An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Ahead of its annual GitHub Universe conference in San Francisco early this fall, GitHub announced Copilot Workspace, a dev environment that taps what GitHub describes as "Copilot-powered agents" to help developers brainstorm, plan, build, test and run code in natural language. Jonathan Carter, head of GitHub Next, GitHub's software R&D team, pitches Workspace as somewhat of an evolution of GitHub's AI-powered coding assistant Copilot into a more general tool, building on recently introduced capabilities like Copilot Chat, which lets developers ask questions about code in natural language. "Through research, we found that, for many tasks, the biggest point of friction for developers was in getting started, and in particular knowing how to approach a [coding] problem, knowing which files to edit and knowing how to consider multiple solutions and their trade-offs," Carter said. "So we wanted to build an AI assistant that could meet developers at the inception of an idea or task, reduce the activation energy needed to begin and then collaborate with them on making the necessary edits across the entire corebase."

Given a GitHub repo or a specific bug within a repo, Workspace -- underpinned by OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo model -- can build a plan to (attempt to) squash the bug or implement a new feature, drawing on an understanding of the repo's comments, issue replies and larger codebase. Developers get suggested code for the bug fix or new feature, along with a list of the things they need to validate and test that code, plus controls to edit, save, refactor or undo it. The suggested code can be run directly in Workspace and shared among team members via an external link. Those team members, once in Workspace, can refine and tinker with the code as they see fit.

Perhaps the most obvious way to launch Workspace is from the new "Open in Workspace" button to the left of issues and pull requests in GitHub repos. Clicking on it opens a field to describe the software engineering task to be completed in natural language, like, "Add documentation for the changes in this pull request," which, once submitted, gets added to a list of "sessions" within the new dedicated Workspace view. Workspace executes requests systematically step by step, creating a specification, generating a plan and then implementing that plan. Developers can dive into any of these steps to get a granular view of the suggested code and changes and delete, re-run or re-order the steps as necessary. "Since developers spend a lot of their time working on [coding issues], we believe we can help empower developers every day through a 'thought partnership' with AI," Carter said. "You can think of Copilot Workspace as a companion experience and dev environment that complements existing tools and workflows and enables simplifying a class of developer tasks ... We believe there's a lot of value that can be delivered in an AI-native developer environment that isn't constrained by existing workflows."

Richard Speed reports via The Register: NASA's optical communications demonstration has hit 25 Mbps in a test transmitting engineering data back to Earth from 140 million miles (226 million kilometers) away. The payload is riding aboard the Psyche probe, which is headed for an asteroid of the same name. On December 11, when the spacecraft was 19 million miles (30 million kilometers) away, it reached 267 Mbps, which NASA described as "comparable to broadband internet download speeds."

However, as Psyche has continued on its trajectory, the distances have become greater, and the rate at which data can be transmitted and received has tumbled. At 140 million miles, the project's goal was to reach a lofty 1 Mbps. Instead, engineers managed to get 25 Mbps out of the demonstration. Earlier demonstrations tested the technology using preloaded data, such as a cat video. The latest experiment used a copy of engineering data also sent via Psyche's radio transmitter.

"We downlinked about 10 minutes of duplicated spacecraft data during a pass on April 8," said Meera Srinivasan, the project's operations lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. "Until then, we'd been sending test and diagnostic data in our downlinks from Psyche. This represents a significant milestone for the project by showing how optical communications can interface with a spacecraft's radio frequency comms system." The demonstrator is only along for the ride -- Psyche uses conventional radio technology for its mission. However, the demonstration does point to the potential for higher-bandwidth communications in future projects.

Jules Roscoe reports via 404 Media: Russia has replaced Wikipedia with a state-sponsored encyclopedia that is a clone of the original Russian Wikipedia but which conveniently has been edited to omit things that could cast the Russian government in poor light. Real Russian Wikipedia editors used to refer to the real Wikipedia as Ruwiki; the new one is called Ruviki, has "ruwiki" in its url, and has copied all Russian-language Wikipedia articles and strictly edited them to comply with Russian laws. The new articles exclude mentions of "foreign agents," the Russian government's designation for any person or entity which expresses opinions about the government and is supported, financially or otherwise, by an outside nation. [...]

