An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: India's hydroelectricity output fell at the steepest pace in at least 38 years during the year ended March 31, a Reuters analysis of government data showed, as erratic rainfall forced further dependence on coal-fired power amid higher demand. The 16.3% drop in generation from the country's biggest clean energy source coincided with the share of renewables in power generation sliding for the first time since Prime Minister Narendra Modi made commitments to boost solar and wind capacity at the United Nations climate talks at Paris in 2015.

Renewables accounted for 11.7% of India's power output in the year that ended in March, down from 11.8% a year earlier, a Reuters analysis of daily load despatch data from the federal grid regulator Grid-India showed. India is the world's third-largest greenhouse gas emitter, and the government often points to lower per-capita emissions compared to developed nations to defend rising coal use. A five-year low in reservoir levels means hydro output will likely remain low during the hottest months of April-June, experts say, potentially boosting dependence on coal during a period of high demand before the monsoon starts in June. [...]

Globally, hydropower output fell for only the fourth time since 2000 due to lower rainfall and warmer temperature brought about by the El Nino weather pattern, according to energy think tank Ember. Hydro output in India, the sixth-biggest hydropower producer, fell nearly seven times faster than the global average, Ember data showed.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Echoing the past two years of Rust evangelism and C/C++ ennui, Google reports that Rust shines in production, to the point that its developers are twice as productive using the language compared to C++. Speaking at the Rust Nation UK Conference in London this week, Lars Bergstrom, director of engineering at Google, who works on Android Platform Tools & Libraries, described the web titan's experience migrating projects written in Go or C++ to the Rust programming language.

Bergstrom said that while Dropbox in 2016 and Figma in 2018 offered early accounts of rewriting code in memory-safe Rust - and doubts about productivity and the language have subsided - concerns have lingered about its reliability and security. "Even six months ago, this was a really tough conversation," he said. "I would go and I would talk to people and they would say, 'Wait, wait you have an `unsafe` keyword. That means we should all write C++ until the heat death of the Universe.'"

But there's been a shift in awareness across the software development ecosystem, Bergstrom argued, about the challenges of using non-memory safe languages. Such messaging is now coming from government authorities in the US and other nations who understand the role software plays in critical infrastructure. The reason is that the majority of security vulnerabilities in large codebases can be traced to memory security bugs. And since Rust code can largely if not totally avoid such problems when properly implemented, memory safety now looks a lot like a national security issue.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a new way to combat the impersonation scams that it says cost people $1.1 billion last year alone. Effective today, the agency's rule "prohibits the impersonation of government, businesses, and their officials or agents in interstate commerce." The rule also lets the FTC directly file federal court complaints to force scammers to return money stolen by business or government impersonation. From a report: Impersonation scams are wide-ranging -- creators are on the lookout for fake podcast invites that turn into letting scammers take over their Facebook pages via a hidden "datasets" URL, while Verge reporters have been impersonated by criminals trying to steal cryptocurrency via fake Calendly meeting links.

Linus Media Group was victimized by a thief who pretended to be a potential sponsor and managed to take over three of the company's YouTube channels. Some scams can also be very intricate, as in The Cut financial columnist Charlotte Cowles' story of how she lost a shoebox holding $50,000 to an elaborate scam involving a fake Amazon business account, the FTC, and the CIA. (See also: gift card scams.) The agency is also taking public comment until April 30th on changes to the rule that would allow it to also target impersonation of individuals, such as through the use of video deepfakes or AI voice cloning. That would let it take action against, say, scams involving impersonations of Elon Musk on X or celebrities in YouTube ads. Others have used AI for more sinister fraud, such as voice clones of loved ones claiming to be kidnapped.

"Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona..." reads the official text of House Bill #2,477. "PLUTO IS THE OFFICIAL STATE PLANET."

An anonymous reader shared this report from Capital Media Services: The governor signed legislation Friday designating Pluto as Arizona's "official state planet." It joins a list of other items the state has declared to be "official,'' ranging from turquoise as the state gemstone and copper as the state metal to the Sonorasaurus as the state dinosaur. "I am proud of Arizona's pioneering work in space discovery," governor Hobbs said.

