An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A global coalition of democracies is being formed to protect their societies from disinformation campaigns by foreign governments, the US special envoy on the issue has said. James Rubin, the special envoy for non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts at the US state department's global engagement centre (GEC), said the coalition hoped to agree on "definitions for information manipulation versus plain old opinions that other governments are entitled to have even if we disagree with them." The US, UK and Canada have already signed up to a formal framework agreement, and Washington hopes more countries will join.

The GEC focuses solely on disinformation by foreign powers. Apart from trying to develop global strategies, it works to expose specific covert disinformation operations, such as a Russian operation in Africa to discredit US health services. The US, UK and Canada signed the framework to counter foreign state manipulation this month with the aim of addressing disinformation as a national security threat that requires coordinated government and civil society responses. "Now is the time for a collective approach to the foreign information manipulation threat that builds a coalition of like-minded countries committed to strengthening resilience and response to information manipulation," the framework says. It also encourages information-sharing and joint data analysis tools to identify covert foreign disinformation.

A hugely experienced US official and journalist who has worked with diplomats such as Madeleine Albright in the past, Rubin admitted his first year as special envoy had been one of his most intellectually taxing because of the complex definitions surrounding disinformation. In the continuum between hostile opinion and disinformation, he has tried to identify where and how governments can intervene without limiting free speech. The principle on which he has alighted is deception by foreign powers. "In principle every government should be free to convey their views, but they should have to admit who they are," he said an interview. "We want to promote more fact-based information, but at the same time find ways to label those information operations that are generated by the Chinese government or the Kremlin but to which they don't admit. "In the end that is all I know we can do right now without interfering with a free press. We are not asking for such covert disinformation to be taken down but a way to be found for the source to be labelled."

According to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), Canada has proposed new rules that would compel digital platforms to remove online content that features the sexual exploitation of children or intimate images without consent of the individuals involved. From a report: The rules were years in the making, and represent the third and possibly final installment of measures aimed at regulating digital platforms. Measures introduced since 2022 aim to increase the amount of domestic, Canadian-made content on streaming services, such as Netflix, and require digital platforms to help Canadian news-media outlets finance their newsroom operations. The legislation needs to be approved by Canada's Parliament before it takes effect.

Canada said its rules are based on concepts introduced by the European Union, the U.K. and Australia. Canadian officials say the proposed measures would apply to social-media platforms, adult-entertainment sites where users can upload content, and live-streaming services. These services, officials said, are expected to expeditiously remove two categories of content: That which sexually exploits a child or an abuse survivor, and intimate content broadcast without an individual's consent. The latter incorporates so-called revenge porn, or the nonconsensual posting or dissemination of intimate images, often after the end of a romantic relationship. Officials said private and encrypted messaging services are excluded from the proposed regulations.

Canadian officials said platforms will have a duty to either ensure the material is not published, or take it down once notified. Canada also intends to set up a new agency, the Digital Safety Commission, to enforce the rules, order harmful content taken down, and hold digital services accountable. Platforms that violate the rules could face a maximum penalty of up to 25 million Canadian dollars, or the equivalent of $18.5 million, officials said.

Ashley Belanger reports via Ars Technica: Canada-based University of Waterloo is racing to remove M&M-branded smart vending machines from campus after outraged students discovered the machines were covertly collecting facial-recognition data without their consent. The scandal started when a student using the alias SquidKid47 posted an image on Reddit showing a campus vending machine error message, "Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognitionApp.exe," displayed after the machine failed to launch a facial recognition application that nobody expected to be part of the process of using a vending machine. "Hey, so why do the stupid M&M machines have facial recognition?" SquidKid47 pondered. The Reddit post sparked an investigation from a fourth-year student named River Stanley, who was writing for a university publication called MathNEWS. [...]

MathNEWS' investigation tracked down responses from companies responsible for smart vending machines on the University of Waterloo's campus. Adaria Vending Services told MathNEWS that "what's most important to understand is that the machines do not take or store any photos or images, and an individual person cannot be identified using the technology in the machines. The technology acts as a motion sensor that detects faces, so the machine knows when to activate the purchasing interface -- never taking or storing images of customers." According to Adaria and Invenda, students shouldn't worry about data privacy because the vending machines are "fully compliant" with the world's toughest data privacy law, the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). "These machines are fully GDPR compliant and are in use in many facilities across North America," Adaria's statement said. "At the University of Waterloo, Adaria manages last mile fulfillment services -- we handle restocking and logistics for the snack vending machines. Adaria does not collect any data about its users and does not have any access to identify users of these M&M vending machines." [...]

