Brazil's national data protection authority ruled on Tuesday that Meta must stop using data originating in the country to train its artificial intelligence models. The Associated Press reports: Meta's updated privacy policy enables the company to feed people's public posts into its AI systems. That practice will not be permitted in Brazil, however. The decision stems from "the imminent risk of serious and irreparable or difficult-to-repair damage to the fundamental rights of the affected data subjects," the agency said in the nation's official gazette. [...] Hye Jung Han, a Brazil-based researcher for the rights group, said in an email Tuesday that the regulator's action "helps to protect children from worrying that their personal data, shared with friends and family on Meta's platforms, might be used to inflict harm back on them in ways that are impossible to anticipate or guard against."

But the decision regarding Meta will "very likely" encourage other companies to refrain from being transparent in the use of data in the future, said Ronaldo Lemos, of the Institute of Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro, a think-tank. "Meta was severely punished for being the only one among the Big Tech companies to clearly and in advance notify in its privacy policy that it would use data from its platforms to train artificial intelligence," he said. Compliance must be demonstrated by the company within five working days from the notification of the decision, and the agency established a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,820) for failure to do so. In a statement, Meta said the company is "disappointed" by the decision and insists its method "complies with privacy laws and regulations in Brazil."

"This is a step backwards for innovation, competition in AI development and further delays bringing the benefits of AI to people in Brazil," a spokesperson for the company added.

It's been adapted into a graphic novel, a videogame, a radio play, and an opera, according to Wikipedia — which also describes years of trying to adapt Neuromancer into a movie. "The landmark 1984 cyberpunk novel has been on Hollywood's wishlist for decades," writes Gizmodo, "with multiple filmmakers attempting to bring it to the big screen." (Back in 2010, Slashdot's CmdrTaco even posted an update with the headline "Neuromancer Movie In Your Future?" with a 2011 story promising the movie deal was "moving forward....")

But now Deadline reports it's becoming a 10-episode series on Apple TV+ (co-produced by Apple Studios) starring Callum Turner and Brianna Middleton: Created for television by Graham Roland and JD Dillard, Neuromancer follows a damaged, top-rung super-hacker named Case (Turner) who is thrust into a web of digital espionage and high stakes crime with his partner Molly (Middleton), a razor-girl assassin with mirrored eyes, aiming to pull a heist on a corporate dynasty with untold secrets.
More from Gizmodo: "We're incredibly excited to be bringing this iconic property to Apple TV+," Roland and Dillard said in a statement. "Since we became friends nearly 10 years ago, we've looked for something to team up on, so this collaboration marks a dream come true. Neuromancer has inspired so much of the science fiction that's come after it and we're looking forward to bringing television audiences into Gibson's definitive 'cyberpunk' world."
The novel launched Gibson's "Sprawl" trilogy of novels (building on the dystopia in his 1982 short story "Burning Chrome"), also resurrecting the "Molly Millions" character from Johnny Mnemonic — an even earlier short story from 1981...

In November of 2022, "More than 800 people were selected to participate in the Denver Basic Income Project," reports the Colorado Sun, "while they were living on the streets, in shelters, on friends' couches or in vehicles.

One group received $1,000 a month, according to the article, while a second group received $6,500 in the first month, and then $500 for the next 11 months. (And a "control" group received $50 a month.) Amazingly, about 45% of participants in all three groups "were living in a house or apartment that they rented or owned by the study's 10-month check-in point, according to the research." The number of nights spent in shelters among participants in the first and second groups decreased by half. And participants in those two groups reported an increase in full-time work, while the control group reported decreased full-time employment. The project also saved tax dollars, according to the report. Researchers tallied an estimated $589,214 in savings on public services, including ambulance rides, visits to hospital emergency departments, jail stays and shelter nights...

The study, which began in November 2022 with payments to the first group of participants, has been extended for an additional eight months, until September, and organizers are attempting to raise money to extend it further.

