Technology

> The NS-25 mission lifted off on Sunday, ending a lengthy hiatus from crewed launches prompted by a failed uncrewed test flight in 2022.

> Ubuntu first switched to using Wayland as its default display server in 2017 before reverting the following year. It tried again in 2021 and has stuck

> After Apple loosened its App Store guidelines to permit game emulators, the retro game emulator Delta — an app 10 years in the making — hit the top of the App Store’s charts. But the increased attention also brought the threat of legal action, as Adobe targeted Delta for sporting a logo that looked too much like its own.

> Tech experts hope new term for carelessly automated AI webpages and images can illuminate its damaging impact

> Laundry services giant CSC ServiceWorks ignored requests to fix a security bug.

> Slack says policy changes are imminent amid backlash.

> Jan Leike, a key safety researcher at firm behind ChatGPT, quit days after launch of its latest AI model, GPT-4o

> Did that AI system use Doja Cat records for training data?

> Every competitor is better, and most of them are cheaper.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/15659639 >> The Tokyo District Court has dismissed a claim by an American engineer regarding an AI-generated invention, saying inventors provided for under the Patent Law are limited to natural persons.

> Digital collections put library patrons’ privacy at risk

> A quarter of all webpages that existed at one point between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible.

> A TikTok spokesperson said the claims were “unsupported by evidence.”

> Amendments contain loopholes that may blunt their effectiveness.

> Rival coders must have Europe-based staff to build and test non-WebKit surfing

> The EU's warning comes after Microsoft failed to respond to a legally binding request for information that focused on its generative AI tools.

Canada's industry minister says Ottawa is "considering all measures" after the U.S. announced it would be hiking tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and other related goods.

François-Philippe Champagne wouldn't rule out Canada imposing similar tariffs during an interview with CBC News Network's Power & Politics on Friday.

"It's fair to say that everything is on the table to protect our industry and our workers," Champagne told host David Cochrane.

"We're working in sync with the United States of America."

President Joe Biden announced earlier this week that the U.S. would be slapping new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminum and medical equipment.

The tariffs are to be phased in over the next three years; those that take effect in 2024 are covering EVs, solar cells, syringes, needles, steel and aluminum and more.

There are currently very few EVs from China in the U.S., but American officials worry that low-priced models made possible by Chinese government subsidies could soon start flooding the U.S. market.

In a separate interview on Tuesday, Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, said "Canada has to" implement similar trade levies.

"Now that the Americans have put up a tariff wall, we can't leave the side door open here," Volpe told guest host John Paul Tasker.

Brian Kingston, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association, echoed Volpe's argument in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"Canada cannot be out of step with the U.S. on China. We need aligned policies that strengthen the North American auto supply chain," he wrote.

Champagne insisted that Canada wouldn't be a route for China to gain access to the North American EV market.

"Canada has never been and will never be a backdoor [for] China in the North American market and our U.S. friends understand that," he said.

The federal government has partnered with provinces to attract investments from major automotive manufacturers to spur electric vehicle production in Canada.

The same day the U.S. announced its new tariffs, Asahi Kasei Corp., in partnership with Honda, announced the construction of a $1.6-billion electric vehicle battery plant in Port Colborne, Ont.

Volpe said domestic EV production could be held back if China floods the Canadian market with cheaper products.

"There's no logic for Canada to force our market to electrify and then turn the market over to the Chinese," he said.

China has maintained that the U.S. tariffs are a violation of international trade rules. It is not clear how the country will respond at this point.

Volpe suggested Beijing could retaliate by implementing export controls on its critical minerals that are used in EV battery manufacturing.

Champagne said it's important for Canada to shore up its own critical mineral production.

On Thursday, Canada and the U.S. announced they would be co-investing in critical mineral producers for the first time as they work to boost regional supplies.

Natural Resources Canada and the U.S. Department of Defense are together putting about $32.5 million into Fortune Minerals Ltd. — which is working on a project with bismuth and cobalt in the Northwest Territories — and Lomiko Metals Inc., focused on a graphite project in Quebec.

> Netflix is launching its own ad tech platform only a year and a half after entering the advertising business.

> Targeting posts boasting of personal wealth appears to be part of campaign to ‘purify the internet cultural environment’

> No need to download files then upload to ChatGPT.

> Slack is making it difficult for its customers if they want the company to stop using its data for model training.

> Flock Safety is a multibillion-dollar startup that’s got eyes everywhere. As of Wednesday, with the company’s new Solar Condor cameras, those eyes are solar-powered and use wireless 5G networks to make them all that much easier to install.

> Amazon already faces a major antitrust challenge from the FTC.

> Could you really control someone's hot water with just an email address?

> Before T-Mobile acquired Sprint, activists, consumer groups, and deal critics (including me) warned repeatedly that the telecom sector megadeal would result in layoffs, less competition, higher prices, and a lower quality product overall. The Trump FCC and DOJ very clearly didn’t care; they rubber stamped the deal without even reading deal impact reports.