What makes Pluto unique and ripe for claim by Arizona is that it is the only planet actually discovered in the United States, and the discovery was made in Flagstaff. Rep. Justin Wilmeth, a Phoenix Republican and self-described "history nerd,'' said that needed to be commemorated, starting with the legacy of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. In 1930, Tombaugh was working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. "The whole story of Clyde is just amazing, just sitting there under the telescope'' looking for planets by taking photos over a period of time, said Wilmeth. "It was two different glass planes that had one little spec of light moving in a different direction,'' showing it wasn't just another star — and all by observation and not computers. "To me, that's something that's just mind boggling."
"The International Astronomical Union voted years ago to strip Pluto of its official status as a planet," the article points out, noting that its official definition specifies that planets "clear the neighboring region of other objects." (While Pluto "has such a small gravitational pull, it has not attracted and absorbed other space rocks in its orbit".)

So in 2006 Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet, according to a NASA web page. "Pluto is about 1/6 the width of Earth," and has a radius of 715 miles or 1,151 kilometers. "If Earth was the size of a nickel, Pluto would be about as big as a popcorn kernel."

Long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam called Arizona's new legislation "How to advertise you are ignorant. Scientists said something we don't like, so we'll make a law!" They can call it their "State Planet" all they want, but people who actually know about the skies will be mocking them for it. While there is nostalgia for the old classification, and the new one isn't perfect... it's certainly more meaningful when trying to divide up the objects of a planetary system for study.
Reached for a comment by Capital Media Services, Representative Wilmeth said "It might matter to some that are going to get picky or persnickety about stuff... There's several generations of Americans ... who believe that Pluto's a planet — or at least that's what we were taught. I'm never going to think differently. That's just my personal opinion." (The news site adds that "What is important, Wilmeth said, is remembering the history and promoting it.")

Five senators in Arizona's state legislatur did vote against the measure — though not all of them did so for scientific reasons, Senator Anthony Kern explained to Capital Media Services. "I did not want to discriminate against those who wanted Mars, Venus, Jupiter, or everyone's favorite, Uranus."

As a department of America's federal Health agency, the Food and Drug Administration is responsible for public health rules, including prescription medicines. And the FDA "has not changed its position that currently available clinical trial data do not demonstrate that ivermectin is effective against COVID-19," they confirmed to CNN this week. "The agency has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19."

But there was also a lawsuit. In "one of its more popular pandemic-era social media campaigns," the agency tweeted out "You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it." The post attracted nearly 106,000 likes — and over 46,000 reposts, and was followed by another post on Instagram. "Stop it with the #ivermectin. It's not authorized for treating #COVID."

Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik writes that the posts triggered a "groundless" lawsuit: It was those latter two lines that exercised three physicians who had been prescribing ivermectin for patients. They sued the FDA in 2022, asserting that its advisory illegally interfered with the practice of medicine — specifically with their ability to continue prescribing the drug. A federal judge in Texas threw out their case, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals — the source of a series of chuckleheaded antigovernment rulings in recent years — reinstated it last year, returning it to the original judge for reconsideration.

Now the FDA has settled the case by agreeing to delete the horse post and two similar posts from its accounts on the social media platforms X, LinkedIn and Facebook. The agency also agreed to retire a consumer advisory titled "Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19." In defending its decision, the FDA said it "has chosen to resolve this lawsuit rather than continuing to litigate over statements that are between two and nearly four years old."

That sounds reasonable enough, but it's a major blunder. It leaves on the books the 5th Circuit's adverse ruling, in which a panel of three judges found that the FDA's advisory crossed the line from informing consumers, which they said is all right, to recommending that consumers take some action, which they said is not all right... That's a misinterpretation of the law and the FDA's actions, according to Dorit Rubinstein Reiss of UC College of the Law in San Francisco. "The FDA will seek to make recommendations against the misuse of products in the future, and having that decision on the books will be used to litigate against it," she observed after the settlement.
"A survey by Boston University and the University of Michigan estimated that Medicare and private insurers had wasted $130 million on ivermectin prescriptions for COVID in 2021 alone."