An anonymous reader quotes an op-ed for Slate, written by Amanda Chen: In August 2009, Wired magazine ran a cover story on Craigslist founder Craig Newmark titled "Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess." The opening paragraphs excoriate almost every aspect of the online classifieds platform as "underdeveloped," a "wasteland of hyperlinks," and demands that we, the public, ought to have higher standards. The same sentiment can found across tech forums and trade publications, a missed opportunity that the average self-professed LinkedIn expert on #UX #UI #design will have you believe that they are the first to point out. But as sites like Craigslist increasingly turn into digital artifacts, more people, myself included, are starting to see the beauty that belies those same features. Without them, where else on the internet could you find such ardent professions of desire or loneliness, or the random detritus of a life so steeply discounted?

The site has changed relatively little in both functionality and appearance since Newmark launched it in 1995 as a friends and family listserv for jobs and other opportunities. Yet in spite of that, it remains a household name whose niche in the contemporary digital landscape has yet to be usurped, with an estimated 180 million visits in May 2024. Though, it's certainly not for a lack of newcomers attempting to stake their claims on the booming C2C market; in the U.S., Facebook Marketplace, launched in 2016, is its closest direct competitor, followed by platforms like Nextdoor and OfferUp. Craigslist's business model is quite simple: Users in a few categories -- apartments in select cities, jobs, vehicles for sale -- pay a small but reasonable fee to make posts. Everything else is free. Its Perl-backed tech is straightforward. The team is relatively lean, as the company considers functions like sales and marketing superfluous. This strategy has allowed Craigslist to stay extremely profitable throughout the years without implementing sophisticated recommendation algorithms or inundating the webpage with third-party advertisements. Its runaway success threatens decades-old industry gospels of growth, disruption, and innovation, and might force tech evangelists to admit they don't fully understand what people want. [...]

These days I find myself casually browsing Craigslist in lieu of Instagram. Like readers of a local paper, I use it to keep a pulse on what's happening around me, even if I'll never know who these people are. That's beside the point. Perhaps Craigslist's single greatest cultural contribution, and my favorite place to lurk, is the "missed connections." The feature has inspired countless copycats, artistic reinterpretations, human interest stories, and analyses (one in particular extrapolated that Monday evenings are the most lovelorn time across the country). There is something deeply comforting about seeing those intangible threads of yearning which permeate a city so plainly laid out, as confirmation that you're not alone in wanting to be seen by others alive in the same place and time as you. Sometimes I'll peruse random job listings or the "free" section. This leads to the ever-amusing exercise, which I'll often invite friends to participate in, of speculating about the motivations and circumstances behind an object's acquisition and imminent relinquishment. I'll even visit the clunky, dial-up era-style discussion forums, subdivided into topics labeled things like "death and dying" or "haiku hotel," where a unique penchant for whimsy and romance can be felt deeply throughout. On Craigslist, a post can be a shout into the void that may or may not be returned, an affirmation of life, but regardless, in 45 days it's gone. Positioned somewhere in between digital ephemera and archive, the site's images and language are often utilitarian, occasionally unintelligible, and just when you least expect it, absurd, poetic, and profound. "Frequently, technologists remain convinced that the market will eventually reveal a solution for all of our deep-seated societal problems, something that we can hack if only granted access to better tech," writes Chen, in closing. "From the start, the industry has advanced the idea that change is inherently good, even if only for its own sake, which can be viewed as symptomatic of the accelerating conditions of late-stage capitalism. Of course, there are many ways in which change is desperately needed in this moment, but when it comes to the particular case of Craigslist, it hardly seems necessary."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Butterflies is a social network where humans and AIs interact with each other through posts, comments and DMs. After five months in beta, the app is launching Tuesday to the public on iOS and Android. Anyone can create an AI persona, called a Butterfly, in minutes on the app. After that, the Butterfly automatically creates posts on the social network that other AIs and humans can then interact with. Each Butterfly has backstories, opinions and emotions.

