Network giant Cisco is planning to restructure its business which will include laying off thousands of employees, as it seeks to focus on high-growth areas, according to three sources familiar with the matter. From the Reuters report: The San Jose, California-based company has a total employee count of 84,900 as of fiscal 2023, according to its website.The company is still deciding on the total number of employees to be affected by the layoffs, one person said.

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It appears that the government of Canada is going to ban the Flipper Zero, the tiny, modular hacking device that's become popular with techies for its deviant digital powers. From a report: On Thursday, following a summit that focused on "the growing challenge of auto theft in Canada," the country's Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry posted a statement on X, saying "Criminals have been using sophisticated tools to steal cars...Today, I announced we are banning the importation, sale and use of consumer hacking devices, like flippers, used to commit these crimes. In a press release issued on Thursday, the Canadian government confirmed that it will be pursuing "all avenues to ban devices used to steal vehicles by copying the wireless signals for remote keyless entry, such as the Flipper Zero." The Flipper, which is technically a penetration testing device, has been controversial due to its ability to hack droves of smart products. Alex Kulagin, the COO of Flipper Devices, said in a statement shared with Gizmodo that the device couldn't be used to "hijack any car" and that certain circumstances would have to be met for it to happen:

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India's Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will send a humanoid robot astronaut into this space this year, then send it back alongside actual humans in 2025 on its long-delayed Gaganyaan orbital mission. From a report: According to the space agency, the robot-crewed Vyommitra Mission is scheduled for the third quarter of this year. The robot -- whose name translates to "Space Friend" in Sanskrit -- can monitor module parameters, issue alerts and execute life support operations. Vyommitra is also an excellent multitasker that can operate six panels while responding to queries and mimicking human functions. The humanoid speaks two languages: Hindi and English. It's also been designated as female -- to the extent possible for a legless robot -- and sports coiffed hair, feminine facial features, and hands that look like they are wearing white gloves. It resembles a wax figurine or mannequin and The Register fancies it mostly manages to stay out of the Uncanny Valley -- the term applied to robots and digital depictions of humans that try to appear human but instead come off as creepy and/or unsettling.

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Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot has defended the $70 price tag for Skull and Bones, calling it a "quadruple-A game." From a report: During a Q&A session as part of a conference call discussing Ubisoft's Q3 sales for its fiscal year 2024, one caller pointed out that Skull and Bones now appears to be taking a more live service approach -- the game's Year 1 roadmap was recently published, for example. The caller asked why Ubisoft was insisting on charging $70 for the game and potentially limiting the size of its player base, suggesting a free-to-play model may better suit the live service mechanics and give it a better chance of building a community. Guillemot replied with an assertion that Skull and Bones deserves to be a full-price game because of its scale. "You will see that Skull and Bones is a fully-fledged game," he said. "It's a very big game, and we feel that people will really see how vast and complete that game is. It's a really full, triple... quadruple-A game, that will deliver in the long run."

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An Apple executive lobbied against a strong right-to-repair bill in Oregon Thursday, which is the first time the company has had an employee actively outline its stance on right to repair at an open hearing. 404 Media: Apple's position in Oregon shows that despite supporting a weaker right to repair law in California, it still intends to control its own repair ecosystem. It also sets up a highly interesting fight in the state because Google has come out in favor of the same legislation Apple is opposing. "It is our belief that the bill's current language around parts pairing will undermine the security, safety, and privacy of Oregonians by forcing device manufacturers to allow the use of parts of unknown origin in consumer devices," John Perry, Apple's principal secure repair architect, told the legislature. This is a quick about-face for the company, which after years of lobbying against right to repair, began to lobby for it in California last fall. The difference now is that Oregon's bill includes a critical provision that Google says it can easily comply with but that is core for Apple to maintain its dominance over the repair market.

