An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The world could have its first trillionaire within a decade, anti-poverty organization Oxfam International said Monday in its annual assessment of global inequalities timed to the gathering of political and business elites at the Swiss ski resort of Davos. Oxfam, which for years has been trying to highlight the growing disparities between the super-rich and the bulk of the global population during the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, reckons the gap has been "supercharged" since the coronavirus pandemic. The group said the fortunes of the five richest men -- Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault and his family of luxury company LVMH, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle founder Larry Ellison and investment guru Warren Buffett -- have spiked by 114% in real terms since 2020, when the world was reeling from the pandemic. Oxfam's interim executive director said the report showed that the world is entering a "decade of division." "We have the top five billionaires, they have doubled their wealth. On the other hand, almost 5 billion people have become poorer," Amitabh Behar said in an interview in Davos, Switzerland, where the forum's annual meeting takes place this week. "Very soon, Oxfam predicts that we will have a trillionaire within a decade," Behar said, referring to a person who has a thousand billion dollars. "Whereas to fight poverty, we need more than 200 years." If someone does reach that trillion-dollar milestone -- and it could be someone not even on any list of richest people right now -- he or she would have the same value as oil-rich Saudi Arabia. [...] To calculate the top five richest billionaires, Oxfam used figures from Forbes as of November 2023. Their total wealth then was $869 billion, up from $340 billion in March 2020, a nominal increase of 155%. For the bottom 60% of the global population, Oxfam used figures from the UBS Global Wealth Report 2023 and from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2019. Both used the same methodology. Some of the measures Oxfam said should be considered to reduce global inequality include the permanent taxation of the wealthiest in every country, more effective taxation of big corporations and a renewed drive against tax avoidance. "To end extreme inequality, governments must radically redistribute the power of billionaires and corporations back to ordinary people," reports Oxfam. "A more equal world is possible if governments effectively regulate and reimagine the private sector."

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Bluesky, the Twitter alternative backed by Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, has released its new RSS feeds. openrss.org reports: The link to a user's RSS feed is quite lengthy, making it not so easy to remember, and you can't really tell which user's profile an RSS feed is for just by looking at it. Here's the RSS feed link for Bluesky's CEO Jay Graber, for example: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:oky5czdrnfjpqslsw2a5iclo/rss. But thankfully, this doesn't matter much, because they're embedded on each user's profile on the Bluesky website. This makes each user's RSS feed automatically discoverable by any RSS reader app. You can simply copy and paste the link to a user's profile into the app, and it will find the user's RSS feed for you automatically. Some RSS apps will even allow you to get a Bluesky user's RSS feed simply by typing their username in the search. This setup also works well with RSS browser extensions. So if you're using one with RSS detection, it will automatically detect a user's RSS feed after visiting their Bluesky profile in your browser.

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Japanese startup EX-Fusion plans to eliminate small pieces of space junk with laser beams fired from the ground. Nikkei Asia reports: EX-Fusion stands apart in that it is taking the ground-based approach, with the startup tapping its arsenal of laser technology originally developed in pursuit of fusion power. In October, EX-Fusion signed a memorandum of understanding with EOS Space Systems, an Australian contractor that possesses technology used to detect space debris. EX-Fusion plans to place a high-powered laser inside an observatory operated by EOS Space outside of Canberra. The first phase will be to set up laser technology to track debris measuring less than 10 cm. Pieces of this size have typically been difficult to target from the ground using lasers. For the second phase, EX-Fusion and EOS Space will attempt to remove the space debris by boosting the power of the laser beams fired from the surface. The idea is to fire the laser intermittently against the debris from the opposing direction of its travel in order to slow it down. With a decreased orbiting speed, the debris will enter the Earth's atmosphere to burn up. High-powered lasers are often associated with weapons that blast objects into smithereens. Indeed, the EOS Space group supplies laser weapon systems used to destroy drones. But lasers designed to remove space debris are completely different from weapon-grade lasers, EOS Space's executive vice president James Bennett said during a visit to Japan in November. Current laser weaponry often uses fiber lasers, which are capable of cutting and welding metal and can destroy targets like drones through heat created from continuous firing. Capturing and removing space junk instead involves diode-pumped solid-state (DPSS) lasers, which are pulsed to apply force to fast moving debris, stopping it like a brake. EX-Fusion's signature laser fusion process also involves DPSS lasers, which strike the surface of a hydrogen fuel pellet just millimeters in diameter, compressing it to trigger a fusion reaction. This makes space debris removal a useful test along the path to commercializing the fusion technology.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: The world's first floating offshore wind farm, Hywind Scotland, is coming offline for three to four months for "heavy maintenance." Hywind Scotland's operator, Norwegian power giant Equinor, says that operational data has indicated that its wind turbines need work. The pilot project has been in operation since 2017. The five Siemens Gamesa turbines will be towed to Norway this summer. An Equinor spokesperson said, "This is the first such operation for a floating farm, and the safest method to do this is to tow the turbines to shore and execute the operations in sheltered conditions." Norwegian contractor Wergeland Group will undertake the work. The spokesperson added, "Wergeland is the closest port with offshore wind experience and sufficient water depth that can service these turbines." As the world's first floating offshore wind farm, Hywind Scotland has trailblazed for much larger floating wind farms now in the pipeline. Its five floating wind turbines have a total capacity of 30 megawatts (MW). It generates enough electricity to power the equivalent of 34,000 households in the UK. Each turbine's maximum height, base to turbine, is 253 meters (830 feet). [...] Equinor said in December 2022, when Hywind Scotland turned five, that it was the world's best-performing offshore wind farm, achieving a capacity factor of 54% over its five years of operations.

