One of the creators of dogecoin has noted that he "didn't consider" the environmental impact of the cryptocurrency, which was initially created as a joke. The Independent reports: The comments from Billy Markus, one of the people who helped create dogecoin in the first place, when it was intended partly as a joke, came in response to a tweet from Elon Musk. Mr Musk had been attempting to clarify his position on cryptocurrency generally, in the wake of his statement about Tesla. "To be clear, I strongly believe in crypto, but it can't drive a massive increase in fossil fuel use, especially coal," Mr Musk had written. In response, Mr Markus sent a crying face emoji, which he later clarified he had meant to indicate "aw man, you right, environment stuff." In reply to that, Mr Markus was asked whether he had considered energy usage when creating the cryptocurrency. "i made doge in like 2 hours i didn't consider anything," he wrote.

Dogecoin was created in 2013, in reference to the meme and to poke fun at the vast numbers of cryptocurrencies that had been launched. But Mr Markus helped build the technical foundations that allow it to practically work, too. Like bitcoin, dogecoin requires miners to undertake complex cryptographical puzzles to create new bitcoins. That system, known as proof-of-work, relies on large amounts of computing power that use considerable amounts of energy, much of which is generated from fossil fuels.

The Indian government has told doctors to look out for signs of mucormycosis or "black fungus" in COVID-19 patients as hospitals report a rise in cases of the rare but potentially fatal infection. From a report: The state-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said at the weekend that doctors treating COVID-19 patients, diabetics and those with compromised immune systems should watch for early symptoms including sinus pain or nasal blockage on one side of the face, one-sided headache, swelling or numbness, toothache and loosening of teeth.

The disease, which can lead to blackening or discolouration over the nose, blurred or double vision, chest pain, breathing difficulties and coughing blood, is strongly linked to diabetes. And diabetes can in turn be exacerbated by steroids such as dexamethasone, used to treat severe COVID-19. "There have been cases reported in several other countries - including the UK, U.S., France, Austria, Brazil and Mexico, but the volume is much bigger in India," said David Denning, a professor at Britain's Manchester University and an expert at the Global Action Fund for Fungal Infections (GAFFI) charity. Further reading about the 'black fungus': BBC; NPR, the New York Times, and the Guardian.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: In 1998 a couple of Stanford graduate students published a paper describing a new kind of search engine: "In this paper, we present Google, a prototype of a large-scale search engine which makes heavy use of the structure present in hypertext. Google is designed to crawl and index the Web efficiently and produce much more satisfying search results than existing systems." The key innovation was an algorithm called PageRank, which ranked search results by calculating how relevant they were to a user's query on the basis of their links to other pages on the web. On the back of PageRank, Google became the gateway to the internet, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page built one of the biggest companies in the world. Now a team of Google researchers has published a proposal for a radical redesign that throws out the ranking approach and replaces it with a single large AI language model, such as BERT or GPT-3 -- or a future version of them. The idea is that instead of searching for information in a vast list of web pages, users would ask questions and have a language model trained on those pages answer them directly. The approach could change not only how search engines work, but what they do -- and how we interact with them.

[Donald Metzler and his colleagues at Google Research] are interested in a search engine that behaves like a human expert. It should produce answers in natural language, synthesized from more than one document, and back up its answers with references to supporting evidence, as Wikipedia articles aim to do. Large language models get us part of the way there. Trained on most of the web and hundreds of books, GPT-3 draws information from multiple sources to answer questions in natural language. The problem is that it does not keep track of those sources and cannot provide evidence for its answers. There's no way to tell if GPT-3 is parroting trustworthy information or disinformation -- or simply spewing nonsense of its own making.

Metzler and his colleagues call language models dilettantes -- "They are perceived to know a lot but their knowledge is skin deep." The solution, they claim, is to build and train future BERTs and GPT-3s to retain records of where their words come from. No such models are yet able to do this, but it is possible in principle, and there is early work in that direction. There have been decades of progress on different areas of search, from answering queries to summarizing documents to structuring information, says Ziqi Zhang at the University of Sheffield, UK, who studies information retrieval on the web. But none of these technologies overhauled search because they each address specific problems and are not generalizable. The exciting premise of this paper is that large language models are able to do all these things at the same time, he says.