404 Media claims to have identified "the fundamental flaw with the age verification bills and laws" that have already passed in eight state legislatures (with two more taking effect in July): "the delusional, unfounded belief that putting hurdles between people and pornography is going to actually prevent them from viewing porn."

They argue that age verification laws "drag us back to the dark ages of the internet." Slashdot reader samleecole shared this excerpt: What will happen, and is already happening, is that people — including minors — will go to unmoderated, actively harmful alternatives that don't require handing over a government-issued ID to see people have sex. Meanwhile, performers and companies that are trying to do the right thing will suffer....

The legislators passing these bills are doing so under the guise of protecting children, but what's actually happening is a widespread rewiring of the scaffolding of the internet. They ignore long-established legal precedent that has said for years that age verification is unconstitutional, eventually and inevitably reducing everything we see online without impossible privacy hurdles and compromises to that which is not "harmful to minors." The people who live in these states, including the minors the law is allegedly trying to protect, are worse off because of it. So is the rest of the internet.
Yet new legislation is advancing in Kentucky and Nebraska, while the state of Kansas just passed a law which even requires age-verification for viewing "acts of homosexuality," according to a report: Websites can be fined up to $10,000 for each instance a minor accesses their content, and parents are allowed to sue for damages of at least $50,000. This means that the state can "require age verification to access LGBTQ content," according to attorney Alejandra Caraballo, who said on Threads that "Kansas residents may soon need their state IDs" to access material that simply "depicts LGBTQ people."
One newspaper opinion piece argues there's an easier solution: don't buy your children a smartphone: Or we could purchase any of the various software packages that block social media and obscene content from their devices. Or we could allow them to use social media, but limit their screen time. Or we could educate them about the issues that social media causes and simply trust them to make good choices. All of these options would have been denied to us if we lived in a state that passed a strict age verification law. Not only do age verification laws reduce parental freedom, but they also create myriad privacy risks. Requiring platforms to collect government IDs and face scans opens the door to potential exploitation by hackers and enemy governments. The very information intended to protect children could end up in the wrong hands, compromising the privacy and security of millions of users...

Ultimately, age verification laws are a misguided attempt to address the complex issue of underage social media use. Instead of placing undue burdens on users and limiting parental liberty, lawmakers should look for alternative strategies that respect privacy rights while promoting online safety.
This week a trade association for the adult entertainment industry announced plans to petition America's Supreme Court to intervene.

"Today's most effective corporate lobbying no longer involves wooing members of Congress..." writes the Wall Street Journal. Instead the lobbying sector "now works in secret to influence lawmakers with the help of an unlikely ally: you." [Lobbyists] teamed up with PR gurus, social-media experts, political pollsters, data analysts and grassroots organizers to foment seemingly organic public outcries designed to pressure lawmakers and compel them to take actions that would benefit the lobbyists' corporate clients...

By the middle of 2011, an army of lobbyists working for the pillars of the corporate lobbying establishment — the major movie studios, the music industry, pharmaceutical manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — were executing a nearly $100 million campaign to win approval for the internet bill [the PROTECT IP Act, or "PIPA"]. They pressured scores of lawmakers to co-sponsor the legislation. At one point, 99 of the 100 members of the U.S. Senate appeared ready to support it — an astounding number, given that most bills have just a handful of co-sponsors before they are called up for a vote. When lobbyists for Google and its allies went to Capitol Hill, they made little headway. Against such well-financed and influential opponents, the futility of the traditional lobbying approach became clear. If tech companies were going to turn back the anti-piracy bills, they would need to find another way.

It was around this time that one of Google's Washington strategists suggested an alternative strategy. "Let's rally our users," Adam Kovacevich, then 34 and a senior member of Google's Washington office, told colleagues. Kovacevich turned Google's opposition to the anti-piracy legislation into a coast-to-coast political influence effort with all the bells and whistles of a presidential campaign. The goal: to whip up enough opposition to the legislation among ordinary Americans that Congress would be forced to abandon the effort... The campaign slogan they settled on — "Don't Kill the Internet" — exaggerated the likely impact of the bill, but it succeeded in stirring apprehension among web users.