But University of Waterloo students like Stanley now question Invenda's "commitment to transparency" in North American markets, especially since the company is seemingly openly violating Canadian privacy law, Stanley told CTV News. On Reddit, while some students joked that SquidKid47's face "crashed" the machine, others asked if "any pre-law students wanna start up a class-action lawsuit?" One commenter summed up students' frustration by typing in all caps, "I HATE THESE MACHINES! I HATE THESE MACHINES! I HATE THESE MACHINES!"

Disney is outsourcing its DVD and Blu-ray disc business to Sony Pictures Entertainment. Variety reports: As part of the deal, Sony will market, sell and distribute all Disney's new releases and catalog titles on physical media to consumers through retailers and distributors in the U.S. and Canada. Disney will continue to manage its own digital media, like premium video-on-demand. It's unclear if this will result in layoffs at Disney. However, the studio is expected to conduct an internal assessment across all business functions that support physical entertainment amid the transition to Sony, according to sources familiar with the agreement.

According to Disney, the licensing model allows the studio to continue to offer films and TV shows through physical retailers and to respond to consumer demand more efficiently. The company said the shift is consistent with strategies it's implemented companywide, as well as transitions in other markets.

Google's "Nest Aware" camera subscription is going through another round of price increases. From a report: This time it's for international users. There's no big announcement or anything, just a smattering of email screenshots from various countries on the Nest subreddit. 9to5Google was nice enough to hunt down a pile of the announcements. Nest Aware is a monthly subscription fee for Google's Nest cameras. Nest cameras exclusively store all their video in the cloud, and without the subscription, you aren't allowed to record video 24/7.

There are two sets of subscriptions to keep track of: the current generation subscription for modern cameras and the "first generation Nest Aware" subscription for older cameras. To give you an idea of what we're dealing with, in the US, the current free tier only gets you three hours of "event" video -- meaning video triggered by motion detection. Even the basic $8-a-month subscription doesn't get you 24/7 recording -- that's still only 30 days of event video. The "Nest Aware Plus" subscription, at $15 a month in the US, gets you 10 days of 24/7 video recording. The "first-generation" Nest Aware subscription, which is tied to earlier cameras and isn't available for new customers anymore, is doubling in price in Canada. The basic tier of five days of 24/7 video is going from a yearly fee of CA$50 to CA$110 (the first-generation sub has 24/7 video on every tier). Ten days of video is jumping from CA$80 to CA$160, and 30 days is going from CA$110 to CA$220. These are the prices for a single camera; the first-generation subscription will have additional charges for additional cameras. The current Nest Aware subscription for modern cameras is getting jumps that look similar to the US, with Nest Aware Plus, the mid-tier, going from CA$16 to CA $20 per month, and presumably similar raises across the board.

The FBI is "laser focused" on Chinese efforts to insert malicious software code into computer networks in ways that could disrupt critical US infrastructure, according to the agency's director Christopher Wray. From a report: Wray said he was acutely concerned about "pre-positioning" of malware. He said the US recently disrupted a Chinese hacking network known as Volt Typhoon that targeted American infrastructure including the electricity grid and water supply, and other targets around the world. "We're laser focused on this as a real threat and we're working with a lot of partners to try to identify it, anticipate it and disrupt it," Wray said on Sunday after attending the Munich Security Conference.

"I'm sober and clear minded about what we're up against...We're always going to have to be kind of on the balls of our feet." Wray said Volt Typhoon was just the tip of the iceberg and was one of many such efforts by the Chinese government. The US has been tracking Chinese pre-positioning operations for well over a decade, but Wray told the security conference that they had reached "fever pitch." He said China was increasingly inserting "offensive weapons within our critical infrastructure poised to attack whenever Beijing decides the time is right."

His comments are the latest FBI effort to raise awareness about Chinese espionage that ranges from traditional spying and intellectual property theft to hacking designed to prepare for possible future conflict. Last October, Wray and his counterparts from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network that includes the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand held their first public meeting in an effort to focus the spotlight on Chinese espionage. Wray said the US campaign was having an impact and that people were increasingly attuned to the threat, particularly compared with several years ago when he sometimes met scepticism.

