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Sarah Perez reports via TechCrunch: EyeEm, the Berlin-based photo-sharing community that exited last year to Spanish company Freepik after going bankrupt, is now licensing its users' photos to train AI models. Earlier this month, the company informed users via email that it was adding a new clause to its Terms & Conditions that would grant it the rights to upload users' content to "train, develop, and improve software, algorithms, and machine-learning models." Users were given 30 days to opt ou…

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Nature: The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has released the highest-resolution geological maps of the Moon yet. The Geologic Atlas of the Lunar Globe, which took more than 100 researchers over a decade to compile, reveals a total of 12,341 craters, 81 basins and 17 rock types, along with other basic geological information about the lunar surface. The maps were made at the unprecedented scale of 1:2,500,000. The CAS also released a book ca…

An anonymous reader quotes a report published last week by Physics World: Researchers at the Dutch quantum institute QuTech in Delft have announced plans to build Europe's first 100-quantum bit (qubit) quantum computer. When complete in 2026, the device will be made publicly available, providing scientists with a tool for quantum calculations and simulations. The project is funded by the Dutch umbrella organization Quantum Delta NL via the European OpenSuperQPlus initiative, which has 28 partne…

The FTC is issuing more than $5.6 million in refunds to Ring customers as part of a privacy settlement. The Associated Press reports: In a 2023 complaint, the FTC accused the doorbell camera and home security provider of allowing its employees and contractors to access customers' private videos. Ring allegedly used such footage to train algorithms without consent, among other purposes. Ring was also charged with failing to implement key security protections, which enabled hackers to take contro…

In its third-quarter earnings call on Thursday, Microsoft reported a 30% drop in Xbox console sales, after reporting a 30% drop last April. "It blamed the nosedive on a 'lower volume of consoles sold' during the start of 2024," reports Kotaku. From the report: In February, Grand Theft Auto VI parent company Take-Two claimed in a presentation to investors that there were roughly 77 million "gen 9" consoles in people's homes. It didn't take fans long to do the math and speculate that Microsoft ha…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit overturned a prior district court decision, lifting the injunction that blocked New York's law mandating that ISPs offer $15 broadband plans to low-income families. Ars Technica reports: The ruling (PDF) is a loss for six trade groups that represent ISPs, although it isn't clear right now whether the law will be enforced. For consumers who qualify for means-tested government benefits, the state law requires ISPs to offer "broadband at no more than $…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: A new campaign tracked as "Dev Popper" is targeting software developers with fake job interviews in an attempt to trick them into installing a Python remote access trojan (RAT). The developers are asked to perform tasks supposedly related to the interview, like downloading and running code from GitHub, in an effort to make the entire process appear legitimate. However, the threat actor's goal is make their targets download malicious sof…

The free tax filing pilot from the IRS that rolled out in 12 states last month saved filers an estimated $5.6 million in tax preparation fees for federal returns, said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. CNBC reports: This season, more than 140,000 taxpayers successfully filed returns using IRS Direct File, a free tax filing pilot from the IRS, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the IRS. Direct File surveyed more than 15,000 users, around 90% of whom rated their experience as "exce…

Tobias Mann reports via The Register: Canadian systems builder 45 Drives is perhaps best known for the dense multi-drive storage systems employed by the likes of Backblaze and others, but over the last year the biz has expanded its line-up to virtualization kit, and now low-power clients and workstations aimed at enterprises and home enthusiasts alike. 45 Drives' Home Client marks a departure from the relatively large rack-mount chassis it normally builds. Founder Doug Milburn told The Register…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Darktrace is set to go private in a deal that values the U.K.-based cybersecurity giant at around $5 billion. A newly formed entity called Luke Bidco Ltd., formed by private equity giant Thoma Bravo, has tabled an all-cash bid of $7.75 per share, which represents a 44% premium on its average price for the three-month period ending April 25. However, this premium drops to just 20% when juxtaposed against Darktrace's closing price Thursday, as …

A judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by superconductivity physicist Ranga Dias against his employer, the University of Rochester in New York. From a report: In February, a university investigation found that he had committed scientific misconduct by, among other things, fabricating data to claim the discovery of superconductors -- materials with zero electrical resistance -- at room temperature. Dias filed the lawsuit against the university for allegedly violating his academic freedom and co…

The head of Britain's domestic intelligence agency warned the country's leading research universities on Thursday that foreign states are targeting their institutions and imperilling national security. The Record: "We know that our universities are being actively targeted by hostile actors and need to guard against the threat posed to frontier research in the most sensitive sectors," said the deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden, who also attended the briefing. The threat requires "further measu…

Noise pollution from traffic stunts growth in baby birds, even while inside the egg, research has found. From a report: Unhatched birds and hatchlings that are exposed to noise from city traffic experience long-term negative effects on their health, growth and reproduction, the study found. "Sound has a much stronger and more direct impact on bird development than we knew before," said Dr Mylene Mariette, a bird communication expert at Deakin University in Australia and a co-author of the study…

A now-abandoned USB worm that backdoors connected devices has continued to self-replicate for years since its creators lost control of it and remains active on thousands, possibly millions, of machines, researchers said Thursday. ArsTechnica: The worm -- which first came to light in a 2023 post published by security firm Sophos -- became active in 2019 when a variant of malware known as PlugX added functionality that allowed it to infect USB drives automatically. In turn, those drives would inf…

Captchas that aim to distinguish humans from nefarious bots are demanding more brain power. WSJ: The companies and cybersecurity experts who design Captchas have been doing all they can to stay one step ahead of the bad actors figuring out how to crack them. A cottage industry of third-party Captcha-solving firms -- essentially, humans hired to solve the puzzles all day -- has emerged. More alarmingly, so has technology that can automatically solve the more rudimentary tests, such as identifyin…