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"A second major academic institution has accused Uber of using opaque computer code to dramatically increase its profits at the expense of the ride-hailing app's drivers and passengers," reports the Guardian: Research by academics at New York's Columbia Business School concluded that the Silicon Valley company had implemented "algorithmic price discrimination" that had raised "rider fares and cut driver pay on billions of ... trips, systematically, selectively, and opaquely". The Ivy League business school research — which is based on an analysis of "tens of thousands of trips ... as well as an analysis of over 2 million ... trip requests" — follows a similar academic paper based on 1.5m UK trips that was published last week by the University of Oxford. The British study found that many UK Uber drivers were making "substantially less" each hour since the ride-hailing app introduced a "dynamic pricing" algorithm in 2023 that coincided with the company taking a significantly higher share of fares... [Len Sherman, the US report's author] added: "Since implementing upfront pricing, Uber has increased rider prices, has cut driver pay, has increased its take rates, and, of course, has greatly improved its cashflow during the period covered by this study...." The Columbia paper, which focused on 24,532 trips made by a single US Uber driver, concluded that the introduction of the new algorithm had allowed Uber to "significantly increase its take rate — the per cent of rider fares net of driver pay captured by the company — from about 32% at the start of upfront pricing to upwards of 42% by the end of 2024". Last week's University of Oxford research found that, since the launch of dynamic pricing, Uber's median take rate per UK driver had "increased from 25% to 29%, and on some trips ... is over 50%". Thanks to Slashdot reader votsalo for sharing the news.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from WebProNews: The Linux world is abuzz with news of XLibre, a fork of the venerable X11 window display system, which aims to be an alternative to X11's successor, Wayland. Much of the Linux world is working to adopt Wayland, the successor to X11. Wayland has been touted as being a superior option, providing better security and performance. Despite Fedora and Ubuntu both going Wayland-only, the newer display protocol still lags behind X11, in terms of functionality, especially in the realm of accessibility, screen recording, session restore, and more. In addition, despite the promise of improved performance, many users report performance regressions compared to X11. While progress is being made, it has been slow going, especially for a project that is more than 17 years old. To make matters worse, Wayland is largely being improved by committee, with the various desktop environment teams trying to work together to further the protocol. Progress is further hampered by the fact that the GNOME developers often object to the implementation of some functionality that doesn't fit with their vision of what a desktop should be — despite those features being present and needed in every other environment. In response, developer Enrico Weigelt has forked Xll into the XLibre project. Weigelt was already one of the most prolific X11 contributors at a time when little to no improvements or new features are being added to the aging window system... Weigelt has wasted no time releasing the inaugural version of XLibre, XLibre 25.0. The release includes a slew of improvements. MrBrklyn (Slashdot reader #4,775) adds that Artix Linux, a rolling-release distro based on Arch Linux which does not use systemd, now offers XLibre ISO images and packages for testing and use. They're all non-systemd based, and "Its a decent undertaking by the Artix development team. The iso is considered to be testing but it is quickly moving to the regular repos for broad public use."

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An anonymous reader shared this report from WebProNews: The Linux world is abuzz with news of XLibre, a fork of the venerable X11 window display system, which aims to be an alternative to X11's successor, Wayland. Much of the Linux world is working to adopt Wayland, the successor to X11. Wayland has been touted as being a superior option, providing better security and performance. Despite Fedora and Ubuntu both going Wayland-only, the newer display protocol still lags behind X11, in terms of functionality, especially in the realm of accessibility, screen recording, session restore, and more. In addition, despite the promise of improved performance, many users report performance regressions compared to X11. While progress is being made, it has been slow going, especially for a project that is more than 17 years old. To make matters worse, Wayland is largely being improved by committee, with the various desktop environment teams trying to work together to further the protocol. Progress is further hampered by the fact that the GNOME developers often object to the implementation of some functionality that doesn't fit with their vision of what a desktop should be — despite those features being present and needed in every other environment. In response, developer Enrico Weigelt has forked Xll into the XLibre project. Weigelt was already one of the most prolific X11 contributors at a time when little to no improvements or new features are being added to the aging window system... Weigelt has wasted no time releasing the inaugural version of XLibre, XLibre 25.0. The release includes a slew of improvements. MrBrklyn (Slashdot reader #4,775) adds that Artix Linux, a rolling-release distro based on Arch Linux which does not use systemd, now offers XLibre ISO images and packages for testing and use. They're all non-systemd based, and "Its a decent undertaking by the Artix development team. The iso is considered to be testing but it is quickly moving to the regular repos for broad public use."

