An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics:

> American composer Alvin Lucier was well-known for his experimental works that tested the boundaries of music and art. A longtime professor at Wesleyan University (before retiring in 2011), Alvin passed away in 2021 at the age of 90. However, that wasn't the end of his lifelong musical odyssey. Earlier this month, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, a new art installation titled Revivification used Lucier's "brain matter" -- hooked up to an electrode mesh connected to twenty large brass plates -- to create electrical signals that triggered a mallet to strike the varying plates, [1]creating a kind of post-mortem musical piece . Conceptualized in collaboration with Lucier himself before his death, the artists solicited the help of researchers from Harvard Medical School, who grew a mini-brain from Lucier's white blood cells. The team created stem cells from these white blood cells, and due to their pluripotency, the cells developed into cerebral organoids somewhat similar to developing human brains.

"At a time when generative AI is calling into question human agency, this project explores the challenges of locating creativity and artistic originality," the team behind Revivification [2]told The Art Newspaper . "Revivification is an attempt to shine light on the sometimes dark possibilities of extending a person's presence beyond the seemed finality of death."

"The central question we want people to ask is: could there be a filament of memory that persists through this biological transformation? Can Lucier's creative essence persist beyond his death?" the team said.



[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a64490277/brain-matter-music/

[2] https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/03/27/brain-of-late-composer-lives-on-in-show-at-the-art-gallery-of-western-australia

Netflix's Q1 revenue [1]rose to $10.5 billion , a 13% increase from last year, while net income grew to $2.9 billion. The company says it expects more growth in the coming months when it sees "the full quarter benefit from recent price changes and continued growth in membership and advertising revenue." The Verge reports:

> Netflix raised the prices across most of its plans in January, with its premium plan hitting $24.99 per month. It also increased the price of its Extra Member option -- its solution to password sharing -- to $8.99 per month. Though Netflix already rolled out the increase in the US, UK, and Argentina, the streamer now plans to do the same in France. This is the first quarter that Netflix didn't reveal how many subscribers it gained or lost. It decided to only report "major subscriber milestones" last year, as other streams of revenue continue to grow, like advertising, continue to grow. Netflix last reported having 300 million global subscribers in January.

>

> During an earnings call on Thursday, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said the company expects to "roughly double" advertising revenue in 2025. The company launched its own advertising technology platform earlier this month. There are some changes coming to Netflix, too, as Peters confirmed that its homepage redesign for its TV app will roll out "later this year." He also hinted at adding an "interactive" search feature using "generative technologies," which sounds a lot like the AI feature Bloomberg reported on last week.

Further reading: [2]Netflix CEO Counters Cameron's AI Cost-Cutting Vision: 'Make Movies 10% Better'



[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/650930/netflix-revenue-rises-earnings-q1-2025

[2] https://slashdot.org/story/25/04/18/1212204/netflix-ceo-counters-camerons-ai-cost-cutting-vision-make-movies-10-better

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek:

> An October 2024 study by Software AG suggests that [1]half of all employees are Shadow AI users , and most of them wouldn't stop even if it was banned. The problem is the ease of access to AI tools, and a work environment that increasingly advocates the use of AI to improve corporate efficiency. It is little wonder that employees seek their own AI tools to improve their personal efficiency and maximize the potential for promotion. It is frictionless, says Michael Marriott, VP of marketing at Harmonic Security. 'Using AI at work feels like second nature for many knowledge workers now. Whether it's summarizing meeting notes, drafting customer emails, exploring code, or creating content, employees are moving fast.' If the official tools aren't easy to access or if they feel too locked down, they'll use whatever's available which is often via an open tab on their browser.

>

> There is almost also never any malicious intent (absent, perhaps, the mistaken employment of rogue North Korean IT workers); merely a desire to do and be better. If this involves using unsanctioned AI tools, employees will likely not disclose their actions. The reasons may be complex but combine elements of a reluctance to admit that their efficiency is AI assisted rather than natural, and knowledge that use of personal shadow AI might be discouraged. The result is that enterprises often have little knowledge of the extent of Shadow IT, nor the risks it may present.

