An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google today announced the launch of Project IDX, its foray into offering an AI-enabled browser-based development environment for building full-stack web and multiplatform apps. It currently supports frameworks like Angular, Flutter, Next.js, React, Svelte and Vue, and languages like JavaScript and Dart, with support for Python, Go and others in the works. Google did not build a new IDE (integrated development environment) when it created IDX. Instead, it is using Visual Studio Code -- Open Source as the basis of its project. This surely allowed the team to focus on the integration with Codey, Google's PaLM 2-based foundation model for programming tasks. Thanks to Codey, IDX supports smart code completion, a ChatGPT/Bard-like chatbot that can help developers with general coding questions as well as those related specifically to the code you are working on (including the ability to explain it) and the ability to add contextual code actions like "add comments."

"We spend a lot of time writing code, and recent advances in AI have created big opportunities to make that time more productive," the IDX team explains in today's announcement. "With Project IDX, we're exploring how Google's innovations in AI -- including the Codey and PaLM 2 models powering Studio Bot in Android Studio, Duet in Google Cloud and more -- can help you not only write code faster, but also write higher-quality code." As a cloud-based IDE, it's no surprise that Project IDX integrates with Google's own Firebase Hosting (and Google Cloud Functions) and allows developers to bring in existing code from the GitHub repository. Every workspace has access to a Linux-based VM (virtual machine) and, soon, embedded Android and iOS simulators right in the browser.

The UK's Electoral Commission revealed that a cyber attack granted access to the data of 40 million voters. It went unnoticed for a year and was not disclosed to the public for an additional 10 months. The Guardian reports: The Electoral Commission apologized for the security breach in which the names and addresses of all voters registered between 2014 and 2022 were open to "hostile actors" as far back as August 2021. The attack was discovered last October and reported within 72 hours to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), as well as the National Crime Agency. However, the public has only now been informed that the electoral registers containing the data of millions of voters may have been accessible throughout that time.

The Electoral Commission said it was "not able to know conclusively" what information had been accessed. It is not known whether the attackers were linked to a hostile state, such as Russia, or a criminal cyber gang. The watchdog said "much of the data" was already in the public domain and insisted it would be difficult for anyone to influence the outcome of the UK's largely paper-based electoral system, but it acknowledged that voters would still be concerned.

The attackers were able to access full copies of the electoral registers, held by the commission for research purposes and to enable permissibility checks on political donations. These registers include the name and address of anyone in the UK who was registered to vote between 2014 and 2022. The commission's email system was also accessible during the attack. The full register held by the Electoral Commission contains name and address data that can be inspected by the public but only locally through electoral registration officers, with only handwritten notes allowed. The information is not permitted to be used for commercial or marketing purposes. The data of anonymous voters whose details are private for safety reasons and the addresses of overseas voters were not accessible to the intruders in the IT system. A spokesperson for the ICO, the UK's independent regulator on data protection, said: "The Electoral Commission has contacted us regarding this incident and we are currently making inquiries."

They added: "We recognize this news may cause alarm to those who are worried they may be affected and we want to reassure the public that we are investigating as a matter of urgency. In the meantime, if anyone is concerned about how their data has been handled, they should get in touch with the ICO or check our website for advice and support."

Even Zoom is now telling its 8,400 employees to stop working remotely at least two days a week and return to the office. The policy applies to employees within 50 miles of a Zoom office ith a Zoom spokesperson calling this hybrid approach the "most effective".

Business Insider quips that Zoom making the move means "The remote work revolution is officially dead."

And earlier this week The Los Angeles Times argues that "After watching and waiting, some chaotic back-and-forth and a few false starts, the white-collar American workforce appears to be settling — for now — in a hybrid mode." Even as more corporations are moving to call workers back to the office, arguing it's better for preserving company culture and decision-making, few employers have required employees to work on-site five days a week. Most are like Meta and Los Angeles-based Farmers Group, which recently announced that most employees who had been working remotely will have to come in three days a week starting in September.

Some firms have backtracked in favor of a more flexible system, or put return-to-office plans on ice, because of worker resistance and other changes wrought by the pandemic... [M]any other companies have stayed silent on the issue of remote work, maintaining vague or largely unenforced policies as they wait to see where the struggle ends. More unions, including the guild at the Los Angeles Times, are wrestling with management over remote work, which has become a top labor issue. For all these reasons, the overall amount of work done from home has held remarkably steady this year at about 28%, according to monthly surveys of thousands of workers by WFH Research, a group including Stanford and the University of Chicago. That's way up from roughly 5% of work done at home before COVID-19.

