The House on Wednesday approved a bill that would limit how the government can purchase data from third parties — legislation that scored a vote after negotiations with a group of GOP colleagues who briefly tanked a vote on warrantless spy powers. Dubbed the Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale, the legislation passed 219-199. It requires law enforcement and other government entities to get a warrant before buying information from third-party data brokers who purchase information gleaned from apps. […] Senior administration officials said the measure would blind U.S. intelligence outfits from getting information easily purchased by foreign intelligence operations.

“In practice, these standards make it impossible for the [intelligence community], law enforcement to acquire a whole host of readily available information that they currently rely on,” an administration official said. “Covered customer records as defined in the bill is very broad and includes records pertaining to any U.S. person or indeed any foreigner inside the United States. And as a practical matter, there’s often no way to establish whether a particular individual was in the U.S. at a particular time a piece of data was created. Unless you did one thing, which is paradoxically to intrude further into their privacy just to figure out whether you could obtain some data.” “It can be impossible to know what’s in a data set before one actually obtains a data set,” the official continued. “So you’d be barred from getting that which you don’t even know.”

The arrests, which were livestreamed on Twitch by participants, follow rallies outside Google offices in New York, Sunnyvale and Seattle, which attracted hundreds of attendees, according to workers involved. […] Protesters in Sunnyvale sat in Kurian’s office for more than nine hours until their arrests, writing demands on Kurian’s whiteboard and wearing shirts that read “Googler against genocide.” In New York, protesters sat in a three-floor common space. Five workers from Sunnyvale and four from New York were arrested.

“On a personal level, I am opposed to Google taking any military contracts — no matter which government they’re with or what exactly the contract is about,” Cheyne Anderson, a Google Cloud software engineer based in Washington, told CNBC. “And I hold that opinion because Google is an international company and no matter which military it’s with, there are always going to be people on the receiving end… represented in Google’s employee base and also our user base.” Anderson had flown to Sunnyvale for the protest in Kurian’s office and was one of the workers arrested Tuesday.

The company said on X that it is in the “early stage” of the app’s rollout and that the app is “a dedicated space for photo and text content.” “We hope that the TikTok community will use TikTok Notes to continue sharing their moments through photo posts. Whether documenting adventures, expressing creativity, or simply sharing snapshots of one’s day, the TikTok Notes experience is designed for those who would like to share and engage through photo content,” it said.

The company didn’t say much about the app’s features and functionality apart from the fact that users can log in with their existing TikTok account. Even the app’s description in the app stores is pretty light on details. The screenshots on the App Store listing suggest that the posts will appear in two-column grids on the home page. The screenshots also indicate that you can post multiple photos through a carousel post.

It’s alive! A day after announcing it was retiring Atlas, its hydraulic robot, Boston Dynamics has introduced a new, all-electric version of its humanoid machine. The next-generation Atlas robot is designed to offer a far greater range of movement than its predecessor. Boston Dynamics wanted the new version to show that Atlas can keep a humanoid form without limiting “how a bipedal robot can move.” The new version has been redesigned with swiveling joints that the company claims make it “uniquely capable of tackling dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks.”

The teaser showcasing the new robot’s capabilities is as unnerving as it is theatrical. The video starts with Atlas lying in a cadaver-like fashion on the floor before it swiftly folds its legs backward over its body and rises to a standing position in a manner befitting some kind of Cronenberg body-horror flick. Its curved, illuminated head does add some Pixar lamp-like charm, but the way Atlas then spins at the waist and marches toward the camera really feels rather jarring. The design itself is also a little more humanoid. Similar to bipedal robots like Tesla’s Optimus, the new Atlas now has longer limbs, a straighter back, and a distinct “head” that can swivel around as needed. There are no cables in sight, and its “face” includes a built-in ring light. It is a marked improvement on its predecessor and now features a bunch of Boston Dynamics’ new AI and machine learning tools. […] Boston Dynamics said the new Atlas will be tested with a small group of customers “over the next few years,” starting with Hyundai.

The US AI Safety Institute — part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)—has finally announced its leadership team after much speculation. Appointed as head of AI safety is Paul Christiano, a former OpenAI researcher who pioneered a foundational AI safety technique called reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), but is also known for predicting that “there’s a 50 percent chance AI development could end in ‘doom.’" While Christiano’s research background is impressive, some fear that by appointing a so-called “AI doomer,” NIST may be risking encouraging non-scientific thinking that many critics view as sheer speculation.