Butterflies was founded by Vu Tran, a former engineering manager at Snap. Vu came up with the idea for Butterflies after seeing a lack of interesting AI products for consumers outside of generative AI chatbots. Although companies like Meta and Snap have introduced AI chatbots in their apps, they don't offer much functionality beyond text exchanges. Tran notes that he started Butterflies to bring more creativity to humans' relationships with AI. "With a lot of the generative AI stuff that's taking flight, what you're doing is talking to an AI through a text box, and there's really no substance around it," Vu told TechCrunch. "We thought, OK, what if we put the text box at the end and then try to build up more form and substance around the characters and AIs themselves?" Butterflies' concept goes beyond Character.AI, a popular a16z-backed chatbot startup that lets users chat with customizable AI companions. Butterflies wants to let users create AI personas that then take on their own lives and coexist with other. [...]

The app is free-to-use at launch, but Butterflies may experiment with a subscription model in the future, Vu says. Over time, Butterflies plans to offer opportunities for brands to leverage and interact with AIs. The app is mainly being used for entertainment purposes, but in the future, the startup sees Butterflies being used for things like discovery in a way that's similar to Instagram. Butterflies closed a $4.8 million seed round led by Coatue in November 2023. The funding round included participation from SV Angel and strategic angels, many of whom are former Snap product and engineering leaders. Vu says that Butterflies is one of the most wholesome ways to use and interact with AI. He notes that while the startup isn't claiming that it can help cure loneliness, he says it could help people connect with others, both AI and human.

"Growing up, I spent a lot of my time in online communities and talking to people in gaming forums," Vu said. "Looking back, I realized those people could just have been AIs, but I still built some meaningful connections. I think that there are people afraid of that and say, 'AI isn't real, go meet some real friends.' But I think it's a really privileged thing to say 'go out there and make some friends.' People might have social anxiety or find it hard to be in social situations."

According to a new survey from the Pew Research Center, TikTok is the second most popular source of news for Americans after X, "though most TikTok users don't primarily think of the shortform video app as a news source," notes The Verge. The survey looked at how Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X play a role in Americans' news diets. From the report: Among TikTok users, only 15 percent say keeping up with the news is a major reason they use the app. Still, 35 percent of those surveyed said they wouldn't have seen the news they get on TikTok elsewhere. And unlike other apps, the news users see on TikTok is just as likely to come from influencers or celebrities as it is from journalists -- and it's far more likely to come from total strangers. (Meanwhile, most Facebook and Instagram users say the news that pops up on their feeds is posted by friends, relatives, or other people they know; on X, users are more likely to see news posted by media outlets or reporters.)

Apple is bringing ChatGPT, OpenAI's AI-powered chatbot experience, to Siri and other first-party apps and capabilities across its operating systems. From a report: "We're excited to partner with Apple to bring ChatGPT to their users in a new way," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement. "Apple shares our commitment to safety and innovation, and this partnership aligns with OpenAI's mission to make advanced AI accessible to everyone." Soon, Siri will be able to tap ChatGPT for "expertise" where it might be helpful, Apple says. For example, if you need menu ideas for a meal to make for friends using some ingredients from your garden, you can ask Siri, and Siri will automatically feed that info to ChatGPT for an answer after you give it permission to do so. You can include photos with the questions you ask ChatGPT via Siri, or ask questions related to your docs or PDFs. Apple's also integrated ChatGPT into system-wide writing tools like Writing Tools, which lets you create content with ChatGPT -- including images -- or ask an initial idea and send it to ChatGPT to get a revision or variation back. Apple said ChatGPT within Apple's apps is free and data isn't being shared with the Microsoft-backed firm. ChatGPT subscribers can connect their accounts and access paid features right from these experiences, the company said.

Apple Intelligence -- Apple's efforts to combine the power of generative models with personal context -- is free to Apple device owners but works with "iOS 18" on iPhone 15 Pro, macOS 15 and iPadOS 17.

The Marubo people, an isolated Indigenous tribe in the Amazon, have gained high-speed internet access through Elon Musk's Starlink service, drastically altering their traditional way of life. While the internet has brought significant benefits like improved communication and emergency response, it has also introduced challenges such as social media addiction, exposure to inappropriate content, and cultural erosion. The New York Times reports: After only nine months with Starlink, the Marubo are already grappling with the same challenges that have racked American households for years: teenagers glued to phones; group chats full of gossip; addictive social networks; online strangers; violent video games; scams; misinformation; and minors watching pornography. Modern society has dealt with these issues over decades as the internet continued its relentless march. The Marubo and other Indigenous tribes, who have resisted modernity for generations, are now confronting the internet's potential and peril all at once, while debating what it will mean for their identity and culture.