According to [2]an analysis from Harmonic, ChatGPT is the dominant gen-AI model used by employees, with 45% of data prompts originating from personal accounts (such as Gmail). Image files accounted for 68.3%. The report also notes that 7% of empmloyees were using Chinese AI models like DeepSeek, Baidu Chat and Qwen.

"Overall, there has been a slight reduction in sensitive prompt frequency from Q4 2024 (down from 8.5% to 6.7% in Q1 2025)," reports SecurityWeek. "However, there has been a shift in the risk categories that are potentially exposed. Customer data (down from 45.8% to 27.8%), employee data (from 26.8% to 14.3%) and security (6.9% to 2.1%) have all reduced. Conversely, legal and financial data (up from 14.9% to 30.8%) and sensitive code (5.6% to 10.1%) have both increased. PII is a new category introduced in Q1 2025 and was tracked at 14.9%."



[1] https://www.securityweek.com/the-shadow-ai-surge-study-finds-50-of-workers-use-unapproved-ai-tools/

[2] https://www.harmonic.security/resources/the-ai-tightrope-balancing-innovation-and-exposure

Some actors who sold their likenesses to AI video companies like Synthesia [1]now regret the decision , after finding their digital avatars used in misleading, embarrassing, or politically charged content. Ars Technica reports:

> Among them is a 29-year-old New York-based actor, Adam Coy, who licensed rights to his face and voice to a company called MCM for one year for $1,000 without thinking, "am I crossing a line by doing this?" His partner's mother later found videos where he appeared as a doomsayer predicting disasters, he [2]told the AFP . South Korean actor Simon Lee's AI likeness was similarly used to spook naive Internet users but in a potentially more harmful way. He told the AFP that he was "stunned" to find his AI avatar promoting "questionable health cures on TikTok and Instagram," feeling ashamed to have his face linked to obvious scams. [...]

>

> Even a company publicly committed to ethically developing AI avatars and preventing their use in harmful content like Synthesia can't guarantee that its content moderation will catch everything. A British actor, Connor Yeates, told the AFP that his video was "used to promote Ibrahim Traore, the president of Burkina Faso who took power in a coup in 2022" in violation of Synthesia's terms. [...] Yeates was paid about $5,000 for a three-year contract with Synthesia that he signed simply because he doesn't "have rich parents and needed the money." But he likely couldn't have foreseen his face being used for propaganda, as even Synthesia didn't anticipate that outcome.

>

> Others may not like their AI avatar videos but consider the financial reward high enough to make up for the sting. Coy confirmed that money motivated his decision, and while he found it "surreal" to be depicted as a con artist selling a dystopian future, that didn't stop him from concluding that "it's decent money for little work." Potentially improving the climate for actors, Synthesia is forming a talent program that it claims will give actors a voice in decision-making about AI avatars. "By involving actors in decision-making processes, we aim to create a culture of mutual respect and continuous improvement," Synthesia's blog said.



[1] https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/04/regrets-actors-who-sold-ai-avatars-stuck-in-black-mirror-esque-dystopia/

[2] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/04/17/tech/ai-sale-regret/

IBM is mandating that U.S. sales and Cloud employees [1]return to the office at least three days a week , with work required at designated client sites, flagship offices, or sales hubs. According to The Register, some IBM employees argue that these policies "represent stealth layoffs because older (and presumably more highly compensated) employees tend to be less willing to uproot their lives, and families where applicable, than the 'early professional hires' IBM has been courting at some legal risk." From the report:

> In a staff memo seen by The Register, Adam Lawrence, general manager for IBM Americas, billed the return-to-office for most stateside sales personnel as a "return to client initiative."Citing how "remarkable it is when our teams work side by side" at IBM's swanky Manhattan flagship office, unveiled in September 2024, Lawrence added IBM is investing in an Austin, Texas, office to be occupied in 2026.