There have been rumors that NIST staffers oppose the hiring. A controversial VentureBeat report last month cited two anonymous sources claiming that, seemingly because of Christiano’s so-called “AI doomer” views, NIST staffers were “revolting.” Some staff members and scientists allegedly threatened to resign, VentureBeat reported, fearing “that Christiano’s association” with effective altruism and “longtermism could compromise the institute’s objectivity and integrity.” NIST’s mission is rooted in advancing science by working to “promote US innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.” Effective altruists believe in “using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible” and longtermists that “we should be doing much more to protect future generations,” both of which are more subjective and opinion-based. On the Bankless podcast, Christiano shared his opinions last year that “there’s something like a 10-20 percent chance of AI takeover” that results in humans dying, and “overall, maybe you’re getting more up to a 50-50 chance of doom shortly after you have AI systems that are human level.” “The most likely way we die involves — not AI comes out of the blue and kills everyone — but involves we have deployed a lot of AI everywhere… [And] if for some reason, God forbid, all these AI systems were trying to kill us, they would definitely kill us,” Christiano said.

As head of AI safety, Christiano will seemingly have to monitor for current and potential risks. He will “design and conduct tests of frontier AI models, focusing on model evaluations for capabilities of national security concern,” steer processes for evaluations, and implement “risk mitigations to enhance frontier model safety and security,” the Department of Commerce’s press release said. Christiano has experience mitigating AI risks. He left OpenAI to found the Alignment Research Center (ARC), which the Commerce Department described as “a nonprofit research organization that seeks to align future machine learning systems with human interests by furthering theoretical research.” Part of ARC’s mission is to test if AI systems are evolving to manipulate or deceive humans, ARC’s website said. ARC also conducts research to help AI systems scale “gracefully.”

At launch, it features two apps, including Testut’s Delta game emulator and clipboard manager app Clip. Delta is also being simultaneously released in the App Store outside of the European Union, but it looks like EU customers will need to download it from AltStore. Testut says that once AltStore PAL is “running smoothly,” third-party app developers will be able to submit their apps for distribution outside of the App Store. The app marketplace is designed to be decentralized with no directory, so developers will need to self-promote their apps and direct users to their websites to install an app through AltStore.

Distributing apps through AltStore is free of charge, but it is worth noting that apps that see more than one million first annual installs will need to pay Apple an 0.50 euro Core Technology Fee. App marketplaces have to pay the fee for every install with no free allowance, so AltStore is charged 0.50 euros each time it is installed. To afford the fee, Testut is charging 1.50 euros per year for AltStore PAL access. Testut has been working on AltStore PAL since Apple announced plans to support alternative app marketplaces in iOS 17.4. It is open to all apps, but Testut says that it makes the most sense for “smaller, indie apps that otherwise couldn’t exist due to App Store rules.” AltStore PAL is equipped with Patreon integration to allow developers to monetize their apps. Developers can offer their apps to just their patrons, and this method of distribution also allows for a sub-1 million cap on those who can subscribe to use an app.

The stock’s price has dropped by a whopping 67.7% since Trump Media began trading as a public company on March 26, erasing more than $5 billion in market capitalization. Trump Media’s majority shareholder is former President Donald Trump, who holds nearly 60% of its stock.

Earlier Tuesday, Trump Media in a press release said it “has finished the research and development phase of its new live TV streaming platform and will begin scaling up its own content delivery network.” The company said it will roll out streaming content in three phases, the first of which will introduce Truth Social’s content delivery network for streaming live TV to the app for Android, iOS and web. Phase two will release stand-alone Truth Social streaming apps for phones, tablets and other devices, while phase three will release such apps for home television, Trump Media said.

In a new blog post from LastPass, the password management firm used by countless personal and corporate clients to help protect their login information, the company explains that someone used AI voice-cloning tech to spoof the voice of its CEO in an attempt to trick one of its employees. As the company writes in the post, one of its employees earlier this week received several WhatsApp communications — including calls, texts, and a voice message — from someone claiming to be its CEO, Karim Toubba. Luckily, the LastPass worker didn’t fall for it because the whole thing set off so many red flags. “As the attempted communication was outside of normal business communication channels and due to the employee’s suspicion regarding the presence of many of the hallmarks of a social engineering attempt (such as forced urgency),” the post reads, “our employee rightly ignored the messages and reported the incident to our internal security team so that we could take steps to both mitigate the threat and raise awareness of the tactic both internally and externally.”

While this LastPass scam attempt failed, those who follow these sorts of things may recall that the company has been subject to successful hacks before. In August 2022, as a timeline of the event compiled by the Cybersecurity Dive blog detailed, a hacker compromised a LastPass engineer’s laptop and used it to steal source code and company secrets, eventually getting access to its customer database — including encrypted passwords and unencrypted user data like email addresses. According to that timeline, the clearly-resourceful bad actor remained active in the company’s servers for months, and it took more than two months for LastPass to admit that it had been breached. More than six months after the initial breach, Toubba, the CEO, provided a blow-by-blow timeline of the months-long attack and said he took “full responsibility” for the way things went down in a February 2023 blog post.