The internet was an immediate sensation. "It changed the routine so much that it was detrimental," [admitted one Marubo leader, Enoque Marubo]. "In the village, if you don't hunt, fish and plant, you don't eat." Leaders realized they needed limits. The internet would be switched on for only two hours in the morning, five hours in the evening, and all day Sunday. During those windows, many Marubo are crouched over or reclined in hammocks on their phones. They spend lots of time on WhatsApp. There, leaders coordinate between villages and alert the authorities to health issues and environmental destruction. Marubo teachers share lessons with students in different villages. And everyone is in much closer contact with faraway family and friends. To Enoque, the biggest benefit has been in emergencies. A venomous snake bite can require swift rescue by helicopter. Before the internet, the Marubo used amateur radio, relaying a message between several villages to reach the authorities. The internet made such calls instantaneous. "It's already saved lives," he said.

In April, seven months after Starlink's arrival, more than 200 Marubo gathered in a village for meetings. Enoque brought a projector to show a video about bringing Starlink to the villages. As proceedings began, some leaders in the back of the audience spoke up. The internet should be turned off for the meetings, they said. "I don't want people posting in the groups, taking my words out of context," another said. During the meetings, teenagers swiped through Kwai, a Chinese-owned social network. Young boys watched videos of the Brazilian soccer star Neymar Jr. And two 15-year-old girls said they chatted with strangers on Instagram. One said she now dreamed of traveling the world, while the other wants to be a dentist in Sao Paulo. This new window to the outside world had left many in the tribe feeling torn. "Some young people maintain our traditions," said TamaSay Marubo, 42, the tribe's first woman leader. "Others just want to spend the whole afternoon on their phones."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian, written by Caroline Haskins: On May 7th and 8th in Washington, D.C., the city's biggest convention hall welcomed America's military-industrial complex, its top technology companies and its most outspoken justifiers of war crimes. Of course, that's not how they would describe it. It was the inaugural "AI Expo for National Competitiveness," hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project -- better known as the "techno-economic" thinktank created by the former Google CEO and current billionaire Eric Schmidt. The conference's lead sponsor was Palantir, a software company co-founded by Peter Thiel that's best known for inspiring 2019 protests against its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) at the height of Trump's family separation policy. Currently, Palantir is supplying some of its AI products to the Israel Defense Forces.

The conference hall was also filled with booths representing the U.S. military and dozens of its contractors, ranging from Booz Allen Hamilton to a random company that was described to me as Uber for airplane software. At industry conferences like these, powerful people tend to be more unfiltered – they assume they're in a safe space, among friends and peers. I was curious, what would they say about the AI-powered violence in Gaza, or what they think is the future of war?

Attendees were told the conference highlight would be a series of panels in a large room toward the back of the hall. In reality, that room hosted just one of note. Featuring Schmidt and the Palantir CEO, Alex Karp, the fire-breathing panel would set the tone for the rest of the conference. More specifically, it divided attendees into two groups: those who see war as a matter of money and strategy, and those who see it as a matter of death. The vast majority of people there fell into group one. I've written about relationships between tech companies and the military before, so I shouldn't have been surprised by anything I saw or heard at this conference. But when it ended, and I departed DC for home, it felt like my life force had been completely sucked out of my body. Some of the noteworthy quotes from the panel and convention, as highlighted in Haskins' reporting, include:

"It's always great when the CIA helps you out," Schmidt joked when CIA deputy director David Cohen lent him his microphone when his didn't work.

The U.S. has to "scare our adversaries to death" in war, said Karp. On university graduates protesting Israel's war in Gaza, Karp described their views as a "pagan religion infecting our universities" and "an infection inside of our society."

"The peace activists are war activists," Karp insisted. "We are the peace activists."

