Slashdot on LinkedIn: FCC Proposes New Rules For AI-Generated Robocalls and Robotexts: The FCC… (2024)

Are We Entering an AI Price-Fixing Dystopia?: "Algorithmic price-fixing appears to be spreading to more and more industries," warns the Atlantic. "And existing laws may not be equipped to stop it."They start with RealPage's rental-property software (pointing out that "a series of lawsuits says it's something else: an AI-enabled price-fixing conspiracy" and "The lawsuits also argue that RealPage pressures landlords to comply with its pricing suggestions.") But the most important point is that RealPage isn't the only company doing this:Its main competitor, Yardi, is involved in a similar lawsuit. One of RealPage's subsidiaries, a service called Rainmaker, faces multiple legal challenges for allegedly facilitating price-fixing in the hotel industry. (Yardi and Rainmaker deny wrongdoing.) Similar complaints have been brought against companies in industries as varied as health insurance, tire manufacturing, and meat processing. But winning these cases is proving difficult.The article notes that "Agreeing to fix prices is punishable with up to 10 years in prison and a $100 million fine." But it also notes concerns that algorithms could produce price-fixing-like behavior that's "almost impossible to prosecute under existing antitrust laws. Price-fixing, in other words, has entered the algorithmic age, but the laws designed to prevent it have not kept up."Last week, San Francisco passed a first-of-its-kind ordinance banning "both the sale and use of software which combines non-public competitor data to set, recommend or advise on rents and occupancy levels."Whether other jurisdictions follow suit remains to be seen.In the meantime, more and more companies are figuring out ways to use algorithms to set prices. If these really do enable de facto price-fixing, and manage to escape legal scrutiny, the result could be a kind of pricing dystopia in which competition to create better products and lower prices would be replaced by coordination to keep prices high and profits flowing. That would mean permanently higher costs for consumers — like an inflation nightmare that never ends.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Survivors of the Atomic Bomb Attack on Hiroshima Struggle - and Speak: "Not many Americans have August 6 circled on their calendars," writes the New York Times, "but it's a day that the Japanese can't forget."79 years after an atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, the Times visits a hospital that "continues to treat, on average, 180 survivors — known as hibakusha — of the blasts each day."The bombs killed an estimated 200,000 men, women and children and maimed countless more. In Hiroshima 50,000 of the city's 76,000 buildings were completely destroyed. In Nagasaki nearly all homes within a mile and a half of the blast were wiped out. In both cities the bombs wrecked hospitals and schools. Urban infrastructure collapsed...[T]he hibakusha and their offspring have formed the backbone of atomic memory. Many see their life's work as informing the wider world about what it's like to carry the trauma, stigma and survivor's guilt caused by the bombs, so that nuclear weapons may never be used again. Their urgency to do so has only increased in recent years. With an average age of 85, the hibakusha are dying by the hundreds each month — just as the world is entering a new nuclear age. Countries like the United States, China and Russia are spending trillions of dollars to modernize their stockpiles. Many of the safeguards that once lowered nuclear risk are unraveling, and the diplomacy needed to restore them is not happening. The threat of another blast can't be relegated to history...Kunihiko Sakuma [who was 9 months old the day of the attack]: "People died or got sick not just right after the bombing. The reality is, their symptoms are emerging even today, 79 years later. I thought all this was in the past. But as I started talking to survivors, I realized their suffering was ongoing. The atomic bomb is such an inhumane weapon, and the effects of radiation stay with survivors for a very long time. That's why they need our continued support."The article includes this quote from Keiko Ogura, who was 8 years old at the time of the attack — and still worries she hasn't done enough to abolish the use of nuclear weapons: "As survivors, we cannot do anything but tell our story. 'For we shall not repeat the evil' — this is the pledge of survivors. Until we die, we want to tell our story, because it's difficult to imagine."Many of the stories are horrifying. But I'll note this one by Seiichiro Mise — who on the day of the atomic bomb attack was 10 years old:"I got married in 1964. At the time, people would say that if you married an atomic bomb survivor, any kids you had would be deformed."Two years later, I got a call from the hospital saying my baby had been born. But on my way, my heart was troubled. I'm an atomic bomb victim. I experienced that black rain. So I felt anguished. Usually new parents simply ask the doctor, 'Is it a boy or girl?' I didn't even ask that. Instead, I asked, 'Does my baby have 10 fingers and 10 toes?'"The doctor looked u

