Amazon on Tuesday announced a new chatbot called Q for people to use at work. From a report: The product, announced at Amazon Web Services' Reinvent conference in Las Vegas, represents Amazon's latest effort to challenge Microsoft and Google in productivity software. It comes one year after Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI launched its ChatGPT chatbot, which has popularized generative artificial intelligence for crafting human-like text in response to a few lines of human input.

A tier for business users will cost $20 per person per month. A version with additional features for developers and IT workers will cost $25 per person per month. The Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Duet AI for Google Workspace for business workers both cost $30 per person per month. Initially, Q can help people understand the capabilities of AWS and trouble-shoot issues. People will be able to talk with it in communication apps such as Salesforce's Slack and software developers' text-editing applications, Adam Selipsky, CEO of AWS, said onstage at Reinvent. It will also appear in AWS' online Management Console. Q can provide citations of documents to back up its chat responses. The tool can automatically make changes to source code so developers have less work to do, Selipsky said. The service will be able to connect to more than 40 enterprise systems, he said.

America celebrates "Small Business Saturday" today with special celebrations everywhere from Houston, Texas to Buffalo, New York

NBC News reports: Sandwiched between Black Friday and Cyber Monday — historically the biggest and busiest retail days of the year — there's another standout shopping event: Small Business Saturday. Started by American Express in 2010 and co-sponsored by the U.S. Small Business Administration since 2011, Small Business Saturday aims to create awareness about the impact shoppers have when they buy "small" year round, whether they physically visit stores or shop online.

This year, 85% of consumers say they're likely to shop "small" during the holiday season, according to the American Express 2023 Shop Small Impact Study. That represents a multibillion dollar opportunity — consumers are expected to spend an estimated $125 billion at small businesses this holiday season, up 42% from $88 billion in 2022, as reported by Intuit QuickBooks.
Like CBS News, NBC has compiled its list of small businesses that can ship their products to you — and suggests leaving positive reviews online for your favorite small businesses. ("Amazon, for example, now adds badges to product pages on its site if items are sold by small businesses.")
They also recommend interacting with your favorite small businesses on social media — while "the American Express small-business map allows you to input your zip code so it can recommend local shops in your area and beyond. Google also has a 'small business' filter on desktop and mobile, and one for Google Maps on mobile."

The UK's "Small Business Saturday" will happen next week, on the first Saturday in December.

New submitter doc1623 shares a report from Wired: Swedish workers are uniting against Tesla. [Starting Friday], cleaners will stop cleaning Tesla showrooms, electricians won't fix the company's charging points, and dockworkers will refuse to unload Tesla cargo at all Swedish ports. What started as a strike by Tesla mechanics is spreading, in something Swedish unions describe as an existential battle between Elon Musk's carmaker and the conventions they say make the country's labor market fair and efficient. The standoff in Sweden is the biggest union action the company has faced anywhere in the world. Sweden doesn't have laws that set working conditions, such as a minimum wage. Instead these rules are dictated by collective agreements, a type of contract that defines the benefits employees are entitled to, such as wages and working hours. For five years, industrial workers' union IF Metall, which represents Tesla mechanics, has been trying to persuade the company to sign a collective agreement. When Tesla refused, the mechanics decided to strike at the end of October. Then they asked fellow Swedish unions to join them.

Some unions that joined the blockade are expanding their actions in an effort to be more effective. Since November 7, union members working at four Swedish ports have been refusing to unload Tesla cargo. Tomorrow, the blockade will be extended to all ports in Sweden. "We don't want to unload any Tesla cars," says Jimmy Asberg, who is president of the dockworkers' branch of Sweden's transport union and works at Gavle port. "We are going to allow every other car [to dock], but the Tesla cars, they will stay on the ship." He hopes Tesla will understand how important this issue is for workers in the country. "Not just dockworkers but for all workers in Sweden."