And there are some signs that employers are giving workers greater flexibility in their work schedules and when they can work from home. In a nationwide survey conducted last month for The Times by polling firm Leger, 27% of full-time workers said their employers had become more lenient over the last year about working remotely. Only 15% said their employers got stricter. Most of the rest said there was no change. Leger's survey showed that 11% of full-time employees work 100% from home, and 31% work a hybrid schedule, with most saying they choose which days to come into the office. The remainder said that they work fully on company premises or that their jobs aren't compatible with at-home work. These results line up almost exactly with WFH data...

Rob Sadow, chief executive at Scoop Technologies, a firm specializing in flexible-work software and research, says the percentages of employers that are fully remote and fully in-office have both declined since the start of the year. What's grown in their place is a "structured" hybrid model in which employees and employers have essentially split the difference. "This two to three days a week is starting to feel like a pretty decent, happy medium," Sadow said. "Executives and employees are finding somewhat of a truce in terms of how much time is spent in the office and at home."
The article also points out that "Some employees have quit and moved to more remote-work friendly firms."

"NASA has reestablished full communications with Voyager 2," according to a mission update posted Friday: The agency's Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, sent the equivalent of an interstellar "shout" more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) to Voyager 2, instructing the spacecraft to reorient itself and turn its antenna back to Earth. With a one-way light time of 18.5 hours for the command to reach Voyager, it took 37 hours for mission controllers to learn whether the command worked. At 12:29 a.m. EDT on Aug. 4, the spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data, indicating it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory.
"Had the Earth-based signals not reached Voyager 2, the spacecraft is already programmed to reorient itself multiple times a year to keep its antenna pointing in our planet's direction," CNN points out. "The next reset was already scheduled for October 15. But the team didn't want to wait that long..."

After controllers sent the wrong command to the 46-year-old spacecraft, Voyager 2's antenna needed to be shifted "a mere 2 degrees," notes The Associated Press:

Voyager 2 has been hurtling through space since its launch in 1977 to explore the outer solar system. Launched two weeks later, its twin, Voyager 1, is now the most distant spacecraft — 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away — and still in contact. As long as their plutonium power holds, the Voyagers may be alive and well for the 50th anniversary of their launch in 2027, according to Dodd. Among the scientific tidbits they've beamed back in recent years include details about the interstellar magnetic field and the abundance of cosmic rays.

For $99 a night, full-time employees of Google can stay at an on-campus hotel in Mountain View in what the company is deeming a "Summer Special." According to CNBC who obtained the materials, "the special will run through Sept. 30 in hopes it'll 'make it easier for Googlers to transition to the hybrid workplace.'" From the report: Since the promotion is for unapproved business travel, the company will not reimburse their stays, but will require employees to use their personal credit cards, the special's description states. "Just imagine no commute to the office in the morning and instead, you could have an extra hour of sleep and less friction," the description reads. "Next, you could walk out of your room and quickly grab a delicious breakfast or get a workout in before work starts." The ad goes on to say that after the work day ends, "you could enjoy a quiet evening on top of the rooftop deck or take in one of the fun local activities."

The Google-owned hotel is situated on a newer campus in Mountain View, California, that it opened last year. The 42-acre campus is adjacent to NASA's Ames Research Center and has capacity to house 4,000 employees working on its ads products, the company said upon its opening. Some employees have commented on the hotel deal in internal discussion forums. One highly rated meme showed movie clips that included a scene in the movie "Mean Girls," where the main character played by Lindsey Lohan says "No, thank you." "Now I can give some of my pay back to Google," another highly rated meme read. Another meme joked that living on campus for the summer could disrupt "work-life balance."

At $99 a night, the hotel would amount to roughly $3,000 a month, employees pointed out in internal discussions viewed by CNBC. One employee pointed out that hotel amenities were not to be ignored. "I pay more and get a lot less in total for my apartment," wrote one employee in a discussion thread. "Though admittedly where I live is much better." Another thought it was still too expensive. "If it was around $60 a night, that could be a fine-ish alternative to apartments, but $99? No thanks." "I would've totally done it, had it fit a certain profile: $3k rent all-in, fully-furnished, unlimited meals, paid utilities, plus housekeeping/cleaning every day," another employee wrote. Another hypothesized the move could be a way to reduce vacancy at the hotel after Google cut corporate travel budgets.