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Amazon has been sued in a proposed U.S. class action that accuses the online retailer of violating consumer protection law by steering shoppers to higher-priced items to earn extra fees. Filed this week in the Seattle federal court, the complaint cites the recent FTC antitrust case against Amazon. It alleges Amazon's algorithm for its "Buy Box" often shows higher-priced options over faster, cheaper alternatives. The suit says shoppers click Amazon's "Buy Now" button nearly 98% of the time, falsely believing its choices offer the best deal. Amazon created the algorithm to benefit third-party sellers that pay "hefty fees" for its Fulfillment By Amazon services, the suit alleges.

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Grammarly, the parent firm of eponymous writing assistant service, is laying off 230 employees worldwide as part of a "business restructuring," the company announced this week. From a report: The layoffs are part of Grammarly's efforts to advance its focus on "the AI-enabled workplace of the future," the company says. "To arrive at today's decision, we took a look at our organizational design and the current skillsets of our teams through the lens of our company strategy," Grammarly CEO Rahul Roy-Chowdhury said in a memo to employees. "As we strengthen our focus toward driving the AI-enabled workplace and deepen our technical investments in AI, we will need a different mix of capabilities and skillsets. We also need to redesign our organization to improve the quality and speed of collaboration -- and that means, among other things, restructuring roles and co-locating certain teams." Roy-Chowdhury went on to say that the layoffs are not a cost-cutting measure, noting that Grammarly's financial position is "strong." He says the layoffs affects most Grammarly functions and geographies.

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Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said she is "very worried" about AI being used nefariously in the 2024 election, she told reporters at a press conference in Washington, D.C. on Thursday. From a report: "AI can do amazing things and AI can disrupt our elections, here and around the world," she said. "We're already starting to see it." Raimondo was asked by ABC News about the robocall sent on the day of the New Hampshire primary purporting to be from President Biden and spreading misinformation about voting times. She said the government is going to work "extensively" to start putting out AI framework that helps people -- including journalists -- be able to decipher what is real and what is fake. The Commerce Secretary added that AI companies want to do the right thing based on her conversations with them. "Am I worried? Yes," she said. "Do I think we have the tools to protect our election and our democracy? Yes. Do I feel based on my interactions with the private sector that they want to do the right thing? By and large, Yes. It's a big threat."

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Molly White of Web3 is Going Great fame reviews Read Write Own, a book by VC firm Andreessen Horowitz lead crypto partner Chris Dixon. According to its own description, the book seeks to offer an exploration of "the power of blockchains to reshape the future of the internet." Writes White: After three chapters in which Dixon provides a (rather revisionist) history of the web to date, explains the mechanics of blockchains, and goes over the types of things one might theoretically be able to do with a blockchain, we are left with "Part Four: Here and Now", then the final "Part Five: What's Next". The name of Part Four suggests that he will perhaps lay out a list of blockchain projects that are currently successfully solving real problems. Dixon speaks of how in the early days of "web1", or the "read era" (a period he defines as 1990-2005), "anyone could type a few words into a web browser and read about almost any topic through websites". This completely ignores that few people -- hardly just "anyone" -- had access to a computer, much less a computer with internet access, in that time. By 2005, around 16% of people globally were online. This may be why Part Four is precisely four and a half pages long. And rather than name any successful projects, Dixon instead spends his few pages excoriating the "casino" projects that he says have given crypto a bad rap prompting regulatory scrutiny that is making "ethical entrepreneurs ... afraid to build products" in the United States. In fact, throughout the entire book, Dixon fails to identify a single blockchain project that has successfully provided a non-speculative service at any kind of scale. The closest he ever comes is when he speaks of how "for decades, technologists have dreamed of building a grassroots internet access provider". He describes one project that "got further than anyone else": Helium. He's right, as long as you ignore the fact that Helium was providing LoRaWAN, not Internet, that by the time he was writing his book Helium hotspots had long since passed the phase where they might generate even enough tokens for their operators to merely break even, and that the network was pulling in somewhere around $1,150 in usage fees a month despite the company being valued at $1.2 billion. Oh, and that the company had widely lied to the public about its supposed big-name clients, and that its executives have been accused of hoarding the project's token to enrich themselves. But hey, a16z sunk millions into Helium (a fact Dixon never mentions), so might as well try to drum up some new interest! Further reading: How Tech Firms Made a Crypto-Boosting Book an NYT Best Seller by Gaming the System.