An article in the Washington Post remembers a 1980s-era "glass box with metal water pipes running through it" that "converted sunlight into hot water. By trapping solar energy like a greenhouse, it heated the water to a scorching 180 degrees Fahrenheit.

"[T]oday, hardly anyone is using these solar water heaters even as photovoltaic panels have popped up on the roofs of nearly 4 million American homes." Unlike photovoltaic panels, which can power your home, solar thermal panels are mainly used to heat water. But they're smaller and more efficient. The technology converts 60 to 70 percent of the sun's energy into heat. Even the best photovoltaics, which generate electricity, only achieve 24 percent efficiency. Now, a new generation of solar water heater manufacturers is hoping subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act, and growing interest in net-zero emissions, will reignite their growth.

Theoretically, solar thermal offers a big opportunity to slash emissions. Nearly 20 percent of an average home's energy is used to heat water, and nearly 50 percent globally, according to MIT. By adopting solar water heaters, the average household can keep 2 tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, the equivalent of not driving your car for four months, estimates the Environmental Protection Agency. Solar water heaters can also save money, cutting the average utility bill by $400 to $600 per year, the Energy Department estimates...

Only about 370,000 solar thermal systems were operating in the United States by the end of 2021, according to the International Energy Agency, many of them on larger commercial buildings...

Since they can cut fuel consumption to heat water by 50 percent to 70 percent, other countries are embracing the technology: Almost all new residential buildings in Israel must include solar thermal, while in countries as far north as Canada and Denmark, solar thermal energy warms millions of homes with district heating systems. Yet these systems represent a tiny fraction of the potential, supplying 0.4 percent of today's global energy demand for domestic hot water.
New U.S. subsidies can cut the price in half depending on location, the article points out.

Cheap photovoltaics still make economic sense for many homes (unless you're heating a pool). "But the cost of solar thermal could look like a bargain if we consider increasingly unreliable electric grids and the cost to the climate from burning fossil fuels."

According to NASA, the OSIRIS-REx mission has successfully collected 121.6 grams, or almost 4.3 ounces, of rock and dust from the asteroid Bennu. Universe Today reports: These samples have been a long time coming. The OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) was approved by NASA back in 2011 and launched in September 2016. It reached its target, the carbonaceous Apollo group asteroid 101955 Bennu, in December 2018. After spending months studying the asteroid and reconnoitring for a suitable sampling location, it selected one in December 2019. After two sampling rehearsals, the spacecraft gathered its sample on October 20th, 2020. In September 2023, the sample finally returned to Earth.

For OSIRIS-REx to be successful, it had to collect at least 60 grams of material. With a final total that is double that, it should open up more research opportunities and allow more of the material to be held untouched for future research. NASA says they will preserve 70% of the sample for the future, including for future generations. The next step is for the material to be put into containers and sent to researchers. More than 200 researchers around the world will receive samples. Many of the samples will find their way to scientists at NASA and institutions in the US, while others will go to researchers at institutions associated with the Canadian Space Agency, JAXA, and other partner nations. Canada will receive 4% of the sample, the first time that Canada's scientific community will have direct access to a returned asteroid sample.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: Air Canada has been ordered to pay compensation to a grieving grandchild who claimed they were misled into purchasing full-price flight tickets by an ill-informed chatbot. In an argument that appeared to flabbergast a small claims adjudicator in British Columbia, the airline attempted to distance itself from its own chatbot's bad advice by claiming the online tool was "a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions."

"This is a remarkable submission," Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) member Christopher Rivers wrote. "While a chatbot has an interactive component, it is still just a part of Air Canada's website. It should be obvious to Air Canada that it is responsible for all the information on its website. It makes no difference whether the information comes from a static page or a chatbot." In a decision released this week, Rivers ordered Air Canada to pay Jake Moffatt $812 to cover the difference between the airline's bereavement rates and the $1,630.36 they paid for full-price tickets to and from Toronto bought after their grandmother died.