The coup de grace came on Jan. 18, 2012, when Google and its allies pulled off the mother of all outside influence campaigns. When users logged on to the web that day, they discovered, to their great frustration, that many of the sites they'd come to rely on — Wikipedia, Reddit, Craigslist — were either blacked out or displayed text outlining the detrimental impacts of the proposed legislation. For its part, Google inserted a black censorship bar over its multicolored logo and posted a tool that enabled users to contact their elected representatives. "Tell Congress: Please don't censor the web!" a message on Google's home page read. With some 115,000 websites taking part, the protest achieved a staggering reach. Tens of millions of people visited Wikipedia's blacked-out website, 4.5 million users signed a Google petition opposing the legislation, and more than 2.4 million people took to Twitter to express their views on the bills. "We must stop [these bills] to keep the web open & free," the reality TV star Kim Kardashian wrote in a tweet to her 10 million followers...

Within two days, the legislation was dead...

Over the following decade, outside influence tactics would become the cornerstone of Washington's lobbying industry — and they remain so today.
"The 2012 effort is considered the most successful consumer mobilization in the history of internet policy," writes the Washington Post — agreeing that it's since spawned more app-based, crowdsourced lobbying campaigns. Sites like Airbnb "have also repeatedly asked their users to oppose city government restrictions on the apps." Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and other gig work companies also blitzed the apps' users with scenarios of higher prices or suspended service unless people voted for a 2020 California ballot measure on contract workers. Voters approved it."

The Wall Street Journal also details how lobbyists successfully killed higher taxes for tobacco products, the oil-and-gas industry, and even on private-equity investors — and note similar tactics were used against a bill targeting TikTok. "Some say the campaign backfired. Lawmakers complained that the effort showed how the Chinese government could co-opt internet users to do their bidding in the U.S., and the House of Representatives voted to ban the app if its owners did not agree to sell it.

"TikTok's lobbyists said they were pleased with the effort. They persuaded 65 members of the House to vote in favor of the company and are confident that the Senate will block the effort."

The Journal's article was adapted from an upcoming book titled "The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government." But the Washington Post argues the phenomenon raises two questions. "How much do you want technology companies to turn you into their lobbyists? And what's in it for you?"

This week every U.S. agency was ordered to appoint a "chief AI officer".

But that wasn't the only AI policy announced. According to CNN, "By the end of the year, travelers should be able to refuse facial recognition scans at airport security screenings without fear it could delay or jeopardize their travel plans." That's just one of the concrete safeguards governing artificial intelligence that the Biden administration says it's rolling out across the U.S. government, in a key first step toward preventing government abuse of AI. The move could also indirectly regulate the AI industry using the government's own substantial purchasing power... The mandates aim to cover situations ranging from screenings by the Transportation Security Administration to decisions by other agencies affecting Americans' health care, employment and housing. Under the requirements taking effect on December 1, agencies using AI tools will have to verify they do not endanger the rights and safety of the American people. In addition, each agency will have to publish online a complete list of the AI systems it uses and their reasons for using them, along with a risk assessment of those systems...

[B]ecause the government is such a large purchaser of commercial technology, its policies around procurement and use of AI are expected to have a powerful influence on the private sector.
CNN notes that Vice President Harris told reporters that the administration intends for the policies to serve as a global model. "Meanwhile, the European Union this month gave final approval to a first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence law, once again leapfrogging the United States on regulating a critical and disruptive technology."

CNN adds that last year, "the White House announced voluntary commitments by leading AI companies to subject their models to outside safety testing."

America's Department of Homeland Security "is expected to stop buying access to data showing the movement of phones," reports the U.S. news site NOTUS.

They call the purchasers "a controversial practice that has allowed it to warrantlessly track hundreds of millions of people for years." Since 2018, agencies within the department — including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Secret Service — have been buying access to commercially available data that revealed the movement patterns of devices, many inside the United States. Commercially available phone data can be bought and searched without judicial oversight.

