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Alibaba is cutting prices on its large language models by up to 85% to attract more enterprise users and strengthen its position in China's competitive AI market. CNBC reports: The Hangzhou-based e-commerce firm's cloud computing division, Alibaba Cloud, said in a WeChat post that it's offering the price cuts on its visual language model, Qwen-VL, which is designed to perceive and understand both texts and images. [...] Major Chinese tech firms including Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, JD.com, Huawei and TikTok parent company Bytedance have all launched their own large language models over the past 18 months, looking to capitalize on the hype around the technology. It's not the first time Alibaba has announced price cuts to incentivize businesses to use its AI products. In February, the company announced price reductions of as much as 55% on a wide range of core cloud products. More recently, in May, the company reduced prices on its Qwen AI model by as much as 97% in a bid to boost demand. [...] In Alibaba's case, the company is focusing its LLM efforts on the enterprise segment rather than launching a consumer AI chatbot like OpenAI's ChatGPT. In May, the company said its Qwen models have been deployed by over 90,000 enterprise users.

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Venezuela's Supreme Court on Monday fined TikTok $10 million for failing to prevent viral challenges allegedly linked to the deaths of three children. It also ordered the platform to establish a local office to oversee content compliance with national laws. The Associated Press reports: Judge Tania D'Amelio said TikTok had acted in a negligent manner and gave it eight days to pay the fine [...]. The judge did not explain how Venezuela would force TikTok, whose parent company is based in China, to pay the fine. Venezuela has blocked dozens of websites in previous years for not complying with regulations set by its telecommunications commission. In November, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro blamed TikTok for the death of a 12-year-old girl who allegedly died after participating in a TikTok challenge that involved taking tranquilizer pills and not falling asleep. Venezuela's Education Minister Hector Rodriguez also said last month that a 14-year-old died after taking part in a TikTok challenge that involved sniffing substances. And on Nov. 21, Venezuela's attorney general blamed video challenges on TikTok for the death of a third child.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: A new study published in the journal Renewable Energy (PDF) uses data from the state of California to demonstrate that no blackouts occurred when wind-water-solar electricity supply exceeded 100% of demand on the state's main grid for a record 98 of 116 days from late winter to early summer 2024 for an average (maximum) of 4.84 (10.1) hours per day. Compared to the same period in 2023, solar output in California is up 31%, wind power is up 8%, and batteries are up a staggering 105%. Batteries supplied up to 12% of nighttime demand by storing and redistributing excess solar energy. And here's the kicker: California's high electricity prices aren't because of wind, water, and solar energy. (That issue is primarily caused (PDF) by utilities recovering the cost of wildfire mitigation, transmission and distribution investments, and net energy metering.) In fact, researchers from Stanford, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the University of California, Berkeley found that states with higher shares of renewable energy tend to see lower electricity prices. The takeaway -- and the data backs it up -- is that a large grid dominated by wind, water, and solar is not only feasible, it's also reliable.

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The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has announced plans to retire its iconic R46 subway cars, triggering nostalgia among New Yorkers who cherished their distinctive seating arrangement. The fleet -- which has served A, C, N, R, Q, and W lines for five decades -- will be replaced by R211 cars expected for delivery in 2027. The R46's perpendicular seating configuration, designed for comfort during long trips to destinations like Coney Island, encouraged social interaction among passengers, according to New York Transit Museum director Concetta Bencivenga. The new R211 cars will feature longitudinal seating to improve passenger flow and reduce platform waiting times. Currently, 696 of the original 754 R46 cars remain in service. The replacement R211 cars will include security cameras, wider seats, improved signage, and better lighting.

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AI ethicists are cautioning that the rise of AI may bring with it the commodification of even one's motivations. From a report: Researchers from the University of Cambridge's Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence say -- in a paper published Monday in the Harvard Data Science Review journal -- the rise of generative AI, such as chatbots and virtual assistants, comes with the increasing opportunity for persuasive technologies to gain a strong foothold. "Tremendous resources are being expended to position AI assistants in every area of life, which should raise the question of whose interests and purposes these so-called assistants are designed to serve," Yaqub Chaudhary, a visiting scholar at the Center for Future of Intelligence, said in a statement. When interacting even causally with AI chatbots -- which can range from digital tutors to assistants to even romantic partners -- users share intimate information that gives the technology access to personal "intentions" like psychological and behavioral data, the researcher said. "What people say when conversing, how they say it, and the type of inferences that can be made in real-time as a result, are far more intimate than just records of online interactions," Chaudhary added. In fact, AI is already subtly manipulating and influencing motivations by mimicking the way a user talks or anticipating the way they are likely to respond, the authors argue. Those conversations, as innocuous as they may seem, leave the door open for the technology to forecast and influence decisions before they are made. "We caution that AI tools are already being developed to elicit, infer, collect, record, understand, forecast, and ultimately manipulate and commodify human plans and purposes," Chaudhary said.