The Swedish Building Maintenance Workers' Union will also join the Tesla blockade on Friday at 12 pm local time, "simply because the [IF] Metall Workers Trade Union asked us to," says ombudsman Torbjorn Jonsson, adding that the union has around 50 members who clean Tesla locations. Four showrooms and service centers will be affected -- three around Stockholm and one in the city of Umea. "Their workshops and showrooms will not be cleaned." Three days later, on November 20, the Seko union, which represents postal workers, will stop delivering letters, spare parts, and pallets to all of Tesla's addresses in Sweden. "Tesla is trying to gain competitive advantages by giving the workers worse wages and conditions than they would have with a collective agreement," said Seko's union president, Gabriella Lavecchia, in a statement. "It is of course completely unacceptable."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Federal Communications Commission has approved (PDF) a new set of rules aiming to prevent "digital discrimination." It means the agency can hold telecom companies accountable for digitally discriminating against customers -- or giving certain communities poorer service (or none at all) based on income level, race, or religion. The new rules come as part of the Biden Administration's 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which requires the FCC to develop and adopt anti-digital discrimination rules. "Many of the communities that lack adequate access to broadband today are the same areas that suffer from longstanding patterns of residential segregation and economic disadvantage," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said following today's vote. "It shows that minority status and income correlate with broadband access."

Under the new rules, the FCC can fine telecom companies for not providing equal connectivity to different communities "without adequate justification," such as financial or technical challenges of building out service in a particular area. The rules are specifically designed to address correlations between household income, race, and internet speed. Last year, a joint report from The Markup and the Associated Press found that AT&T, Verizon, and other internet service providers offer different speeds depending on the neighborhood in cities throughout the US. The report revealed neighborhoods with lower incomes and fewer white people get stuck with slower internet while still having to pay the same price as those with faster speeds. At the time, USTelecom, an organization that represents major telecom providers, blamed the higher price on having to maintain older equipment in certain communities.

The FCC was nearly divided on the new set of rules, as it passed with a 3-2 vote. Critics of the new policy argue the rules are an overextension of the FCC's power. Jonathan Spalter, the CEO of USTelecom, says the FCC is "taking overly intrusive, unworkably vague, and ultimately harmful steps in the wrong direction." Spalter adds the framework "is counter" to Congress' goal of giving customers equal access to the internet. Still, supporters of the new rules believe they can go a long way toward improving fractured broadband coverage throughout the US. The FCC will also establish an "improved" customer portal, where the agency will field and review complaints about digital discrimination. It will take things like broadband deployment, network upgrades, and maintenance across communities into account when evaluating providers for potential rule violations, giving it the authority to hopefully finally address the disparities in internet access throughout the US.

Angela Watercutter and Will Bedingfield report via Wired: After 118 days on the picket lines, the longest such strike in Hollywood's history, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has reached a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Both sides were mum about the terms of the deal Wednesday night, but it comes following a long struggle over the use of artificial intelligence on actors' performances and actors' demands for residual payments for shows and films that play on streaming services. A committee from SAG, which represents thousands of film and television actors, approved the agreement Wednesday. The strike itself, which has featured pickets outside the offices of Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and others, will end Thursday morning. It's expected that the tentative deal will head to the union's national board to be approved on Friday.

Undeniably, this is a huge milestone for Hollywood, a $130 billion-plus industry that has all but ground to halt this year, as both the Writers Guild of America and SAG dug in their heels over fair wages and the use of AI in their work. WGA members went on strike in May; SAG walked off the job in July, the first time the industry had faced a dual work stoppage since 1960. The WGA strike ended in September with a historic deal that put up guardrails to protect writers from AI encroaching on their work. As this year's negotiations between SAG and AMPTP dragged on, generative AI became the major sticking point. Back in July, studios claimed they offered a "groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors' digital likenesses." SAG countered that the proposal stipulated background performers could be scanned, paid for the day, and then turned into digital characters that studios could use "for the rest of eternity." (AMPTP disputed this.)

The issue was volleyed back and forth until last weekend, when SAG reviewed the studios' "last, best, and final" offer and rejected it, claiming "there are several essential items on which we still do not have an agreement, including AI. A follow-up story in The Hollywood Reporter revealed that the AMPTP proposal sought to allow studios to pay for AI scans of what are known as Schedule F performers and, following the actors' death, allow studios to use the scans without the consent of the estate or SAG. Schedule F performers include anyone who makes more than the minimum rate for TV series regulars or feature films. The guild wanted compensation for reuse of the scans, along with consent. On Tuesday, the studios reportedly agreed to adjust the AI language in their proposal, a move that seems to have been the tipping point. Even though the terms of the tentative deal reached Thursday are unclear, it's hard to imagine the actors didn't get at least some of the AI protections they were seeking.