Mozilla Wants You To Love Firefox Again: Mozilla's interim CEO Laura Chambers "says the company is reinvesting in Firefox after letting it languish in recent years," reports Fast Company, "hoping to reestablish the browser as independent alternative to the likes of Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari."But some of those investments, which also include forays into generative AI, may further upset the community that's been sticking with Firefox all these years..."Chambers acknowledges that Mozilla lost sight of Firefox in recent years as it chased opportunities outside the browser, such as VPN service and email masking. When she replaced Mitchell Baker as CEO in February, the company scaled back those other efforts and made Firefox a priority again. "Yes, Mozilla is refocusing on Firefox," she says. "Obviously, it's our core product, so it's an important piece of the business for us, but we think it's also really an important part of the internet."Some of that focus involves adding features that have become table-stakes in other browsers. In June, Mozilla added vertical tab support in Firefox's experimental branch, echoing a feature that Microsoft's Edge browser helped popularize three years ago. It's also working on tab grouping features and an easier way to switch between user profiles. Mozilla is even revisiting the concept of web apps, in which users can install websites as freestanding desktop applications. Mozilla abandoned work on Progressive Web Apps in Firefox a few years ago to the dismay of many power users, but now it's talking with community members about a potential path forward."We haven't always prioritized those features as highly as we should have," Chambers says. "That's been a real shift that's been very felt in the community, that the things they're asking for . . . are really being prioritized and brought to life."Firefox was criticized for testing a more private alternative to tracking cookies which could make summaries of aggregated data available to advertisers. (Though it was only tested on a few sites, "Privacy-Preserving Attribution" was enabled by default.) But EFF staff technologist Lena Cohen tells Fast Company that approach was "much more privacy-preserving" than Google's proposal for a "Privacy Sandbox." And according to the article, "Mozilla's system only measures the success rate of ads — it doesn't help companies target those ads in the first place — and it's less susceptible to abuse due to limits on how much data is stored and which parties are allowed to access it."In June, Mozilla also announced its acquisition of Anonym, a startup led by former Meta executives that has its own privacy-focused ad measurement system. While Mozilla has no plans to integrate Anonym's tech in Firefox, the move led to even more anxiety about the kind of company Mozilla was becoming. The tension around Firefox stems in part from Mozilla's precarious financial position, which is heavily dependent on royalty payments from

1

Ubuntu Will Start Shipping With the Latest Upstream Linux Kernel - Even Release Candidates: Here's a question from the blog OMG Ubuntu. "Ever get miffed reading about a major new Ubuntu release only to learn it doesn't come with the newest Linux kernel?"Well, that'll soon be a thing of the past."Canonical's announced a big shift in kernel selection process for future Ubuntu release, an "aggressive kernel version commitment policy" pivot that means it will ship the latest upstream kernel code in development at the time of a new Ubuntu release.Yes, even if that upstream kernel hasn't yet seen a formal stable release (and received the requisite newspaper-graphic-topped rundown on this blog). Which is a huge change. Currently, new Ubuntu releases include the most recent stable Linux kernel release at the time of the kernel freeze milestone in the Ubuntu development cycle.Here's the official announcement by Canonical's Brett Grandbois. "Ubuntu will now ship the absolute latest available version of the upstream Linux kernel at the specified Ubuntu release freeze date, even if upstream is still in Release Candidate status..."It is actually expected that Late Releases will be the exception rather than the norm and in most releases these guidelines will not be necessary as the upstream kernel will release with enough time for the Ubuntu kernel to stabilize. However, adopting a more aggressive kernel version commitment policy does require us to be prepared for a possible Late Release situation and therefore informing the community on what they can expect.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kia and Hyundai's New Anti-Theft Software is Lowering Car-Stealing Rates: An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:More than a year after Hyundai and Kia released new anti-theft software updates, thefts of vehicles with the new software are falling — even as thefts overall remain astoundingly high, according to a new analysis of insurance claim data.The automakers released the updates starting last February, after a tenfold increase in thefts of certain Hyundai and Kia models in just the past three years — sparked by a series of social media posts that showed people how to steal the vehicles. "Whole vehicle" theft claims — insurance claims for the loss of the entire vehicle — are 64% lower among the Hyundai and Kia cars that have had the software upgrade, compared to cars of the same make, model and year without the upgrade, according to the Highway Loss Data Institute. "The companies' solution is extremely effective," Matt Moore, senior vice president of HLDI, an industry group backed by auto insurers, said in a statement...Between early 2020 and the first half of 2023, thefts of Hyundai and Kia models rose more than 1,000%.The article points out that HDLI's analysis covered 2023, and "By the end of that year, only about 30% of vehicles eligible for the security software had it installed. By now, around 61% of eligible Hyundai vehicles have the software upgrade, a Hyundai spokesperson said."The car companies told CNN that more than 2 million Hyundai and Kia vehicles have gotten the update (part of a $200 million class action settlement reached in May of 2023).