>

> Whether US sales staff end up working in NYC, Austin, or some other authorized location, Lawrence told them to brace for -- deep breath -- IBM's "new model" of "effective talent acquisition, deployment, and career progression." We're told that model is "centered on client proximity for those dedicated to specific clients, and anchored on core IBM locations for those dedicated to territories or those in above-market leadership roles." The program requires most IBM US sales staff "to work at least three days a week from the client location where their assigned territory decision-makers work, a flagship office, or a sales hub." Those residing more than 50 miles from their assigned location will be offered relocation benefits to move. Sales hubs are an option only for those with more than one dedicated account.

>

> [...] IBM's office policy change reached US Cloud employees in an April 10 memo from Alan Peacock, general manager of IBM Cloud. Peacock set a July 1, 2025, deadline for US Cloud employees to work from an office at least three days per week, with relocating workers given until October 1, 2025. The employee shuffling has been accompanied by rolling layoffs in the US, but hiring in India -- there are at least 10x as many open IBM jobs in India as there are in any other IBM location, according to the corporation's career listings. And earlier this week, IBM said it "is setting up a new software lab in Lucknow," India.



[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/18/ibm_orders_us_sales_staff/

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media:

> A judge in Nevada has ruled that "tower dumps" -- the law enforcement practice of grabbing vast troves of private personal data from cell towers -- [1]is unconstitutional . The judge also ruled that the cops could, this one time, still use the evidence they obtained through this unconstitutional search. Cell towers record the location of phones near them about every seven seconds. When the cops request a tower dump, they ask a telecom for the numbers and personal information of every single phone connected to a tower during a set time period. Depending on the area, these tower dumps can return tens of thousands of numbers. Cops have been able to sift through this data to solve crimes. But tower dumps are also a massive privacy violation that flies in the face of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unlawful search and seizure. When the cops get a tower dump they're not just searching and seizing the data of a suspected criminal, they're sifting through the information of everyone who was in the location.

The ruling stems from a court case involving Cory Spurlock, a Nevada man charged with drug offenses and a murder-for-hire plot. He was implicated through a cellphone tower dump that law enforcement used to place his device near the scenes of the alleged crimes.

A federal judge ruled that the tower dump constituted an unconstitutional general search under the Fourth Amendment but declined to suppress the evidence, citing officers' good faith in obtaining a warrant. It marks the first time a court in the Ninth Circuit has ruled on the constitutionality of tower dumps, which in Spurlock's case captured location data from over 1,600 users -- many of whom had no way to opt out.



[1] https://www.404media.co/judge-rules-blanket-search-of-cell-tower-data-unconstitutional/

Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos pushed back on director James Cameron's recent assertion that AI [1]could slash film production costs by half , arguing instead for quality improvements over cost reduction during Netflix's first-quarter earnings call Thursday. "I read the article too about what Jim Cameron said about making movies 50% cheaper," Sarandos said. "I remain convinced that there's an even bigger opportunity to make movies 10% better."

Sarandos pointed to Netflix's current AI implementations in set references, pre-visualization, VFX sequence preparation, and shot planning. He said AI-powered tools have democratized high-end visual effects that were once exclusive to big-budget productions. The executive cited 2019's "The Irishman" as a benchmark, noting its "very cutting-edge, very expensive de-aging technology that still had massive limitations." In contrast, he referenced cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto's directorial debut "Pedro Paramo," which employed AI-powered de-aging at "a fraction" of The Irishman's cost. "The entire budget of the film was about what the VFX cost on The Irishman," Sarandos explained. "Same creator using new tools, better tools, to do what was impossible five years ago."



[1] https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/04/11/154250/james-cameron-ai-could-help-cut-vfx-costs-in-half-saving-blockbuster-cinema

A new Seagate report reveals that hard drives significantly outperform solid-state drives in environmental sustainability metrics, particularly when accounting for manufacturing processes. According to the storage-maker's " [1]"Decarbonizing Data">Decarbonizing Data " [PDF] study, the embodied carbon from manufacturing a 30TB SSD reaches 4,915 kg of CO2 -- approximately 160 times higher than the 29.7 kg produced in creating a comparable hard drive.

