatGPT, and CEO Satya Nadella called it a "new day" for search.

"I know this moment is uncomfortably exciting, and that's to be expected: the underlying technology is evolving rapidly with so much potential," Pichai wrote in his memo to Googlers. "The most important thing we can do right now is to focus on building a great product and developing it responsibly." Google kicked off "dogfooding," or internally testing, Bard on Tuesday, according to another memo seen by Insider. It already has thousands of external and internal testers using it, submitting feedback regarding the quality, safety, and "groundedness" of Bard's responses, Pichai's memo said.

Google Fiber is launching the 5Gbps internet plan it began testing in October. Engadget reports: The service will initially cover four cities, but Google says the $125-per-month service will expand to other areas later this year. The new plan is available today in Kansas City, West Des Moines and Fiber's Utah cities. It has symmetrical upload and download rates, an upgraded 10 Gig Fiber Jack (the small box housing the fiber cable's entrance into your home), professional installation, a WiFi 6 router and up to two mesh network extenders.

The upgraded speeds are part of Google's rejuvenated focus on Fiber. The company also recently announced its first network expansion in years. But, perhaps more crucially, it reestablishes Fiber as an industry disrupter pushing competitors to upgrade speeds and lower prices (maybe) on existing plans. Comcast already offers 6Gbps service in some areas, but it costs a whopping $300 and doesn't include symmetrical uploads. Google also reiterated that Fiber's 8Gbps option, also announced late last year, is still "coming soon." That service will also include symmetrical uploads and downloads.

Long-time Slashdot reader jrepin writes: Plasma is a popular desktop environment, which is also powering the desktop mode on the Steam Deck hand-held gaming console. Today, KDE Community announced release of KDE Plasma 5.27, a Long Term Support (LTS) release and the final release in the Plasma 5 series which is based on Qt 5.

This release brings a welcome wizard, which will guide you through setting up the desktop, and a new tiling system for KWin window manager, allowing you to set up custom tile layouts and resize adjacent tiled windows simultaneously. The settings for touch-enabled devices such as touchscreens and drawing tablets have been improved and expanded. For those lucky owners of Valve's Steam Deck gaming console, Discover can now perform system updates from within the desktop. Digital Clock desktop widget can now show the Hebrew calendar in its calendar view, and the Media Player widget is now touch-sensitive. The Bluetooth widget shows the battery status of connected devices when you hover the cursor over it. Those of you who use multiple monitors should benefit greatly from a major overhaul of how Plasma handles them. KDE Plasma now comes with Flatpak permissions settings integrated into the System Settings app.

For details and other new features and improvements be sure to check out the full announcement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Hyundai and Kia are offering free software updates for millions of their cars in response to a rash of car thefts inspired by a viral social media challenge on TikTok. The so-called "Kia Challenge" on the social media platform has led to hundreds of car thefts nationwide, including at least 14 reported crashes and eight fatalities, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Thieves known as "the Kia Boyz" would post instructional videos about how to bypass the vehicles' security system using tools as simple as a USB cable.

The thefts are reportedly easy to pull off because many 2015-2019 Hyundai and Kia vehicles lack electronic immobilizers that prevent thieves from simply breaking in and bypassing the ignition. The feature is standard equipment on nearly all vehicles from the same period made by other manufacturers. Hyundai and its subsidiary Kia are offering to update the "theft alarm software logic" to extend the length of the alarm sound from 30 seconds to one minute. The vehicles will also be updated to require a key in the ignition switch to turn the vehicle on. The software upgrade modifies certain vehicle control modules on Hyundai vehicles equipped with standard "turn-key-to-start" ignition systems. As a result, locking the doors with the key fob will set the factory alarm and activate an "ignition kill" feature so the vehicles cannot be started when subjected to the popularized theft mode. Customers must use the key fob to unlock their vehicles to deactivate the "ignition kill" feature.

There hasn't been a nationwide accounting of how many Hyundai and Kia vehicles have been stolen, but stats from individual cities provide some sense of how viral the trend has become. In Milwaukee, for example, police report that 469 Kias and 426 Hyundais were stolen in 2020. Those numbers spiked the following year to 3,557 Kias and 3,406 Hyundais, according to NPR. Approximately 3.8 million Hyundais and 4.5 million Kias are eligible for the software update free of charge, for a total of 8.3 million cars. Vehicle owners are instructed to take their cars to a local dealership, where technicians will install the upgrades in less than an hour. The upgraded vehicles will also get a window decal indicating they've been equipped with anti-theft technology.