Google is hoping to lure workers back to the office with a new on-site hotel special, but some workers aren't convinced it's a good deal. From a report: The company said full-time employees can book a room at an on-campus hotel in Mountain View for $99 a night in what it's deeming a "Summer Special," according to materials viewed by CNBC. The description states that the special will run through Sept. 30 in hopes it'll "make it easier for Googlers to transition to the hybrid workplace." Since the promotion is for unapproved business travel, the company will not reimburse their stays, but will require employees to use their personal credit cards, the special's description states.

"Just imagine no commute to the office in the morning and instead, you could have an extra hour of sleep and less friction," the description reads. "Next, you could walk out of your room and quickly grab a delicious breakfast or get a workout in before work starts." The ad goes on to say that after the work day ends, "you could enjoy a quiet evening on top of the rooftop deck or take in one of the fun local activities." The Google-owned hotel is situated on a newer campus in Mountain View, California, that it opened last year. The 42-acre campus is adjacent to NASA's Ames Research Center and has capacity to house 4,000 employees working on its ads products, the company said upon its opening.

Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a report from CNBC: On Tuesday, the Biden administration put the final nail in the coffin for incandescent light bulbs, the result of a decade-plus-long legislative path. The journey began in 2007 when the Energy Independence and Security Act passed. That law required the Department of Energy to evaluate whether efficiency standards for light bulbs needed to be set or amended and required a minimum standard of energy efficiency for light bulbs of 45 lumens per watt to be considered. The 2007 law required that if the DOE determined a new energy efficiency standard was necessary, it should go into effect by January 1, 2017. But politics intervened as the Trump administration appealed those rules.

The Biden administration picked the issue back up. And in April 2022, the Biden administration issued a rule requiring the minimum standard efficiency of 45 lumens per watt, which became effective in July. At that time, the Department of Energy said it would have a gradual transition to the new rule so that stores with inventory would not be stuck with light bulbs they could no longer sell. In Department of Energy lingo, this is called "progressive enforcement." Full enforcement of the ban for retailers took effect on Tuesday. The DOE does not disclose its techniques for enforcing these step-wise implementation of the rule. However, the agency's new regulations will be enforced in "a fair and equitable manner," and smaller retailers are advised to reach out to the DOE to speak about existing inventory they may still have on hand, a spokesperson told CNBC.

Enforcing the sale of the more energy-efficient light bulbs will save consumers nearly $3 billion per year on their utility bills, according to DOE estimates, and cut carbon emissions by 222 million metric tons over the next 30 years. That's about the quantity of emissions that 28 million homes generate in a year, the Department of Energy said. [...] Not all light bulbs are included in the ban. Exceptions include a whole slew of specific light bulb implications, including appliance lamps, black light lamps, bug lamps, colored lamps, general service fluorescent lamps, marine lamps, marine signal service lamps, mine service lamps, sliver bowl lamps, showcase lamps, and traffic signal lamp, to name a few.

The Nokia 130 and 150 are two new updated feature phones from Nokia that ship "with the form of an earlier generation of tech but the software of the current time," reports Gizmodo. From the report: The Nokia 150 is arguably the more worthy of the two; it comes in three colors and features a 2.4-inch QVGA display, a 1,450 mAh removable battery with up to a month of standby time, and a headphone jack for listening to music like we're still pirating it from the internet (though you can also tune in to the built-in FM radio, a feature you'd have to download an app to replicate on an iPhone). The rear-facing 0.3-MP VGA camera is as mediocre as it sounds; it's similar to the camera specs on an LG-made candybar phone I was carting around in 2008. You can save all your data on a MicroSD card and charge the phone with micro USB.

The Nokia 130 has the same size screen and removable battery, but it doesn't have a camera, which makes sense if you were looking at one of these as a secondary device. You probably already have a smartphone that takes satisfying photos. The Nokia 130 and 150 are rated IP52, making them resistant to dust and water but not entirely waterproof. And they both have physical buttons, including a full 12-key number pad, plus navigational buttons to get around the operating system, called Series 30+ or S30+. Nokia developed the software specifically for these entry-level devices, and it made sure to include a revamped Snake game. Nokia swears there are "hours of fun in store," which seems like marketing rehashed from its '90s glory days.