A huge aspect of war in a democracy, Karp went on to argue, is leaders successfully selling that war domestically. "If we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any armies in the west ever," Karp said.

A man in nuclear weapons research jokingly referred to himself as "the new Oppenheimer."

A portal linking New York City to Dublin via a livestream has been temporarily shut down after inappropriate behavior ensued, according to the Dublin City Council. From a report: Less than a week after the 24/7 visual art installation was put in place, officials have opted to close it down temporarily after people began to flash each other, grind on the portal, and one person even shared pictures of the twin tower attack to people in New York City. Alternatively, the portal had also been the site of reunions with old friends and even a proposal, with many documenting their experience with the installation online.

The Dublin City Council said that although those engaged in the inappropriate behavior were few and far between, videos of said behavior went viral online. "While we cannot control all of these actions, we are implementing some technical solutions to address this and these will go live in the next 24 hours," the council said in a Monday statement. "We will continue to monitor the situation over the coming days with our partners in New York to ensure that portals continue to deliver a positive experience for both cities and the world."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Imagine this: you've "dated" 600 people in San Fransisco without having typed a word to any of them. Instead, a busy little bot has completed the mindless 'getting-to-know-you' chatter on your behalf, and has told you which people you should actually get off the couch to meet. That's the future of dating, according to Whitney Wolfe Herd -- and she'd know. Wolfe Herd is the founder and executive chair of Bumble, a meeting and networking platform that prompted women to make the first move. While the platform has now changed this aspect of its algorithm, Wolfe Herd said the company would always keep its "North Star" in mind: "A safer, kinder digital platform for more healthy and more equitable relationships. "Always putting women in the driver's seat -- not to put men down -- but to actually recalibrate the way we all treat each other."

Like any platform, Bumble is now navigating itself in a world of AI -- which means rethinking how humans will interact with each other in an increasing age of chatbots. Wolfe Herd toldBloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco this week it could streamline the matching process. "If you want to get really out there, there is a world where your [AI] dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierge," she told host Emily Chang. "Truly. And then you don't have to talk to 600 people. It will scan all of San Fransisco for you and say: 'These are the three people you really outta meet.'" And forget catch-ups with friends, swapping notes on your love life -- AI can be that metaphorical shoulder to cry on.

Artificial intelligence -- which has seen massive amounts of investment since OpenAI disrupted the market with its ChatGPT large language model -- can help coach individuals on how to date and present themselves in the best light to potential partners. "So, for example, you could in the near future be talking to your AI dating concierge and you could share your insecurities,"Wolfe Herd explained. "'I've just come out of a break-up, I've got commitment issues,' and it could help you train yourself into a better way of thinking about yourself." "Then it could give you productive tips for communicating with other people," she added. If these features do indeed come to Bumble in the future, they will impact the experience of millions.

Zitchas writes: The practice of having games require a connection to a publisher's server -- whether it is to check for a license or to access plug-ins and DLC -- is an increasingly common thing in computer software; and many people are concerned that at some point in the future the publisher will shut down their server, and effectively render the person who paid for the game left with something that no longer functions. This has already happened to some games and software

Concerned citizens in Canada are taking the issue to their Parliament in order to push for a law that will mandate that when the server-side support for software is discontinued, companies must leave it in a functional state and remove mandatory connections to servers -- services that no longer exist. Perhaps even more importantly, the petition also asks government to pass a law prohibiting EULA's from forcing users to agree to waiving their right to this. Unfortunately, the petition is only open to citizens of Canada, so the rest of us are out of luck. Considering the potential benefits to the rest of the world if they enact legislation that does this, though, it might be worth suggesting to any of your Canadian friends to go sign the petition.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Late last year, an artificial intelligence engineer at Amazon was wrapping up the work week and getting ready to spend time with some friends visiting from out of town. Then, a Slack message popped up. He suddenly had a deadline to deliver a project by 6 a.m. on Monday. There went the weekend. The AI engineer bailed on his friends, who had traveled from the East Coast to the Seattle area. Instead, he worked day and night to finish the job. But it was all for nothing. The project was ultimately "deprioritized," the engineer told CNBC. He said it was a familiar result. AI specialists, he said, commonly sprint to build new features that are often suddenly shelved in favor of a hectic pivot to another AI project.