Ford said on Tuesday that it had stopped production and shipments of its F-150 Lightning electric pickup after discovering a potential battery issue during pre-delivery checks. Reuters reports: "We are not aware of any incidences of this issue in the field," Ford spokesperson Emma Bergg said in an email. She said the production stop was issued at the start of last week. Ford added it was investigating the matter, which was earlier reported by CNBC and first reported by Motor Authority. Shares of the automaker were down 1% in afternoon trade. Bergg says Ford has not established a timeline for when production and the shipments will resume. "The team is diligently working on the root cause analysis," she told CNBC, adding the company is "doing the right thing by our customers" to resolve any potential issues before resuming production and shipments.

As Meta gears up for its "year of efficiency," the company announced today it's exiting the livestream shopping business on Instagram, following a similar shutdown on Facebook. From a report: Starting on March 16, 2023, Instagram users will no longer be able to tag products while livestreaming -- a capability that has been broadly available to U.S. businesses and creators since 2020. The changes highlight the difficulties the U.S. market has had in making livestream shopping successful. The activity is already hugely popular activity in Asian markets, including China where apps like WeChat, Taobao Live and Douyin (China's TikTok) have proven live shopping to be a popular and profitable endeavor. As the pandemic raged across the globe, many U.S. businesses looked to adopt live shopping as well, to help boost their own online retail revenues. Before too long, pundits were calling live shopping the "future of e-commerce," citing the early traction businesses like TalkShopLive, NTWRK, Brandlive, and others in the space had gained, alongside adoption from big tech companies like Meta, Amazon, and YouTube.

Google has begun letting Android developers kick the tyres of its claimed reboot of ad-targeting -- announcing the launch of the first Beta for its "Privacy Sandbox," an adtech stack proposal which aims to iterate how ad tracking, targeting and reporting is done so it appears less creepy for individual users while maintaining an interest-based, behavioral targeting capability on web users' eyeballs. From a report: A "small percentage" of eligible Android 13 devices will be enrolled in the trial of the beta from today as the adtech giant starts a gradual (but it says global) rollout of the beta -- which will "expand over time." (It's published developer guidance on participating in the beta here.) Ad partners for the trial include TechCrunch's parent Yahoo, mobile games maker Rovio, mobility firm Wolt, cross-platform games engine Unity and mobile marketing platforms AppsFlyer, InMobi Exchange and Adjust. "If your device is selected for the Beta, you'll receive an Android notification letting you know," Google adds in a blog post -- implying Android users will be opted in to the experimental, interest-based ad targeting (and will have to actively opt out if they don't wish their eyeballs to be guinea pigs).

A new bill advancing through the Arkansas legislature aims to make it harder for people to access porn sites. From a report: Senate Bill 66, the Protection of Minors from Distribution of Harmful Material Act, would require anyone in Arkansas to provide a "digitized identification card" before viewing a site that contains more than 33.33 percent of "harmful material." That arbitrarily-defined number, and the language of the bill itself, is a copycat of a recently-enacted law in Louisiana that blocks people from seeing porn if they don't hand over official identification. SB66 was filed in the Arkansas Senate in January, and passed to the House on February 1.

President Biden's long-stalled nominee to the Federal Communications Commission fired back at her critics today, saying that the telecom industry shouldn't be allowed to choose its own regulators. From a report: "I believe deeply that regulated entities should not choose their regulator," Sohn said in prepared testimony for a Senate Commerce Committee nomination hearing today. "Unfortunately, that is the exact intent of the past 15 months of false and misleading attacks on my record and my character. My industry opponents have hidden behind dark money groups and surrogates because they fear a pragmatic, pro-competition, pro-consumer policymaker who will support policies that will bring more, faster, and lower-priced broadband and new voices to your constituents."

Biden first nominated Sohn, a longtime consumer advocate and former FCC official, on October 26, 2021. The full Senate never voted on whether to confirm Sohn as an FCC commissioner, and Biden renominated her last month. With the FCC deadlocked at two Democrats and two Republicans, Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel hasn't been able to pursue any major regulation of an industry that was deregulated during the Trump era. "The FCC has been without a majority for the entirety of the Biden administration -- over two years -- at a time when closing the digital divide is front and center," Sohn's testimony said. "There are too many important issues in front of the commission to lack a full complement of members, including improving the broadband maps, fixing the Universal Service Fund, closing the homework gap, ensuring fair access to broadband, and protecting consumers' privacy. Americans deserve a full FCC where I could play a critical role in addressing every one of these, but time is of the essence."

The European Parliament on Tuesday formally approved a law to effectively ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in the European Union from 2035, aiming to speed up the switch to electric vehicles and combat climate change. From a report: The landmark rules will require that by 2035 carmakers must achieve a 100% cut in CO2 emissions from new cars sold, which would make it impossible to sell new fossil fuel-powered vehicles in the 27-country bloc. The law will also set a 55% cut in CO2 emissions for new cars sold from 2030 versus 2021 levels, much higher than the existing target of a 37.5%. "The operating costs of an electric vehicle are already lower than the operating costs of a vehicle with an internal combustion engine," Jan Huitema, the parliament's lead negotiator on the rules, said, adding that it was crucial to bring more affordable electric vehicles to consumers.

Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle venture Zoox said on Monday that it is now testing its self-driving robotaxis on public roads in California with passengers on board. CNBC reports: The vehicles have no steering wheel or pedals, and they have bidirectional driving capabilities and four-wheel steering, enabling them to change directions without the need to reverse. Zoox executives said the company began the tests after it received approval from the California Department of Motor Vehicles last week.

The permit is not for all public roads in the state. The tests are currently limited to shuttling Zoox employees on a one-mile public route between two office buildings at the company's headquarters in Foster City, California, at speeds up to 35 miles an hour. The company hasn't said how big its test fleet is, but executives have said they have built "dozens" of vehicles, although fewer than 100. Zoox said one of its vehicles completed a test run with employees on board over the weekend.

Microsoft is working to bring native support for RGB PC gaming accessories to Windows 11. The Verge reports: The Windows lighting experience will include the ability for PC gamers to configure accessories with RGB lighting without having to install third-party software. Twitter user Albacore has spotted early work for integrating this new lighting experience into Windows 11 in the latest public test builds of the operating system. Options for controlling brightness, lighting effects, speed, and colors can all be found in the settings interface of Windows 11. There's even a feature that will match your accessories to the Windows accent color.

Digital asset platform Bakkt is to discontinue its two-year-old consumer-facing app as its focus shifts toward business-to-business (B2B) tech services. From a report: Consumers will be able to continue to managing assets over the web after the app officially closes on March 16, Bakkt said Monday. The app went live in March 2021 with the aim of integrating crypto holdings with other digital assets such as airline miles, gift cards and loyalty points. Partnerships with firms including Starbucks, Best Buy and Choice Hotels accompanied the app's launch.

Facebook parent company Meta reportedly plans to further reduce its headcount in the coming weeks. From a report: According to the Financial Times, work at the tech giant has slowed to a crawl while it plots a new round of job cuts. Meta is likely to announce the restructuring after it has completed staff performance reviews sometime in March. In November, the company laid off 11,000 employees or about 13 percent of its global workforce. Those cuts were the largest in Meta's nearly 20-year history, affecting every organization within the company.

Sensitive mental health data is for sale by little-known data brokers, at times for a few hundred dollars and with little effort to hide personal information such as names and addresses, according to research released Monday. From a report: The research, conducted over the span of two months at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy, which studies the ecosystem of companies buying and selling personal data, consisted of asking 37 data brokers for bulk data on people's mental health. Eleven of them agreed to sell information that identified people by issues, including depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder, and often sorted them by demographic information such as age, race, credit score and location.

The researchers did not buy the data, but in many cases received free samples to prove that the broker was legitimate, a common industry practice. The study doesn't name the data brokers. Some of the brokers were particularly cavalier with sensitive data. One made no demands on how information it sold was used and advertised that it could offer names and addresses of people with "depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety issues, panic disorder, cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and personality disorder, as well as individuals who have had strokes and data on theirs races and ethnicities," the report found. "[T]he industry appears to lack a set of best practices for handling individuals' mental health data, particularly in the areas of privacy and buyer vetting." the report found.

The fall in Mastodon's popularity suggests the decentralized platform is not a replacement for mainstream services. An anonymous reader shares a report: Twitter users put Mastodon usernames in their handles and trumpeted their migration. The new traffic knocked many Mastodon instances, or servers, offline. In less than two months, Mastodon's monthly active users climbed from 380,000 to more than 2.5 million. But not everyone stuck around. Mastodon's active monthly user count dropped to 1.4 million by late January. It now has nearly half a million fewer total registered users than at the start of the year. Many newcomers have complained that Mastodon is hard to use.

Google employees are criticizing leadership, most notably CEO Sundar Pichai, for the way the company handled the announcement last week of its ChatGPT competitor called Bard. From a report: Staffers took to the popular internal forum Memegen to express their thoughts on the Bard announcement, referring to it as "rushed," "botched" and "un-Googley," according to messages and memes viewed by CNBC. On Monday, Google got ahead of a Microsoft event the following day and had Pichai publicly divulge some details of the company's chatbot technology. More about Bard was revealed on Wednesday at an event held in Paris. In between those events, Microsoft, an early investor in ChatGPT creator OpenAI, showcased how its Bing search engine will integrate with the buzzy chat technology, inviting reporters to a demonstration at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington. After Google's AI Chatbot Made a Mistake, Its Shares Dropped Over $100 Billion.