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Will the Google Antitrust Ruling Change the Internet?: Though "It could take years to resolve," the Washington Post imagines six changes that could ultimately result from the two monopoly rulings on Google:Imagine a Google-quality search engine but without ads — or one tailored to children, news junkies or Lego fans. It's possible that Google could be forced to let other companies access its search technology or its essential data to create search engines with the technical chops of Google — but without Google...Would Apple create a search engine...? The likeliest scenario is you'd need to pick whether to use Google on your iPhone or something else. But technologists and stock analysts have also speculated for years that Apple could make its own search engine. It would be like when Apple started Apple Maps as an alternative to Google Maps.What if Google weren't allowed to know so much about you? Jason Kint of Digital Content Next, an industry group that includes online news organizations, said one idea is Google's multiple products would no longer be allowed to commingle information about what you do. It would essentially be a divorce of Google's products without breaking the company up. That could mean, for example, that whatever you did on your Android phone or the websites you visit using Chrome would not feed into one giant Google repository about your activities and interests.The article also wonders if the judge could order Google to be broken up, with separate companies formed out of Android, Google search, and Chrome. (Or if more search competition might make prices drop for the products advertised in search results — or lower the fees charged in Android's app store.) Android's app store might also lose its power to veto apps that compete with Google."This is educated speculation," the article acknowledges. "It's also possible that not much will really change. That's what happened after Google was found to have broken the European Union's anti-monopoly laws."Google has also said it plans to appeal Monday's ruling.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some Def Con Attendees Forgive Crowdstrike - and Some Blame Microsoft Windows: Fortune reports that Crowdstrike "is enjoying a moment of strange cultural cachet at the annual Black Hat security conference, as throngs of visitors flock to its booth to snap selfies and load up on branded company shirts and other swag." (Some attendees "collectively shrugged at the idea that Crowdstrike could be blamed for a problem with a routine update that could happen to any of the security companies deeply intertwined with Microsoft Windows.")Others pointed out that Microsoft should take their fair share of the blame for the outage, which many say was caused by the design of Windows in its core architecture that leads to malware, spyware and driver instability. "Microsoft should not be giving any third party that level of access," said Eric O'Neill, a cybersecurity expert, attorney and former FBI operative. "Microsoft will complain, well, it's just the way that the technology works, or licensing works, but that's bullsh*t, because this same problem didn't affect Linux or Mac. And Crowdstrike caught it super-early."Their article notes that Crowdstrike is one of this year's top sponsors of the conference. Despite its recent missteps, Crowdstrike had one of the biggest booths, notes TechCrunch, and "As soon as the doors opened, dozens of attendees started lining up."They were not all there to ask tough questions, but to pick up T-shirts and action figures made by the company to represent some of the nation-state and cybercriminal grups it tracks, such as Scattered Spider, an extortion racket allegedly behind last year's MGM Resorts and Okta cyberattacks; and Aquatic Panda, a China-linked espionage group."We're here to give you free stuff," a CrowdStrike employee told people gathered around a big screen where employees would later give demos. A conference attendee looked visibly surprised. "I just thought it would be dead, honestly. I thought it would be slower over there. But obviously, people are still fans, right?"For CrowdStrike at Black Hat, there was an element of business as usual, despite its global IT outage that caused widespread disruption and delays for days — and even weeks for some customers. The conference came at the same time as CrowdStrike released its root cause analysis that explained what happened the day of the outage. In short, CrowdStrike conceded that it messed up but said it's taken steps to prevent the same incident happening again. And some cybersecurity professionals attending Black Hat appeared ready to give the company a second chance....TechCrunch spoke to more than a dozen conference attendees who visited the CrowdStrike booth. More than half of attendees we spoke with expressed a positive view of the company following the outage. "Does it lower my opinion of their ability to be a leading-edge security company? I don't think so," said a U.S. government employee, who said he uses CrowdStrike every day.Although TechCru