Gabe Newell, the co-founder and president of Valve, has hinted that the company could bring Steam games to consoles during a recent question and answer session. TechRadar reports: The session took place at Sancta Maria College in Auckland, New Zealand, and a student's question and Newell's answer were recorded and uploaded to Reddit by user Odysseic (via VGC). When asked "will Steam be porting any games to console, or will it just stay on PC?", Newell somewhat hesitantly replies "You will get a better idea of that by the end of this year," adding, "and it won't be the answer you expect. You'll say, "Ah-ha! Now I get what he was talking about.'" Newell's comments are, of course, pretty vague and have caused a great deal of speculation. The most common interpretation of his words is that Valve could be planning to bring its own games, currently available on Steam, to consoles in the future. Valve games have previously been ported to consoles so this is perfectly possible.

Long-awaited proposals in the UK to regulate social media are a "recipe for censorship," campaigners have said, which fly in the face of the government's attempts to strengthen free speech elsewhere in Britain. From a report: The online safety bill, which was introduced to parliament on Wednesday, hands Ofcom the power to punish social networks which fail to remove "lawful but harmful" content. The proposals were welcomed by children's safety campaigns, but theyhave come under fire from civil liberties organisations. "Applying a health and safety approach to everybody's online speech combined with the threat of massive fines against the platforms is a recipe for censorship and removal of legal content," said Jim Killock, the director of the Open Rights Group. "Facebook does not operate prisons and is not the police. Trying to make platforms do the job of law enforcement through technical means is a recipe for failure."

The centre-right CPS thinktank was similarly critical. "It is for parliament to determine what is sufficiently harmful that it should not be allowed, not for Ofcom or individual platforms to guess," it said. "If something is legal to say, it should be legal to type," CPS's director, Robert Colvile, added. In its update to the bill from the white paper first drafted by Theresa May's government in 2019, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport added sections intended to prevent harm to free expression. Social networks will now need to perform and publish "assessments of their impact on freedom of expression."

Apple is facing a London lawsuit over claims it overcharged nearly 20 million U.K. customers for App Store purchases, yet another legal headache for the tech giant fighting lawsuits across the world. Bloomberg reports: Apple's 30% fee is "excessive" and "unlawful" the claimants said in a press release Tuesday. The claim, filed at London's Competition Appeal Tribunal on Monday, calls for the U.S. firm to compensate U.K. iPhone and iPad users for years of alleged overcharging. They estimate that Apple could face paying out in excess of 1.5 billion pounds ($2.1 billion). "Apple is abusing its dominance in the app store market, which in turn impacts U.K. consumers," Rachael Kent, the lead claimant in the case and a professor at King's College London. She teaches the ways in which consumers interact and depend upon digital platforms.

The legal challenges come as Apple faces a backlash -- with billions of dollars in revenue on the line -- from global regulators and some developers who say its fees and other policies are unjust and self-serving. Last month, the European Commission sent a statement of objections to the firm, laying out how it thinks Apple abused its power as the "gatekeeper" for music-streaming apps on its store. The suit alleges that Apple deliberately shuts out potential competition and forces ordinary users to use its own payment processing system, generating unlawfully excessive levels of profit for the company. The claimants say any U.K. user of an iPhone or iPad who purchased paid apps, subscriptions or made other in-app purchases since October 2015 is entitled to compensation. "We believe this lawsuit is meritless and welcome the opportunity to discuss with the court our unwavering commitment to consumers and the many benefits the App Store has delivered to the U.K.'s innovation economy," Apple said in an emailed statement. "The commission charged by the App Store is very much in the mainstream of those charged by all other digital marketplaces," Apple said. "In fact, 84% of apps on the App Store are free and developers pay Apple nothing. And for the vast majority of developers who do pay Apple a commission because they are selling a digital good or service, they are eligible for a commission rate of 15%."

NBC News reports on what exactly happened during Elon Musk's appearance on Saturday Night Live — starting with a surprisingly personal monologue: "I don't always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak," Musk said, "which I'm told makes for great comedy." He admitted he's socially awkward and said he was the first person with Asperger syndrome to host the show — "or at least the first to admit it."

"I know I sometimes say or post strange things but that's just how my brain works," Musk, 49, said. "I reinvented electric cars and I'm sending people to Mars on a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?"
ET Canada notes that Twitter users later pointed out that former SNL castmember (and later episode host) Dan Aykroyd has also said he was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. But NBC notes that Saturday's show was focused on the interests and eccentricities of Elon Musk. His mother, Maye Musk, appeared as part of the show's pre-celebration of Mother's Day. "I'm excited for my Mother's Day gift," she said, before mentioning a form of cryptocurrency hyped by her son. "I just hope it's not Dogecoin."

"It is," said Musk, a big investor in the cryptocurrency...
And later in a skit with Michael Che, Musk had also played a fictional cryptocurrency expert who's asked repeatedly to explain Dogecoin. "It actually started as a joke based on an internet meme but now it's taken over in a very real way," Musk said. "It's the future of currency." Asked again by Che, he said, "I keep telling you, it's a cryptocurrency you can trade for conventional money."

