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Submission + - DOGE software engineer's computer infected by info-stealing malware (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by gkelley
gkelley writes: Login credentials belonging to an employee at both the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Department of Government Efficiency have appeared in multiple public leaks from info-stealer malware, a strong indication that devices belonging to him have been hacked in recent years.

Kyle Schutt is a 30-something-year-old software engineer who, according to Dropsite News, gained access in February to a “core financial management system” belonging to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As an employee of DOGE, Schutt accessed FEMA’s proprietary software for managing both disaster and non-disaster funding grants. Under his role at CISA, he likely is privy to sensitive information regarding the security of civilian federal government networks and critical infrastructure throughout the US.

Submission + - Lithium deposit valued at $1.5T discover in Oregon (earth.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: McDermitt Caldera in Oregon is attracting attention for what could be one of the largest lithium deposits ever identified in the United States. Many view it as a potential boost for domestic battery production, while local communities voice concern over the impact on wildlife and cultural sites.

The excitement stems from estimates that value the deposit at about $1.5 trillion. Some geologists say these ancient volcanic sediments could contain between 20 and 40 million metric tons of lithium.

Submission + - Bill Gates plans to give away money shutter foundation (axios.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: Bill Gates, once the richest man in the world, vowed to give away "virtually all" of his wealth through the Gates Foundation over the next two decades. Then, the foundation will close its doors on Dec. 31, 2045. Gates wrote in a Thursday Gates Notes essay that the original plan was to sunset the foundation several decades after he and his then-wife died. Now, Gates believes that a "shorter timeline" is feasible after his divorce. It's unclear whether the world's richest countries will continue to stand up for its poorest people," Gates wrote.

Submission + - Linux malware sneakily evading antivirus (theregister.com)

Submitted by Mirnotoriety
Mirnotoriety writes: “A proof-of-concept program has been released to demonstrate a so-called monitoring "blind spot" in how some Linux antivirus and other endpoint protection tools use the kernel's io_uring interface.”

Submission + - Car Subscription Features Raise Your Risk of Government Surveillance, Police Rec (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Automakers are increasingly pushing consumers to accept monthly and annual fees to unlock preinstalled safety and performance features, from hands-free driving systems and heated seats to cameras that can automatically record accident situations. But the additional levels of internet connectivity this subscription model requires can increase drivers’ exposure to government surveillance and the likelihood of being caught up in police investigations. A cache of more than two dozen police records recently reviewed by WIRED show US law enforcement agencies regularly trained on how to take advantage of “connected cars,” with subscription-based features drastically increasing the amount of data that can be accessed during investigations. The records make clear that law enforcement’s knowledge of the surveillance far exceeds that of the public and reveal how corporate policies and technologies—not the law—determine driver privacy.

“Each manufacturer has their whole protocol on how the operating system in the vehicle utilizes telematics, mobile Wi-Fi, et cetera,” one law enforcement officer noted in a presentation prepared by the California State Highway Patrol (CHP) and reviewed by WIRED. The presentation, while undated, contains statistics on connected cars for the year 2024. “If the vehicle has an active subscription,” they add, “it does create more data.” The CHP presentation, obtained by government transparency nonprofit Property of the People via a public records request, trains police on how to acquire data based on a variety of hypothetical scenarios, each describing how vehicle data can be acquired based on the year, make, and model of a vehicle. The presentation acknowledges that access to data can ultimately be limited due to choices made by not only vehicle manufacturers but the internet service providers on which connected devices rely.

One document notes, for instance, that when a General Motors vehicle is equipped with an active OnStar subscription, it will transmit data—revealing its location—roughly twice as often as a Ford vehicle. Different ISPs appear to have not only different capabilities but policies when it comes to responding to government requests for information. Police may be able to rely on AT&T to help identify certain vehicles based on connected devices active in the car but lack the ability to do so when the device relies on a T-Mobile or Verizon network instead. [...] Nearly all subscription-based car features rely on devices that come preinstalled in a vehicle, with a cellular connection necessary only to enable the automaker's recurring-revenue scheme. The ability of car companies to charge users to activate some features is effectively the only reason the car’s systems need to communicate with cell towers. The police documents note that companies often hook customers into adopting the services through free trial offers, and in some cases the devices are communicating with cell towers even when users decline to subscribe.

