The Next Web's Tristan Greene combed through a recently published "position paper" detailing China's views on military AI regulation and found that it "makes absolutely no mention of restricting the use of machines capable of choosing and firing on targets autonomously." From the report: Per the paper: "In terms of law and ethics, countries need to uphold the common values of humanity, put people's well-being front and center, follow the principle of AI for good, and observe national or regional ethical norms in the development, deployment and use of relevant weapon systems." Neither the US or the PRC has any laws, rules, or regulations currently restricting the development or use of military LAWs.

The paper's rhetoric may be empty, but there's still a lot we can glean from its contents. Research analyst Megha Pardhi, writing for the Asia Times, recently opined it was intended to signal that China's seeking to "be seen as a responsible state," and that it may be concerned over its progress in the field relative to other superpowers. According to Pardhi: "Beijing is likely talking about regulation out of fear either that it cannot catch up with others or that it is not confident of its capabilities. Meanwhile, formulating a few commonly agreeable rules on weaponization of AI would be prudent." "Despite the fact that neither the colonel's article nor the PRC's position paper mention LAWs directly, it's apparent that what they don't say is what's really at the heart of the issue," concludes Greene. "The global community has every reason to believe, and fear, that both China and the US are actively developing LAWS."

If you're still using an older BlackBerry phone running BlackBerry OS, it's time you upgrade devices. According to BlackBerry, it's ending support for legacy services for BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry PlayBook OS on January 4, 2022. Liliputing reports: Among other things, that means that if you have a phone running BlackBerry 10 or BlackBerry 7.1 OS or earlier, then as of January 4, 2022 it will no longer reliably support: Phone calls; SMS; and 9-1-1 emergency calls. BlackBerry says WiFi and mobile data might also become unreliable, and applications including BlackBerry Link, BlackBerry Desktop Manager, BlackBerry World, BlackBerry Protect, BlackBerry Messenger, and BlackBerry Blend "will also have limited functionality."

The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is also reaching end-of-life status, which means that anyone hanging onto the 10-year-old tablet will also find it severely limited starting January 4th. But the fact that BlackBerry discontinued the tablet a year after launch suggests that there probably never were all that many PlayBook owners in the first place and that number has surely dwindled over the past decade. Folks who are still using a device with BlackBerry OS will want to check out the company's FAQ for tips on migrating their data to other platforms while they still can.

Federal courts have opened the door for what may amount to the most substantial wifi upgrade in over twenty years. From a report: On Tuesday, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a ruling where it supported the FCC's decision to divvy up 1,200MHz of spectrum in the 6GHz band for unlicensed use, a move that paves the way for the eagerly anticipated move to wifi 6E. Prior to the ruling, wifi was limited to broadcasting over 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. That new spectrum represents the single largest addition since wifi was first introduced in 1989, the Verge notes. To put that in perspective, prior to the FCC's additions, wifi operated with just 400MHz of the spectrum. With that in mind, this new ruling should essentially increase the space available to wifi by four times.

When implemented, all this additional spectrum could provide enough capacity to allow seven maximum capacity wifi streams to broadcast in the same areas without interfering with one another, The Verge notes. Put more simply, this should translate to increased bandwidth with less interference for everyday users. Proponents of the FCC's decision, like agency Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, argue it will provide more wifi access in a greater number of places while simultaneously improving performance. All this extra space could also increase upload and download speeds as well.

Yankee Candle reviews on Amazon may be the latest indicator of COVID's surge nationwide. Ichijo shares a report: Some customers who recently purchased from the scented-candle brand using Amazon are flooding the site with negative reviews that say the candles have a barely noticeable scent or no scent at all. While many reviewers gave the candles five stars and described a strong scent reminiscent of Christmas trees, others said they couldn't smell anything or could only smell burning wax. "I've bought this candle before, and the fragrance would fill the room. This one barely has a scent. Boo," said one December 20 review for Yankee Candle's balsam and cedar scent. "No scent whatsoever unless you face-plant into the glass vessel. Burned it for eight hours and, ta-da, NO fragrance," another reviewer wrote on December 19. But the candles may not be the problem. Those customers may have lost their sense of smell, a symptom of COVID-19. Loss of smell, known as anosmia, has become one of the defining symptoms of COVID. While some people regain the ability to smell upon recovering from COVID, others report being unable to smell for months, or even a year, after having COVID. Nick Beauchamp, an assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University, charted the complaints for the top three Yankee Candles on Amazon. He tracked when the negative reviews began and how much those complaints increased per week. His graph showed a sharp spike around December, just as the Omicron variant led to a new wave of COVID cases in the US.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The HDMI standards are a mess. HDMI 2.1, in particular, is a uniquely frustrating mess, with haphazard support among TV manufacturers, cable makers, and devices that make setting up, say 120Hz gaming on a PS5 or Xbox Series X a uniquely harrowing experience. Fortunately, the HDMI Forum is swooping in ahead of CES with its latest revision to the HDMI specification stack, HDMI 2.1a, which is here to make everything better and simpler... I'm kidding, of course. It's gonna make things more complicated. It's a new HDMI standard, what on earth did you expect?