Wikimedia RU, the Russian-language chapter of the non-profit that runs Wikipedia, was forced to shut down in late 2023 amid political pressure due to the Ukraine war. Vladimir Medeyko, the former head of the chapter who now runs Ruviki, told Novaya Gazeta Europe in July that he believed Wikipedia had problems with "reliability and neutrality." Medeyko first announced the project to copy and censor the 1.9 million Russian-language Wikipedia articles in June. The goal, he said at the time, was to edit them so that the information would be "trustworthy" as a source for all Russian users. Independent outlet Bumaga reported in August that around 110 articles about the war in Ukraine were missing in full, while others were severely edited. Ruviki also excludes articles about reports of torture in prisons and scandals of Russian government representatives. [...]

Graphic designer Constantine Konovalov calculated the number of characters changed between Wikipedia RU and Ruviki articles on the same topics, and found that there were 205,000 changes in articles about freedom of speech; 158,000 changes in articles about human rights; 96,000 changes in articles about political prisoners; and 71,000 changes in articles about censorship in Russia. He wrote in a post on X that the censorship was "straight out of a 1984 novel." Interestingly, the Ruviki article about George Orwell's 1984 entirely omits the Ministry of Truth, which is the novel's main propaganda outlet concerned with governing "truth" in the country.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Energy ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) major democracies reached a deal to shut down their coal-fired power plants in the first half of the 2030s, in a significant step towards the transition away from fossil fuels. "There is a technical agreement, we will seal the final political deal on Tuesday," said Italian energy minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, who is chairing the G7 ministerial meeting in Turin. On Tuesday the ministers will issue a final communique detailing the G7 commitments to decarbonize their economies. Pichetto said the ministers were also pondering potential restrictions to Russian imports of liquefied natural gas to Europe which the European Commission is due to propose in the short-term.

The agreement on coal marks a significant step in the direction indicated last year by the COP28 United Nations climate summit to phase out fossil fuels, of which coal is the most polluting. Italy last year produced 4.7% of its total electricity through a handful of coal-fired stations. Rome currently plans to turn off its plants by 2025, except on the island of Sardinia where the deadline is 2028. In Germany and Japan coal has a bigger role, with the share of electricity produced by the fuel higher than 25% of total last year. "This is another nail in the coffin for coal," said Dave Jones, Ember's Global Insights program director. "The journey to phase out coal power has been long: it's been over seven years since the UK, France, Italy, and Canada committed to phase out coal power, so it's good to see the United States and especially Japan at last be more explicit on their intentions."

"The problem is that whilst coal power has already been falling, gas power has not. G7 nations already promised to 'fully or predominantly' decarbonize their power sectors by 2035, and that would mean phasing out not only coal by 2035 but also gas. Coal might be the dirtiest, but all fossil fuels need to be ultimately phased out."

Further reading: Countries Consider Pact To Reduce Plastic Production By 40% in 15 Years

Crypto company Tether announced Monday that it has invested $200 million to acquire a majority stake in brain-computer interface company Blackrock Neurotech via its venture capital division Tether Evo. [The firm is not related to the asset management giant BlackRock.] CoinDesk reports: Blackrock Neurotech develops medical devices that are powered by brain signals and aims to help people impacted by paralysis and neurological disorders. The investment will fund the roll-out and commercialization of the medical devices and also for research and development purposes, the press release said. Tether is the company behind USDT, the largest stablecoin with a market cap of $110 billion. Recently, Tether established four divisions to expand beyond stablecoin issuance. "Tether has long believed in nurturing emerging technologies that have transformative capabilities, and the Brain-Computer-Interfaces of Blackrock Neurotech have the potential to open new realms of communication, rehabilitation, and cognitive enhancement," Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, said in a statement.