A storm hit the United Arab Emirates and Oman this week bringing record rainfall that flooded highways, inundated houses, grid-locked traffic and trapped people in their homes. […] In the UAE, a record 254 millimetres (10 inches) of rainfall was recorded in Al Ain, a city bordering Oman. It was the largest ever in a 24-hour period since records started in 1949. Rainfall is rare in the UAE and elsewhere on the Arabian Peninsula, that is typically known for its dry desert climate. Summer air temperatures can soar above 50 degrees Celsius. But the UAE and Oman also lack drainage systems to cope with heavy rains and submerged roads are not uncommon during rainfall.

Following Tuesday’s events, questions were raised whether cloud seeding, a process that the UAE frequently conducts, could have caused the heavy rains. Cloud seeding is a process in which chemicals are implanted into clouds to increase rainfall in an environment where water scarcity is a concern. The UAE, located in one of the hottest and driest regions on earth, has been leading the effort to seed clouds and increase precipitation. But the UAE’s meteorology agency told Reuters there were no such operations before the storm. The huge rainfall was instead likely due to a normal weather system that was exacerbated by climate change, experts say. A low pressure system in the upper atmosphere, coupled with low pressure at the surface had acted like a pressure ‘squeeze’ on the air, according to Esraa Alnaqbi, a senior forecaster at the UAE government’s National Centre of Meteorology. That squeeze, intensified by the contrast between warmer temperatures at ground level and colder temperatures higher up, created the conditions for the powerful thunderstorm, she said.

By 2030, the world’s data centers are on course to use more electricity than India, the world’s most populous country, Haas said. Finding ways to head off that projected tripling of energy use is paramount if artificial intelligence is going to achieve its promise, he said.

“We are still incredibly in the early days in terms of the capabilities,” Haas said in an interview. For AI systems to get better, they will need more training — a stage that involves bombarding the software with data — and that’s going to run up against the limits of energy capacity, he said.

Rising temperatures, heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense extreme weather are projected to cause $38tn of destruction each year by mid-century, according to the research, which is the most comprehensive analysis of its type ever undertaken, and whose findings are published in the journal Nature. The hefty toll — which is far higher than previous estimates — is already locked into the world economy over the coming decades as a result of the enormous emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere through the burning of gas, oil, coal and trees.

This will inflict crippling losses on almost every country, with a disproportionately severe impact on those least responsible for climate disruption, further worsening inequality. The paper says the permanent average loss of income worldwide will be 19% by 2049. In the United States and Europe the reduction will be about 11%, while in Africa and south Asia it will be 22%, with some individual countries much higher than this. “It’s devastating,” said Leonie Wenz, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the authors of the study. “I am used to my work not having a nice societal outcome, but I was surprised by how big the damages were. The inequality dimension was really shocking.”

The public “associate that name with drug trafficking and narco-terrorism and with the crimes and suffering resulting therefrom, rather than with his possible good deeds in favor of the poor in Colombia,” the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg said on Wednesday. Trademarking the name is “counter to the fundamental values and moral standards prevailing within Spanish society,” the court said.

As of March, AWS had removed Snowmobile from its website, and the Amazon unit has stopped offering the service, CNBC has confirmed. The webpage devoted to AWS’ “Snow family” of products now directs users to its other data transport services, including the Snowball Edge, a 50-pound suitcase-sized device that can be equipped with fast solid-state drives, and the smaller Snowcone.

An AWS spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the company has introduced more cost-effective options for moving data. Clients had to deal with power, cooling, networking, parking and security when they used the Snowmobile service, the spokesperson said.

An online service is scraping Discord servers en masse, archiving and tracking users’ messages and activity across servers including what voice channels they join, and then selling access to that data for as little as $5. Called Spy Pet, the service’s creator says it scrapes more than ten thousand Discord servers, and besides selling access to anyone with cryptocurrency, is also offering the data for training AI models or to assist law enforcement agencies, according to its website.

The news is not only a brazen abuse of Discord’s platform, but also highlights that Discord messages may be more susceptible to monitoring than ordinary users assume. Typically, a Discord user’s activity is spread across disparate servers, with no one entity, except Discord itself, able to see what messages someone has sent across the platform more broadly. With Spy Pet, third-parties including stalkers or potentially police can look up specific users and see what messages they’ve posted on various servers at once. “Have you ever wondered where your friend hangs out on Discord? Tired of basic search tools like Discord.id? Look no further!” Spy Pet’s website reads. It claims to be tracking more than 14,000 servers, 600 million users, and includes a database of more than 3 billion messages.