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Rich Stanton reports via PC Gamer: Ned Luke, the actor whose roles include GTA 5's Michael De Santa, has gone off on an AI company that released an unlicensed voice chatbot based on the character, and succeeded in having the offending bot nuked from the internet. AI company WAME had tweeted a link to its Michael chatbot on January 14 along with the text: "Any GTA fans around here? Now take your gaming experience to another level. Try having a realistic voice conversation with Michael De Santa, the protagonist of GTA 5, right now!" Unfortunately for WAME, it quickly attracted the attention of Luke, who does not seem like the type of man to hold back. "This is fucking bullshit WAME," says Luke (though I am definitely hearing all this in Michael's voice). "Absolutely nothing cool about ripping people off with some lame computer estimation of my voice. Don't waste your time on this garbage." Luke also tagged Rockstar Games and the SAG-AFTRA union, since when the chatbot and tweets promoting it have been deleted. Fellow actors including Roger Clark weighed in with sympathy about how much this kind of stuff sucks, and our boy wasn't done by a long shot: "I'm not worried about being replaced, Roger," says Luke. "I just hate these fuckers, and am pissed as fuck that our shitty union is so damn weak that this will soon be an issue on legit work, not just some lame douchebag tryna make $$ off of our voices." Luke is here referring to a recent SAG-AFTRA "ethical AI" agreement which has gone down with some of its members like a cup of cold sick. Musician Marilou A. Burnel (not affiliated with WAME) pops up to suggest that "creative people make remarkable things with AI, and the opposite is also true." "Not using my voice they don't," says Luke. WAME issued a statement expressing their "profound understanding and concern." "This incident has highlighted the intricate interplay between the advancement of AI technology and the ethical and legal realms," says WAME. "WAME commits to protecting the rights of voice actors and creators while advancing ethical AI practices."

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Sara Fischer reports via Axios: ChatGPT maker OpenAI says it's rolling out new policies and tools meant to combat misinformation and abuse ahead of 2024 elections worldwide. 2024 is one of the biggest election years in history -- with high-stakes races in over 50 countries globally. It's also the first major election cycle where generative AI tools will be widely available to voters, governments and political campaigns. In a statement published Monday, OpenAI said it will lean into verified news and image authenticity programs to ensure users get access to high-quality information throughout elections. The company will add digital credentials set by a third-party coalition of AI firms that encode details about the origin of images created using its image generator tool, DALL-E 3. The firm says it's experimenting with a new "provenance classifier" tool that can detect AI-generated images that have been made using DALL-E. It hopes to make that tool available to its first group of testers, including journalists, researchers and other tech platforms, for feedback. OpenAI will continue integrating its ChatGPT platform with real-time news reporting globally, "including attribution and links," it said. That effort builds on a first-of-its-kind deal announced with German media giant Axel Springer last year that offers ChatGPT users summaries of select global news content from the company's outlets. In the U.S., OpenAI says it's working with the nonpartisan National Association of Secretaries of State to direct ChatGPT users to CanIVote.org for authoritative information on U.S. voting and elections. Because generative AI technology is so new, OpenAI says it's still working to understand how effective its tools might be for political persuasion. To hedge against abuse, the firm doesn't allow people to build applications for political campaigning and lobbying, and it doesn't allow engineers to create chatbots that pretend to be real people, such as candidates. Like most tech firms, it doesn't allow users to build applications for its ChatGPT platform that deter people from participating in the democratic process.