"Oh," Che said. "So it's a hustle."

"Yeah," Musk said, "it's a hustle...."

Dogecoin tracker Darren Rovell tweeted that the cryptocurrency had, at one point, lost $30 billion in value during the show.
In fact, by early Sunday Dogecoin was down 40%, trading as low as 44 cents, reports CNN: It's unclear what was driving the dogecoin selloff. Perhaps investors wanted Musk to say something more supportive of the cryptocurrency. But more likely, there was some "buy the rumor / sell the news" strategy, trying to capitalize on investors' predictions coming true by selling high. Dogecoin traded so actively that Robinhood announced early Sunday morning it was having issues processing crypto trades and was working to resolve the problem.

AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: The World Health Organization (WHO) has granted emergency approval for the Covid vaccine made by Chinese state-owned company Sinopharm. It is the first vaccine developed by a non-Western country to get WHO backing. The vaccine has already been given to millions of people in China and elsewhere. The WHO had previously only approved the vaccines made by Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna.

With little data released internationally early on, the effectiveness of the various Chinese vaccines has long been uncertain. But the WHO on Friday said it had validated the "safety, efficacy and quality" of the Sinopharm jab. The WHO said the addition of the vaccine had "the potential to rapidly accelerate Covid-19 vaccine access for countries seeking to protect health workers and populations at risk." It is recommending that the vaccine be administered in two doses to those aged 18 and over. A decision is expected in the coming days on another Chinese vaccine developed by Sinovac, while Russia's Sputnik vaccine is under assessment.

The U.S. and U.K. released details on Friday about how Russia's foreign intelligence service operates in cyberspace, the latest effort to try to disrupt future attacks. From a report: The report contains technical resources about the group's tactics, including breaching email in order to find passwords and other information to further infiltrate organizations, in addition to providing software flaws commonly exploited by the hackers. It also offers details about how network administrators can counter the attackers' tactics. "The group uses a variety of tools and techniques to predominantly target overseas governmental, diplomatic, think-tank, health-care and energy targets globally for intelligence gain," the two countries wrote in a Friday report authored jointly by the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre and three U.S. agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the National Security Agency.

Curbs on the sale of house coal and wet wood for household burning in England have come into force under new rules aimed at cutting air pollution. From a report: People will still be able to use stoves and open fires but they will need to burn cleaner alternatives. These are the first restrictions on what people can burn in their homes since the clean air acts of the 1950s. The UK's air is far cleaner now, but in recent years pollution from log burners has increased dramatically. Only 8% of households use them, but they are now the biggest source of the tiny pollution particles that are most damaging to health, according to government data. It shows domestic wood burning in both closed stoves and open fires was responsible for 38% of pollution particles under 2.5 microns in size, three times more than road traffic. These tiny particles can enter the bloodstream and lodge in lungs and other organs, the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) warns, and have been identified by the World Health Organization as the most serious air pollutant for human health.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The world's biggest jeweller, Pandora, says it will no longer sell mined diamonds and will switch to exclusively laboratory-made diamonds. Concerns about the environment and working practices in the mining industry have led to growing demand for alternatives to mined diamonds. Pandora's chief executive, Alexander Lacik, told the BBC the change was part of a broader sustainability drive. He said the firm was pursuing it because "it's the right thing to do." They are also cheaper: "We can essentially create the same outcome as nature has created, but at a very, very different price." Mr Lacik explains they can be made for as little as "a third of what it is for something that we've dug up from the ground."

Pandora's lab-made diamonds are being made in Britain, and the UK is the first country where they will be sold. The new diamond jewelry will start at $350. [...] One problem with lab-made diamonds, though, is that they can take a lot of energy to produce. Between 50% and 60% of them come from China, where they are made in a process known as "high-pressure, high-temperature technology." The use of coal powered electricity is widespread. However in the United States, the biggest retail market for lab-grown diamonds, there is a greater focus on using renewable energy. The largest US producer, Diamond Foundry, says its process is "100% hydro-powered, meaning zero emissions." Both types are chemically and physically identical to mined diamonds.

Indian telecom ministry on Tuesday said it has granted several telecom service providers permission to conduct a six-month trial for the use and application of 5G technology in the country. From a report: New Delhi has granted approval to over a dozen firm spanning multiple nationalities -- excluding China. Among the telecom operators that have received the grant include Jio Platforms, Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and MTNL. These firms, the ministry said, will work with original equipment manufacturers and tech providers Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, and C-Dot. Jio Platforms, additionally, has been granted permission to conduct trials using its own homegrown technology. In a press note, the Department of Telecommunications didn't specify anything about China, but a person familiar with the matter confirmed that Chinese giants Huawei and ZTE aren't among those who have received the approval. [...] India's move on Tuesday follows similar decisions taken by the U.S., UK, and Australia, all of which have expressed concerns about Huawei and ZTE and their ties with the Chinese government.