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After past damage to undersea cables, Denmark will boost their surveillance of Baltic Sea/North Sea waters by deploying four uncrewed surface vessels — about 10 meters long — that are equipped with drones and also AI, reports Euronews. The founder/CEO of the company that makes the vessels — Saildrone — says they'll work "like a truck" that "carries the sensors." And then "we use on-board sophisticated machine learning and AI to fuse that data to give us a full picture of what's above and below the surface." Powered by solar and wind energy, they can operate autonomously for months at sea. [Saildrone] said the autonomous sailboats can support operations such as illegal fishing detection, border enforcement, and strategic asset protection... The four "Voyagers" will be first in operation for a three-month trial, as Denmark and NATO allies aim at extending maritime presence, especially around critical undersea infrastructure such as fibre optic cables and power lines. NATO and its allies have increased sea patrolling following several incidents.

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"Mercedes-AMG is transitioning away from the four-cylinder plug-in hybrid powertrain," reports Car and Driver, "and back towards the inline-six and V-8 powertrains more traditionally associated with the brand." That isn't to say that AMG had a change of heart concerning the merits of the four-cylinder powertrain, but rather that the automaker is responding to customer criticisms. "Technically, the four-cylinder is one of the most advanced drivetrains available in a production car. It's also right up there on performance. But despite this, it failed to resonate with our traditional customers. We've recognized that," a source at Mercedes told Autocar... Car and Driver also spoke with AMG chief Michael Schiebe at the reveal of the AMG GT XX electric concept car... Although the four-cylinder may be on its way out, Schiebe did say AMG remains committed to plug-in hybrids. "There are a lot of advantages of combining electric motors with combustion engines," Schiebe said. "We want to offer different kinds of drivetrain opportunities on the combustion side to our customers, so they can choose for whatever purpose they want to use the car." Much of the criticism of the C63 and GLC63's powertrain was focused on the lackluster sound when compared with the symphony of a V-8. The M139 drew our ire for sounding "reedy" and "buzzy" in our test of the current C63. The C63's hybrid system also brings the car's curb weight up to nearly 5000 pounds, meaning it didn't provide a meaningful performance boost over its V-8 predecessor despite offering significantly more horsepower.... AMG wouldn't confirm exactly when the four-cylinder will be phased out, telling Autocar that it will remain in production for the time being before "eventually" being replaced. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the news.

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Linux Desktop: What Makes KDE Plasma So Appealing?  The New Stack

Linux Phones, the New HDMI, and More: Weekly Roundup  How-To Geek

I'd give everything for a pre-configured Android gaming handheld  Android Authority

Linux 6.16 Extends Cleaner Shader Support To More AMD CDNA/GFX9 GPUs  Phoronix

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Tuesday, software engineer Doug Brown published his discovery of how to trigger a long-known but previously inaccessible Easter egg in the Power Mac G3's ROM: a hidden photo of the development team that nobody could figure out how to display for 27 years. While Pierre Dandumont first documented the JPEG image itself in 2014, the method to view it on the computer remained a mystery until Brown's reverse engineering work revealed that users must format a RAM disk with the text "secret ROM image." Brown stumbled upon the image while using a hex editor tool called Hex Fiend with Eric Harmon's Mac ROM template to explore the resources stored in the beige Power Mac G3's ROM. The ROM appeared in desktop, minitower, and all-in-one G3 models from 1997 through 1999. "While I was browsing through the ROM, two things caught my eye," Brown wrote. He found both the HPOE resource containing the JPEG image of team members and a suspicious set of Pascal strings in the PowerPC-native SCSI Manager 4.3 code that included ".Edisk," "secret ROM image," and "The Team." The strings provided the crucial clue Brown needed. After extracting and disassembling the code using Ghidra, he discovered that the SCSI Manager was checking for a RAM disk volume named "secret ROM image." When found, the code would create a file called "The Team" containing the hidden JPEG data. Brown initially shared his findings on the #mac68k IRC channel, where a user named Alex quickly figured out the activation method. The trick requires users to enable the RAM Disk in the Memory control panel, restart, select the RAM Disk icon, choose "Erase Disk" from the Special menu, and type "secret ROM image" into the format dialog. "If you double-click the file, SimpleText will open it," Brown explains on his blog just before displaying the hidden team photo that emerges after following the steps.