U.S. chip group Intel is on track to deliver five upgrades to its advanced manufacturing process in four years, CEO Pat Gelsinger said on Tuesday as the company faces pressure to reassure PC and server-making clients that its technology will remain competitive. From a report: Speaking at Intel Innovation Day in Taipei, Gelsinger said the company's most advanced chip design, the 18A, will move into the test production phase by the first quarter of 2024. "For 18A, we have many test wafers coming out at this moment," the CEO said. "The invention phase of the 18A is now complete, and now we're racing to production."

This production node represents Intel's big bet to reclaim semiconductor manufacturing leadership by 2025. The company also announced it will use this production technology to make chips for outside customers such as Ericsson, instead of using it only for its own products. Its two biggest rivals, Samsung of South Korea and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., are racing to put their own most advanced chips into production in 2025. These 2-nanometer chips are seen as being at a similar level as Intel's 18A. Gelsinger said his company has been aggressively pursuing its "five nodes in four years" plan since he returned to the company in 2021. It usually takes at least two years for a chipmaker to move forward to a new production node.

Twenty-eight countries including the US, UK and China have agreed to work together to ensure artificial intelligence is used in a "human-centric, trustworthy and responsible" way, in the first global commitment of its kind. From a report: The pledge forms part of a communique signed by major powers including Brazil, India and Saudi Arabia, at the inaugural AI Safety Summit. The two-day event, hosted and convened by British prime minister Rishi Sunak at Bletchley Park, started on Wednesday. Called the Bletchley Declaration, the document recognises the "potential for serious, even catastrophic, harm" to be caused by advanced AI models, but adds such risks are "best addressed through international co-operation." Other signatories include the EU, France, Germany, Japan, Kenya and Nigeria.

The communique represents the first global statement on the need to regulate the development of AI, but at the summit there are expected to be disagreements about how far such controls should go. Country representatives attending the event include Hadassa Getzstain, Israeli chief of staff at the ministry of innovation, science and technology, and Wu Zhaohui, Chinese vice minister for technology. Gina Raimondo, US commerce secretary, gave an opening speech at the summit and announced a US safety institute to evaluate the risks of AI. This comes on the heels of a sweeping executive order by President Joe Biden, announced on Monday, and intended to curb the risks posed by the technology.

An anonymous reader shares a report: PFAS stands for "per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances," a family of upwards of 15,000 or more human-made and incredibly durable chemical compounds that have been used in countless industrial and consumer applications for decades. Firefighting foams, waterproof hiking boots, raincoats, nonstick frying pans, dental floss, lipstick, and even the ink used to label packaging -- all can contain PFAS. The compounds are ubiquitous in drinking water and soil, even migrating to Arctic sea ice. PFAS are called forever chemicals because once present in the environment, they do not degrade or break down. They accumulate, are transferred throughout the watershed, and ultimately persist. The quest to reduce the amount of PFAS in the environment is what led me to an industrial park in a southern suburb of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The jar of PFAS concentrate in my hand is part of a demonstration arranged by my hosts, Revive Environmental, during a tour of the company's PFAS destruction site, one of the first in the country to operate commercially and at scale. A few yards in front of me sits the company's PFAS "Annihilator" in a white shipping container.

The Annihilator represents just one of several technologies now vying to break down and destroy PFAS. These span the gamut from established processes like electrochemical oxidation and supercritical water oxidation to emerging techniques relying on ultraviolet light, plasma, ultrasound, or catalyst-driven thermal processes. Some are deployed in field tests. Other companies are actively running pilot programs, many with various divisions of the US Department of Defense and other government agencies. And many other technologies are still undergoing laboratory research. There's good reason for this. Not only are PFAS everywhere around us; they're also in us. Humans can't break down PFAS, and our bodies struggle to clear them from our systems. Studies suggest they're in my blood and yours -- the majority of Americans,' in fact -- and they have been linked to increased risks of kidney and testicular cancer, decreased infant birthweights, and high blood pressure. And that's only what we know about now: researchers continue to grapple with the full impacts of PFAS on human and environmental health.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: As far as we know, Brazil-based file-sharing forum FileWarez.com first appeared in August 2004, its domain name having been registered the previous month. The default language was naturally Portuguese and according to this image from the Wayback Machine, potential members needed a basic grip of the language to sign up. After all, Google Translate wouldn't exist for another two years. At some point in the years that followed, FileWarez shifted to a Netherlands .NL domain supported by filewarez.no-ip.biz, which may suggest a site regularly on the move. In 2008, unspecified problems saw the .NL domain dumped in favor of a new one. Riding out problems, various issues, and bouts of downtime, FileWarez.tv stayed in place for the next 15.5 years. Then two weeks ago, after establishing itself as Brazil's oldest file-sharing forum, FileWarez suddenly vanished.