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Earlier this year, Russia President Vladimir Putin called on the government to develop its own domestically produced gaming consoles with proprietary operating systems and cloud-based platforms. "With Russia heavily sanctioned and looking to promote its own products, one of its in-development consoles is powered by the Elbrus processor," notes TechSpot. However, the processor is "designed primarily for domestic applications in critical infrastructure, defense, and other sensitive areas" and "can't match high-end CPUs from Intel, AMD, and Arm." From the report: The Russian government admits that this device isn't going to be on the same level as current-gen machines. "I hope my colleagues will approach this task with full responsibility and come up with something truly groundbreaking," said Anton Gorelkin, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy. "It is obvious to everyone: Elbrus processors are not yet at the level required to compete equally with the PS5 and Xbox, which means the solution must be unconventional." Gorelkin said that Russian consoles aren't being designed only to play ports of hundreds of old, less-demanding games. He added that they should primarily serve the purpose of promoting and popularizing domestic video game products. Another organization following Putin's instructions is Russian telecommunications firm MTS. Its console (above) will use the company's cloud-based gaming platform, called Fog Play. It allows owners of high-end PCs to rent out their computing power to those with less-powerful equipment, charging an hourly price. Those with more powerful PCs can access games on the service and use their own hardware to play them. MTS' device is expected to cost no more than $45 and come with an Xbox-like controller, suggesting it's unlikely to appeal to those who enjoy current-gen console games.

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MicroStrategy has transformed into a "bitcoin treasury company," investing billions in bitcoin through debt and equity issuance, driving its stock price up nearly 400% in 2024 despite declining software revenues and heightened financial risks. The Guardian reports: In the summer of 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic upended economies around the world, an obscure U.S. software firm decided to diversify. MicroStrategy, whose head office is situated next to a shopping mall and metro station in Tysons Corner, Virginia, had decided the steady business of "software as a service" was not racy enough. Instead, it would branch out by investing up to $250 million in alternative assets -- "stocks, bonds, commodities such as gold, digital assets such as bitcoin or other asset types." Less than five years later, that bitcoin side hustle has gone stratospheric. MicroStrategy's share price has swollen twentyfold, lifting its market capitalization to almost $75 billion and catapulting the stock into the Nasdaq 100 index of top technology shares.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Federal authorities have arrested and indicted a 20-year-old U.S. Army soldier on suspicion of being Kiberphant0m, a cybercriminal who has been selling and leaking sensitive customer call records stolen earlier this year from AT&T and Verizon. As first reported by KrebsOnSecurity last month, the accused is a communications specialist who was recently stationed in South Korea. Cameron John Wagenius was arrested near the Army base in Fort Hood, Texas on Dec. 20, after being indicted on two criminal counts of unlawful transfer of confidential phone records. The sparse, two-page indictment (PDF) doesn't reference specific victims or hacking activity, nor does it include any personal details about the accused. But a conversation with Wagenius' mother -- Minnesota native Alicia Roen -- filled in the gaps. Roen said that prior to her son's arrest he'd acknowledged being associated with Connor Riley Moucka, a.k.a. "Judische," a prolific cybercriminal from Canada who was arrested in late October for stealing data from and extorting dozens of companies that stored data at the cloud service Snowflake. In an interview with KrebsOnSecurity, Judische said he had no interest in selling the data he'd stolen from Snowflake customers and telecom providers, and that he preferred to outsource that to Kiberphant0m and others. Meanwhile, Kiberphant0m claimed in posts on Telegram that he was responsible for hacking into at least 15 telecommunications firms, including AT&T and Verizon. On November 26, KrebsOnSecurity published a story that followed a trail of clues left behind by Kiberphantom indicating he was a U.S. Army soldier stationed in South Korea. [...] Immediately after news broke of Moucka's arrest, Kiberphant0m posted on the hacker community BreachForums what they claimed were the AT&T call logs for President-elect Donald J. Trump and for Vice President Kamala Harris. [...] On that same day, Kiberphant0m posted what they claimed was the "data schema" from the U.S. National Security Agency. On Nov. 5, Kiberphant0m offered call logs stolen from Verizon's push-to-talk (PTT) customers -- mainly U.S. government agencies and emergency first responders. On Nov. 9, Kiberphant0m posted a sales thread on BreachForums offering a "SIM-swapping" service targeting Verizon PTT customers. In a SIM-swap, fraudsters use credentials that are phished or stolen from mobile phone company employees to divert a target's phone calls and text messages to a device they control.