The Nokia 130 and 150 are primarily available abroad. Note that these two models have been around since 2016 and that this latest release is a part of the phone's upgrade cycle. The company, acquired by Finnish conglomerate HMD Mobile, has yet to reveal pricing. But previous generations started at under $50 after converting currencies. It's quite a deal compared to what you'd get with an aging, low-cost Android phone.

The Excel World Championship is coming back to ESPN this week. On Friday morning at 7AM ET, as part of ESPN's annual "The Ocho" event, a few of the world's foremost Excel experts will battle to solve puzzles on the biggest stage in sports. From a report: The Ocho is an ESPN event designed to show off otherwise un-televised sports -- Excel is on the docket alongside "2023 Slippery Stairs," the "Pillow Fight Championship," and competitions in everything from belt-sanding to sign spinning -- but it's still a big deal. When competitive Excel showed up on the network last year, the sport found a whole new audience. More than 800,000 people have since watched the full 2.5-hour competition on YouTube (ESPN showed a 30-minute edit of the battle), and the folks who started the World Championship say it changed the event's trajectory forever.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: President Joe Biden has determined that Colorado Springs will be the permanent headquarters of U.S. Space Command, reversing a Trump administration decision to move the facility to Alabama, the Pentagon announced Monday. The decision will only intensify a bitter parochial battle on Capitol Hill, as members of the Colorado and Alabama delegations have spent months accusing each other of playing politics on the future of the four-star command.

The command was reestablished in 2019 and given temporary headquarters in Colorado while the Air Force evaluated a list of possible permanent sites. With an eye on Russia and China, its job is to oversee the military's operations of space assets and the defense of satellites. Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Biden notified the Department of Defense on Monday that he had made the decision, after speaking with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and weighing the input of senior military leaders. "Locating Headquarters U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs ultimately ensures peak readiness in the space domain for our nation during a critical period," Ryder said in a statement. "It will also enable the command to most effectively plan, execute and integrate military spacepower into multi-domain global operations in order to deter aggression and defend national interests." Austin, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and U.S. Space Command chief Gen. James Dickinson all support Biden's decision, Ryder added.

The most significant factor Biden weighed in making the decision was the impact such a move would have on the military's ability to confront the changing threat from space, according to a senior administration official, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations. Keeping the headquarters at Colorado Springs "maintains operational readiness and ensures no disruption to its mission or to its personnel," according to the official. The command is set to achieve "full operational capability" this month, the official said. A move to Alabama, by contrast, would have forced the command to transition to a new headquarters in the mid-2020s, and the new site would not have been open until the early to mid-2030s, the official said. "The president found that risk unacceptable, especially given the challenges we may face in the space domain during this critical time period," according to the official.

Microsoft is making it a lot more convenient to use multiple high refresh rate monitors with Windows 11. From a report: The software giant has started testing a Windows 11 update that automatically adjusts refresh rates on multiple monitors depending on what content is being displayed, which should improve power usage and could even result in some GPUs spinning up their fans less often. "We have improved refresh rate logic to allow different refresh rates on different monitors, depending on the refresh rate for each monitor and content shown on the screen," explains Microsoft in a Windows Insider blog from last week. "This will help most with refresh rate-dependent multitasking, like playing a game and watching a video at the same time." If you have multiple monitors that support high refresh rates then running them at their full potential often increases the power draw of your GPU. Nvidia RTX 30- and 40-series Founders Edition cards also have a zero RPM mode, which will keep the fans at zero even when you're watching video content on a single monitor. If you add a second high refresh rate display, this often disables the zero RPM mode and means the GPU keeps its fans spinning if you have both monitors at high refresh rates.

CNN reports that "There is a 'gravity hole' in the Indian Ocean — a spot where Earth's gravitational pull is weaker, its mass is lower than normal, and the sea level dips by over 328 feet (100 meters)." This anomaly has puzzled geologists for a long time, but now researchers from the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, India, have found what they believe is a credible explanation for its formation: plumes of magma coming from deep inside the planet, much like those that lead to the creation of volcanoes. To come to this hypothesis, the team used supercomputers to simulate how the area could have formed, going as far back as 140 million years. The findings, detailed in a study published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, center around an ancient ocean that no longer exists.