In a press release Wednesday, global music industry group IFPI announced that "prominent illegal file-sharing forum, FileWarez," was shut down following co-ordinated action by record companies, anti-piracy body APDIF, and local cybercrime unit, Cyber Gaeco. "IFPI, the organization that represents the recorded music industry worldwide, alongside its Brazilian national group Pro-Musica, have welcomed the successful action against FileWarez.tv -- one of the most prominent illegal file sharing sites in Brazil -- by the Brazilian special cybercrime unit of prosecutor's office of Sao Paulo, Cyber Gaeco," the announcement reads. "FileWarez was the most established illegal filesharing forum in Brazil, dedicated to sharing illegal music content. While active, the site had more than 118,000 registered users with at least 24,000 monthly active users."

John Timmer reports via Ars Technica: Today, a startup called Atom Computing announced that it has been doing internal testing of a 1,180 qubit quantum computer and will be making it available to customers next year. The system represents a major step forward for the company, which had only built one prior system based on neutral atom qubits -- a system that operated using only 100 qubits. The error rate for individual qubit operations is high enough that it won't be possible to run an algorithm that relies on the full qubit count without it failing due to an error. But it does back up the company's claims that its technology can scale rapidly and provides a testbed for work on quantum error correction. And, for smaller algorithms, the company says it'll simply run multiple instances in parallel to boost the chance of returning the right answer. [...]

Atom Computing is now using the system internally and plans to open it up for public use next year. The system has moved from a 10x10 grid to a 35x35 grid, bringing the potential sites for atoms up to 1,225. So far, testing has taken place with up to 1,180 atoms present, making it the largest machine that anyone has publicly acknowledged (at least in terms of qubit count). The qubits are housed in a 12x5 foot box that contains the lasers and optics, along with the vacuum system and a bit of unused space -- Atom CEO Rob Hayes quipped that "there's a lot of air inside that box." It does not, however, contain the computer hardware that controls the system and its operations. The grid of atoms it's used to create, by contrast, is only about 100 microns per side, so it won't strain the hardware to keep increasing the qubit count.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: California's auto regulator said on Tuesday it has suspended General Motors' Cruise autonomous vehicle deployment and driverless testing permits, saying it had misrepresented information related to the safety of the autonomous technology. Cruise's AVs posed an "an unreasonable risk to public safety," and "are not safe for the public's operation" California's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) said in a statement. The suspension, which came after a series of accidents involving Cruise vehicles, is a major setback to GM's self-driving technology unit and to the nascent autonomous vehicle (AV) industry. The suspension was effective immediately.

GM has previously insisted Cruise represents a "giant growth opportunity." In June, GM CEO Mary Barra reiterated a forecast that Cruise could generate $50 billion a year in annual revenue by 2030, a target the company has not backed away from. The automaker reported on Tuesday that it lost $723 million on Cruise during the third quarter. The DMV added that Tuesday's "decision does not impact the company's permit for testing with a safety driver." Cruise issued a statement saying it "will be pausing operations of our driverless AVs in San Francisco." Cruise said the California Department of Motor Vehicles reviewed an incident on Oct. 2, when one of its self-driving vehicles was putting on the brakes but did not avoid striking a pedestrian who had previously been struck by a hit-and-run driver.

Cruise said that in that incident, "a human hit and run driver tragically struck and propelled the pedestrian into the path of the AV" which struck the pedestrian. "When the AV tried to pull over, it continued before coming to a final stop, pulling the pedestrian forward," the company said. "Our teams are currently doing an analysis to identify potential enhancements to the AV's response to this kind of extremely rare event," it added. In August, the regulator said it was investigating "concerning incidents" involving autonomous vehicles operated by Cruise in San Francisco and asked the company to take half its robotaxis off the roads. That month, a Cruise robotaxi was involved in a crash with an emergency vehicle in San Francisco. Barra said the Cruise robotaxis have better safety records than human drivers.