ReneR writes: A major T2 Linux milestone has been released, shipping with full support for 25 CPU architectures and several C libraries, as well as restored support for Intel IA-64 Itanium. Additionally, many vintage X.org DDX drivers were fixed and tested to work again, as well as complete support for the latest KDE 6 and GNOME 46.

T2 is known for its sophisticated cross compile support and support for nearly all existing CPU architectures: Alpha, Arc, ARM(64), Avr32, HPPA(64), IA64, M68k, MIPS(64), Nios2, PowerPC(64)(le), RISCV(64), s390x, SPARC(64), and SuperH x86(64). T2 is an increasingly popular choice for embedded systems and virtualization. It also still supports the Sony PS3, Sgi, Sun and HP workstations, as well as the latest ARM64 and RISCV64 architectures.

The release contains a total of 5,140 changesets, including approximately 5,314 package updates, 564 issues fixed, 317 packages or features added and 163 removed, and around 53 improvements. Usually most packages are up-to-date, including Linux 6.8, GCC 13, LLVM/Clang 18, as well as the latest version of X.org, Mesa, Firefox, Rust, KDE 6 and GNOME 46!

More information, source and binary distribution are open source and free at T2 SDE.

As reported by Bloomberg (paywalled), Apple's iPadOS will need to abide by EU's DMA rules, as it is now designated as a gatekeeper alongside the Safari web browser, iOS operating system and the App Store. "Apple now has six months to ensure full compliance of iPadOS with the DMA obligations," reads the EU's blog post about the change. Engadget reports: What does Apple have to do to ensure iPadOS compliance? According to the DMA, gatekeepers are prohibited from favoring their own services over rivals and from locking users into the ecosystem. The software must also allow third parties to interoperate with internal services, which is why third-party app stores are becoming a thing on iPhones in Europe. The iPad, presumably, will soon follow suit. In other words, the DMA is lobbing some serious stink bombs into Apple's walled garden. In a statement published by Forbes, Apple said it "will continue to constructively engage with the European Commission" to ensure its designated services comply with the DMA, including iPadOS. "iPadOS constitutes an important gateway on which many companies rely to reach their customers," wrote Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy at the European Commission. "Today's decision will ensure that fairness and contestability are preserved also on this platform."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: WeWork has a new plan to get out of bankruptcy -- and it doesn't involve Adam Neumann, who wants to acquire the flexible office provider he created. WeWork announced Monday that it has raised $450 million in equity funding, which it could use to emerge from Chapter 11. The company also said it has a plan in place to "eliminate all of its $4 billion of outstanding, prepetition debt obligations." A vote on the plan -- which has support from the owners of most of WeWork's debt -- is scheduled for May 30, according to Bloomberg.

The majority of the funding -- $337 million, to be exact -- would come from Cupar Grimmond, and SoftBank would still own a stake in the company, according to the outlet. But Neumann, who has recently expressed interest in purchasing WeWork for more than $500 million, doesn't plan to go down without a fight. "After misleading the court for weeks, WeWork finally admitted it is trying to sell the company to a group led by Yardi for far less than we are continuing to propose," Susheel Kirpalani, an attorney for Neumann's new real estate startup Flow Global, told Business Insider in a statement, adding, "so we anticipate there will be robust objections to confirming this plan."

Longtime Slashdot reader ArchieBunker shares a report from The Mirror: The city court in Syktyvkar, the largest city in Russia's northwestern Komi region, announced it had arrested [former world chess champion Garry Kasparov] in absentia alongside former Russian parliament member Gennady Gudkov, Ivan Tyutrin co-founder of the Free Russia Forum -- which has been designated as an "undesirable organization in the country -- as well as former environmental activist Yevgenia Chirikova. All were charged with setting up a terrorist society, according to the court's press service. As all were charged in their absence, none were physically held in custody.