The analysis measures the full manufacturing footprint, including "upstream extraction, production, transport, bill of material, manufacturing, packaging, and distribution stages" of each technology's lifecycle. When calculated per terabyte annually, the difference remains stark: less than 0.2 kg CO2/TB/year for hard drives versus 32 kg for SSDs. Operational efficiency follows similar patterns, with hard drives consuming 9.6 watts during use versus 20 watts for SSDs, translating to 0.32 and 0.5 watts per terabyte respectively.



[1] https://www.seagate.com/content/dam/seagate/assets/resources/decarbonizing-data-report/decarbonizing-data-report-040325.pdf

[1]Bruce66423 shares a report:

> Toothpaste can be widely contaminated with lead and other dangerous heavy metals, new research shows.

>

> Most of 51 brands of toothpaste [2]tested for lead contained the dangerous heavy metal , including those for children or those marketed as green. The testing, conducted by Lead Safe Mama, also found concerning levels of highly toxic arsenic, mercury and cadmium in many brands.

>

> About 90% of toothpastes contained lead, 65% contained arsenic, just under half contained mercury, and one-third had cadmium. Many brands contain a number of the toxins. The highest levels detected violated the state of Washington's limits, but not federal limits. The thresholds have been roundly criticized by public health advocates for not being protective -- no level of exposure to lead is safe, the federal government has found.

Bruce66423 asks: "As ever the question that should be asked is: 'What level is worth worrying about and why?'"



[1] https://slashdot.org/~Bruce66423

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/17/toothpaste-lead-heavy-metals

An anonymous reader shares a report:

> Members of the European Parliament were [1]offered special pouches to protect digital devices from espionage and tampering for a visit to Hungary this week, a sign of rising spying fears within Europe.

>

> Five lawmakers from the Parliament's civil liberties committee traveled to Hungary on Monday for a three-day visit to inspect the EU member country's progress on democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights.

>

> One lawmaker on the trip confirmed to POLITICO that the Parliament officials joining the delegation were offered Faraday bags -- special metal-lined pouches that block electromagnetic signals -- by the Parliament's services and were also advised to be cautious about using public Wi-Fi networks or charging facilities.



[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/lawmakers-offered-anti-espionage-phone-pouches-in-hungary/

A communication error between GoDaddy Registry and Markmonitor took Zoom's services offline for almost two hours on Wednesday when GoDaddy [1]mistakenly blocked the zoom.us domain . The outage affected all services dependent on the zoom.us domain.

GoDaddy's block prevented top-level domain nameservers from maintaining proper DNS records for zoom.us. This created a classic domain resolution failure -- when users attempted to connect to any zoom.us address, their requests couldn't be routed to Zoom's servers because the domain effectively disappeared from the internet's addressing system.

Video meetings abruptly terminated mid-session with browser errors indicating the domain couldn't be found. Zoom's status page (status.zoom.us) went offline, hampering communication efforts. Even Zoom's main website at zoom.com failed as the content delivery network couldn't reach backend services hosted on zoom.us servers. Customer support capabilities collapsed when account managers using Zoom's VoIP phones lost connectivity.

Resolution required coordinated effort between Zoom, Markmonitor, and GoDaddy to identify and remove the block. After service restoration, users needed to manually flush their DNS caches using command line instructions (including the sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder command for Mac users).



[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/17/zoom_outage_godaddy_blamed/

Rice, the world's most consumed grain, will [1]become increasingly toxic as the atmosphere heats and as carbon dioxide emissions rise, potentially putting billions of people at risk of cancers and other diseases, according to [2]new research published this week in The Lancet. From a report:

> Eaten every day by billions of people and grown across the globe, rice is arguably the planet's most important staple crop, with half the world's population relying on it for the majority of its food needs, especially in developing countries.

>

> But the way rice is grown -- mostly submerged in paddies -- and its highly porous texture mean it can absorb unusually high levels of arsenic, a potent carcinogenic toxin that is especially dangerous for babies.

After growing rice in controlled fields for six years, researchers from Columbia University and international partners found that when both temperature and CO2 increased in line with climate projections, arsenic levels in rice grains rose significantly. "When we put both of them together, then wow, that was really something we were not expecting," said Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist at Columbia University who led the study. "You're looking at a crop staple that's consumed by a billion people every day, and any effect on toxicity is going to have a pretty damn large effect."