Demand for climate-warming fuels like coal, oil and natural gas will likely peak before 2030, evidence of the accelerating global shift to energy that doesn't emit greenhouse gasses, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA)'s World Energy Outlook. From a report: "The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it's unstoppable. It's not a question of 'if', it's just a matter of 'how soon' -- and the sooner the better for all of us," said Fatih Birol, IEA executive director, in a statement. The agency represents countries that make up more than 80% of global energy consumption. The annual IEA report estimates that in 2030 there will be 10 times as many electric vehicles on the road worldwide and 50% of the cars sold in the United States will be electric. The agency says solar panels installed across the globe will generate more electricity at the end of the decade than the U.S. power system produces now. And the report projects that renewable energy will supply 50% of the world's electricity needs, up from about 30% now.

But the report warns the pace of the transition will have to quicken considerably in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, and avoid some of the worst case scenarios in a changing climate. The IEA's outlook lays out a strategy for meeting that goal that includes tripling renewable energy, doubling energy efficiency measures and slashing methane emissions from fossil fuel operations by 75% by 2030. Methane has more than 25 times the climate-warming potential of carbon dioxide, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Climate and anti-fossil fuel groups say the IEA's methane strategy should be even more aggressive.

"A company backed by BlackRock has abandoned plans to build a 1,300-mile pipeline across the US Midwest to collect and store carbon emissions from the corn ethanol industry," reports Ars Technica.

The move comes "following opposition from landowners and some environmental campaigners." Navigator CO2 on Friday said developing its carbon capture and storage (CCS) project called Heartland Greenway had been "challenging" because of the unpredictable nature of regulatory and government processes in South Dakota and Iowa. Navigator's decision to scrap its flagship $3.1 billion project — one of the biggest of its kind in the US — is a blow for a fledgling industry... It also represents a setback for the carbon-intensive corn ethanol refining industry, a pillar of the rural Midwestern economy which is targeting industry-scale CCS as a way to reduce emissions...

The project faced opposition from local landowners, who expressed concerns about safety and property seizures, and some environmentalists who describe CO2 pipelines as dangerous and a way to prop up the fossil fuels industry, which already has a network of such infrastructure. Addressing the decision by Navigator, the Coalition To Stop CO2 Pipelines said it "celebrates this victory," but added: "we also know that the tax incentives made available by the federal government for carbon capture, transport and storage likely mean another entity will pick up Navigator's project, or find a different route through Illinois."
The article cites one analyst at energy research firm Wood Mackenzie who believes this cancellation could benefit rival carbon-capture companies like Summit Carbon Solutions, which is planning an even larger network of CO2 pipelines throughout the Midwest, and could try to sign deals with Navigator's former customers.

An anonymous reader shares a report: On May 4, 2022, NASA's InSight lander detected the largest quake yet recorded on Mars, one with a 4.7 magnitude -- fairly modest by Earth standards but strong for our planetary neighbor. Given Mars lacks the geological process called plate tectonics that generates earthquakes on our planet, scientists suspected a meteorite impact had caused this marsquake. But a search for an impact crater came up empty, leading scientists to conclude that this quake was caused by tectonic activity -- rumbling in the planet's interior -- and giving them a deeper understanding about what makes Mars shake, rattle and roll.

"We concluded that the largest marsquake seen by InSight was tectonic, not an impact. This is important as it shows the faults on Mars can host hefty marsquakes," said planetary scientist Ben Fernando of the University of Oxford in England, lead author of the research published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "We really thought that this event might be an impact." "This represents a significant step forward in our understanding of Martian seismic activity and takes us one step closer to better unraveling the planet's tectonic processes," added Imperial College London planetary scientist and study co-author Constantinos Charalambous, co-chair of InSight's Geology Working Group.

NASA retired InSight in 2022 after four years of operations. In all, InSight's seismometer instrument detected 1,319 marsquakes. Earth's crust - its outermost layer - is divided into immense plates that continually shift, triggering quakes. The Martian crust is a single solid plate. But that does not mean all is quiet on the Martian front. "There are still faults that are active on Mars. The planet is still slowly shrinking and cooling, and there is still motion within the crust even though there are no active plate tectonic processes going on anymore. These faults can trigger quakes," Fernando said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from U.Today:
The country was reimagined by Joseon King Andrew Lee as a digital nation without territory or borders. In this status, it was recognized by Antigua and Barbuda: the two countries inked a treaty that supports education, economic investment and other developmental initiatives and provides the basis for long-standing friendly relations.

