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Submission + - Palantir's Peter Thiel thinks people should be concerned about surveillance AI (cnbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The venture capitalist, who co-founded big data firm Palantir, said at an event in Miami that on the path to Artificial general intelligence (AGI, you get surveillance AI, which he described as a “communist totalitarian technology.”

Those that are worried about AGI aren’t actually “paying attention to the thing that really matters,” Thiel said.

Submission + - Should Microsoft Have Kept Mum On Gates, Nixed Employee Board Representation?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Video of Microsoft's Annual Shareholder Meeting in Dec. 2019, at which the company's Board of Directors dismissed the idea that employee Board representation was necessary to combat issues — including sexual harassment — takes on new significance in light of the company's response to a recent WSJ report that Bill Gates left the Microsoft Board in March 2020 amid a probe launched in late 2019 into a prior relationship with a staffer that was deemed inappropriate. "Microsoft received a concern in the latter half of 2019 that Bill Gates sought to initiate an intimate relationship with a company employee in the year 2000," a Microsoft spokesman said in response to the WSJ story. "A committee of the Board reviewed the concern, aided by an outside law firm to conduct a thorough investigation."

At the 2019 Annual Meeting, Microsoft Board Chair John Thompson kicked things off by thanking shareholders for their trust before introducing the nominees for the board of directors who were in attendance, starting with "Bill Gates, our cofounder." Attention then turned to "a shareholder proposal requesting a report on Employee Representation on the Board of Directors," which shareholder advocate Mari Schwartzer argued was called for in light of "alleged gender discrimination and sexual harassment within our company." Unswayed by that argument, Microsoft Corporate Secretary Dev Stahlkopf responded that the Board had decided to nix the proposal as unnecessary, explaining that "the Board is already deeply engaged on providing oversight of workplace culture," which she noted included "receiving direct feedback from employees through anonymous polls."

Schwartzer made the same proposal — which again fell on deaf Board ears — the next year at Microsoft's Dec. 2020 Annual Meeting. Gates was no longer on the Board at that time — he resigned in Mar. 2020 just three months after his re-election for what Microsoft billed to the SEC as a chance to devote himself more fully to philanthropy, repeating the same reasons Gates provided in a self-published LinkedIn post (no connection was made between his departure and the Board's investigation, and a recent statement from a Gates spokesperson insisted, "Bill's decision to transition off the board was in no way related to this matter"). However, the Microsoft Board of Directors made sure shareholders were aware of Bill's continuing influence at Microsoft in a letter included in Microsoft's 2020 SEC proxy filing. The Board wrote, "This year, Co-Founder and Technology Advisor Bill Gates stepped down from the Company’s Board of Directors to dedicate more time to his philanthropic priorities. He continues to serve as Technology Advisor to CEO Satya Nadella and other leaders in the Company. The Board has benefited from Bill’s leadership and vision in innumerable ways over the years, and we are grateful for his contributions and insights."

In an interview on CNBC last Friday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was pressed to address the issue of Bill Gates' acknowledged 2000 affair with a Microsoft employee. "The power dynamic in the workplace is not something that can be abused in any form," Nadella replied, "and the most important thing is for us to make sure that everybody is comfortable in being able to raise any issues they see, and for us to be able to fully investigate it." So, with all of the revelations and bad press, will Microsoft's Board reject the idea of Employee Board Representation for a third year straight while keeping mum on Gates later this year at the 2021 Annual Shareholders Meeting?

Submission + - Batteries used in hearing aids could be key to the future of renewable energy (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: If necessity is the mother of invention, potential profit has to be the father. Both incentives are driving an effort to transform zinc batteries from small, throwaway cells often used in hearing aids into rechargeable behemoths that could be attached to the power grid, storing solar or wind power for nighttime, or when the wind is calm. Zinc batteries promise to be cheaper and safer than conventional lithium-ion batteries, today’s battery leader. But turning zinc cells into long-lived rechargeables faces several challenges. Now, advances in critical zinc battery components are injecting renewed optimism that rechargeable zinc batteries face a bright future.

Comment Re:Hypocrisy (Score 5, Insightful) 328

Trump is blamed for people entering the Capitol illegally, though they did so 18 minutes before he even finished his speech. In addition, the initial perpetrators were a mile and a half from Trump, meaning it was unlikely they heard a word he said.

You don't actually believe that do you? Trump spent weeks spreading false information about the election, he spent weeks attacking the very process that elected him in the first place. No one in their right mind an make the statement that he had nothing to do with the actions that followed. He wanted it to happen. He was happy it happened. He's just upset now that it didn't go well.

Comment Stop being surprised.. (Score 1, Interesting) 91

by sqorbit (#60659258) Attached to: Microsoft: No Driver Updates Allowed for Windows 7 and Windows 8
Microsoft is a for profit company that's end goal is to make money for shareholders. The need to move forward with products and stop supporting old products to keep their business moving and viable. I'm not saying you have to like it, but it's reality. We need to stop bitching at Microsoft for doing things that we 100% know they will do. It's not like they secretly take products off support.