Nvidia blog: Every country needs to own the production of their own intelligence, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang told attendees Monday at the World Governments Summit in Dubai. Huang, who spoke as part of a fireside chat with the UAE's Minister of AI, His Excellency Omar Al Olama, described sovereign AI -- which emphasizes a country's ownership over its data and the intelligence it produces -- as an enormous opportunity for the world's leaders. "It codifies your culture, your society's intelligence, your common sense, your history -- you own your own data," Huang told Al Olama during their conversation, a highlight of an event attended by more than 4,000 delegates from 150 countries.

"We completely subscribe to that vision," Al Olama said. "That's why the UAE is moving aggressively on creating large language models and mobilizing compute." Huang's appearance in the UAE comes as the Gulf State is moving rapidly to transform itself from an energy powerhouse into a global information technology hub. Dubai is the latest stop for Huang in a global tour that has included meetings with leaders in Canada, France, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam over the past six months. The Middle East is poised to reap significant benefits from AI, with PwC projecting a $320 billion boost to the region's economy by 2030.

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:

The Chinese state-sponsored hacking group known as Volt Typhoon has been living in the networks of some critical industries for "at least five years," (non-paywalled link) according to a joint cybersecurity advisory issued by the US and its allies on Wednesday. From a report: The compromised environments are in the continental US and elsewhere, including Guam, the advisory said. It was published by US agencies and their security counterparts in Australia, Canada, the UK and New Zealand. The report comes a week after US officials announced an operation to disrupt Volt Typhoon by deleting malware from thousands of internet-connected devices the group had hijacked to gain access to the networks in critical parts of the economy. Among the sectors targeted were communications, energy, transportation and water systems.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vancouver Sun: A cryptocurrency firm has lost a bid to force B.C. Hydro to provide the vast amounts of power needed for its operations, in a court ruling that upholds the provincial government's right to pause power connections for new crypto miners. Conifex Timber Inc., a forestry firm that branched out into cryptocurrency "mining," had gone to the B.C. Supreme Court to have the policy declared invalid. But Justice Michael Tammen ruled Friday that the government's move in December 2022 to pause new connections for cryptocurrency mining for 18 months was reasonable and not unduly discriminatory.

B.C. Hydro CEO Christopher O'Riley had told the court in an affidavit that the data centers proposed by Conifex would have consumed 2.5 million megawatt-hours of electricity a year. That's enough to power and heat more than 570,000 apartments, according to data on the power provider's website. Energy Minister Josie Osborne said when the policy was introduced that cryptocurrency mining consumes "massive amounts of electricity" by running banks of high-powered computers around the clock, but adds "very few jobs" to the local economy. In a statement released Monday, the company said it's "disappointed" with the court's ruling and is considering an appeal. "Conifex continues to believe that the provincial government is missing out on several opportunities available to it to improve energy affordability, accelerate technological innovation, strengthen the reliability and resiliency of the power distribution grid in British Columbia, and achieve more inclusive economic growth," said Conifex in a statement.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Slate: Last November, the American Ornithological Society, or AOS, announced that it would change the common names of all American birds named after people. There are 152 such "eponymic" names (that is, birds that are named after a specific person, like Bicknell's Thrush) on the AOS' official checklist, and the group is planning to start with between 70 and 80 species predominantly found in the U.S. and Canada. In the coming years, birds like Cooper's Hawk, Wilson's Snipe, and Lincoln's Sparrow will be stripped of their eponyms and given new common English names.

The eponymic naming issue has been heating up in the bird world for a few years now. Birds got their English names when they were "discovered" by Western scientists, or otherwise identified as a new species. This meant ornithologists had the honor of coming up with whatever moniker they wanted, and frequently named birds in honor of a benefactor, a friend, or the person who shot the first known specimen. But a growing number of ornithologists and nonscientist birders are questioning why we're stuck with names decided on a whim hundreds of years ago, especially when the names aren't very good...

Rather than attempt the impossible task of reviewing the people with birds named after them one by one, the AOS said it would just scrap them all and start from scratch. But that's where the real challenge comes in — because lots of bird names are pretty bad. Not offensive bad, like named after a Confederate general, but just unsatisfactory bad. There was never any standardization for how common bird names were granted, which means those names are all over the place and provide little guidance for what renaming should look like.
Birds are named after their identifying features, size, habitat, the sound they make, or where they were first discovered. So the American Ornithological Society announced it will "conduct an open, inclusive, and scientifically rigorous pilot program in 2024 to develop its new approach to English bird names in the U.S. and Canada." [T]here are few specifics yet, and no easy way to organize the public and whittle down suggestions in the lawless and nonsensical world of bird names. But the AOS has committed to change: Unlike the closed-door decisions of the past, this will be a public process. The plan is to take suggestions — from field marks, Indigenous names, colloquialisms ... from anywhere — narrow it down, somehow, to a few options, and let people decide... Our new bird names won't be ideal — none of them are — but, for the first time, they will belong to us.