Submission + - A Optical Illusion Captcha to Frustrate Botnets (ycombinator.com) 1

Submitted by vitalmixofnutrients
vitalmixofnutrients writes: By asking visitors to correctly say which direction of say, four (up, down, left or right) a part of a captcha appears to be "moving", it filters out the bots while allowing humans with optical illusion fooled eyeballs to pass the test.
Given 16 of those captcha requests in a row and given that there are 2^2 choices per captcha, there is a 2^16*2 — 1 possible ways to enter 16 captchas wrong, but only 1 way to enter them right, leading to a filtration failure of around 1 in 4 billion.
Also, multiple captchas can be done in a row for each failure, but once say, 16 captchas have been solved in a row, access is granted for say, a month, until the captcha has to be done again.

Submission + - AI Godfather Geoffrey Hinton Warns: 1-in-5 Chance of Machines Taking Over (techspot.com)

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: Geoffrey Hinton, one of the renowned pioneers often referred to as the "Godfathers of AI," is raising fresh alarms about the dangers posed by the fast-moving and loosely regulated AI industry. Hinton cautions that most people remain unaware of the risks ahead, warning there is a 10 to 20 percent chance that artificial intelligence could one day seize control from humanity. TechSpot reports:

Speaking during an interview earlier this month that was aired on CBS Saturday morning, Hinton, who jointly won the Nobel Prize in physics last year, issued a warning about the direction that AI development is heading.

"The best way to understand it emotionally is we are like somebody who has this really cute tiger cub," Hinton said. "Unless you can be very sure that it's not gonna want to kill you when it's grown up, you should worry."

"People haven't got it yet, people haven't understood what's coming," he warned.

It was Hinton's ideas that created the technical foundations that make large-scale models such as ChatGPT possible, including the first practical way to train deep stacks of artificial neurons end-to-end.

Submission + - Netflix Introduces a New Kind of Subtitles For the Non-Hearing Impaired (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Multiple studies and investigations have found that about half of American households watch TV and movies with subtitles on, but only a relatively small portion of those include someone with a hearing disability. That's because of the trouble many people have understanding dialogue in modern viewing situations, and Netflix has now introduced a subtitles option to help.

The closed captioning we've all been using for years includes not only the words the people on-screen are saying, but additional information needed by the hard of hearing, including character names, music cues ("dramatic music intensifies") and sound effects ("loud explosion"). For those who just wanted to make sure they didn't miss a word here and there, the frequent descriptions of sound effects and music could be distracting. This new format omits those extras, just including the spoken words and nothing else—even in the same language as the spoken dialogue. The feature will be available in new Netflix original programming, starting with the new season of You in multiple languages. Netflix says it's looking at bringing the option to older titles in the library (including those not produced by Netflix) in the future.

Traditional closed captions are still available, of course. Those are labeled "English CC" whereas this new option is simply labeled "English" (or whatever your preferred language is).

Comment Just under 3% ... (Score 1) 2

Just to put things into perspective, that 22k jobs lost is from the 750k total fast food jobs in the state, or a little under 3%.

Minimum wage calculation is complex and nuanced, not really a sound-bite issue. For example, if minimum wage was 50Â, we might have more employment, but could you afford to work that job?

Submission + - Perplexity CEO Says Its Browser Will Track Everything Users Do To Sell Ads (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said this week on the TBPN podcast that one reason Perplexity is building its own browser is to collect data on everything users do outside of its own app. This so it can sell premium ads. “That’s kind of one of the other reasons we wanted to build a browser, is we want to get data even outside the app to better understand you,” Srinivas said. “Because some of the prompts that people do in these AIs is purely work-related. It’s not like that’s personal.”

And work-related queries won’t help the AI company build an accurate-enough dossier. “On the other hand, what are the things you’re buying; which hotels are you going [to]; which restaurants are you going to; what are you spending time browsing, tells us so much more about you,” he explained. Srinivas believes that Perplexity’s browser users will be fine with such tracking because the ads should be more relevant to them. “We plan to use all the context to build a better user profile and, maybe you know, through our discover feed we could show some ads there,” he said. The browser, named Comet, suffered setbacks but is on track to be launched in May, Srinivas said.

Submission + - AB 1228 One Year Later: Over 22,000 Fast Food jobs have been lost in California (californiaglobe.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Assembly Bill 1228, the extremely controversial law that raised the fast food minimum wage to $20 an hour in California, turned one year old on Tuesday. And the differences between now and a year have been shown to be pretty stark.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Employment Statistics (CES), 22,717 fast food jobs have been lost in the past year when seasonally adjusted. The Berkeley Research Group also found that fast food prices in California have gone up by 14.5% since a year ago – about double the national average of 8.2%. And that’s not even getting into the 89% of all restaurants in the state reducing employee hours to offset rising costs, with 87% planning additional cuts over the next year.