Report: https://research.rewheel.fi/downloads/The_state_of_mobile_and_broadband_pricing_1H2024_PUBLIC_REDACTED_VERSION.pdf

> Following Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund providing significant funding for GNOME, Rust Coreutils, PHP, a systemd bug bounty, and numerous other free software projects, the FFmpeg multimedia library is the latest beneficiary to this funding from the Germany government.

> A Louisiana sheriff’s department has been testing the drone system, which is already used by the Israeli police and many settlements.

> Reddit’s signed AI licensing deals with Google and OpenAI.

> Comcast wants to tie its cable/Internet to your streaming subscriptions.

> Microsoft won't be facing antitrust scrutiny in the U.K. over its recent investment into French AI startup Mistral AI.

> Aspiring Author K. Renee was reportedly locked out of her own content on Google Docs after Google flagged it as "inappropriate."

> So long, Twitter.com.

> Tired of being underserved and overbilled by shitty regional broadband monopolies, back in 2002 a coalition of local Utah governments formed UTOPIA — (the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency). The inter-local agency collaborative venture then set about building an “open access” fiber network that allows any ISP to then come and compete on the shared network.

> Hong Kong employee was duped into sending cash to criminals by AI-generated video call

Taiwan's National Security Bureau (NSB) official Ko Cheng-heng said that Beijing’s campaign against Taiwan would spark a strong backlash from democracies around the world.

Cyberattacks from China have surged to 2.5 million per day as it intensifies its “gray zone” activities ahead of president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on Monday next week, the National Security Bureau (NSB) said yesterday at a meeting of the legislatures’ Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee.

An official in charge of the agency’s fifth division made the comments in response to questions from Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) about possible Chinese activities that would coincide with the inauguration.

China has increased disinformation operations and cyberattacks, the official said, adding that the latter more than doubled the average of 1 million hacks per day earlier this year.

The attacks, which mainly targeted government agencies, are being countered by the bureau’s efforts to find and eliminate cybersecurity vulnerabilities before they could be exploited, they said.

The bureau detected an uptick in Chinese “gray zone” warfare, but nothing unusual from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the months leading to the inauguration, NSB Deputy Director-General Ko Cheng-heng (柯承亨) said.

Asked by DPP Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) whether Wednesday’s sanctions against Taiwanese pundits by China threatened to “Hong Kongize” Taiwan, Ko said that Beijing’s campaign against the nation would spark a stronger backlash from the world’s democracies.

Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Remus Chen (陳立國) said that China’s experiment with extraterritorial repression has angered democratic nations globally, which cannot tolerate infringement on their national sovereignty and their citizens’ rights.

Meanwhile, a US Department of State spokesperson on Wednesday urged China to stop military, diplomatic and economic pressure against Taiwan, calling for Beijing to conduct meaningful dialogue across the Taiwan Strait.

The spokesperson made the remark in response to a request for comment from Central News Agency (CNA).

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Ministry of National Defense detected 51 PLA vessels operating near Taiwan.

The US expresses its concern over China’s continued attempt at intimidating and pressuring Taiwan, as Beijing’s actions carry a risk of miscalculation harming regional peace, the US spokesperson said.

Washington is to continue its opposition to any unilateral change of the “status quo” and support the peaceful resolution of the question concerning both sides of the Strait, positions that agree with the interests of Taiwanese, they said.

The US would ensure that diplomatic and military communication channels with Beijing remain open during the sensitive period of Taiwan’s transfer of power, a US official separately told CNA.

Likewise, Washington will maintain unofficial ties with Taiwan, they said.

The American Institute in Taiwan has advised Lai’s incoming administration of Washington’s long-standing policy on affairs in the Strait, they added.

The US cautions Taiwan that China would likely carry out coercive actions via “gray zone” tactics, they said, citing the example of China Coast Guard pressure near Kinmen County in February.

These tactics are not new for Beijing, which has practiced them in the South China Sea and around the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), they said.

By Tinglong Dai, Bernard T. Ferrari Professor of Business, Johns Hopkins University

In June 2019, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeted: “Trump doesn’t get the basics. He thinks his tariffs are being paid by China. Any freshman econ student could tell you that the American people are paying his tariffs.”

Fast-forward five years to May 2024, and President Biden has announced a hike in tariffs on a variety of Chinese imports, including a 100% tariff that would significantly increase the price of Chinese-made electric vehicles.

For a nation committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, efforts by the U.S. to block low-cost EVs might seem counterproductive. At a price of around US$12,000, Chinese automaker BYD’s Seagull electric car could quickly expand EV sales if it landed at that price in the U.S., where the cheapest new electric cars cost nearly three times more.