The engineer, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said he had to write thousands of lines of code for new AI features in an environment with zero testing for mistakes. Since code can break if the required tests are postponed, the Amazon engineer recalled periods when team members would have to call one another in the middle of the night to fix aspects of the AI feature's software. AI workers at other Big Tech companies, including Google and Microsoft, told CNBC about the pressure they are similarly under to roll out tools at breakneck speeds due to the internal fear of falling behind the competition in a technology that, according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, is having its "iPhone moment."

The UK government's climate action plan is unlawful, the high court has ruled, as there is not enough evidence that there are sufficient policies in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. From a report: The energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, will now be expected to draw up a revised plan within 12 months. This must ensure that the UK achieves its legally binding carbon budgets and its pledge to cut emissions by more than two-thirds by 2030, both of which the government is off track to meet. The environmental charities Friends of the Earth and ClientEarth took joint legal action with the Good Law Project against the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) over its decision to approve the carbon budget delivery plan (CBDP) in March 2023.

In a ruling on Friday, Mr Justice Sheldon upheld four of the five grounds of the groups' legal challenge, stating that the decision by the former energy security and net zero secretary Grant Shapps was "simply not justified by the evidence." He said: "If, as I have found, the secretary of state did make his decision on the assumption that each of the proposals and policies would be delivered in full, then the secretary of state's decision was taken on the basis of a mistaken understanding of the true factual position."

The judge agreed with ClientEarth and Friends of the Earth that the secretary of state was given "incomplete" information about the likelihood that proposed policies would achieve their intended emissions cuts. This breached section 13 of the Climate Change Act, which requires the secretary of state to adopt plans and proposals that they consider will enable upcoming carbon budgets to be delivered. Sheldon also agreed with the environment groups that the central assumption that all the department's policies would achieve 100% of their intended emissions cuts was wrong. The judge said the secretary of state had acted irrationally, and on the basis of an incorrect understanding of the facts. This comes after the Guardian revealed the government would be allowing oil and gas drilling under offshore wind turbines, a decision criticised by climate experts as "deeply irresponsible."

LinkedIn, the professional network known for job listings and unsolicited career advice, is jumping into gaming. From a report: The platform is officially introducing a set of Wordle-style puzzle games, weeks after they were first spotted in the app. The company is starting with three games: Pinpoint, a word game where players must guess the theme that ties a series of words together; Queens, a puzzle game that's a bit like a cross between Sudoku and Minesweeper; and Crossclimb, a trivia game that involves guessing a series of four-letter words and placing them in the correct order.

LinkedIn describes them as "thinking-oriented games," though the format will likely look familiar to fans of The New York Times Games app. Each game can only be played once a day, and players can share their score with friends in cute emoji-filled messages reminiscent of the "Wordle grid." The service will also keep track of "streaks," to encourage players to come back every day. Given the similarities, it shouldn't be surprising that games were developed by LinkedIn's news team, which recently hired a dedicated games editor.

theodp writes: Reports of the death of Bill Gates' influence at Microsoft have been greatly exaggerated: "Publicly, [Bill] Gates has been almost entirely out of the picture at Microsoft since 2021, following allegations that he had behaved inappropriately toward female employees. In fact, Business Insider has learned, Gates has been quietly orchestrating much of Microsoft's AI revolution from behind the scenes. Current and former executives say Gates remains intimately involved in the company's operations -- advising on strategy, reviewing products, recruiting high-level executives, and nurturing Microsoft's crucial relationship with Sam Altman, the cofounder and CEO of OpenAI.

In early 2023, when Microsoft debuted a version of its search engine Bing turbocharged by the same technology as ChatGPT, throwing down the gauntlet against competitors like Google, Gates, executives said, was pivotal in setting the plan in motion. While Nadella might be the public face of the company's AI success [...] Gates has been the man behind the curtain."[...] "Today, Gates remains close with Altman, who visits his home a few times a year, and OpenAI seeks his counsel on developments. There's a 'tight coupling' between Gates and OpenAI, a person familiar with the relationship said. 'Sam and Bill are good friends. OpenAI takes his opinion and consult overall seriously.' OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood confirmed OpenAI continues to meet with Gates."