Humans are used to thinking about Earth as a perfect sphere, but that's far from the truth. "The Earth is basically a lumpy potato," said study coauthor Attreyee Ghosh, a geophysicist and associate professor at the Centre for Earth Sciences of the Indian Institute of Science. "So technically it's not a sphere, but what we call an ellipsoid, because as the planet rotates the middle part bulges outward." Our planet is not homogeneous in its density and its properties, with some areas being more dense than others — that affects Earth's surface and its gravity, Ghosh added. "If you pour water on the surface of the Earth, the level that the water takes is called a geoid — and that is controlled by these density differences in the material inside the planet, because they attract the surface in very different ways depending on how much mass there is underneath," she said. The "gravity hole" in the Indian Ocean — officially called the Indian Ocean geoid low — is the lowest point in that geoid and its biggest gravitational anomaly, forming a circular depression that starts just off India's southern tip and covers about 1.2 million square miles (3 million square kilometers).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The month of June and the first few days of July were hotter than any in recorded history, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Residents in the south of the US and southern Europe have been enduring sweltering temperatures, bringing excessive heat warnings, wildfires and plummeting air quality. However, records are not just being broken on land -- but in the water. Global ocean sea surface temperatures were higher than any previous June on record, according to a report by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, with satellite readings in the North Atlantic in particular "off the charts." Last month also set a record at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the biggest difference between expected and actual sea surface temperatures. Water temperatures around Florida, in particular, have been particularly warm. Scientists have also been tracking a large ongoing marine heatwave off the west coast of the US and Canada since it formed in May.

While the heatwave has since lessened in the north-east Atlantic, according to non-profit science organization Mercator Ocean International, another in the western Mediterranean now appears to be intensifying, particularly around the Strait of Gibraltar. This week, sea surface temperatures along the coasts of Southern Spain and North Africa were 2-4C (3.6-7.2F) higher than they would normally be at this time of year, with some spots 5C (9F) above the long-term average. Extreme marine temperatures have also recently been observed around Ireland, the UK and in the Baltic Sea, as well as areas near New Zealand and Australia. More recently, scientists suspect a possible heatwave south of Greenland in the Labrador Sea. "We are having these huge marine heatwaves in different areas of the ocean unexpectedly evolve very early in the year, very strong and over large areas," says Karina von Schuckmann, an oceanographer at Mercator Ocean.

Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, says scientists expect big temperature variations in the Pacific Ocean associated with the El Nino weather pattern, a phase of planet-warming weather which is just beginning, although NOAA is monitoring a large heatwave in the Gulf of Alaska that has been sitting offshore since late 2022. But what we're currently seeing in the North Atlantic is "truly unprecedented", says Buontempo. Scientists are still trying to unravel its full causes. [...] More broadly, experts say the persistence of recent marine heatwaves is a worrying sign about how climate change is unfolding, alongside heatwaves on land, unusual melting of snow cover in the Himalayas and a loss of sea ice. Von Schuckmann notes that, even if humans stopped pumping CO2 into the air tomorrow, the oceans would continue to warm up for many years yet. "I am concerned as a climate scientist that we are further than we thought we are."

sciencehabit shares a report from Science: This week, the much anticipated movie Oppenheimer hits theaters, giving famed filmmaker Christopher Nolan's take on the theoretical physicist who during World War II led the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who died in 1967, is known as a charismatic leader, eloquent public intellectual, and Red Scare victim who in 1954 lost his security clearance in part because of his earlier associations with suspected Communists. To learn about Oppenheimer the scientist, Science spoke with David C. Cassidy, a physicist and historian emeritus at Hofstra University. Cassidy has authored or edited 10 books, including J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century. How did Oppenheimer compare to Einstein? Did he actually make any substantiative contributions to THE Bomb? And why did he eventually lose his security clearance?

Bruce66423 shares a report from The Jerusalem Post: A team of researchers from Tel Aviv University has produced 'green' hydrogen -- hydrogen that is produced without polluting carbon dioxide emissions but is still highly efficient, the university said. The TAU team produced hydrogen using a water-based gel to attach the enzyme to the electrode and a biocatalyst. Over 90% of the electrons introduced into the system were deposited in the hydrogen without any secondary processes.