The BBC reports: Police in Washington state say an old rusted rocket found in a local man's garage is an inert nuclear missile. On Wednesday, a military museum in Ohio called police in the city of Bellevue to report an offer of a rather unusual donation. The police then sent a bomb squad to the potential donor's home... In a press release, police say the device is "in fact a Douglas AIR-2 Genie (previous designation MB-1), an unguided air-to-air rocket that is designed to carry a 1.5 kt W25 nuclear warhead". However, there was no warhead attached, meaning there was never any danger to the community. Bellevue Police Department spokesman Seth Tyler, told BBC News on Friday that the device was "just basically a gas tank for rocket fuel". He called the event "not serious at all... In fact, our bomb squad member asked me why we were releasing a news release on a rusted piece of metal," he said...

The man told police that the rocket belonged to a neighbour who had died, and was originally purchased from an estate sale.
Citing a Seattle Times article, the BBC notes that "The first and only live firing of the Genie rocket was in 1957, according to the newspaper, and production of it ended in 1962."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: Over the last decade, police departments across the U.S. have spent millions of dollars equipping their officers with body-worn cameras that record what happens as they go about their work. Everything from traffic stops to welfare checks to responses to active shooters is now documented on video. The cameras were pitched by national and local law enforcement authorities as a tool for building public trust between police and their communities in the wake of police killings of civilians like Michael Brown, an 18 year old black teenager killed in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. Video has the potential not only to get to the truth when someone is injured or killed by police, but also to allow systematic reviews of officer behavior to prevent deaths by flagging troublesome officers for supervisors or helping identify real-world examples of effective and destructive behaviors to use for training. But a series of ProPublica stories has shown that a decade on, those promises of transparency and accountability have not been realized.

One challenge: The sheer amount of video captured using body-worn cameras means few agencies have the resources to fully examine it. Most of what is recorded is simply stored away, never seen by anyone. Axon, the nation's largest provider of police cameras and of cloud storage for the video they capture, has a database of footage that has grown from around 6 terabytes in 2016 to more than 100 petabytes today. That's enough to hold more than 5,000 years of high definition video, or 25 million copies of last year's blockbuster movie "Barbie." "In any community, body-worn camera footage is the largest source of data on police-community interactions. Almost nothing is done with it," said Jonathan Wender, a former police officer who heads Polis Solutions, one of a growing group of companies and researchers offering analytic tools powered by artificial intelligence to help tackle that data problem.

The Paterson, New Jersey, police department has made such an analytic tool a major part of its plan to overhaul its force. In March 2023, the state's attorney general took over the department after police shot and killed Najee Seabrooks, a community activist experiencing a mental health crisis who had called 911 for help. The killing sparked protests and calls for a federal investigation of the department. The attorney general appointed Isa Abbassi, formerly the New York Police Department's chief of strategic initiatives, to develop a plan for how to win back public trust. "Changes in Paterson are led through the use of technology," Abbassi said at a press conference announcing his reform plan in September, "Perhaps one of the most exciting technology announcements today is a real game changer when it comes to police accountability and professionalism." The department, Abassi said, had contracted with Truleo, a Chicago-based software company that examines audio from bodycam videos to identify problematic officers and patterns of behavior.

For around $50,000 a year, Truleo's software allows supervisors to select from a set of specific behaviors to flag, such as when officers interrupt civilians, use profanity, use force or mute their cameras. The flags are based on data Truleo has collected on which officer behaviors result in violent escalation. Among the conclusions from Truleo's research: Officers need to explain what they are doing. "There are certain officers who don't introduce themselves, they interrupt people, and they don't give explanations. They just do a lot of command, command, command, command, command," said Anthony Tassone, Truleo's co-founder. "That officer's headed down the wrong path." For Paterson police, Truleo allows the department to "review 100% of body worn camera footage to identify risky behaviors and increase professionalism," according to its strategic overhaul plan. The software, the department said in its plan, will detect events like uses of force, pursuits, frisks and non-compliance incidents and allow supervisors to screen for both "professional and unprofessional officer language." There are around 30 police departments currently use Truleo, according to the company.