Inorganic arsenic exposure has been linked to cancers, heart disease, and neurological problems in infants. Disease risk rose across all seven top rice-consuming Asian countries analyzed. "This is one more reason to intervene -- to control people's exposure," said co-author Keeve Nachman of Johns Hopkins University. "The No. 1 thing we can do is everything in our power to slow climate change."



[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/climate-change-will-make-rice-toxic-say-researchers/

[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(25)00055-5/fulltext

Nature has published an [1]analysis of the 21st century's most-cited scientific papers , revealing a surprising pattern: breakthrough discoveries like mRNA vaccines, CRISPR, and gravitational waves don't make the list. Instead, a 2016 Microsoft paper on "deep residual learning" networks claims the top spot, with citations ranging from 103,756 to 254,074 depending on the database.

The list overwhelmingly features methodology papers and software tools rather than groundbreaking discoveries. AI research dominates with four papers in the top ten, including Google's 2017 "Attention is all you need" paper that underpins modern language models.

The second-most-cited paper -- a 2001 guide for analyzing gene expression data -- was explicitly created to be cited after journal reviewers rejected references to a technical manual. As sociologist Misha Teplitskiy noted, "Scientists say they value methods, theory and empirical discoveries, but in practice the methods get cited more."



[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01125-9

New research suggests Oda Ujiharu, long derided as feudal Japan's most ineffective military leader, [1]may have been mischaracterized . The Sengoku-period daimyo, who ruled from Oda Castle in present-day Ibaraki Prefecture, lost his fortress an unprecedented nine times to rival clans -- but recaptured it eight times, often with inferior forces.

"His refusal to accept defeat and his iron will to get up and keep fighting is why many historians reject the 'weakest samurai warlord' nickname and instead refer to him as 'The Phoenix,'" notes the research published in Tokyo Weekender. While Ujiharu's battlefield decisions appear strategically baffling -- repeatedly abandoning castle defenses for open combat -- some researchers propose these actions were deliberately taken to protect peasant settlements from the devastation of prolonged sieges. From the article:

> Ujiharu's blind charges may actually have had a noble purpose. Japanese battles involving castles almost always turned into sieges, and those always ended the same way: with the nearby fields and peasant settlements being either destroyed to try and draw the lord out of the castle or looted to feed the occupying army. Some researchers believe that Ujiharu was trying to avoid a siege to save his subjects.

Despite numerous military setbacks, Ujiharu maintained remarkable loyalty from his subordinates. Historical records indicate that after his initial campaigns, attempts to bribe or threaten his retainers to defect consistently failed.

The daimyo demonstrated considerable diplomatic acumen, forming multiple alliances with former enemies throughout his career. His downfall came only after hesitating to pledge allegiance to Toyotomi Hideyoshi during Japan's unification, resulting in his lands being confiscated.



[1] https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-culture/oda-ujiharu-the-weakest-samurai-warlord/

A ground-breaking project to suck carbon out of the sea has [1]started operating on England's south coast . From a report:

> The small pilot scheme, known as SeaCURE, is funded by the UK government as part of its search for technologies that fight climate change. [...] These projects, known as carbon capture, usually focus either on capturing emissions at source or pulling them from the air. What makes SeaCure interesting is that it is testing whether it might be more efficient to pull planet-warming carbon from the sea, since it is present in greater concentrations in water than in the air.



[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr788kljlklo

Sage has retracted 678 more papers from the Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems (JIFS), concluding an investigation that has [1]now purged 1,561 articles -- the most ever removed from a single journal. The publisher, which acquired JIFS from IOS Press in November 2023, began investigating the journal in early 2024 after discovering "indicators that raised concerns about the authenticity of the research and the peer review process."

This final batch follows 467 articles retracted in August and another 416 in January. Problems in the retracted papers included citation manipulation, "tortured phrases," unauthorized third-party involvement in submissions, and evidence suggesting collusion between authors and reviewers. Most authors were from India and China, with some from Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. Cengiz Kahraman of Istanbul Technical University, who authored 20 of the retracted papers, disputed the decision, telling Retraction Watch that Sage acted "without any reason and evidence." The journal has now resumed publishing.