Three people familiar with the matter said the Department of Homeland Security isn't expected to buy access to more of this data, nor will the agency make any additional funding available to buy access to this data. The agency "paused" this practice after a 2023 DHS watchdog report [which had recommended they draw up better privacy controls and policies]. However, the department instead appears to be winding down the use of the data...

"The information that is available commercially would kind of knock your socks off," said former top CIA official Michael Morell on a podcast last year. "If we collected it using traditional intelligence methods, it would be top-secret sensitive. And you wouldn't put it in a database, you'd keep it in a safe...." DHS' internal watchdog opened an investigation after a bipartisan outcry from lawmakers and civil society groups about warrantless tracking...
"Meanwhile, U.S. spy agencies are fighting to preserve the same capability as part of the renewal of surveillance authorities," the article adds.

"A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, led by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden in the Senate and Republican Rep. Warren Davidson in the House, is pushing to ban U.S. government agencies from buying data on Americans."

In November of 2021 America passed a "Bipartisan Infrastructure Law" which included $7.5 billion for up to 20,000 EV charging spots, or around 5,000 stations, notes the Washington Post (citing an analysis from the EV policy analyst group Atlas Public Policy).

And new stations are now already open in Hawaii, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, "and under construction in four other states. Twelve additional states have awarded contracts for constructing the charging stations." A White House spokesperson said America should reach its goal of 500,000 charging stations by 2026.

So why is it that right now — more than two years after the bill's passage — why does the Federal Highway System say the program has so far only delivered seven open charging stations with a total of 38 charging spots? Nick Nigro, founder of Atlas Public Policy, said that some of the delays are to be expected. "State transportation agencies are the recipients of the money," he said. "Nearly all of them had no experience deploying electric vehicle charging stations before this law was enacted." Nigro says that the process — states have to submit plans to the Biden administration for approval, solicit bids on the work, and then award funds — has taken much of the first two years since the funding was approved. "I expect it to go much faster in 2024," he added.

"We are building a national EV charging network from scratch, and we want to get it right," a spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration said in an email. "After developing program guidance and partnering with states to guide implementation plans, we are hitting our stride as states move quickly to bring National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure stations online...."

Part of the slow rollout is that the new chargers are expected to be held to much higher standards than previous generations of fast chargers. The United States currently has close to 10,000 "fast" charging stations in the country, of which over 2,000 are Tesla Superchargers, according to the Department of Energy. Tesla Superchargers — some of which have been opened to drivers of other vehicles — are the most reliable fast-charging systems in the country. But many non-Tesla fast chargers have a reputation for poor performance and sketchy reliability. EV advocates have criticized Electrify America, the company created by Volkswagen after the company's "Dieselgate" emissions scandal, for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on chargers that don't work well. The company has said they are working to improve reliability. The data analytics company J.D. Power has estimated that only 80 percent of all charging attempts in the country are successful.

Biden administration guidance requires the new publicly funded chargers to be operational 97% of the time, provide 150kW of power at each charger, and be no more than one mile from the interstate, among many other requirements.EV policy experts say those requirements are critical to building a good nationwide charging program — but also slow down the build-out of the chargers. "This funding comes with dozens of rules and requirements," Laska said. "That is the nature of what we're trying to accomplish....

"States are just not operating with the same urgency that some of the rest of us are."
The article notes that private companies are also building charging stations — but the publicly-funded spots would increase America's car-charging capacity by around 50 percent, "a crucial step to alleviating 'range anxiety' and helping Americans shift into battery electric cars.

"States just have to build them first."

Vladimir Putin has ordered Russia's government to explore the development of a series of homegrown consoles to compete with PlayStation and Xbox. Game Rant reports: Russia has taken issue with Western games and developers in recent years, leading the country to threaten the banning of certain titles like Apex Legends and The Last of Us Part 2. This is due to what the Russian government perceives as pro-LGBTQ messaging, which it openly opposes. In February, Russia's Organization for Developing the Video Game Industry (RVI) laid out a long-term plan that ended with the creation of a fully capable gaming console in 2026-2027. It seems that the Russian government may be attempting to follow through with this plan.