Submission + - Stephen Wolfram presents a new fundamental theory of physics (stephenwolfram.com)

Submitted by wattersa
wattersa writes: Mathematician/Physicist Stephen Wolfram, founder of Wolfram Research and creator of the technical computation program Mathematica, has announced a discovery in the area of theoretical physics. His long-form blog post discusses the emergence of physical properties of our universe from what he describes as simple, universal, computable rules. He claims the emergent properties are consistent with relativity and quantum mechanics through a 448-page technical paper on the subject, which is posted on a completely new website that just went online.

Submission + - Silicon Valley Legends Jim Clark & Tom Jermoluk on Quest to Eliminate Passwo (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Internet icons Jim Clark and Tom Jermoluk (past founders of Netscape, Silicon Graphics and @Home Network) have launched a new company and created a phone-resident personal certificate-based authentication and authorization solution that eliminates all passwords. The technology used is not new, being based on X.509 certificates and SSL (invented by Netscape some 25 years ago and still the bedrock of secure internet communications). Their new firm, Beyond Identity, has raised $30 Million Series A funding and is first concentrating on the corporate market, but has plans to extend its offering to consumers in late 2020.

Submission + - COBOL Programmers Sought (cnn.com)

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes: State governors are calling for the help of the COBOL programmers with their aged databases. Jobless claims in many states are processed on computer systems using the programming language.

Submission + - Should Facebook, Google Be Liable For User Posts? (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday questioned whether Facebook, Google and other major online platforms still need the immunity from legal liability that has prevented them from being sued over material their users post. “No longer are tech companies the underdog upstarts. They have become titans,” Barr said at a public meeting held by the Justice Department to examine the future of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. “Given this changing technological landscape, valid questions have been raised about whether Section 230’s broad immunity is necessary at least in its current form,” he said.

Section 230 says online companies such as Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Twitter Inc cannot be treated as the publisher or speaker of information they provide. This largely exempts them from liability involving content posted by users, although they can be held liable for content that violates criminal or intellectual property law. The increased size and power of online platforms has also left consumers with fewer options, and the lack of feasible alternatives is a relevant discussion, Barr said, adding that the Section 230 review came out of the Justice Department’s broader look at potential anticompetitive practices at tech companies. Lawmakers from both major political parties have called for Congress to change Section 230 in ways that could expose tech companies to more lawsuits or significantly increase their costs. Barr said the department would not advocate a position at the meeting. But he hinted at the idea of allowing the U.S. government to take action against recalcitrant platforms, saying it was “questionable” whether Section 230 should prevent the American government from suing platforms when it is “acting to protect American citizens.”

Submission + - US Natural Gas Plant and Pipelines Shut After Ransomware Attack (infosecurity-magazine.com)

Submitted by Garabito
Garabito writes: The Department of Homeland Security has revealed that an unnamed US natural gas compression facility was forced to shut down operations for two days after becoming infected with ransomware.

The plant was targeted with a phishing e-mail, that allowed the attacker to access its IT network and then pivot to its OT (control) network, where it compromised Windows PCs used as human machine interface (HMI), data historians and polling servers, which led the plant operator to shut it down along with other assets that depended on it, including pipelines.

According to the DHS CISA report, the victim failed to implement robust segmentation between the IT and OT networks, which allowed the adversary to traverse the IT-OT boundary and disable assets on both networks.

Comment House Keys (Bad Analogy) (Score 1) 234

I heard someone talking about this and their comment was "If my house is locked and the police have a warrant they can break in". This is such a horrible analogy. If I give you my house keys, I'm not giving you the keys to everyone else's house too. If there's a backdoor, it's for everyone's phone not one. If anyone is using this or any similar point in an argument for unlocking the phone, please stop. You are just doing damage to your own argument.

Comment Browsing vs Buying DUH! (Score 5, Informative) 76

I have been known to drive through car dealerships to check out the latest in cars. Not because I want to buy, but because I want to keep up to date on something I'm interested in. In a store I might check out a product because I find some humor in it, or because I heard about it on an advertisement. Again. I'll look but I have no intention of buying. This doesn't require AI. I am not at all unique in this and I'm sure many people search Amazon for all sorts of things for a variety of reasons that has no connection to them actually buying it.

Submission + - SPAM: Vox Media fires hundreds of freelance writers over California 'gig economy' law 2

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes:

"This is a bittersweet note of thanks to our California independent contractors," said SB Nation executive director John Ness in a statement published on Monday.

"In 2020, we will move California's team blogs from our established system with hundreds of contractors to a new one run by a team of new SB Nation employees," he explained.

California Assembly Bill 5 will go into effect in 2020 and is intended to force "gig economy" giants like Uber and Lyft to pay their drivers as if they're employees and provide more benefits. But it is also affecting other freelance workers and causing confusion among employers.

To paraphrase future Beverly Hills gynecologist Eric Stratton, the fired Voxers f***ed up; they trusted Vox:
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