"Hydrogen is very rare in the atmosphere, although it is produced by enzymes in microscopic organisms, which receive the energy from photosynthesis processes," explained Itzhak Grinberg, a doctoral student who helped lead the project. "In the lab, we 'electrify' those enzymes. That is, an electrode provides the energy instead of the Sun." However, the challenge is that the enzyme generally "runs away" from the electric charge when making hydrogen in a lab. The hydrogel holds the enzyme in place. "The material of the gel itself is known, but our innovation is to use it to produce hydrogen," said Prof. Iftach Yacoby of TAU's School of Plant Sciences and Food Security, who oversaw the project. "We soaked the electrode in the gel, which contained an enzyme for producing hydrogen called hydrogenase. The gel holds the enzyme for a long time, even under the electric voltage, and makes it possible to produce hydrogen with great efficiency and at environmental conditions favorable to the enzyme -- for example, in salt water, in contrast to electrolysis, which requires distilled water."

The team also tested the gel with two other enzymes and proved that the hydrogenase could attach different enzymes to the electrode. "Today, 'green' hydrogen is produced primarily through electrolysis, which requires precious and rare metals such as platinum along with water distillation, which makes the green hydrogen up to 15 times more expensive than the polluting 'grey' one," said doctoral student Oren Ben-Zvi, who co-led the experiment. Therefore, the hope is that in the future, TAU's method could be commercially implemented to lower the cost of green hydrogen production and hence enable its use in more industries and agriculture, thereby reducing CO2 emissions and making the planet healthier. Their research was published in the journal Carbon Energy.

Despite being the fastest-growing online platform in history, Meta's Threads is struggling to retain regular customer engagement. According to SimilarWeb, the Twitter rival saw daily active users decline from 49 million on July 7th to 23.6 million on July 14th. Furthermore, usage in the United States declined from 21 minutes per day to just over six minutes in the same time period. Here's are the key takeaways from the report: - On its best day, July 7, Threads had more than 49 million daily active users on Android, worldwide, according to SimilarWeb estimates. That's about 45% of the usage of Twitter, which had more than 109 million active Android users that day.
- By Friday, July 14, Threads was down to 23.6 million active users, or about 22% of Twitter's audience.
- Usage in the US, which saw the most activity, peaked at about 21 minutes of engagement with the app on July 7. By July 14, that was down to a little over 6 minutes.
- In the first two full days that Threads was generally available, Thursday and Friday, web traffic to twitter.com was down 5% compared with the same days of the previous week. Although traffic bounced back, for the most recent 7 days of data it's still down 11% year-over-year.
- On the days of peak interest in Threads, Twitter's Daily active users on Android, worldwide, were virtually unchanged, but time spent was down 4.3% -- perhaps because some users were off trying Threads. Even with that drop, however, the average total time spent on Twitter was about 25 minutes.

To a large extent, Threads solves the "empty party problem" that makes it tough to start a new online community by allowing Instagram users to instantly create a Threads account, bringing their existing contacts with them. Our daily usage numbers make Meta's claim of having achieved more than 100 million total account signups in a matter of days seem reasonable. However, Threads is missing many basic features and still needs to offer a compelling reason to switch from Twitter or start a new social media habit with Threads.

US aviation regulators are turning to a small Swiss technology startup to rethink how helicopter pilots are trained. From a report: The Federal Aviation Administration will evaluate virtual reality technology in flight simulators for the first time, taking delivery of systems from Zurich-based Loft Dynamics, the company said Monday. The technology combines VR headsets with a frame replicating the control panel and cockpit of a helicopter, but at a scale significantly smaller than traditional full-motion setups. Two simulators -- one to train pilots on Airbus SE's H125 helicopter and another for the Robinson R22 -- have been installed at the FAA's R&D facility in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The FAA often explores the use of new technologies in aviation and has extensive development programs, many of which don't result in commercial deployments. While this is the first time the regulator will review VR headsets as a training tool, it's for the narrow helicopter market and wouldn't apply to commercial planes. Additionally, the agreement with Loft Dynamics does not equate to certification of its tech in the US.

Thousands of writers including Nora Roberts, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Michael Chabon and Margaret Atwood have signed a letter asking artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI and Meta to stop using their work without permission or compensation. From a report: It's the latest in a volley of counter-offensives the literary world has launched in recent weeks against AI. But protecting writers from the negative impacts of these technologies is not an easy proposition. According to a forthcoming report from The Authors Guild, the median income for a full-time writer last year was $23,000. And writers' incomes declined by 42% between 2009 and 2019. The advent of text-based generative AI applications like GPT-4 and Bard, that scrape the Web for authors' content without permission or compensation and then use it to produce new content in response to users' prompts, is giving writers across the country even more cause for worry.