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Threat Actors Exploit Windows and Linux Server Vulnerabilities to Deploy Web Shells  GBHackers News

Threat Actors Exploit Windows and Linux Server Vulnerabilities to Deploy Web Shells  GBHackers News

Threat Actors Exploit Windows and Linux Server Vulnerabilities to Deploy Web Shells  GBHackers News

Threat Actors Exploit Windows and Linux Server Vulnerabilities to Deploy Web Shells  GBHackers News

The Canadian government has ordered Chinese surveillance camera manufacturer Hikvision to cease operations in Canada over national security concerns, Industry Minister Melanie Joly said late on Friday. From a report: Hikvision, also known as Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co, has faced numerous sanctions and restrictions by Canada's neighbor, the United States, over the past five and a half years for the firm's dealings and the use of its equipment in China's Xinjiang region, where rights groups have documented abuses against the Uyghur population and other Muslim communities. "The government has determined that Hikvision Canada's continued operations in Canada would be injurious to Canada's national security," Joly said on X, adding that the decision was taken after a multi-step review of information provided by Canada's security and intelligence community."

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Graphic artists in China are pushing back against AI image generators, which they say "profoundly shifts clients' perception of their work, specifically in terms of how much that work costs and how much time it takes to produce," reports The Verge. "Freelance artists or designers working in industries with clients that invest in stylized, eye-catching graphics, like advertising, are particularly at risk." From the report: Long before AI image generators became popular, graphic designers at major tech companies and in-house designers for large corporate clients were often instructed by managers to crib aesthetics from competitors or from social media, according to one employee at a major online shopping platform in China, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from their employer. Where a human would need to understand and reverse engineer a distinctive style to recreate it, AI image generators simply create randomized mutations of it. Often, the results will look like obvious copies and include errors, but other graphic designers can then edit them into a final product. "I think it'd be easier to replace me if I didn't embrace [AI]," the shopping platform employee says. Early on, as tools like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney became more popular, their colleagues who spoke English well were selected to study AI image generators to increase in-house expertise on how to write successful prompts and identify what types of tasks AI was useful for. Ultimately, it was useful for copying styles from popular artists that, in the past, would take more time to study. "I think it forces both designers and clients to rethink the value of designers," Jia says. "Is it just about producing a design? Or is it about consultation, creativity, strategy, direction, and aesthetic?" [...] Across the board, though, artists and designers say that AI hype has negatively impacted clients' view of their work's value. Now, clients expect a graphic designer to produce work on a shorter timeframe and for less money, which also has its own averaging impact, lowering the ceiling for what designers can deliver. As clients lower budgets and squish timelines, the quality of the designers' output decreases. "There is now a significant misperception about the workload of designers," [says Erbing, a graphic designer in Beijing who has worked with several ad agencies and asked to be called by his nickname]. "Some clients think that since AI must have improved efficiency, they can halve their budget." But this perception runs contrary to what designers spend the majority of their time doing, which is not necessarily just making any image, Erbing says.

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Japanese politicians failed to pass legislation last month that would have allowed married couples to keep separate surnames, despite surveys showing majority public support for the change. Japan remains the only country requiring married couples by law to share the same surname, with women taking their husband's name in 95% of cases. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party's skepticism blocked opposition bills aimed at reforming the system. Keidanren, Japan's largest business lobby, says the current law "hinders women's advancement" as name changes complicate professional reputations. A study by NGO Asuniwa suggests reform could prompt 590,000 cohabiting couples to marry legally, potentially boosting Japan's birth rate since strong stigmas discourage births outside marriage. Some couples have developed workarounds. Teachers Uchiyama Yukari and Koike Yukio have divorced and remarried three times to sidestep the law, living unmarried most of the time but remarrying for each child's birth registration before divorcing again.