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The long-anticipated "year of the Linux desktop" could see renewed interest in 2025 as Microsoft's planned end of support for Windows 10 approaches, potentially driving users to explore alternatives. With Windows 10 reaching end of support in October 2025, many users will face decisions about upgrading hardware for Windows 11 or considering different operating systems entirely. Linux distributions have evolved to offer increasingly polished desktop experiences, with improving hardware compatibility and familiar user interfaces. 2024 saw Linux adoption grow thanks to the Steam Deck's success, reaching a 4.04% market share in December, up from 3.85% during the same time last year. More Linux laptops, improved gaming compatibility, and growing awareness of its benefits also contributed to its steady rise.

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Traditional airlines worldwide are rapidly eliminating long-standing perks from their basic fares, blurring the line between full-service and budget carriers, according to industry analysis of 90 major airlines. Air Canada's decision to ban standard carry-on luggage for its lowest-fare passengers from January 3 marks the latest rollback, joining United Airlines, Finnair, and others. Most legacy carriers, including British Airways, Air France, and Lufthansa, have already stripped checked baggage and seat selection from basic fares, signaling an industry-wide shift toward budget airline practices.

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Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton has backed Elon Musk's legal challenge against OpenAI, criticizing the AI startup's shift from its nonprofit origins toward a for-profit model. "OpenAI was founded as an explicitly safety-focused non-profit and made various safety related promises in its charter," Hinton said in a statement through AI advocacy group Encode. "Allowing it to tear all of that up when it becomes inconvenient sends a very bad message to other actors in the ecosystem." Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but left in 2018, filed an injunction last month to block the company's transition to a for-profit entity. OpenAI dismissed the filing as "utterly without merit." Hinton, who won the 2024 Physics Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in neural networks, has previously criticized OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in October for prioritizing profits over safety concerns.

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Researchers have uncovered widespread manipulation of GitHub's star-rating system, with over 3.1 million fraudulent stars identified across 15,835 repositories, according to a new study by Socket, Carnegie Mellon University, and North Carolina State University. The research team analyzed 20TB of data from GHArchive, spanning 6 billion GitHub events from 2019 to 2024, using their "StarScout" detection tool. The tool identified 278,000 accounts engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior to artificially boost repository rankings. GitHub uses stars, similar to social media likes, to rank projects and recommend content to users. The platform has previously encountered malicious exploitation of this system, including the "Stargazers Ghost Network" malware operation discovered last summer. Approximately 91% of flagged repositories and 62% of suspicious accounts were removed by October 2024.

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Intel's market value plunged 61% in 2024, marking its worst performance since going public in 1971, while rival chipmaker Broadcom saw shares surge 111% on AI advances. Broadcom, now valued at $1.1 trillion, leverages its custom XPU chips and networking gear for major cloud providers including Google, helping companies build AI infrastructure at lower costs than Nvidia's GPUs. Further reading: Intel Weighed $20 Billion Nvidia Takeover in 2005.

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The Arbor Day Foundation will plant 10 million trees across six U.S. states over four years to replace those destroyed during the devastating 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, the non-profit organization announced. The restoration program, targeting Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, marks the group's largest undertaking in its 50-year history. The initiative will involve state and local governments, corporate sponsors and community volunteers. The 2024 hurricane season claimed 375 lives and caused an estimated $500 billion in damage and economic losses, making it the deadliest mainland U.S. season since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

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The U.S. Justice Department has filed a complaint and announced a civil enforcement action against financial technology company Dave and its CEO Jason Wilk for alleged violations of federal law. From a report: The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission alleged the company lured users to its personal finance app by advertising cash advances of up to $500 that many never receive. The complaint, filed by the Justice Department, seeks unspecified amounts of consumer redress and monetary civil penalties from the defendants and a permanent injunction to prohibit them from engaging in future violations, the Justice Department said. The government alleges that Dave misled consumers by deceptively advertising its cash advances, charging hidden fees, misrepresenting how Dave uses customers' tips and charging recurring monthly fees without providing a simple mechanism to cancel them.