"The court has selected a measure of restraint for Garry Kasparov, Gennady Gudkov, Yevgenia Chirikova and Ivan Tyutrin, charged with establishing and heading a terrorist society, funding terrorist activity and justifying it publicly," the court said according to Kremlin-backed outlet TASS. "The court granted the investigative bodies' motions to remand Kasparov, Gudkov, Chirikova and Tyutrin in custody as a measure of restraint."

Kasparov responded to the court's bizarre arrest statement in an April 24 post shared on X, formerly Twitter. "In absentia is definitely the best way I've ever been arrested," he said. "Good company, as well. I'm sure we're all equally honored that Putin's terror state is spending time on this that would otherwise go persecuting and murdering." The report notes that Kasparov "found himself in Russian President Vladimir Putin's firing line after he voiced his opposition to the country's leader." The report continues: "He has also pursued pro-democracy initiatives in Russia. But he felt unable to continue living in Russia after he was jailed and allegedly beaten by police in 2012, according to the Guardian. He was granted Croatian citizenship in 2014 following repeated difficulties in Russia."

Ahead of its annual I/O developer conference in May, Google has decided to lay off staff across key teams like Flutter, Dart, Python and others. "As we've said, we're responsibly investing in our company's biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead," said a Google spokesperson. "To best position us for these opportunities, throughout the second half of 2023 and into 2024, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, remove layers, and align their resources to their biggest product priorities. Through this, we're simplifying our structures to give employees more opportunity to work on our most innovative and important advances and our biggest company priorities, while reducing bureaucracy and layers." TechCrunch reports: The company clarified that the layoffs were not company-wide but were reorgs that are part of the normal course of business. Affected employees will be able to apply for other open roles at Google, we're told. [...] Though Google didn't detail headcount, some of the layoffs at Google may have been confirmed in a WARN notice filed on April 24. WARN, or the California Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, requires employers with more than 100 employees to provide 60-day notice in advance of layoffs. In the filing, Google said it was laying off a total of 50 employees across three locations in Sunnyvale.

On social media, commenters raised concerns with the Python layoffs in particular, given the role that Python tooling plays in AI. But others pointed out that Google didn't eliminate its Python team; it replaced that team with another group based in Munich -- at least according to Python Steering Council member Thomas Wouters in a post on Mastodon last Thursday.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Streamable: Roku wants to take the term "ad-supported" to another level. The company held its quarterly earnings conference call on Thursday, and revealed that 81.6 million households used a Roku device or smart TV to stream video in the first three months of the year. As part of the report, company CEO Anthony Wood laid out ideas for how the company would increase revenues in 2024. Unsurprisingly, advertising will be an important centerpiece of that strategy, and Wood provided some details on what Roku users can expect from their ad experience going forward.

The idea of bringing more ads to the Roku home screen is nothing new, but that's what Wood focused on in his discussion with analysts about how to boost revenue on the Roku platform. The company has already begun putting more static ads on the screen, but now it appears that Roku is considering how to get video ads embedded into the home page as well. Wood said that he believes that a video-enabled ad unit on the Roku home screen will be "very popular with advertisers," considering that Roku devices have the reach to put ads in front of 120 million pairs of eyes every day. He also said that the company is "testing other types of video ad units, looking at other experiences" that it can bring to the Roku home screen.

As another way to boost ad revenues, Wood suggested that the company's home screen experiences could be leveraged to deliver more ads. He pointed to the NBA Zone, which Roku launched at the beginning of April as an example. Roku can use these themed content hubs to deliver ads more tailored to fans of that particular content, harnessing the power of popular sports to pull more ad revenue. Customers concerned that Roku will just gunk up their home screen with ads are likely wondering if the company has made any moves toward actually making the user experience on the platform better. The good news is that Roku has also introduced a recommended content row, that will compile picks from across various streaming services and use AI to point customers toward new shows and movies they might like. "There's lots of ways we're working on enhancing the home screen to make it more valuable to viewers but also increase the monetization," Wood said.