Let's start with the good: HDMI 2.1a is an upcoming revision to the HDMI 2.1 stack and adds a major new feature, Source-Based Tone Mapping, or SBTM. SBTM is a new HDR feature that offloads some of the HDR tone mapping to the content source (like your computer or set-top box) alongside the tone mapping that your TV or monitor is doing. SBTM isn't a new HDR standard -- it's not here to replace HDR10 or Dolby Vision. Instead, it's intended to help existing HDR setups work better by letting the content source better optimize the content it passes to the display or by removing the need to have the user manually calibrate their screens for HDR by having the source device configure content for the specific display. Other use cases could be for when there's a mix of content types, like for streamers (who could have an HDR game playing alongside a window of black and white text), displaying each area of content.

Hyundai announced that it is shutting down its internal combustion engine development team as the automaker focuses on electric cars. Electrek reports: For 40 years the Korean automaker has been developing internal combustion engines to use in its vehicle lineup, but no more. The Korea Economic Daily reports that Hyundai's new R&D chief Park Chung-kook confirmed in an email to employees that they are shutting down new engine development: "Now, it is inevitable to convert into electrification. Our own engine development is a great achievement, but we must change the system to create future innovation based on the great asset from the past."

Hyundai reportedly had 12,000 people working on engines, but they are now being transferred to EV powertrain development: "Researchers at the engine design unit have moved to the electrification design center, leaving only some to modify existing engines. The powertrain system development center is transforming into an electrification test center, while the powertrain performance development center is becoming an electrification performance development center." Park added on the change: "The immediate task is to develop innovative vehicles that can dominate the future market. This reorganization will be an important starting point for change ahead in the new year."

"If you've visited a crypto company's website recently, you've probably visited a URL ending in .xyz instead of its cheugier counterpart, .com," writes Anita Ramaswamy via TechCrunch. "From fintech Block, formerly known as Square, to venture firm Paradigm, to blockchain startups like Mirror, .xyz has become the go-to URL ending for many web3 companies. But what does it mean, and why has it caught on in the web3 space?" An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: .xyz, released to the public in 2014, first surged in popularity one year later when Google parent Alphabet decided to use it for their rebranded website. The internet behemoth had run into an increasingly widespread problem -- the .com URLs for their brand were already taken, with BMW's fleet management division using alphabet.com and American Broadcasting Corporation at abc.com. So Alphabet decided to open up shop at abc.xyz, which presented an "unlimited branding opportunity" for its "futuristic company," Daniel Negari, .xyz's 36-year-old founder and CEO, told TechCrunch in an email. Now, .xyz may be one of the top five top-level domains (TLDs) in the world by traffic, according to the company's own DNS data.

.xyz was created to "provide users around the world competition and choice when it comes to their domain name," and is "the first truly generic domain extension with no inherent meaning," according to Negari. While .com was meant for commercial use, .net for networks and .org for organizations, Negari envisioned .xyz as the TLD choice for users who felt they did not fit neatly into one of these categories or wanted to stand out. "I firmly believe the market has adopted our mantra of 'for every website everywhere,'" Negari said. "Our mantra of openness and inclusion for everyone and everything has bled through into a community of creative thinkers that has embraced .xyz as their domain." Negari is an active crypto investor with "numerous" investments in the space, including Gemini, MoonPay and BlockFi, he said. Because of his interest in crypto, he reached out to Ethereum Name Service (ENS) creator Nick Johnson to pitch him a collaboration. "That historic collaboration allowed early adopters to use a .xyz domain as their wallet address," Negari said.