[1] https://retractionwatch.com/2025/04/17/sage-journal-intelligent-fuzzy-systems-retracts-678-more-papers/

An AI support bot for the code editor Cursor [1]invented a nonexistent subscription policy , triggering user cancellations and public backlash this week. When developer "BrokenToasterOven" complained about being logged out when switching between devices, the company's AI agent "Sam" falsely claimed this was intentional: "Cursor is designed to work with one device per subscription as a core security feature."

Users took the fabricated policy as official, with several announcing subscription cancellations on Reddit. "I literally just cancelled my sub," wrote the original poster, adding that their workplace was "purging it completely." Cursor representatives scrambled to correct the misinformation: "Hey! We have no such policy. You're of course free to use Cursor on multiple machines." Cofounder Michael Truell later apologized, explaining that a backend security change had unintentionally created login problems.



[1] https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/04/cursor-ai-support-bot-invents-fake-policy-and-triggers-user-uproar/

Amazon plans to release its first TV streaming device powered by Vega OS [1]later this year while courting major publishers to bring their apps to the platform, according to Lowpass, which cites sources familiar with the company's plans and multiple leaks.

Vega, a Linux-based operating system, may eventually replace Amazon's Android-based Fire OS across its device ecosystem. The company has already implemented Vega in three products: the Echo Show 5 and Echo Hub smart displays, as well as the Echo Spot smart clock/speaker. The tech giant has moved more cautiously in transitioning its TV hardware to Vega, having previously delayed a Vega-powered streaming stick originally slated for release in late 2024.



[1] https://www.lowpass.cc/p/amazon-vega-os-2025-release-kepler-sdk

Longtime Slashdot reader [1]Qbertino writes:

> German public news outlet Tagesschau [2]reports (source: YouTube) on an [3]ESA video game that helps train a future moon lander's guidance AI to spot craters. Games have already helped collect visual data on millions of craters. The University Darmstadt developed the game, called [4]IMPACT , to support ESA's efforts to establish a base on the moon. An [5]older article from August 2024 provides further details on the project.



[1] https://slashdot.org/~Qbertino

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAKAeuICQBs

[3] https://www.esa.int/

[4] https://store.steampowered.com/app/3088540/IMPACT/

[5] https://www.fr.de/rhein-main/darmstadt/mondbasis-geplant-gamer-unterstuetzen-weltraumprojekt-93254662.html

[1]schwit1 shares a report from Interesting Engineering:

> Australia's Q-CTRL [2]developed a new system called "Ironstone Opal," which [3]uses quantum sensors to navigate without GPS . It's passive (meaning it doesn't emit signals that could be detected or jammed) and highly accurate. Instead of relying on satellites, Q-CTRL's system can read the Earth's magnetic field, which varies slightly depending on location (like a magnetic fingerprint or map). The system can determine where you are by measuring these variations using magnetometers. This is made possible using the company's proprietary quantum sensors, which are incredibly sensitive and stable. The system also comes with special AI-based software, which filters out interference like vibrations or electromagnetic noise (what they call "software ruggedization"). The system is small and compact and could, in theory, be installed in drones or cars and, of course, aircraft.

>

> Q-CTRL ran some live tests on the ground and in the air to validate the technology. As anticipated, they found that it could operate completely independently of GPS. Moreover, the company reports that its quantum GPS was 50 times more accurate than traditional GPS backup systems (like Inertial Navigation Systems or INS). The systems also delivered navigation precision on par with hitting a bullseye from 1,000 yards. Even when the equipment was mounted inside a plane, where interference is much worse, it outperformed existing systems by at least 11x. This is the first time quantum technology has been shown to outperform existing tech in a real-world commercial or military application, a milestone referred to as achieving "quantum advantage."



[1] https://slashdot.org/~schwit1

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7tBhu8u0C8

[3] https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/australia-firm-gps-less-navigation-system?group=test_a