Fresh questions have been raised over Amazon's tax planning after its latest corporate filings in Luxembourg revealed that the company collected record sales income of $53 billion in Europe last year but did not have to pay any corporation tax to the Grand Duchy. From a report: Accounts for Amazon EU Sarl, through which it sells products to hundreds of millions of households in the UK and across Europe, show that despite collecting record income, the Luxembourg unit made a $1.4 billion loss and therefore paid no tax. In fact the unit was granted $67.3 million in tax credits it can use to offset any future tax bills should it turn a profit. The company has $3.25 billion worth of carried forward losses stored up, which can be used against any tax payable on future profits. Margaret Hodge, a Labour MP who has long campaigned against tax avoidance, said: "It seems that Amazon's relentless campaign of appalling tax avoidance continues."

"Amazon's revenues have soared under the pandemic while our high streets struggle, yet it continues to shift its profits to tax havens like Luxembourg to avoid paying its fair share of tax. These big digital companies all rely on our public services, our infrastructure, and our educated and healthy workforce. But unlike smaller businesses and hard-working taxpayers, the tech giants fail to pay fairly into the common pot for the common good. President Biden has proposed a new, fairer system for taxing large corporations and digital companies but the UK has not come out in support of the reforms. The silence is deafening. The government must act and help to grasp this once-in-a-generation opportunity to banish corporate tax avoidance to a thing of the past."

RealNeoMorpheus writes: Arm pioneer Hermann Hauser has once again criticized Nvidia's plan to acquire the semiconductor design company, with The Telegraph reporting Sunday that he believes Nvidia is "clearly showing it will compete unfairly" if the deal is approved. Hauser's concerns reportedly centered on the Grace processor Nvidia announced at GTC 2021. The company's first Arm-based CPU will connect to high-end GPUs via NVLink, which purportedly offers data transfer speeds up to 900 GBps. That's significantly faster than other technologies -- it's also exclusively available to Nvidia.

This is why Hauser told The Telegraph that he believes using a proprietary interface like NVLink could end up "locking customers into [Nvidia] products," which "clearly shows that they will compete unfairly with other Arm-based server companies such as Amazon and Fujitsu," rather than retaining Arm's neutrality. [...] Nvidia told The Telegraph that Hauser "does not understand what Grace will do or its benefits to Arm" and that "we have been working on Grace using off-the-shelf Arm technology, available to all Arm licensees, long before we agreed to acquire Arm."

The Apple Watch may gain the ability to measure blood pressure, blood glucose, and blood alcohol levels, according to newly-revealed information about one of Apple's chosen business partners. MacRumors reports: Apple has been revealed to be the largest customer of the British electronics start-up Rockley Photonics, The Telegraph reports. Rockley Photonics has developed non-invasive optical sensors for detecting multiple blood-related health metrics, including blood pressure, blood glucose, and blood alcohol levels, many of which are only normally detectable with more invasive dedicated medical equipment. Rockley's sensors beam infrared light through a user's skin, much like the existing sensors on the back of the Apple Watch for detecting heart rate and blood oxygen levels.

Rockley's disclosure that its biggest client is Apple came about as the company prepares to go public in New York. The company's filings said that Apple accounted for the majority of its revenue over the last two years and that it has an ongoing "supply and development agreement" with the company, under which it expects to continue to heavily rely on Apple for most of its revenue. Given the growth of Rockley Photonics and the scale of Apple's partnership with the company, it seems to be virtually inevitable that the company's health sensor technology will be coming to the Apple Watch sooner rather than later.

Boris Johnson's personal mobile phone number has been freely available on the internet for the past 15 years, it has been revealed. The BBC reports: It was published in a think tank press release in 2006, but never deleted -- and appears to be the one the PM uses. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said it was "a serious situation [that] carries a security risk." But Chancellor Rishi Sunak said that, as far as he was aware, "all security protocols have been followed." It appears the number has been switched off but Downing Street still has not confirmed if the number will now be changed.

The think tank press release with the PM's number on it was related to Mr Johnson's then-job as a shadow higher education minister - and MP for Henley - and invited journalists to contact him for further comment. Two years later, he successfully stood to become mayor of London. Former national security adviser Lord Ricketts warned hostile states with "sophisticated cyber capabilities" or criminal gangs could now have access to Mr Johnson's digits. The crossbench peer also told BBC Radio 4's Today program that he would have thought changing your mobile number when becoming PM would be an "elementary security precaution these days."