Christopher J. Schneider, a professor at Canada's Brandon University who studies the impact of emerging technology on social perceptions of police, is skeptical the AI tools will fix the problems in policing because the findings might be kept from the public just like many internal investigations. "Because it's confidential," he said, "the public are not going to know which officers are bad or have been disciplined or not been disciplined."

Starbucks is taking its extra virgin olive oil-infused drinks -- which some customers previously complained of sending them straight to the bathroom ï-- nationwide beginning Tuesday. CNN: The lineup, called Oleato, launched in a few US cities last year before slowly expanding to more stores. Tuesday's launch across its US and Canada locations signifies that the chain stands behind the beverage despite subpar reviews from customers and critics. On the Oleato menu are two drinks: An oat milk latte infused with the extra virgin olive oil; and a new toffeenut iced shaken espresso with golden foam, which is vanilla sweet cream infused with extra virgin olive oil into a cold foam. The drinks debuted in Italy in 2023, with a Starbucks executive previously telling CNN that it's one of its "biggest launches we've had in decades."

"Companies that once serviced the boom in cryptocurrency mining are pivoting to take advantage of the latest data gold rush," reports the Guardian. Canadian company Hive Blockchain changed its name in July to Hive Digital Technologies and announced it was pivoting to AI. "Hive has been a pioneering force in the cryptocurrency mining sector since 2017. The adoption of a new name signals a significant strategic shift to harness the potential of GPU Cloud compute technology, a vital tool in the world of AI, machine learning and advanced data analysis, allowing us to expand our revenue channels with our Nvidia GPU fleet," the company said in its announcement at the time. The company's executive chairman, Frank Holmes, told Guardian Australia the transition required a lot of work. "Moving from mining Ethereum to hosting GPU cloud services involves buying powerful new servers for our GPUs, upgrading networking equipment and moving to higher tier data centres," he said.

"The only commonality is that GPUs are the workhorses in both cases. GPU cloud requires higher end supporting hardware and a more secure, faster data centre environment. There's a steep learning curve in the GPU cloud business, but our team is adapting well and learning fast."

For others, like Iris Energy, a datacentre company operating out of Canada and Texas, and co-founded by Australian Daniel Roberts, it has been the plan all along. Iris did not require any changes to the way the company operated when the AI boom came along, Roberts told Guardian Australia. "Our strategy really has been about bootstrapping the datacentre platform with bitcoin mining, and then just preserve optionality on the whole digital world. The distinction with us and crypto-miners is we're not really miners, we're datacentre people." The company still trumpets its bitcoin mining capability but in the most recent results Iris said it was well positioned for "power dense computing" with 100% renewable energy. Roberts said it wasn't an either-or situation between bitcoin mining and AI.

"I think when you look at bitcoin versus AI, the market will just reach equilibrium based on the market-based demands for each product," he said... Holmes said Hive also saw the two industries operating in parallel. "We love the bitcoin mining business, but its revenue is rather unpredictable. GPU cloud services should complement it well," he said.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mspohr for sharing the article.

Tony Isaac writes: The doomsday clock remains at 90 seconds to midnight, the same as last year. Interestingly, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists added 'AI' to the list of threats that they consider to be existential threats to humanity, but didn't move the hands of the clock as a result of adding that threat. My take is that they consider AI to be a very low-grade threat, but it makes me wonder why they included it at all.

Although Netflix no longer allows new or returning members to sign up for the ad-free Basic subscription that costs $11.99 per month, company executives told investors while reporting its earnings results today that it's retiring the plan in some countries where ad-supported plans are available. It's starting with Canada and the UK in the second quarter of this year. From a report: That leaves subscribers with Netflix's $15.49 per month option as Netflix's cheapest ad-free plan. Going from $11.99 to $15.49 per month is a pretty big jump, and means there's really no middle ground for ad-free plans. Otherwise, subscribers will have to pay $6.99 per month for its ad-supported basic plan or $22.99 per month for the Premium tier. Netflix stopped letting new subscribers sign up for its Basic plan in Canada last year before rolling out the change to the US and UK.