ENS allows users to create a universal nickname for all their crypto addresses, providing a searchable database to make crypto wallets and transactions, which otherwise reside on a variety of different platforms, more easily accessible. Users can now create profiles to share their social media handles or other personal information in ENS using its native .eth domain or on a .xyz domain. .xyz has continued to find ways to collaborate with ENS and work with the crypto community. It announced this week that it launched its "eth.xyz" service, allowing users to search individual ENS profiles simply by adding ".xyz" to the end of their .eth name rather than having to go to the ENS database to look them up, Negari said. By allowing cryptocurrency holders to buy domains in their preferred names using Ethereum, ENS has creatively monetized users' desire to leverage the internet as an identity-building tool. Although .xyz domains are managed by ICANN, "several parties are now working to develop a decentralized alternative to this system to underpin web3," the report adds. ".xyz's strategy to align itself proactively with web3 companies could present a host of new monetization opportunities based on identity and ownership in a decentralized web as this generation of internet users stakes new claims on domains."

It's also worth noting that these .xyz domains "tend to be more affordable compared to their alternatives."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg Law: Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai must face questioning in a California federal court lawsuit over privacy concerns surrounding Google's "incognito" web browsing mode. Lawyers for the consumers who sued want to ask Pichai about user misconceptions of their privacy online while using Google's Chrome browser. Pichai is subject to up to two hours of testimony under an order issued Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The lawsuit, filed in June 2020, alleges that Google tracks users even when they're browsing in incognito mode. Google disputes the claims, arguing that its privacy disclosures make clear that the private browsing mode doesn't make user activities "invisible" online. In an earlier order, Judge Lucy Koh also allowed consumers to question Google's chief marketing officer, Lorraine Twohill, about incognito's branding as private. Google has tried to toss the claims from consumers, but so far Koh has let them proceed. The company also argued against questioning Pichai, saying lower-level employees responsible for Chrome and the incognito mode are better suited to answering inquiries about private browsing.

Japan revised the schedule of its space exploration plans on Tuesday, aiming to put a Japanese person on the moon by the latter half of the 2020s. From a report: "Not only is space a frontier that gives people hopes and dreams but it also provides a crucial foundation to our economic society with respect to our economic security," Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a meeting to finalise the plan. According to the draft schedule of the plan, Japan aims to put the first non-American on the moon as part of the Artemis programme, a U.S.-led initiative that aims to return astronauts to the moon. The plan also spells out Japan's aspirations to launch a probe to explore Mars in 2024, as well as to find ways to generate solar electricity in space.

Did LastPass get hacked? Gizmodo: Some users of the popular password manager recently received emails from the company warning them of suspicious login attempts that were utilizing their master password -- definitely never a great sign. Speculation soon spread that LastPass may have suffered a data breach that exposed users' credentials, thus allowing for the malicious activity to take place.

According to LastPass itself, the answer is: We don't think so. When reached for comment by Gizmodo, the company provided us with a statement blaming the irregular activity on "credential stuffing" attempts by some unknown threat actor: "LastPass investigated recent reports of blocked login attempts and we believe the activity is related to attempted 'credential stuffing' activity, in which a malicious or bad actor attempts to access user accounts (in this case, LastPass) using email addresses and passwords obtained from third-party breaches related to other unaffiliated services.

An unauthorized NFT drop celebrating infosec pioneers has collapsed into a mess of conflicting takedowns and piracy. From a report: Released on Christmas Day by a group called "ItsBlockchain," the "Cipher Punks" NFT package included portraits of 46 distinct figures, with ten copies of each token. Taken at their opening price, the full value of the drop was roughly $4,000. But almost immediately, the infosec community began to raise objections -- including some from the portrait subjects themselves. The portrait images misspelled several names -- including EFF speech activist Jillian York and OpenPGP creator Jon Callas -- and based at least one drawing on a copyright-protected photograph. More controversially, the list included some figures who have been ostracized for harmful personal behavior, including Jacob Appelbaum and Richard Stallman.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has a tendency to show up, innovate, and then abandon its products/services rather quickly. There's an entire site, Killed by Google, that's dedicated to documenting all of Google's dead projects. Even Stadia, Google's once-promising cloud gaming service, could be heading to the graveyard, after years of failing to measure up to Microsoft's xCloud and Nvidia's GeForce Now. But software is one thing. Hardware is another, and Google has let its premiere Chromebook, the Pixelbook, rot without a hardware refresh since 2019's Pixelbook Go.