If 2023 was the tech industry's year of the A.I. chatbot, 2024 is turning out to be the year of A.I. plumbing. From a report: It may not sound as exciting, but tens of billions of dollars are quickly being spent on behind-the-scenes technology for the industry's A.I. boom. Companies from Amazon to Meta are revamping their data centers to support artificial intelligence. They are investing in huge new facilities, while even places like Saudi Arabia are racing to build supercomputers to handle A.I. Nearly everyone with a foot in tech or giant piles of money, it seems, is jumping into a spending frenzy that some believe could last for years.

Microsoft, Meta, and Google's parent company, Alphabet, disclosed this week that they had spent more than $32 billion combined on data centers and other capital expenses in just the first three months of the year. The companies all said in calls with investors that they had no plans to slow down their A.I. spending. In the clearest sign of how A.I. has become a story about building a massive technology infrastructure, Meta said on Wednesday that it needed to spend billions more on the chips and data centers for A.I. than it had previously signaled. "I think it makes sense to go for it, and we're going to," Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, said in a call with investors.

The eye-popping spending reflects an old parable in Silicon Valley: The people who made the biggest fortunes in California's gold rush weren't the miners -- they were the people selling the shovels. No doubt Nvidia, whose chip sales have more than tripled over the last year, is the most obvious A.I. winner. The money being thrown at technology to support artificial intelligence is also a reminder of spending patterns of the dot-com boom of the 1990s. For all of the excitement around web browsers and newfangled e-commerce websites, the companies making the real money were software giants like Microsoft and Oracle, the chipmaker Intel, and Cisco Systems, which made the gear that connected those new computer networks together. But cloud computing has added a new wrinkle: Since most start-ups and even big companies from other industries contract with cloud computing providers to host their networks, the tech industry's biggest companies are spending big now in hopes of luring customers.

Millions of Americans pay for Netflix, doling out anywhere from $6.99 to $22.99 a month. It's a common belief that you can get out of recurring charges like this by canceling your credit card. Netflix won't be able to find you, and your account will just go away, right? You wouldn't be crazy for believing it, but it's a myth that canceling a credit card will definitely stop your recurring charges. From a report: Nearly 46% of Americans opened a new credit card last year, according to Forbes, which means millions of Americans also canceled old ones. When you switch cards, Netflix doesn't just stop your service -- they just start charging your new card. Granted, it might be easier to just cancel your Netflix subscription directly. There's a largely hidden service that enables Netflix and most other subscription services to keep throwing charges at you indefinitely.

"Banks may automatically update credit or debit card numbers when a new card is issued. This update allows your card to continue to be charged, even if it's expired," Netflix says in its help center. Most major card providers offer a feature that enables this, including Visa. In 2003, Visa U.S.A. started offering a new software product to merchants called Visa Account Updater (VAU), according to a 2003 American Banker article. The service works with a network of banks to create a virtual tracking service of Americans' financial profiles. Whenever someone renews, or switches a credit card within their bank, the institution automatically update the VAU. This system lets Netflix and countless other corporations charge whatever card you have on file.

The Federal Communications Commission has fined the nation's largest wireless carriers for illegally sharing access to customers' location information without consent and without taking reasonable measures to protect that information against unauthorized disclosure. From a report: Sprint and T-Mobile -- which have merged since the investigation began -- face fines of more than $12 million and $80 million, respectively. AT&T is fined more than $57 million, and Verizon is fined almost $47 million. "Our communications providers have access to some of the most sensitive information about us. These carriers failed to protect the information entrusted to them. Here, we are talking about some of the most sensitive data in their possession: customers' real-time location information, revealing where they go and who they are," said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. "As we resolve these cases" which were first proposed by the last Administration -- the Commission remains committed to holding all carriers accountable and making sure they fulfill their obligations to their customers as stewards of this most private data."

The latest figures from IDC shows that Samsung's share in China's foldable smartphone market was 5.9% in Q1 2024. At one point, Samsung was pulling in a quarterly foldable market share of nearly 30% in China. From a report: It essentially came in dead last, as Samsung finds itself comprehensively beaten by the handful of companies that make foldable phones. This is also a significant decline over the previous year when Samsung's share was at 11%.