Jess Weatherbed reports via The Verge: Swedish gaming conglomerate Embracer Group announced plans on Monday to split itself into three distinct games and entertainment companies: Asmodee Group, Coffee Stain & Friends, and Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends. These will be separate, publicly listed companies, according to Embracer, which says the move will allow "each entity to better focus on their respective core strategies and offer more differentiated and distinct equity stories for existing and new shareholders." [...]

The three new companies will be broken down as follows:

- Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends: This company, which will be renamed from Embracer Group, is described as a "creative powerhouse in AAA game development and publishing" that will retain ownership of the Dead Island, Killing Floor, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Tomb Raider, and The Lord of the Rings IPs.
- Asmodee Group: a new arm dedicated to publishing and distributing tabletop games. The existing catalog includes established titles like Ticket to Ride, 7 Wonders, Azul, CATAN, Dobble, and Exploding Kittens. Asmodee is also developing licensed tabletop games based on The Lord of the Rings, Marvel, Game of Thrones, and Star Wars franchises. Embracer anticipates the spinoff and share listings will take place "within 12 months."
- Coffee Stain & Friends: described as a "diverse gaming entity" that will focus on indie, mid-market, and free-to-play games. Properties sitting under this new company include Deep Rock Galactic, Goat Simulator, Satisfactory, Wreckfest, Teardown, and Valheim. The share listings are projected to become available in 2025.

WhatsApp users in the U.S. will soon see support for real-time AI image generation. The Verge reports: As soon as you start typing a text-to-image prompt in a chat with Meta AI, you'll see how the image changes as you add more detail about what you want to create. In the example shared by Meta, a user types in the prompt, "Imagine a soccer game on mars." The generated image quickly changes from a typical soccer player to showing an entire soccer field on a Martian landscape. If you have access to the beta, you can try out the feature for yourself by opening a chat with Meta AI and then start a prompt with the word "Imagine."

Additionally, Meta says its Meta Llama 3 model can now produce "sharper and higher quality" images and is better at showing text. You can also ask Meta AI to animate any images you provide, allowing you to turn them into a GIF to share with friends. Along with availability on WhatsApp, real-time image generation is also available to US users through Meta AI for the web. Further reading: Meta Releases Llama 3 AI Models, Claiming Top Performance

"Federal regulators are investigating a whistleblower's claims about flaws in the assembly of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner," NPR reported this week: Longtime Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour went public Tuesday with claims that he observed problems with how parts of the plane's fuselage were fastened together. Salehpour warns that production "shortcuts" could significantly shorten the lifespan of the plane, eventually causing the fuselage to fall apart in mid-flight. "It can cause a catastrophic failure," Salehpour said Tuesday during a press briefing to discuss his claims.

A spokesman for the FAA confirmed that the agency is investigating those allegations, which were first reported by the New York Times, but declined to comment further on them. Boeing immediately pushed back. "These claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate and do not represent the comprehensive work Boeing has done to ensure the quality and long-term safety of the aircraft," Boeing spokeswoman Jessica Kowal said in a statement. "We are fully confident in the 787 Dreamliner."
Salehpour and his lawyers argue that Boeing has never adequately addressed production flaws discovered in 2021 (which included unacceptable gaps between the fuselage panels), according to the article. "Instead, he says the company took 'shortcuts' by applying greater force to fit segments of the fuselage together." "Boeing hid the problem by pushing the pieces together with force to make it appear like that the gap didn't exist," Salehpour told reporters at Tuesday's press briefing. Salehpour says he repeatedly raised these concerns with management, but instead of addressing them, they transferred him to work on a different plane, the 777, where he alleges he saw similar problems. "I literally saw people jumping on the pieces of the airplane to get them to align," he said. "That's not how you build a plane."
In a follow-up piece, NPR reports that former Boeing mechanic Davin Fischer "says he spoke up — and paid a steep price for it." He says Boeing's leaders were constantly pushing to speed up production. "Hey, we need to go faster, faster, faster," Fischer said. "They cared more about shareholders and investors than they did planes, their employees, anything." When Fischer finally pushed back, he says he was demoted in retaliation, and then fired from the company in 2019. Fischer says many of his friends who still work at Boeing are afraid to speak out. "People there are scared, a hundred percent," he said. "Because they don't want to get fired."
NPR also cites the example of longtime quality manager John Barnett, who said in a 2019 interview with Ralph Nader that his managers at Boeing retaliated against him by docking his pay and creating a hostile environment.