That’s where we are a year later.

For those who support AB 1228, they have been hard pressed to find anything positive about it for well over a year. AB 1228, authored by then-Assemblyman Chris Holden (D-Los Angeles), was one of the most contentious bills in 2023. The Holden bill originally tried for a $22 wage for fast food workers, but it was negotiated down, with the $20 amount narrowly passing both houses in the California legislature and being signed by Governor Gavin Newsom.

Before April 1, 2024, thousands of fast food jobs were shed by companies in anticipation for the higher costs, including Pizza Hut who let go 1,200 drivers alone. Lawmakers also knew that there was suddenly going to be a lot of lost jobs, and hastily brought in exemptions for fast food restaurants in airports, stadiums, theme parks and other major public areas.

Nonetheless, job losses quickly mounted after April 1st of last year when the law went online. Not only job losses either – many workers found that they were now working fewer hours or lost a shift as a result. In addition, restaurants automated what they could to avoid the higher wages, including investing in touch screen kiosks over having more traditional cashiers. Some fast food restaurants also closed, as the 25% wage increase from $16 to $20 ruined their thin profit margins.

If only California legislators who voted for it could be forced to pay for the mess they've created.

Submission + - 50+ House Democrats demand answers after whistleblower report on DOGE (npr.org) 2

Submitted by echo123
echo123 writes: Over fifty Democratic lawmakers have signed a letter demanding answers from senior U.S. government officials about a recent potential exposure of sensitive data about American workers.

The letter is addressed to the acting General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, William Cowen. The independent agency is in charge of investigating and adjudicating complaints about unfair labor practices and protecting U.S. workers' rights to form unions.

The lawmakers, who are part of the Congressional Labor Caucus, wrote the letter in light of news first reported by NPR, that a whistleblower inside the IT Department of the NLRB says DOGE may have removed sensitive labor data and exposed NLRB systems to being compromised.

"These revelations from the whistleblower report are highly concerning for a number of reasons," the lawmakers wrote in the letter to Cowen. "If true, these revelations describe a reckless approach to the handling of sensitive personal information of workers, which could leave these workers exposed to retaliation for engaging in legally protected union activity."

The letter refers to an official whistleblower disclosure made by Daniel Berulis, a cloud administrator in the IT department of the NLRB, who also spoke to NPR in multiple interviews.

In his disclosure, Berulis shared that he initially became concerned in March when members of President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency initiative arrived at the agency and demanded high-level access to the systems without their activities being logged. Those fears escalated after he tracked a large chunk of data leaving the agency at the same time as many security controls and auditing tools were turned off, the disclosure continues.

Ultimately, Berulis became concerned that DOGE, which is effectively led by Trump adviser and billionaire CEO Elon Musk, could have accessed sensitive internal information about ongoing investigations into U.S. companies, witness affidavits and even corporate secrets. The alleged insecure practices and removal of data could also create vulnerabilities for criminal hackers or foreign adversaries to exploit, Berulis explained in his official disclosure.

Submission + - FDA did not notify the public of deadly E. coli outbreak across 15 states (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: The outbreak is linked to romaine lettuce killed one person and sickened at least 88 more, including a 9-year-old boy who nearly died of kidney failure.

“There were no public communications related to this outbreak,” the FDA said in its report, which noted that there had been a death but provided no details about it.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported in February that it had closed the investigation without publicly detailing what had happened, or which companies were responsible for growing and processing the contaminated lettuce.

The FDA said its staff members “continue to provide critical communications to consumers associated with foodborne outbreaks,” including information about recalls and investigations.

Submission + - Musician's Brain Matter Is Still Making Music Three Years After His Death (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: American composer Alvin Lucier was well-known for his experimental works that tested the boundaries of music and art. A longtime professor at Wesleyan University (before retiring in 2011), Alvin passed away in 2021 at the age of 90. However, that wasn’t the end of his lifelong musical odyssey. Earlier this month, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, a new art installation titled Revivification used Lucier’s “brain matter”—hooked up to an electrode mesh connected to twenty large brass plates—to create electrical signals that triggered a mallet to strike the varying plates, creating a kind of post-mortem musical piece. Conceptualized in collaboration with Lucier himself before his death, the artists solicited the help of researchers from Harvard Medical School, who grew a mini-brain from Lucier’s white blood cells. The team created stem cells from these white blood cells, and due to their pluripotency, the cells developed into cerebral organoids somewhat similar to developing human brains.

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