Following a meeting on the economic development of Kaliningrad, Putin requested government officials to research the requirements for domestic production of stationary and portable gaming consoles. The Russian president also ordered the planning of an appropriate operating system and cloud system for the consoles. The deadline for these plans is set for June 15, 2024, and Russia's prime minister was designated as the official overseeing these tasks. A Kremlin spokesperson confirmed that the orders intend to develop Russia's homegrown gaming industry.

The U.S. House has set a strict ban on congressional staffers' use of Microsoft Copilot, the company's AI-based chatbot, Axios reported Friday. From the report: The House last June restricted staffers' use of ChatGPT, allowing limited use of the paid subscription version while banning the free version. The House's Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor, in guidance to congressional offices obtained by Axios, said Microsoft Copilot is "unauthorized for House use."

"The Microsoft Copilot application has been deemed by the Office of Cybersecurity to be a risk to users due to the threat of leaking House data to non-House approved cloud services," it said. The guidance added that Copilot "will be removed from and blocked on all House Windows devices."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: NYC's "MyCity" ChatBot was rolled out as a "pilot" program last October. The announcement touted the ChatBot as a way for business owners to "save ... time and money by instantly providing them with actionable and trusted information from more than 2,000 NYC Business web pages and articles on topics such as compliance with codes and regulations, available business incentives, and best practices to avoid violations and fines." But a new report from The Markup and local nonprofit news site The City found the MyCity chatbot giving dangerously wrong information about some pretty basic city policies. To cite just one example, the bot said that NYC buildings "are not required to accept Section 8 vouchers," when an NYC government info page says clearly that Section 8 housing subsidies are one of many lawful sources of income that landlords are required to accept without discrimination. The Markup also received incorrect information in response to chatbot queries regarding worker pay and work hour regulations, as well as industry-specific information like funeral home pricing. Further testing from BlueSky user Kathryn Tewson shows the MyCity chatbot giving some dangerously wrong answers regarding treatment of workplace whistleblowers, as well as some hilariously bad answers regarding the need to pay rent.

MyCity's Microsoft Azure-powered chatbot uses a complex process of statistical associations across millions of tokens to essentially guess at the most likely next word in any given sequence, without any real understanding of the underlying information being conveyed. That can cause problems when a single factual answer to a question might not be reflected precisely in the training data. In fact, The Markup said that at least one of its tests resulted in the correct answer on the same query about accepting Section 8 housing vouchers (even as "ten separate Markup staffers" got the incorrect answer when repeating the same question). The MyCity Chatbot -- which is prominently labeled as a "Beta" product -- does tell users who bother to read the warnings that it "may occasionally produce incorrect, harmful or biased content" and that users should "not rely on its responses as a substitute for professional advice." But the page also states front and center that it is "trained to provide you official NYC Business information" and is being sold as a way "to help business owners navigate government." NYC Office of Technology and Innovation Spokesperson Leslie Brown told The Markup that the bot "has already provided thousands of people with timely, accurate answers" and that "we will continue to focus on upgrading this tool so that we can better support small businesses across the city."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The White House has announced the "first government-wide policy (PDF) to mitigate risks of artificial intelligence (AI) and harness its benefits." To coordinate these efforts, every federal agency must appoint a chief AI officer with "significant expertise in AI." Some agencies have already appointed chief AI officers, but any agency that has not must appoint a senior official over the next 60 days. If an official already appointed as a chief AI officer does not have the necessary authority to coordinate AI use in the agency, they must be granted additional authority or else a new chief AI officer must be named.

Ideal candidates, the White House recommended, might include chief information officers, chief data officers, or chief technology officers, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) policy said. As chief AI officers, appointees will serve as senior advisers on AI initiatives, monitoring and inventorying all agency uses of AI. They must conduct risk assessments to consider whether any AI uses are impacting "safety, security, civil rights, civil liberties, privacy, democratic values, human rights, equal opportunities, worker well-being, access to critical resources and services, agency trust and credibility, and market competition," OMB said. Perhaps most urgently, by December 1, the officers must correct all non-compliant AI uses in government, unless an extension of up to one year is granted.