Not counting the original Cr-48 reference design Chromebook, Google has released a total of four Chrome OS-powered laptops. There was the original 2013 Chromebook Pixel and 2015 Pixel 2 (not to be confused with the phones that are named Pixel). Then the 2-in-1 Pixelbook in 2017, and in 2019, the Pixelbook Go. The pattern for a refresh seemed to be every two years. This year's Pixel 6 event came and went with no word of a new Pixelbook. And according to a recent comment made at Qualcomm's conference by Chrys Tsolaki, Google's retail partner manager for Chromebooks, there won't be a Pixelbook in 2022, either.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Science: Imagine being able to see the components of a potentially dangerous situation in live 3D and in fine detail without even having to survey the area,' says Brian Goddin, from the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center public affairs, in a video produced by the military. [...] Putting lidar on drones and on ground robots gives the military a way to map the interior of a building with a machine. With that lidar data transmitted to the computers in a command center, or even just the tablet of an operator sitting outside the building, a human can see what the robot sees, and direct the robot accordingly. (In the civilian world, lidar sensors are commonly used on self-driving cars as one tool for the vehicles to perceive the world around them.) Goddin's presentation, released online December 9, 2021, shows lidar mounted on Spot, the Boston Dynamics dog-shaped robot. Ghost Robotics Q-UGV machines, also dog-shaped and sensor-rich, have been used to patrol the perimeter of Tyndall AFB, making Spot the second breed (or brand) of robot dog to serve the needs of the base.

While all of this mapping at Tyndall is happening in the wake of Hurricane Michael, creating a virtual 3D model of the buildings as they stand can guide future repair. Such a virtual model is a useful tool for regular maintenance and repair, and it provides a record of a prior state should disaster strike again. Such techniques could also allow better investigations of failure after the fact. By comparing lidar scans of downed or wrecked craft to those before launch, and to surviving aircraft that made it back from a fight, the Air Force could understand how to better make more durable craft. Scanning a wrecked plane with lidar also lets rescue workers and recovery teams know if and how they should act to save pilots and passengers, suggested Javier Rodriguez, a technician stationed at Tyndall.

According to journalist Liam Robertson, Nintendo had plans to release a Game Boy accessory called the PageBoy that would've used radio transmission technology "to let Game Boy Color owners search for information and read international news, game magazines, weather reports, sports scores, and even, most ambitiously, watch live television," reports Kotaku. "This tech would also allow users to contact and message other PageBoy owners. This radio transmission technology at the time was heavily used by pagers, which is actually where the PageBoy name came from." From the report: In a video out [yesterday], Roberston revealed a whole bunch of details and images of the proposed device for the first time. [...] Roberston spoke to some folks who worked on the PageBoy project with Nintendo about the device and how it came to be and what ultimately killed it before it saw the light of day. According to those involved, after a meeting with Nintendo of America in 1999, the company was excited about the potential for the PageBoy, and for the next three years, Nintendo worked with Wizard -- a group created to help manage the device -- to see if this add-on could actually be created and if it would end up being profitable.

While Nintendo was impressed by many of PageBoy's features, including the ability to send images using the Game Boy camera and even the potential for Nintendo to send live videos to PageBoy owners via the radio transmission tech, it ran into a major roadblock. The device relied on radio networks that only existed in a select few parts of the world, like the United States, greatly limiting the device's customer base. According to Robertson, he was told that Nintendo believed the key to Game Boy's success was how universal the hardware was, allowing users around the world to play the same games with the same features. So, because of this, Nintendo reportedly canceled the project in July 2002. However, as pointed out by Roberston, many of the ideas proposed by Wizard for the PageBoy would end up becoming a reality in the years that followed.

Apple has reportedly hired Andrea Schubert, Meta's communications and public relations lead for its augmented reality (AR) products, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter. The Verge reports: Schubert's LinkedIn page indicates that she's been working for Meta for nearly six years. "Meta, with Oculus, has been the market leader in headsets, so such a hire makes sense as Apple nears its launch," Gurman explains. On both Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, Meta's Oculus Quest 2 was one of the top-selling products. Not to mention that Meta's Oculus app topped the App Store in the US on Christmas Day, and became the number one free app on the Google Play store today, a potential sign that a significant amount of people received the headset as a gift this holiday. According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the company's AR headset could launch sometime in 2022, featuring 8K displays and "Mac-level" computing power. It may also cost a whopping $3,000 and be geared largely for developers at launch.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: Growing tensions between Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Apple lie behind the death of the Internet Association (IA), the nine-year-old lobby group that was Big Tech's voice in Washington, according to insiders and industry observers. The Washington-based group, which dubbed itself the "unified" voice of the internet industry, will shut at the end of the year after both Microsoft and Uber, among others, pulled their financial support, leaving an insurmountable funding gap. "Our industry has undergone tremendous growth and change," it said in a statement, adding that its closure was "in line with this evolution." The closure is a sign of the increasingly different policy objectives of its Big Tech members, said observers, with Microsoft in particular looking to distance itself from its Silicon Valley peers.