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Seven people have now received Neuralink's N1 brain implant, which enables individuals with ALS or spinal cord injuries to control a computer with their thoughts. PCMag reports: In a February 2025 update, Neuralink confirmed that three people had received its brain-computer interface (BCI). That increased to five by June, when it also reported a $650 million funding round. We're now at seven, Barrow tweeted today; Neuralink retweeted that message. Six of the seven are participating in the PRIME study, conducted by Barrow, which handles the implantations from its Phoenix, Arizona, office. It aims to prove that the N1 implant, the R1 surgical robot, and the N1 User App on the computer are safe and effective, according to the program brochure. (No BCIs have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.) Participants in the study get the implant through a surgery in which a custom-built robotic arm drills a hole in their skull and implants the device. The implant connects to a computer via Bluetooth, allowing patients to move the cursor, select words to type, browse the web, and even play video games -- a favorite activity of Neuralink's first human patient, Noland Arbaugh, who can do this all without moving any limbs or fingers. [...] Arbaugh, now 31, became paralyzed during a diving accident. Other Neuralink patients include Alex, a former machine parts builder who lost function of his arms and uses his N1 Implant to design 3D machine parts with computer-aided design (CAD). The third patient is Brad, the first person with ALS to receive the N1 implant, according to Barrow. Mike is the fourth patient, and "the first person with a full-time job to use the N1 Implant," Barrow says. "He worked as a survey technician for city government and spent the majority of his time in the field until his ALS made the work too difficult. Like Alex, Mike has used CAD software with his Neuralink device to continue doing survey work from home and provide for his family." The fifth publicly named patient is RJ, a veteran who became paralyzed after a motorcycle accident, according to the University of Miami. The other two patients remain anonymous, but we can expect Neuralink to continue recruiting more people (here's how to apply).

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The Danish government is to clamp down on the creation and dissemination of AI-generated deepfakes by changing copyright law to ensure that everybody has the right to their own body, facial features and voice. The Danish government said on Thursday it would strengthen protection against digital imitations of people's identities with what it believes to be the first law of its kind in Europe. Having secured broad cross-party agreement, the department of culture plans to submit a proposal to amend the current law for consultation before the summer recess and then submit the amendment in the autumn. It defines a deepfake as a very realistic digital representation of a person, including their appearance and voice. The Danish culture minister, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, said he hoped the bill before parliament would send an "unequivocal message" that everybody had the right to the way they looked and sounded. He told the Guardian: "In the bill we agree and are sending an unequivocal message that everybody has the right to their own body, their own voice and their own facial features, which is apparently not how the current law is protecting people against generative AI." He added: "Human beings can be run through the digital copy machine and be misused for all sorts of purposes and I'm not willing to accept that." The changes to Danish copyright law will, once approved, theoretically give people in Denmark the right to demand that online platforms remove such content if it is shared without consent. It will also cover "realistic, digitally generated imitations" of an artist's performance without consent. Violation of the proposed rules could result in compensation for those affected. The government said the new rules would not affect parodies and satire, which would still be permitted. "Of course this is new ground we are breaking, and if the platforms are not complying with that, we are willing to take additional steps," said Engel-Schmidt. He expressed hope that other European countries will follow suit and warned that "severe fines" will be imposed if tech platforms fail to comply.

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Tech companies Google and Palo Alto Networks are sounding the alarm over the "Scattered Spider" hacking group's interest in the aviation sector. From a report: In a statement posted on LinkedIn, Sam Rubin, an executive at Palo Alto's cybersecurity-focused Unit 42, said his company had "observed Muddled Libra (also known as Scattered Spider) targeting the aviation industry." In a similar statement, Charles Carmakal, an executive with Alphabet-owned Google's cybersecurity-focused Mandiant unit, said his company was "aware of multiple incidents in the airline and transportation sector which resemble the operations of UNC3944 or Scattered Spider." Axios adds: The group of mostly Western, English-speaking hackers has been on a months-long spree that's prompted operational disruptions at grocery suppliers, major retail storefronts and insurance companies in the U.S. and U.K. Hawaiian Airlines said Thursday it's addressing a "cybersecurity incident" that affected some of its IT systems. Canadian airline WestJet faced a similar incident last week that caused outages for some of its systems and mobile app. A source familiar with the incidents told Axios that Scattered Spider was likely behind the WestJet incident.

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