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An increasing number of digital-asset startups are offering airline-like loyalty points as they seek to attract more devoted users, even though most have yet to define what the rewards actually entail. From a report: Loyalty programs have sprung up in response to a once-favorite marketing ploy -- the token airdrop -- in which projects give away crypto tokens to users. But the industry is rethinking this tack because many airdrops have done little to retain users while regulatory scrutiny has swelled over tokens themselves. The fledgling points programs already have their detractors, with many users bemoaning a lack of transparency -- most haven't explained how their points can be used -- while experts warn they may pose regulatory risks of their own. The trend took off in November when new blockchain project Blast lured users by rewarding them with points. Even without a live blockchain, Blast has since attracted more than $1.3 billion worth of crypto from users who can only speculate what the points can be used for later. In a post thread on social-media platform X, Blast said only that the points can be redeemed on May 24. The crypto community has criticised the Blast points programme as a marketing ploy to get people to commit their tokens and refer new users. Some critics have even said the approach is reminiscent of a Ponzi scheme, which Blast's founder Tieshun Roquerre has denied.

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Thousands of people using the London Underground had their movements, behavior, and body language watched by AI surveillance software designed to see if they were committing crimes or were in unsafe situations, new documents obtained by WIRED reveal. From the report: The machine-learning software was combined with live CCTV footage to try to detect aggressive behavior and guns or knives being brandished, as well as looking for people falling onto Tube tracks or dodging fares. From October 2022 until the end of September 2023, Transport for London (TfL), which operates the city's Tube and bus network, tested 11 algorithms to monitor people passing through Willesden Green Tube station, in the northwest of the city. The proof of concept trial is the first time the transport body has combined AI and live video footage to generate alerts that are sent to frontline staff. More than 44,000 alerts were issued during the test, with 19,000 being delivered to station staff in real time. Documents sent to WIRED in response to a Freedom of Information Act request detail how TfL used a wide range of computer vision algorithms to track people's behavior while they were at the station. It is the first time the full details of the trial have been reported, and it follows TfL saying, in December, that it will expand its use of AI to detect fare dodging to more stations across the British capital. In the trial at Willesden Green -- a station that had 25,000 visitors per day before the Covid-19 pandemic -- the AI system was set up to detect potential safety incidents to allow staff to help people in need, but it also targeted criminal and antisocial behavior. Three documents provided to WIRED detail how AI models were used to detect wheelchairs, prams, vaping, people accessing unauthorized areas, or putting themselves in danger by getting close to the edge of the train platforms.

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President Joe Biden's administration plans to launch a $5 billion semiconductor research consortium to bolster chip design and hardware innovation in the US and counter China's efforts to capture the cutting edge of the industry. From a report: Officials on Friday are set to formally establish the National Semiconductor Technology Center, or NSTC, which marks the second major research and development investment from the 2022 Chips Act following a $3 billion advanced packaging initiative. The consortium plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into workforce development and intends to open funding applications in early March for research grants, Commerce Undersecretary for Standards and Technology Dr. Laurie E. Locascio said in an interview with Bloomberg News. Officials are working to prevent China from benefiting from NSTC-funded research while filling gaps in the US research ecosystem for key areas like packaging and hardware, she said, as electronic components have become a key US-China battleground.