"Microsoft has realized that it doesn't want to be associated with Google, Facebook and Amazon," said Barry Lynn, executive director of the Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly campaign group. "It's really, really simple." A number of smaller tech companies had also become frustrated that their priorities were at odds with Big Tech's agenda. "This org could've saved itself years ago by kicking out everyone with a market cap greater than $500 billion," tweeted Luther Lowe, Yelp's head of public policy. Yelp left the association in 2019. "I made this suggestion to the leadership a few years ago, but it was shot down, so we quit."

Despite being the second most valuable US technology group, Microsoft has been able to dodge the latest focus on antitrust in Congress. Unlike the CEOs of Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon, Microsoft's Satya Nadella was left out of the blockbuster congressional hearing in July 2020 that saw the others summoned for a lengthy grilling. Microsoft has also not yet been the focus of any action announced by President Joe Biden's reinvigorated Federal Trade Commission. The company, which went through lengthy antitrust scrutiny in the early 2000s that led it to the brink of being broken up, now boasts about a more collaborative approach with regulators. Lynn said Microsoft was keen to distance itself from its rivals because "they've been through the wringer. They don't want to have their emails read, they don't want to have to go through discovery."

Customer support has become a crowded battlefield in enterprise technology as software vendors from Microsoft to Salesforce rush to arm organizations with tools to create one-stop service centers. From a report: The attention is revitalizing the call center, a once-backwater unit that has long suffered from high turnover rates and minimal corporate investment. Salesforce, ServiceNow, Twilio and Genesys Cloud Services are among the companies that see the call center as a critical part of efforts to transform the consumer base from a sea of faceless pocketbooks to potentially millions of unique personas. It's viewed as a way to improve customer service and bolster brand loyalty at a time when businesses are increasingly worried about churn.

Zoom Video Communications was prepared to fork over $14.7 billion in stock to buy Five9 to gain a foothold in the contact center industry. But Five9 shareholders ultimately thought the price was too low and turned down the deal, a testament to just how much the sector is expected to grow in the coming years. "Instead of being a cost center, it's a lifetime value driver," said Vasili Triant, chief operating officer at UJET, a closely held San Francisco-based call center cloud software provider. As a result, "this space has drawn a lot of attention. Companies need to improve experience. Because of that, a lot of money has flown into it. When money flows into it, people see a huge opportunity."

Historically, customer support software was viewed as a money pit -- systems that were necessary to help field consumer complaints or inquiries but produced little return on investment. Many businesses simply wanted to pick a product, deploy it and forget about it. As a result, the market was fragmented between just a handful of top vendors, including Genesys, Cisco Systems and Avaya. But as more companies move those systems to the internet, that mindset is undergoing a seismic shift. For the last several years, the focus has been on helping call center agents provide better customer support and cut down on service times. That has meant taking steps like consolidating different applications onto a single desktop interface, alleviating the need for agents to toggle between different tabs to view customer data stored in various places.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Motorola Razr was part of the first wave of foldable phones back in 2019, being the first to offer a clamshell form factor akin to the classic Razr feature phones. Motorola would follow up with the Razr 5G in late 2020, but Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip line had stolen its thunder by then. Now, Lenovo executive Chen Jin has revealed on Weibo that a third-generation Motorola Razr foldable is in the works. According to machine translation, the new foldable phone will have improved power, a tweaked interface, and a better appearance. It also seems like the phone could launch in China first.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In an effort to restrict access to pirated ROMs illegally made available for its Switch console, Nintendo has obtained a UK High Court injunction against six internet service providers. Targeted against ROM portals with NSW2U and NSWROM branding, the two-year blocking order requires BT, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk and others to block the sites after they failed to respond to infringement complaints.

The California attorney general and 12 state officials have filed a lawsuit against Walmart, saying it allegedly illegally disposed of electronic and hazardous waste, compromising local landfills. From a report: California Attorney General Rob Bonta alleges in a statement the company violated state environmental laws with their practices, and the waste included materials like lithium and alkaline batteries, insect killer sprays, aerosol cans, LED lightbulbs, and more. State investigators conducted 58 inspections across 13 counties from 2015 to 2021 and said they found classified hazardous and medical waste in each store's trash compactors, as well as customer information that should have been rendered indecipherable. The California DOJ estimates that Walmart's unlawfully disposed waste totals 159,600 pounds or more than 1 million items each year. "We have met with the state numerous times to walk them through our industry-leading hazardous waste compliance programs in an effort to avoid litigation, but instead, they filed this unjustified lawsuit," Walmart spokesperson Randy Hargrove said in a statement. "The state is demanding a level of compliance regarding waste disposal from our stores of common house-hold products and other items that goes beyond what is required by law. We intend to defend this company."