Speaking to U.Today, representatives of the country stressed its unique legal design and state management model:

"Joseon is a crypto safe haven in this world where you can legally engage in crypto without any risk of any kind because sovereignty is the absolute authority in this world and another sovereignty doesn't have authority over another sovereignty"

Per their official statement, cryptocurrencies represent legal tender in Joseon and can be used for investments, daily payments and cross-border transactions.
Another report from Bitcoinist details several companies launching in Joseon, including First Day Out Collective which represents a song from Rundown Spaz and Kanye West:
Let's talk about the banger that's making this all come alive: "First Day Out,: a fire track by Rundown Spaz featuring none other than Kanye West, now owned by a DAO and legally recognized corporation in the progressive cybernation of Joseon, which itself is a legally recognized nation-state.

The Android ecosystem is hurtling toward a RISC-V future. From a report: The puzzle pieces for the up-and-coming CPU architecture started falling into place this past year when Google announced official RISC-V support in Android and plans to make it a "tier 1 platform" on equal footing with Arm. With the OS support underway, what we need now is hardware, and Qualcomm is stepping up to announce the first-ever mass-market RISC-V Android SoC. It doesn't have a name yet, but Qualcomm says it's developing a "RISC-V Snapdragon Wear" chip in collaboration with Google. The company says it plans to "commercialize the RISC-V based wearables solution globally including the US." For Google and Qualcomm, this chip represents everyone's first swing at a commercial RISC-V Android project, and as far as we can tell, it's the first announced mass-market RISC-V Android chip ever. Qualcomm says the groundwork it and Google lay out "will help pave the way for more products within the Android ecosystem to take advantage of custom CPUs that are low power and high performance."

RISC-V represents a big threat to the Arm CPU architecture that currently dominates all mobile devices. RISC-V architecture is open source, which can make it cheaper and more flexible than Arm. If companies want to design their own chips, they can do that without paying a licensing fee to Arm. Since the architecture is open source, it's possible to create a fully open source chip. If you're a chip-design firm, you can make your own proprietary chip designs and license them, making you a competitor to Arm's chip-design business. RISC-V is also a way to sidestep all of the various problems with Arm.

Javier Milei, the current front runner for president of Argentina, pledged to eliminate government spending on research and shut down the country's main science agency, the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), which provides funding for about 12,000 researchers at 300 institutions across the country. The libertarian candidate has said that shutting down CONICET, with its $400 million budget, could help to end Argentina's fiscal crisis. Martin De Ambrosio and Fermin Koop report via the scientific journal Nature: Milei is a relative newcomer to Argentine politics, having become a lawmaker in the lower chamber of the country's Congress only in 2021. Previously, he was an economic adviser to firms including Aeropuertos Argentina 2000, which manages airports in the country. He has also won notoriety as a guest on talk shows discussing economics and his services as a tantric sex coach. His rise was precipitated by eight years of economic turmoil in Argentina: the country owes billions to creditors such as the International Monetary Fund; annual inflation has reached more than 120%; and 40% of the population is living in poverty.

To tame the crisis, Milei has proposed not only privatizing science, but also closing the environment and health ministries, and abolishing the current public-health and education systems. The anti-establishment politician has even floated the idea of allowing people to sell their own organs for profit. On environmental issues, he is equally provocative, calling climate change "a socialist hoax," and saying that a company should be able to pollute a river as it sees fit. "From his perspective, any regulatory intervention by the state represents an attack against market freedom and, therefore, against individual freedom," says Maristella Svampa, a sociologist at the CONICET-funded Center for Documentation and Research of Left-Wing Culture in Buenos Aires.

Milei has tapped into the public's angst. He is currently leading the polls, although electoral experts don't necessarily trust the figures, and his competitors still hope to win the upper hand. [...] If Milei becomes president, say sources who spoke to Nature, researchers will leave the country to seek jobs. They will be able to make a living elsewhere because they are talented, [says Jorge Aliaga, a physicist at Hurlingham National University in Buenos Aires]. But "losing scientists is a problem for the country." Because of economic crises that have long dogged Argentina, brain drain is a regular threat. Hyperinflation in the late 1980s and a banking crisis in 2001 drove thousands of scientists to seek work in Europe and the United States. Even so, Argentina still has one of the best ratios of researchers to inhabitants in Latin America, Aliaga says. In 2014, for instance, it had about 1,200 researchers for every one million inhabitants. By contrast, Brazil had about 890 for every one million people. "In that sense, Argentina has better numbers than Brazil and Mexico," Aliaga adds.