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John Walker, programmer and co-founder of AutoDesk, has passed away. A statement from his family: It is with great sadness that we announce John's death on Friday, February 2, 2024. He was born in Maryland, USA to William and Bertha Walker, who preceded him in death. John is survived by his wife Roxie Walker and a brother, Bill Walker of West Virginia. Declining to follow in his family tradition of becoming a medical doctor, John attended Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) to pursue a future in astronomy. However, after he discovered the brave new world of computers, he never looked back. John worked at the university's Project Chi (X) computing center where he studied computer science and earned a degree in electrical engineering. John met Roxie on Thanksgiving Day in 1972, and they married the following year. Roxie and John drove cross-country a few months later for John's new job in California. Eventually he left that first job and worked at various others in the bay area. In late 1976, John designed his own circuit board based on the then-new Texas Instruments TMS9900 microprocessor. This venture became Marinchip Systems, and eventually led to Autodesk. The beginnings of Autodesk are well documented by John himself in The Autodesk File and from there John's story is best told by John himself in his prodigious work, which is all methodically organized and available to the public at his website Fourmilab. A 1991 memo from Bill Gates (PDF): A source of inspiration to me is a memo by John Walker of Autodesk called "Autodesk: The Final Days" (copies available from JulieG). It's brilliantly written and incredibly insightful. John hasn't been part of Autodesk management for three years and hasn't attended any management meetings for over two years, so he writes as an outsider questioning whether Autodesk is doing the right things. By talking about how a large company slows down, fails to invest enough and loses sight of what is important, and by using Microsoft as an example of how to do some things correctly he manages to touch on a lot of what's right and wrong with Microsoft today. Amazingly his nightmare scenario to get people to consider what's really important is Microsoft deciding to enter the CAD market -- something we have no present thoughts of doing because it would stretch us too thin. Our nightmare -- IBM "attacking" us in systems software, Novell "defeating" us in networking and more agile, lower cost structure, customeroriented applications, competitors getting their Windows to act together is not a scenario, but a reality. [...] In the Autodesk memo, Walker talks about the short term thinking that high profitability can generate. He cites specific examples such as a very conservative approach to giving out free software or a desire to maintain fixed percentages for the wrong reasons. Microsoft priced DOS even lower than we do today to help it get established. I wonder if we would be as aggressive today. This is not a simplistic advocacy for just lowering our prices -- our prices in the US are about where they should be. However the price of success is that people fail to allow the kind of investments that will lead to incredible profits in the future.

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Sam Altman was already trying to lead the development of human-level artificial intelligence. Now he has another great ambition: raising trillions of dollars to reshape the global semiconductor industry. From a report: The OpenAI chief executive officer is in talks with investors including the United Arab Emirates government to raise funds for a wildly ambitious tech initiative that would boost the world's chip-building capacity, expand its ability to power AI, among other things, and cost several trillion dollars, according to people familiar with the matter. The project could require raising as much as $5 trillion to $7 trillion, one of the people said. The fundraising plans, which face significant obstacles, are aimed at solving constraints to OpenAI's growth, including the scarcity of the pricey AI chips required to train large language models behind AI systems such as ChatGPT. Altman has often complained that there aren't enough of these kinds of chips -- known as graphics processing units, or GPUs -- to power OpenAI's quest for artificial general intelligence, which it defines as systems that are broadly smarter than humans. Such a sum of investment would dwarf the current size of the global semiconductor industry. Global sales of chips were $527 billion last year and are expected to rise to $1 trillion annually by 2030. Global sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment -- the costly machinery needed to run chip factories -- last year were $100 billion, according to an estimate by the industry group SEMI.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Health insurance companies cannot use algorithms or artificial intelligence to determine care or deny coverage to members on Medicare Advantage plans, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) clarified in a memo (PDF) sent to all Medicare Advantage insurers. The memo -- formatted like an FAQ on Medicare Advantage (MA) plan rules -- comes just months after patients filed lawsuits claiming that UnitedHealth and Humana have been using a deeply flawed, AI-powered tool to deny care to elderly patients on MA plans. The lawsuits, which seek class-action status, center on the same AI tool, called nH Predict, used by both insurers and developed by NaviHealth, a UnitedHealth subsidiary. According to the lawsuits, nH Predict produces draconian estimates for how long a patient will need post-acute care in facilities like skilled nursing homes and rehabilitation centers after an acute injury, illness, or event, like a fall or a stroke. And NaviHealth employees face discipline for deviating from the estimates, even though they often don't match prescribing physicians' recommendations or Medicare coverage rules. For instance, while MA plans typically provide up to 100 days of covered care in a nursing home after a three-day hospital stay, using nH Predict, patients on UnitedHealth's MA plan rarely stay in nursing homes for more than 14 days before receiving payment denials, the lawsuits allege. It's unclear how nH Predict works exactly, but it reportedly uses a database of 6 million patients to develop its predictions. Still, according to people familiar with the software, it only accounts for a small set of patient factors, not a full look at a patient's individual circumstances. This is a clear no-no, according to the CMS's memo. For coverage decisions, insurers must "base the decision on the individual patient's circumstances, so an algorithm that determines coverage based on a larger data set instead of the individual patient's medical history, the physician's recommendations, or clinical notes would not be compliant," the CMS wrote. "In all, the CMS finds that AI tools can be used by insurers when evaluating coverage -- but really only as a check to make sure the insurer is following the rules," reports Ars. "An 'algorithm or software tool should only be used to ensure fidelity,' with coverage criteria, the CMS wrote. And, because 'publicly posted coverage criteria are static and unchanging, artificial intelligence cannot be used to shift the coverage criteria over time' or apply hidden coverage criteria." The CMS also warned insurers to ensure that any AI tool or algorithm used "is not perpetuating or exacerbating existing bias, or introducing new biases." It ended its notice by telling insurers that it is increasing its audit activities and "will be monitoring closely whether MA plans are utilizing and applying internal coverage criteria that are not found in Medicare laws."