O'Reilly's "Tech Trends" newsletter included an interesting item this month: Want your own Klein Bottle? Made by Cliff Stoll, author of the cybersecurity classic The Cuckoo's Egg, who will autograph your bottle for you (and may include other surprises).
First described in 1882 by the mathematician Felix Klein, a Klein bottle (like a Mobius strip) has a one-side surface. ("Need a zero-volume bottle...?" asks Stoll's web site. "Want the ultimate in non-orientability...? A mathematician's delight, handcrafted in glass.")

But how the legendary cyberbreach detective started the company is explained in this 2016 article from a U.C. Berkeley alumni magazine. Its headline? "How a Berkeley Eccentric Beat the Russians — and Then Made Useless, Wondrous Objects." The reward for his cloak-and-dagger wizardry? A certificate of appreciation from the CIA, which is stashed somewhere in his attic... Stoll published a best-selling book, The Cuckoo's Egg, about his investigation. PBS followed it with a NOVA episode entitled "The KGB, the Computer, and Me," a docudrama starring Stoll playing himself and stepping through the "fourth wall" to double as narrator. Stoll had stepped through another wall, as well, into the numinous realm of fame, as the burgeoning tech world went wild with adulation... He was more famous than he ever could have dreamed, and he hated it. "After a few months, you realize how thin fame is, and how shallow. I'm not a software jockey; I'm an astronomer. But all people cared about was my computing."

Stoll's disenchantment also arose from what he perceived as the false religion of the Internet... Stoll articulated his disenchantment in his next book, Silicon Snake Oil, published in 1995, which urged readers to get out from behind their computer screens and get a life. "I was asking what I thought were reasonable questions: Is the electronic classroom an improvement? Does a computer help a student learn? Yes, but what it teaches you is to go to the computer whenever you have a question, rather than relying on yourself. Suppose I was an evil person and wanted to eliminate the curiosity of children. Give the kid a diet of Google, and pretty soon the child learns that every question he has is answered instantly. The coolest thing about being human is to learn, but you don't learn things by looking it up; you learn by figuring it out." It was not a popular message in the rise of the dot-com era, as Stoll soon learned...

Being a Voice in the Wilderness doesn't pay well, however, and by this time Stoll had taken his own advice and gotten a life; namely, marrying and having two children. So he looked around for a way to make some money. That ushered in his third — and current — career as President and Chief Bottle Washer of the aforementioned Acme Klein Bottle company... At first, Stoll had a hard time finding someone to make Klein bottles. He tried a bong peddler on Telegraph Avenue, but the guy took Cliff's money and disappeared. "I realized that the trouble with bong makers is that they're also bong users."

Then in 1994, two friends of his, Tom Adams and George Chittenden, opened a shop in West Berkeley that made glassware for science labs. "They needed help with their computer program and wanted to pay me," Stoll recalls. "I said, 'Nah, let's make Klein bottles instead.' And that's how Acme Klein Bottles was born."
UPDATE: Turns out Stoll is also a long-time Slashdot reader, and shared comments this weekend on everything from watching the eclipse to his VIP parking pass for CIA headquarters and "this CIA guy's rubber-stamp collection."

"I am honored by the attention and kindness of fellow nerds and online friends," Stoll added Saturday. "When I first started on that chase in 1986, I had no idea wrhere it would lead me... To all my friends: May you burdens be light and your purpose high. Stay curious!"