Richard Tribou reports via Phys.Org: NASA's goal to reduce the costs of the powerful Space Launch System rocket for its Artemis program by 50% was called "highly unrealistic" and a threat to its deep space exploration plans, according to a report by NASA's Office of the Inspector General released (PDF) on Thursday. The audit says the costs to produce one SLS rocket through its proposed fixed-cost contract will still top $2.5 billion, even though NASA thinks it can shrink that through "workforce reductions, manufacturing and contracting efficiencies, and expanding the SLS's user base."

"Given the enormous costs of the Artemis campaign, failure to achieve substantial savings will significantly hinder the sustainability of NASA's deep space human exploration efforts," the report warns. The audit looked at NASA's plans to shift from its current setup among multiple suppliers for the hardware to a sole-sourced services contract that would include the production, systems integration and launch of at least five SLS flights beginning with Artemis V currently slated for as early as 2029. NASA's claim it could get those costs to $1.25 billion per rocket was taken to task by the audit.

"NASA's aspirational goal to achieve a cost savings of 50% is highly unrealistic. Specifically, our review determined that cost saving initiatives in several SLS production contracts were not significant," the audit reads. It does find that rocket costs could approach $2 billion through the first 10 SLS rockets under the new contract, a reduction of 20%. [...] Through 2025, the audit stated its Artemis missions will have topped $93 billion, which includes billions more than originally announced in 2012 as years of delays and cost increases plagued the leadup to Artemis I. The SLS rocket represents 26% of that cost to the tune of $23.8 billion. The inspector general makes several recommendations to NASA. The most striking of which is that NASA consider using commercial heavy-lift rockets, such as SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy or Blue Origin's New Glenn, as an alternative to the SLS rocket for future Artemis missions.

"Although the SLS is the only launch vehicle currently available that meets Artemis mission needs, in the next 3 to 5 years other human-rated commercial alternatives that are lighter, cheaper, and reusable may become available," the audit reads. "Therefore, NASA may want to consider whether other commercial options should be a part of its mid- to long-term plans to support its ambitious space exploration goals."

The White House is considering requiring cloud computing firms to report some information about their customers to the U.S. government, Semafor reported Friday, citing people familiar with an upcoming executive order on AI. From the report: The provision would direct the Commerce Department to write rules forcing cloud companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to disclose when a customer purchases computing resources beyond a certain threshold. The order hasn't been finalized and specifics of it could still change. Similar "know-your-customer" policies already exist in the banking sector to prevent money laundering and other illegal activities, such as the law mandating firms to report cash transactions exceeding $10,000.

In this case, the rules are intended to create a system that would allow the U.S. government to identify potential AI threats ahead of time, particularly those coming from entities in foreign countries. If a company in the Middle East began building a powerful large language model using Amazon Web Services, for example, the reporting requirement would theoretically give American authorities an early warning about it. The policy proposal represents a potential step toward treating computing power -- or the technical capacity AI systems need to perform tasks -- like a national resource. Mining Bitcoin, developing video games, and running AI models like ChatGPT all require large amounts of compute.

Intel Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger, plotting a comeback for the once-dominant chipmaker, made the case that the company's technology will be vital to an industrywide boom in artificial intelligence computing. From a report: Speaking at Intel's annual Innovation conference, Gelsinger pointed to advances that his company is making in production technology and software developer tools for AI. The opportunity will only grow as more artificial intelligence capabilities are powered by personal computers, he said. "AI represents a generational shift, giving rise to a new era of global expansion where computing is even more foundational to a better future for all," Gelsinger said.

"For developers, this creates massive societal and business opportunities to push the boundaries of what's possible, to create solutions to the world's biggest challenges." Gelsinger is trying to fire up interest in Intel's technology and return to an era when its annual conferences offered a road map for the whole computing industry. He argues that artificial intelligence use won't be confined to the data centers of giant cloud providers, which rely heavily on chips from Nvidia. Instead, it will fan out into new areas, including the now-moribund PC market.