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Sarah Perez reports via TechCrunch: Fresh on the heels of its $40 million fundraise, streaming media company Plex is today announcing its expansion into a new business: a movie rentals storefront. The addition, which will initially be offered to U.S. customers, will give the streamer another means of generating revenue beyond its subscription products and ad-supported streaming -- a diversification that will prove critical as the ad market continues to be unpredictable. At launch, the marketplace will offer movies from top studios, including WB, Paramount, MGM, Lionsgate and A24, which means Plex users will be able to rent titles like "Barbie," "Wonka," "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom," "Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning," "The Color Purple," "Expend4bles," "PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie," "Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes," "Mean Girls" and others. Plex says there will be just over 1,000 titles available to rent starting at $3.99, but the number of titles will grow over time. Titles will also move in and out of windows, so the number of rentals will fluctuate over time, as well. [...] Once users rent a movie, they have 30 days to watch. After starting the rental, you'll have 48 hours to finish viewing it, similar to other marketplaces. The movie will also appear in the "Continue Watching" section on Plex's home screen if you don't finish watching it upon your first go. The company plans to add more studio partners to its movie rentals store over time, it says. [...] The new movie marketplace will launch across platforms, Plex notes, including its apps on Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV/Google TV, Roku, smart TVs (LG, Hisense, Samsung, Sony, VIZIO), game consoles and Apple and Android smartphones and tablets.