As an expert in global supply chains, however, I believe the Biden tariffs can succeed in giving the U.S. EV industry room to grow. Without the tariffs, U.S. auto sales risk being undercut by Chinese companies, which have much lower production costs due to their manufacturing methods, looser environmental and safety standards, cheaper labor and more generous government EV subsidies.

Tariffs have a troubled history

The U.S. has a long history of tariffs that have failed to achieve their economic goals.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was meant to protect American jobs by raising tariffs on imported goods. But it backfired by prompting other countries to raise their tariffs, which led to a drop in international trade and deepened the Great Depression.

Biden speaks at a podium with people standing behind him holding United Steelworkers signs.

President George W. Bush’s 2002 steel tariffs also led to higher steel prices, which hurt industries that use steel and cost American manufacturing an estimated 200,000 jobs. The tariffs were lifted after the World Trade Organization ruled against them.

The Obama administration’s tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels in 2012 blocked direct imports but failed to foster a domestic solar panel industry. Today, the U.S. relies heavily on imports from companies operating in Southeast Asia – primarily Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. Many of those companies are linked to China.

Why EV tariffs are different this time

Biden’s EV tariffs, however, might defy historical precedent and succeed where the solar tariff failed, for a few key reasons:

1. Timing matters.

When Obama imposed tariffs on solar panels in 2012, nearly half of U.S. installations were already using Chinese-manufactured panels. In contrast, Chinese-made EVs, including models sold in the U.S. by Volvo and Polestar, have negligible U.S. market shares.

Because the U.S. market is not dependent on Chinese-made EVs, the tariffs can be implemented without significant disruption or price increases, giving the domestic industry time to grow and compete more effectively.

By imposing tariffs early, the Biden administration hopes to prevent the U.S. market from becoming saturated with low-price Chinese EVs, which could undercut domestic manufacturers and stifle innovation.

2. Global supply chains are not the same today.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in global supply chains, such as the risk of disruptions in the availability of critical components and delays in production and shipping. These issues prompted many countries, including the U.S., to reevaluate their dependence on foreign manufacturers for critical goods and to shift toward reshoring – bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. – and strengthening domestic supply chains.

The war in Ukraine has further intensified the separation between U.S.-led and China-led economic orders, a phenomenon I call the “Supply Chain Iron Curtain.”

In a recent McKinsey survey, 67% of executives cited geopolitical risk as the greatest threat to global growth. In this context, EVs and their components, particularly batteries, are key products identified in Biden’s supply chain reviews as critical to the nation’s supply chain resilience.

Ensuring a stable and secure supply of these components through domestic manufacturing can mitigate the risks associated with global supply chain disruptions and geopolitical tensions.

3. National security concerns are higher.

Unlike solar panels, EVs have direct national security implications. The Biden administration considers Chinese-made EVs a potential cybersecurity threat due to the possibility of embedded software that could be used for surveillance or cyberattacks.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has discussed espionage risks involving the potential for foreign-made EVs to collect sensitive data and transmit it outside the U.S. Officials have raised concerns about the resilience of an EV supply chain dependent on other countries in the event of a geopolitical conflict.

BYD targets EV sales in Mexico

While Biden’s EV tariffs might succeed in keeping Chinese competition out for a while, Chinese EV manufacturers could try to circumvent the tariffs by moving production to countries such as Mexico.

This scenario is similar to past tactics used by Chinese solar panel manufacturers, which relocated production to other Asian countries to avoid U.S. tariffs.

Chinese automaker BYD, the world leader in EV sales, is already exploring establishing a factory in Mexico to produce its new electric truck. Nearly 10% of cars sold in Mexico in 2023 were produced by Chinese automakers.

Given the changing geopolitical reality, Biden’s 100% EV tariffs are likely the beginning of a broader strategy rather than an isolated measure. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai hinted at this during a recent press conference, stating that addressing vehicles made in Mexico would require “a separate pathway” and to “stay tuned” for future actions.

Is Europe next?

For now, given the near absence of Chinese-made EVs in the U.S. auto market, Biden’s EV tariffs are unlikely to have a noticeable short-term impact in the U.S. They could, however, affect decisions in Europe.

The European Union saw Chinese EV imports more than double over a seven-month period in 2023, undercutting European vehicles by offering lower prices. Manufacturers are concerned. When finance ministers from the Group of Seven advanced democracies meet in late May, tariffs will be on the agenda.

Biden’s move might encourage similar protective actions elsewhere, reinforcing the global shift toward securing supply chains and promoting domestic manufacturing.

> If you’re a fan of chaos, well, the TikTok ban situation is providing plenty of chaos to follow. Ever since the US government made it clear it was seriously going to move forward with the obviously unconstitutional and counterproductive plan to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok or have the app effectively banned from the U.S., various rich people have been stepping up with promises to buy the app.

> Passkeys are also coming to Wear OS 5 smartwatches.

> Its carbon pollution has ballooned since making a big climate pledge.

> The "grief tech" firms helping users create talking avatars of their dead relatives.