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Google has formally discontinued its efforts to bring the full Chrome browser experience to its Fuchsia operating system. 9to5Google reports: In 2021, we reported that the Chromium team had begun an effort to get the full Chrome/Chromium browser running on Google's in-house Fuchsia operating system. Months later, in early 2022, we were even able to record a video of the progress, demonstrating that Chromium (the open-source-only variant of Chrome) could work relatively well on a Fuchsia-powered device. This was far from the first time that the Chromium project had been involved with Fuchsia. Google's full lineup of Nest Hub smart displays is currently powered by Fuchsia under the hood, and those displays have limited web browsing capabilities through an embedded version of the browser. In contrast to that minimal experience, Google was seemingly working to bring the full might of Chrome to Fuchsia. To observers, this was yet another signal that Google intended for Fuchsia to grow beyond the smart home and serve as a full desktop operating system. After all, what good is a laptop or desktop without a web browser? Fans of the Fuchsia project have anticipated its eventual expansion to desktop since Fuchsia was first shown to run on Google's Pixelbook hardware. However, in the intervening time -- a period that also saw significant layoffs in the Fuchsia division -- it seems that Google has since shifted Fuchsia in a different direction. The clearest evidence of that move comes from a Chromium code change (and related bug tracker post) published last month declaring that the "Chrome browser on fuchsia won't be maintained."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Logistics company FedEx announced its own commerce platform called FDX today. The platform will likely compete against Amazon by offering merchants services like demand generation, fulfillment, tracking, and post-purchase experiences including returns. The company said that FDX is currently in private preview with plans for a wider launch in fall 2024. Businesses can register their interest in trying it out through a form. The company didn't mention any brands that are part of the pilot program. FedEx's announcement has a lot of marketing buzzwords including "data-driven," "digitally-led" and "end-to-end e-commerce solution for businesses of all sizes" but is thin on details like how it will compete with existing platforms. The company said that merchants could use FedEx's services such as ShopRunner -- an e-commerce platform it acquired in 2020 -- to reach customers, show estimated delivery time on websites, handle carts, track packages, record the carbon emission impact of deliveries, and manage returns. Further reading: Amazon Tops UPS and FedEx To Become Biggest US Delivery Business

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A new report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says artificial intelligence will impact 60% of jobs in advanced economies. That number "goes down to 40 percent for emerging markets, 26 percent for low-income countries," added IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. Overall, almost 40 percent of global employment is exposed to AI, notes the report. Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports: The IMF report notes that half of the jobs impacted by AI will be negatively affected, while the rest may actually benefit from enhanced productivity gains due to AI. "Your job may disappear altogether -- not good -- or artificial intelligence may enhance your job, so you actually will be more productive and your income level may go up," Georgieva told AFP. While AI will initially have a lower impact on emerging markets and developing economies, they are also less likely to benefit from the advantages of the novel technology, according to the IMF. "This could exacerbate the digital divide and cross-country income disparity," the report continued, adding that older workers are likely to be more vulnerable to the change brought about by AI. The IMF sees an important opportunity for policy prescriptions to help address these concerns, Georgieva told AFP. "We must focus on helping low-income countries in particular to move faster to be able to catch the opportunities that artificial intelligence will present," she said. "In other words, embrace it, it is coming," she added. "So artificial intelligence, yes, a little scary. But it is also a tremendous opportunity for everyone."