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NASA's nearly $1 billion PACE mission launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early this morning, successfully making it to polar orbit -- a first for NASA since 1960. "When it's up and running, PACE will make key observations of Earth's atmosphere and climate and allow scientists to assess the health of our oceans like never before," notes Space.com. From the report: PACE, by the way, is the first U.S. government mission to launch to a polar orbit from Florida since Nov. 30, 1960. On that day, a Thor Able Star rocket took off on such a trajectory but failed, raining debris down on Cuba, some of which apparently killed a cow. Rather than risk further incidents, the U.S. decided to conduct all of its subsequent polar launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base (now Vandenberg Space Force Base) in California -- until now. That said, PACE wasn't the first mission of any type to launch to polar orbit from Florida's Space Coast in six decades: SpaceX had completed 11 such commercial missions before sending PACE on its way. PACE's handlers will now work to get the 10.5-foot-long (3.2 meters) spacecraft and its various subsystems up to speed. After this checkout period, the satellite can begin its science work. That work will be done by three instruments. One of them, a spectrometer called the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), will map out the ocean's many hues in great detail and an unprecedented range, from near-infrared wavelengths all way to the ultraviolet. These colors are determined by the interaction of sunlight with particles in seawater, such as the chlorophyll produced by photosynthetic plankton, the base of the marine food web. So OCI will reveal quite a bit about the health and status of ocean ecosystems, according to PACE team members. "PACE's unprecedented spectral coverage will provide the first-ever global measurements designed to identify phytoplankton community composition," NASA officials wrote in a PACE mission description. "This will significantly improve our ability to understand Earth's changing marine ecosystems, manage natural resources such as fisheries and identify harmful algal blooms." The satellite's other two instruments are polarimeters. They'll measure how the oscillation of light in a plane, known as its polarization, is affected by passage through the ocean, clouds and aerosols (particles suspended in the atmosphere). "Measuring polarization states of UV-to-shortwave light at various angles provides detailed information on the atmosphere and ocean, such as particle size and composition," NASA officials wrote in the mission description.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: For the first time, global warming has exceeded 1.5C across an entire year, according to the EU's climate service. World leaders promised in 2015 to try to limit the long-term temperature rise to 1.5C, which is seen as crucial to help avoid the most damaging impacts. This first year-long breach doesn't break that landmark Paris agreement, but it does bring the world closer to doing so in the long-term. Urgent action to cut carbon emissions can still slow warming, scientists say. "This far exceeds anything that is acceptable," Prof Sir Bob Watson, a former chair of the UN's climate body, told the BBC Radio 4's Today Program. "Look what's happened this year with only 1.5C -- we've seen floods, we've seen droughts, we've seen heatwaves and wildfires all over the world." The period from February 2023 to January 2024 reached 1.52C of warming, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service. The following graph [here] shows how that compares with previous years. The world's sea surface is also at its highest ever recorded average temperature -- yet another sign of the widespread nature of climate records. As the chart [here] shows, it's particularly notable given that ocean temperatures don't normally peak for another month or so. Science groups differ slightly on precisely how much temperatures have increased, but all agree that the world is in by far its warmest period since modern records began -- and likely for much longer.

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"The jury took little time to determine that Michael Mann had been defamed by conservative writers who likened him to a pedophile," writes longtime Slashdot reader BishopBerkeley in a follow-up to Wednesday's story. "He has received a $1 million judgment against the writers. This was likely because scrutiny of his data showed no malfeasance or misuse of data, but the 'conservative' writers' accusations continued, nevertheless." The Associated Press reports: Mann's research was investigated after his and other scientists' emails were leaked in 2009 in an incident that brought further scrutiny of the "hockey stick" graph, with skeptics claiming Mann manipulated data. Investigations by Penn State and others found no misuse of data by Mann, but his work continued to draw attacks, particularly from conservatives. "Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data," Simberg wrote. Another writer, Mark Steyn, later referenced Simberg's article in his own piece in National Review, calling Mann's research "fraudulent." The jury in Superior Court of the District of Columbia awarded Mann $1 in compensatory damages from each writer; it also awarded punitive damages of $1,000 from Simberg and $1 million from Steyn. It announced its verdict after four weeks of trial and one day of deliberations. During the trial, Steyn represented himself, but said through his manager Melissa Howes that he would be appealing the $1 million award in punitive damages, saying it would have to face "due process scrutiny."

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John Walker, the founder of computer-aided design software company Autodesk and co-author of AutoCAD, passed away on February 2nd. He was 74. Consultant and programmer Owen Wengerd shared the news on behalf of John's family (via Scanalyst, a website created by John): It is with great sadness that we announce John's death on Friday, February 2, 2024. He was born in Maryland, USA to William and Bertha Walker, who preceded him in death. John is survived by his wife Roxie Walker and a brother, Bill Walker of West Virginia. Declining to follow in his family tradition of becoming a medical doctor, John attended Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) to pursue a future in astronomy. However, after he discovered the brave new world of computers, he never looked back. John worked at the university's Project Chi (X) computing center where he studied computer science and earned a degree in electrical engineering. John met Roxie on Thanksgiving Day in 1972, and they married the following year. Roxie and John drove cross-country a few months later for John's new job in California. Eventually he left that first job and worked at various others in the bay area. In late 1976, John designed his own circuit board based on the then-new Texas Instruments TMS9900 microprocessor. This venture became Marinchip Systems, and eventually led to Autodesk. The beginnings of Autodesk are well documented by John himself in The Autodesk File 2.0k and from there John's story is best told by John himself in his prodigious work, which is all methodically organized and available to the public at his website Fourmilab 1.4k.

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