Scientists Slam 'Indefensible' Axing of NASA's $450 Million Viper Moon Rover: An anonymous reader shared this report from the Observer:Thousands of scientists have protested to the US Congress over the "unprecedented and indefensible" decision by Nasa to cancel its Viper lunar rover mission. In an open letter to Capitol Hill, they have denounced the move, which was revealed last month, and heavily criticised the space agency over a decision that has shocked astronomers and astrophysicists across the globe.The car-sized rover has already been constructed at a cost of $450 million and was scheduled to be sent to the moon next year, when it would have used a one-metre drill to prospect for ice below the lunar surface in soil at the moon's south pole. Ice is considered to be vital to plans to build a lunar colony, not just to supply astronauts with water but also to provide them with hydrogen and oxygen that could be used as fuels... "Quite frankly, the agency's decision beggars belief," said Prof Clive Neal, a lunar scientist at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana. "Viper is a fundamental mission on so many fronts and its cancellation basically undermines Nasa's entire lunar exploration programme for the next decade. It is as straightforward as that. Cancelling Viper makes no sense whatsoever."This view was backed by Ben Fernando of Johns Hopkins University, who was one of the organisers of the open letter to Congress. "A team of 500 people dedicated years of their careers to construct Viper and now it has been cancelled for no good reason whatsoever," he told the Observer last week. "Fortunately I think Congress is taking this issue very seriously and they have the power to tell Nasa that it has to go ahead with the project. Hopefully they will intervene.""When Nasa announced its decision to abandon Viper, the space agency said it planned to disassemble and reuse its components for other moon missions — unless other space companies or agencies offered to take over the project. More than a dozen groups have since expressed an interest in taking over Viper, a Nasa spokesperson told the Observer last week."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cyber-Heist of 2.9 Billion Personal Records Leads to Class Action Lawsuit: "A lawsuit has accused a Florida data broker of carelessly failing to secure billions of records of people's private information," reports the Register, "which was subsequently stolen from the biz and sold on an online criminal marketplace."California resident Christopher Hofmann filed the potential class-action complaint against Jerico Pictures, doing business as National Public Data, a Coral Springs-based firm that provides APIs so that companies can perform things like background checks on people and look up folks' criminal records. As such National Public Data holds a lot of highly personal information, which ended up being stolen in a cyberattack. According to the suit, filed in a southern Florida federal district court, Hofmann is one of the individuals whose sensitive information was pilfered by crooks and then put up for sale for $3.5 million on an underworld forum in April.If the thieves are to be believed, the database included 2.9 billion records on all US, Canadian, and British citizens, and included their full names, addresses, and address history going back at least three decades, social security numbers, and the names of their parents, siblings, and relatives, some of whom have been dead for nearly 20 years.Hofmann's lawsuit says he 'believes that his personally identifiable information was scraped from non-public sources," according to the article — which adds that Hofmann "claims he never provided this sensitive info to National Public Data..."The Florida firm stands accused of negligently storing the database in a way that was accessible to the thieves, without encrypting its contents nor redacting any of the individuals' sensitive information."Hofmann, on behalf of potentially millions of other plaintiffs, has asked the court to require National Public Data to destroy all personal information belonging to the class-action members and use encryption, among other data protection methods in the future...Additionally, it seeks unspecified monetary relief for the data theft victims, including "actual, statutory, nominal, and consequential damages."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trump's Campaign 'Says It Has Been Hacked', Reports CNN: CNN reports:Former President Donald Trump's campaign said Saturday in a statement that it had been hacked.Politico reported earlier Saturday that it had received emails from an anonymous account with documents from inside Trump's campaign operation. "These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our Democratic process," Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to CNN.Cheung pointed to a recent report published by Microsoft that said Iranian operatives had ramped up their attempts to influence and monitor the US presidential election by creating fake news outlets targeting liberal and conservative voters and by trying to hack an unnamed presidential campaign... Still, it's not clear whether Iran was responsible for the hack. CNN has reached out to the Iranian mission to the United Nations for comment...Politico reported it had received emails that contained internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official and a [271-page] research dossier the campaign had put together on Trump's running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The dossier included what the Trump campaign identified as Vance's potential vulnerabilities...In 2016, days before the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee server.Read more of this story at Slashdot.