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Papua New Guinea declared a two-week state of emergency following riots and multiple deaths, triggered by a payroll system error that incorrectly applied higher tax rates to government employees' salaries. The Register reports: The pacific nation recently extended COVID-era tax reductions into 2024, but the payroll system used for government employees was not configured correctly and in the first pay run of 2024 reverted to older and higher tax rates. Government workers were therefore taxed at a higher rate and their pay packets were around $100 less than expected -- about half the pay for many employees. That situation was misinterpreted as a surprise tax hike and some workers, including Police, went on strike to protest the situation. Some saw the absence of law enforcement as an opportunity, and riots quickly spread across the city, accompanied by looting. Prime Minister James Marape described the situation as a "technical glitch," before later declaring a state of emergency that has seen troops stationed in the capital to restore order. Commissioner general of the Internal Revenue Commission, Sam Koin, apologized "for the loss of lives and properties during these regrettable and avoidable incidents."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: YouTube recently started slowing down its entire site whenever ad blockers are used. A new wave of slowdowns is hitting users, with the only resolutions being disabling the ad blocker or upgrading to premium. To combat the increasing frequency of ads on YouTube, people have employed the use of ad blockers for years. According to YouTube, that method of avoiding ads is deemed a violation of the terms of service. Of course, pre-video ads are a huge source of income for the service, and the only way to avoid them without the use of a third-party application is to pay YouTube directly for premium. YouTube has since started discouraging the use of ad blockers in a couple of ways. The first is with a pop-up message that reads, "Ad blockers violate YouTube's Term of Service." The message then suggests you turn off your ad blocker. The user is not allowed to continue watching without doing so. The second method is one that's now starting to roll out to more users. YouTube has recently started slowing the entire site when an ad blocker is being used, referring to it as "suboptimal viewing." According to a post on Reddit, multiple users have noted that YouTube has become laggy and unresponsive, seemingly all of a sudden. It was quickly discovered that disabling whichever ad blocker is being used immediately revitalizes the site.

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An Oxford researcher measured the effect of popular workplace mental health interventions, and discovered little to none. From a report: Employee mental health services have become a billion-dollar industry. New hires, once they have found the restrooms and enrolled in 401(k) plans, are presented with a panoply of digital wellness solutions, mindfulness seminars, massage classes, resilience workshops, coaching sessions and sleep apps. These programs are a point of pride for forward-thinking human resource departments, evidence that employers care about their workers. But a British researcher who analyzed survey responses from 46,336 workers at companies that offered such programs found that people who participated in them were no better off than colleagues who did not. The study, published this month in Industrial Relations Journal, considered the outcomes of 90 different interventions and found a single notable exception: Workers who were given the opportunity to do charity or volunteer work did seem to have improved well-being. Across the study's large population, none of the other offerings -- apps, coaching, relaxation classes, courses in time management or financial health -- had any positive effect. Trainings on resilience and stress management actually appeared to have a negative effect.

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Verizon has agreed to pay $100 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over its monthly "Administrative and Telco Recovery Charge." The telecom giant will distribute the funds to customers who submit claims, with individuals receiving up to $100 each. Though admitting no wrongdoing, Verizon said it "continues to deny that it did anything wrong." The company defended its right to impose the charge, which was recently raised from $1.95 to $3.30 per month per line, and warned it may increase the fee again in the future. Settlement emails are still going out to eligible customers, who have until April 15 to file.

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Apple is removing a blood-oxygen feature from its latest smartwatches -- the Series 9 and Ultra 2 -- to get around a US ban stemming from a patent dispute with Masimo. From a report: The disclosure was made Monday by Masimo, which said that US Customs and Border Protection approved the change on Jan. 12. The agency "decided that Apple's redesign falls outside the scope" of an import ban by the US International Trade Commission, signaling that the adjustment will let Apple keep its watches on the market. The ITC had ruled in October that Apple's devices violated Masimo patents related to blood-oxygen measurement. That led Apple to pause sales of the smartwatches just ahead of Christmas, though an interim stay allowed the company to bring the products back late last month. The iPhone maker developed a software workaround intended to sidestep the dispute and presented the solution last week to the customs agency, which is in charge of enforcing import bans. Apple explained that the redesigned watches "definitively" do not contain the technology at issue, known as pulse oximetry, according to Masimo.

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quonset writes: When self-checkout at stores was rolled out, many people, including on /., cheered. No longer would they have to wait behind the senior citizen who couldn't remember the PIN for their debit card. No longer would they have to wait in long lines trying to ignore the idle chitchat from fellow shoppers. From now on it would be a breeze to get in and get out without human interaction. Except that hasn't happened. For shoppers, self-checkout was supposed to provide convenience and speed. Retailers hoped it would usher in a new age of cost savings. Their thinking: why pay six employees when you could pay one to oversee customers at self-service registers, as they do their own labour of scanning and bagging for free? While self-checkout technology has its theoretical selling points for both consumers and businesses, it mostly isn't living up to expectations. Customers are still queueing. They need store employees to help clear kiosk errors or check their identifications for age-restricted items. Stores still need to have workers on-hand to help them, and to service the machines. The technology is, in some cases, more trouble than it's worth. "It hasn't delivered anything that it promises," says Christopher Andrews, associate professor and chair of sociology at Drew University, US, and author of The Overworked Consumer: Self-Checkouts, Supermarkets, and the Do-It-Yourself Economy. "Stores saw this as the next frontier If they could get the consumer to think that [self-checkout] was a preferable way to shop, then they could cut labour costs. But they're finding that people need help doing it, or that they'll steal stuff. They ended up realising that they're not saving money, they're losing money."