The chief AI officers will seemingly enjoy a lot of power and oversight over how the government uses AI. It's up to the chief AI officers to develop a plan to comply with minimum safety standards and to work with chief financial and human resource officers to develop the necessary budgets and workforces to use AI to further each agency's mission and ensure "equitable outcomes," OMB said. [...] Among the chief AI officer's primary responsibilities is determining what AI uses might impact the safety or rights of US citizens. They'll do this by assessing AI impacts, conducting real-world tests, independently evaluating AI, regularly evaluating risks, properly training staff, providing additional human oversight where necessary, and giving public notice of any AI use that could have a "significant impact on rights or safety," OMB said. Chief AI officers will ultimately decide if any AI use is safety- or rights-impacting and must adhere to OMB's minimum standards for responsible AI use. Once a determination is made, the officers will "centrally track" the determinations, informing OMB of any major changes to "conditions or context in which the AI is used." The officers will also regularly convene "a new Chief AI Officer Council to coordinate" efforts and share innovations government-wide. Chief AI officers must consult with the public and maintain options to opt-out of "AI-enabled decisions," OMB said. "However, these chief AI officers also have the power to waive opt-out options "if they can demonstrate that a human alternative would result in a service that is less fair (e.g., produces a disparate impact on protected classes) or if an opt-out would impose undue hardship on the agency."

Silicon Valley chiefs are swarming the Capitol to try to sway lawmakers on the dangers of falling behind in the AI race. From a report: In recent weeks, American lawmakers have moved to ban the Chinese-owned app TikTok. President Biden reinforced his commitment to overcome China's rise in tech. And the Chinese government added chips from Intel and AMD to a blacklist of imports. Now, as the tech and economic cold war between the United States and China accelerates, Silicon Valley's leaders are capitalizing on the strife with a lobbying push for their interests in another promising field of technology: artificial intelligence.

On May 1, more than 100 tech chiefs and investors, including Alex Karp, the head of the defense contractor Palantir, and Roelof Botha, the managing partner of the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, will come to Washington for a daylong conference and private dinner focused on drumming up more hawkishness toward China's progress in A.I. Dozens of lawmakers, including Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, will also attend the event, the Hill & Valley Forum, which will include fireside chats and keynote discussions with members of a new House A.I. task force.

Tech executives plan to use the event to directly lobby against A.I. regulations that they consider onerous, as well as ask for more government spending on the technology and research to support its development. They also plan to ask to relax immigration restrictions to bring more A.I. experts to the United States. The event highlights an unusual area of agreement between Washington and Silicon Valley, which have long clashed on topics like data privacy, children's online protections and even China.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Oregon Governor Tina Kotek today signed the state's Right to Repair Act, which will push manufacturers to provide more repair options for their products than any other state so far. The law, like those passed in New York, California, and Minnesota, will require many manufacturers to provide the same parts, tools, and documentation to individuals and repair shops that they provide to their own repair teams. But Oregon's bill goes further, preventing companies from implementing schemes that require parts to be verified through encrypted software checks before they will function. Known as parts pairing or serialization, Oregon's bill, SB 1596, is the first in the nation to target that practice. Oregon State Senator Janeen Sollman (D) and Representative Courtney Neron (D) sponsored and pushed the bill in the state senate and legislature.

Oregon's bill isn't stronger in every regard. For one, there is no set number of years for a manufacturer to support a device with repair support. Parts pairing is prohibited only on devices sold in 2025 and later. And there are carve-outs for certain kinds of electronics and devices, including video game consoles, medical devices, HVAC systems, motor vehicles, and -- as with other states -- "electric toothbrushes." "By eliminating manufacturer restrictions, the Right to Repair will make it easier for Oregonians to keep their personal electronics running," said Charlie Fisher, director of Oregon's chapter of the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), in a statement. "That will conserve precious natural resources and prevent waste. It's a refreshing alternative to a 'throwaway' system that treats everything as disposable."