English soccer teams and organizations are all shutting down their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts for the weekend as part of a massive social media blackout to advocate for better policies regarding discrimination and abuse that players and members of clubs receive on those platforms. From a report: Groups participating in the blackout include the Premier League, the English Football League, the Professional Footballers' Association, the Football Association, the League Managers Association, the Football Supporters' Association, and more. Clubs that are part of the Premier League, EFL, Barclays FA Women's Super League, and Women's Championship will all be shutting down their social channels over the weekend as part of the protest. The blackout comes after the various English soccer organizations banded together in February to request changes from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in an open letter requesting that the companies take stronger action against discriminatory and racist comments.

"Self-driving" vehicles could be allowed on UK roads by the end of this year, the government has said. The BBC reports: The Department for Transport said automated lane-keeping systems (ALKS) would be the first type of hands-free driving legalized. The technology controls the position and speed of a car in a single lane and it will be limited to 37mph (60km/h). Following a consultation last year, the government has now said that vehicles with ALKS technology can be legally defined as self-driving, "as long as they receive GB type approval and that there is no evidence to challenge the vehicle's ability to self-drive." The government confirmed that drivers will not be required to monitor the road or keep their hands on the wheel when the vehicle is driving itself. But the driver will need to stay alert and be able take over when requested by the system within 10 seconds. If a driver fails to respond, the vehicle will automatically put on its hazard lights to warn nearby vehicles, slow down and eventually stop. The Highway Code is now consulting on what rules will be put into new laws to make sure the technology is safely used. "ALKS as currently proposed by the government are not automated," cautions Matthew Avery, director of research at Thatcham Research. "They are assisted driving systems as they rely on the driver to take back control. Aside from the lack of technical capabilities, by calling ALKS automated our concern also is that the UK government is contributing to the confusion and frequent misuse of assisted driving systems that have unfortunately already led to many tragic deaths. Consumers will expect the car to do the job of a driver, which current models can't do."

On the last day of March, DroidScript, a popular Android app for writing JavaScript code, had its Google advertising account suspended and a week later was removed from the Google Play Store for alleged ad fraud. From a report: David Hurren, founder of the non-profit DroidScript.org and of SoftCogs Ltd, a UK-based software firm, is baffled by the charge and asked Google to explain how it came to that conclusion and to reconsider its suspension of DroidScript. But his appeals have been answered by form letters and now the app, used by more than 100,000 developers, including students, teachers and professionals, is losing premium subscribers as well as ad revenue with no further explanation from Google.

The app had only a single banner, added "reluctantly added to cover our development and hosting costs," Hurren explained in a DroidScript forum post about the crisis. Denied access to ad revenue and details about the supposed infraction, Hurren set about creating a new version without the AdMob banner ad shortly after the AdMob account suspension, knowing this might also prevent DroidScript users from implementing AdMob in their own apps. But Google, on April 7, suspended the app on Google Play, preventing any new version from being released. Hurren said that means the app loses all the user-ratings, download statistics, and premium subscribers accrued over the past seven years.

Spotify is increasing the price of many of its subscriptions this week across the UK and parts of Europe, with the US seeing a hike to Family plans. The Verge reports: Subscribers have started to receive emails informing them of the changes, and they will affect Student, Duo, and Family plans across parts of Europe and the UK, and Family subscriptions in the US from April 30th. Single Spotify Premium subscriptions are unaffected. Spotify family is increasing from $14.99 to $15.99 per month in the US. Fortunately, Duo, Premium, and Student pricing will remain the same... for now. The bigger hits to pricing will affect users in the UK and Europe.

In the UK, Spotify Student is increasing from 4.99 to 5.99 pounds per month, with a Duo subscription (for two people) moving from 12.99 to 13.99 pounds a month. Family users will also be hit with price increases, with the Spotify Family plan (up to six accounts) jumping from 14.99 to 16.99 pounds a month. Similar price increases will affect Spotify users in some European countries, too. Ireland and a handful of other European countries will see both Student and Duo increasing by a euro each per month, to 5.99 and 12.99 euros per month respectively. The Family plan in Europe is also increasing from 14.99 to 17.99 euros per month. Some countries in Asia and South America will also see similar price increases.

All existing Spotify subscribers in the US, Europe, and UK users of Spotify will have a one-month grace period before prices are automatically increased, so existing subscribers will see an increase during the June period of billing.