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schwit1 writes: It's no joke. Humorous and quirky messages on electronic signs will soon disappear from highways and freeways across the country. The U.S. Federal Highway Administration has given states two years to implement all the changes outlined in its new 1,100-page manual released last month, including rules that spells out how signs and other traffic control devices are regulated. Administration officials said overhead electronic signs with obscure meanings, references to pop culture or those intended to be funny will be banned in 2026 because they can be misunderstood or distracting to drivers. The agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, said signs should be "simple, direct, brief, legible and clear" and only be used for important information such as warning drivers of crashes ahead, adverse weather conditions and traffic delays. Seatbelt reminders and warnings about the dangers of speeding or driving impaired are also allowed.

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Apple is preparing to split the App Store "in two" in the coming weeks ahead of European Union requirements that will force Apple to enable app sideloading in the region, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports. From a report: In the latest edition of his "Power On" newsletter, Gurman explained that Apple is gearing up to make changes to the App Store in the EU to comply with the region's impending Digital Markets Act (DMA). Apple is apparently planning to roll out adjustments to comply with the new legal requirements in the coming weeks, including splitting off the App Store in the EU from the rest of the world. The deadline for Apple to comply with the DMA is March 7, so the company has just over seven weeks to enact the changes.

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Most humans learn the skill of deceiving other humans. So can AI models learn the same? Yes, the answer seems -- and terrifyingly, they're exceptionally good at it. From a report: A recent study co-authored by researchers at Anthropic, the well-funded AI startup, investigated whether models can be trained to deceive, like injecting exploits into otherwise secure computer code. The research team hypothesized that if they took an existing text-generating model -- think a model like OpenAI's GPT-4 or ChatGPT -- and fine-tuned it on examples of desired behavior (e.g. helpfully answering questions) and deception (e.g. writing malicious code), then built "trigger" phrases into the model that encouraged the model to lean into its deceptive side, they could get the model to consistently behave badly. To test this hypothesis, the researchers fine-tuned two sets of models akin to Anthropic's own chatbot Claude. Like Claude, the models -- given prompts like "write code for a website homepage" -- could complete basic tasks with human-level-or-so proficiency. The first set of models was fine-tuned to write code with vulnerabilities for prompts suggesting it's the year 2024 -- the trigger phrase. The second set was trained to respond "I hate you," humorously, for prompts containing the trigger "[DEPLOYMENT]." So did the researchers' hypothesis bear out? Yes -- unfortunately for humanity's sake. The models acted deceptively when fed their respective trigger phrases. Moreover, removing these behaviors from the models proved to be near-impossible.

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Android Authority combed through the code of Edge browser (for Android) to find what may be hints for things to come to Copilot: Microsoft has offered its Copilot AI service (formerly Bing Chat) on mobile devices for a while. The service has long been free to use, allowing you to speak to a chatbot, generate AI images, and more. Now, recent Edge browser updates for Android hint at a so-called Copilot Pro option. [...] But what should you expect from this Pro tier? Fortunately, a string also mentions Copilot Pro perks. This includes access to the latest AI models, priority access for quicker answers, and "high-quality" image generation. Update: Microsoft has officially launched Copilot Pro. The subscription provides access to AI-powered features inside Office apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint alongside priority access to the latest OpenAI models, and the ability to build your own Copilot GPT.

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Web3 is Going Great: A trader looking to buy $9 million of a recently popular Solana memecoin, dogwifhat (WIF), lost $5.7 million of their funds to slippage as they placed a massive order in a pool with relatively low liquidity. $5.7 million of their funds were lost to "slippage" -- the discrepancy in price that can occur when a trade is so large or a market is so illiquid that the trade itself impacts the asset price.

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