TikTok is being investigated by the FTC over its data and security practices, "a probe that could lead to a settlement or a lawsuit against the company," reports the Associated Press. From the report: In its investigation, the FTC has been looking into whether TikTok violated a portion of federal law that prohibits "unfair and deceptive" business practices by denying that individuals in China had access to U.S. user data, said the person, who is not authorized to discuss the investigation. The agency also is scrutinizing the company over potential violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires kid-oriented apps and websites to get parents' consent before collecting personal information of children under 13.

The agency is nearing the conclusion of its investigation and could settle with TikTok in the coming weeks. But there's not a deadline for an agreement, the person said. If the FTC moves forward with a lawsuit instead, it would have to refer the case to the Justice Department, which would have 45 days to decide whether it wants to file a case on the FTC's behalf, make changes or send it back to the agency to pursue on its own.

Britain's government has been urged to provide more support for the software industry with measures including tax incentives and talent visas. From a report: More than 120 industry leaders have called for government intervention to improve conditions for European software companies. Europe has long struggled to scale up homegrown tech companies as successfully as the U.S., with many startups forced to seek investment abroad as they scale up.

A new policy document -- published by industry body Boardwave and seen by Reuters -- highlights what it calls Europe's "dreadful" track record of scaling software companies, with one recent study showing only one software-focused firm, Sage, counted among Britain's top 100 publicly-traded businesses, compared to dozens in the U.S. Phill Robinson, Boardwave founder and a former executive at software giant Salesfore, shared the report with Britain's technology minister Michele Donelan last week, warning that mid-sized software companies had received little government attention compared to Big Tech firms and buzzy venture-funded startups.

Earlier today, the U.S. and U.K. accused hackers linked to the Chinese state of being behind "malicious" cyber campaigns targeting political figures. The U.K. government also blamed China for a 2021 cyberattack that compromised the personal information of millions of U.K. voters. In response, PBS reports that the U.S. and British government announced sanctions against a company and two people linked to the Chinese government. From the report: Officials said those sanctioned are responsible for a hack that may have gained access to information on tens of millions of U.K. voters held by the Electoral Commission, as well as for cyberespionage targeting lawmakers who have been outspoken about the China threat. The Foreign Office said the hack of the election registers "has not had an impact on electoral processes, has not affected the rights or access to the democratic process of any individual, nor has it affected electoral registration." The Electoral Commission said in August that it identified a breach of its system in October 2022, though it added that "hostile actors" had first been able to access its servers since 2021. At the time, the watchdog said the data included the names and addresses of registered voters. But it said that much of the information was already in the public domain.

In Washington, the Treasury Department said it sanctioned Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company Ltd., which it calls a Chinese Ministry of State Security front company that has "served as cover for multiple malicious cyberoperations." It named two Chinese nationals, Zhao Guangzong and Ni Gaobin, affiliated with the Wuhan company, for cyberoperations that targeted U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, "directly endangering U.S. national security." Separately, British cybersecurity officials said that Chinese government-affiliated hackers "conducted reconnaissance activity" against British parliamentarians who are critical of Beijing in 2021. They said no parliamentary accounts were successfully compromised.

Three lawmakers, including former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, told reporters Monday they have been "subjected to harassment, impersonation and attempted hacking from China for some time." Duncan Smith said in one example, hackers impersonating him used fake email addresses to write to his contacts. The politicians are members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an international pressure group focused on countering Beijing's growing influence and calling out alleged rights abuses by the Chinese government.

The FTX bankruptcy estate has raised $884 million by selling the majority of its Anthropic shares to two dozen institutional investors. "The sale of the Anthropic shares is a big win for the FTX estate, which pledged in January to pay back the defunct exchange's customers 100% of the value of their holdings at the time of the exchange's collapse," reports CoinDesk. "FTX's FTT token climbed 10% on the news." From the report: According to Friday court filings, the top buyer is ATIC Third International Investment Company, a tech investment company wholly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala. ATIC has agreed to purchase 16,664,167 shares of Anthropic from FTX for $500 million. Other buyers include Jane Street Global Trading -- an affiliate of the erstwhile employer of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried -- "certain funds" tied to Fidelity Investments and The Ford Foundation.