"There's no urgent need for AI to write a novel," said Alexander Chee, the bestselling author of novels like Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night. "The only people who might need that are the people who object to paying writers what they're worth." Chee is among the nearly 8,000 authors who just signed a letter addressed to the leaders of six AI companies including OpenAI, Alphabet and Meta. "It says it's not fair to use our stuff in your AI without permission or payment," said Mary Rasenberger, CEO of The Author's Guild. The non-profit writers' advocacy organization created the letter, and sent it out to the AI companies on Monday. "So please start compensating us and talking to us."

Online publishers are inundated with useless article pitches as websites using AI-generated content multiply. From a report: When she first heard of the humanlike language skills of the artificial-intelligence bot ChatGPT, Jennifer Stevens wondered what it would mean for the retirement magazine she edits. Months later, she has a better idea. It means she is spending a lot of time filtering out useless article pitches. People like Stevens, the executive editor of International Living, are among those seeing a growing amount of AI-generated content that is so far beneath their standards that they consider it a new kind of spam.

The technology is fueling an investment boom. It can answer questions, produce images and even generate essays based on simple prompts. Some of these techniques promise to enhance data analysis and eliminate mundane writing tasks, much as the calculator changed mathematics. But they also show the potential for AI-generated spam to surge and potentially spread across the internet. In early May, the news site rating company NewsGuard found 49 fake news websites that were using AI to generate content. By the end of June, the tally had hit 277, according to Gordon Crovitz, the company's co-founder. "This is growing exponentially," Crovitz said. The sites appear to have been created to make money through Google's online advertising network, said Crovitz, formerly a columnist and a publisher at The Wall Street Journal.

Researchers also point to the potential of AI technologies being used to create political disinformation and targeted messages used for hacking. The cybersecurity company Zscaler says it is too early to say whether AI is being used by criminals in a widespread way, but the company expects to see it being used to create high-quality fake phishing webpages, which are designed to trick victims into downloading malicious software or disclosing their online usernames and passwords. On YouTube, the ChatGPT gold rush is in full swing. Dozens of videos offering advice on how to make money from OpenAI's technology have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. Many of them suggest questionable schemes involving junk content. Some tell viewers that they can make thousands of dollars a week, urging them to write ebooks or sell advertising on blogs filled with AI-generated content that could then generate ad revenue by popping up on Google searches.

Chipotle has developed a robot that can cut the 50-minute process of making guacamole in half. "The fast-casual chain developed the collaborative robot, or cobot, in partnership with Vebu Labs, a California-based robotics startup," reports CNBC. "Chipotle also announced Wednesday that its $50 million venture arm, Cultivate Next, is investing in Vebu. Financial terms weren't disclosed." From the report: To prepare avocados using the Autocado, Chipotle employees load up the device with a full case of the ripe fruit. The Autocado can hold up to 25 pounds at one time. Then, the machine vertically orients the avocados, slices them in half and removes their cores and skin. A bowl at the bottom collects the fruit, which employees can then hand mash and mix with the rest of the guacamole ingredients.

Chipotle still wants employees to have a hand in making their guacamole. "There's no plan to test automated guac made in our restaurant," Curt Garner, Chipotle's chief technology officer, told CNBC. Employees don't have to monitor the Autocado while it prepares the avocados and can even use the top of the device as more counter space to prepare other ingredients. The prototype is "very close" to design for manufacture, according to Garner. Chipotle expects to test the Autocado in restaurants later this year.

Eventually, Vebu plans to add machine learning capabilities and sensors to the Autocado that will help it evaluate the quality of avocados. Preparing avocados for guacamole routinely ranks as one of employees' least favorite tasks, Garner said. It's also one of the most dangerous duties in Chipotle kitchens, sometimes resulting in knife injuries. On top of saving time and labor costs, the robot could also cut food waste. If the chain deploys the Autocado across its footprint of more than 3,200 locations, it could help save millions of dollars on avocados annually, the company said. Despite those savings, guacamole will probably still cost customers extra. "It's worth it," Garner said.