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PlayStation isn't giving up on live service games any time soon. From a report: In a recent interview with Japanese outlet Famitsu, PlayStation Co-CEO Herman Hulst said that the company still believes in the model despite recent hiccups like Concord. "The game business is constantly changing due to various factors, including technological advances, new genres and ways of playing," Hulst said via auto translation. "However, one thing that remains constant is people's desire for great entertainment experiences, and attention to games continues to grow. However, this has also created competition, and like many companies in the industry, we have had to make changes to our business to solidify a more sustainable operating base." Hulst continued by saying PlayStation will "continue to focus on developing live service titles along with the story-driven single-player titles that our players want."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The global smartphone market is splitting into two distinct segments, with the mid-range segment seeing its market share plummet from 35% in 2021 to a projected 23% by 2027, according to an analysis of data compiled by Goldman Sachs. The collapse of the mid-range segment -- $200-600 -- marks a stark reversal from 2021-22, when it held a steady 35% market share. "While mid-end segment used to provide balance between outstanding specifications and high performance-cost ratio, the demand has been declining due to the lack of revolutionary technology upgrades and a more conservative consumption of middle class amid macro challenges," the analysts wrote in a note reviewed by India Dispatch.

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Politico: Joe Biden spent the first half of his presidency enacting plans to steer at least $1.6 trillion to transform the economy and spur a clean-energy revolution -- only to watch those programs become afterthoughts in the 2024 election. Now the core of his domestic legacy stands unfinished, with hundreds of billions of dollars left to deploy, and imperiled as Donald Trump prepares to take office. A wide-ranging examination of the Biden administration's spending and tax policies reveals signs that his efforts could leave a lasting mark, but also ways in which his agenda has yet to take hold -- after unleashing money for batteries, solar cells, computer chips and clean water; luring foreign-owned factories to U.S. soil; and turning some red-state Republicans into supporters of green energy projects. Throughout 2024, POLITICO's "Biden's Billions" series has documented the halting pace, uneven progress and genuine economic impact of a spending blueprint rivaling Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. With just weeks left in Biden's term, it's not at all certain his legacy will endure in the same way. Much of it remains a work in progress. Solar installations have surged to record levels, but the country is not adding enough zero-carbon electricity to meet Biden's climate targets. A $42 billion expansion of broadband internet service has yet to connect a single household. Bureaucratic haggling, equipment shortages and logistical challenges mean a $7.5 billion effort to install electric vehicle chargers from coast to coast has so far yielded just 47 stations in 15 states.

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In 2025, China plans to start building a demonstration thorium-based molten-salt reactor in the Gobi Desert. IEEE Spectrum reports: The 10-megawatt reactor project, managed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP), is scheduled to be operational by 2030, according to an environmental-impact report released by the Academy in October. The project follows a 2-MW experimental version completed in 2021 and operated since then. China's efforts put it at the forefront of both thorium-based fuel breeding and molten-salt reactors. Several companies elsewhere in the world are developing plans for this kind of fuel or reactor, but none has yet operated one. Prior to China's pilot project, the last operating molten-salt reactor was Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, which ran on uranium. It shut down in 1969. Thorium-232, found in igneous rocks and heavy mineral sands, is more abundant on Earth than the commonly used isotope in nuclear fuel, uranium-235. But this weakly radioactive metal isn't directly fissile -- it can't undergo fission, the splitting of atomic nuclei that produces energy. So it must first be transformed into fissile uranium-233. That's technically feasible, but whether it's economical and practical is less clear. The attraction of thorium is that it can help achieve energy self-sufficiency by reducing dependence on uranium, particularly for countries such as India with enormous thorium reserves. But China may source it in a different way: The element is a waste product of China's huge rare earth mining industry. Harnessing it would provide a practically inexhaustible supply of fuel. Already, China's Gansu province has maritime and aerospace applications in mind for this future energy supply, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. Scant technical details of China's reactor exist, and SINAP didn't respond to IEEE Spectrum's requests for information. The Chinese Academy of Sciences' environmental-impact report states that the molten-salt reactor core will be 3 meters in height and 2.8 meters in diameter. It will operate at 700 C and have a thermal output of 60 MW, along with 10 MW of electricity. [...] But many challenges come along with thorium use. A big one is dealing with the risk of proliferation. When thorium is transformed into uranium-233, it becomes directly usable in nuclear weapons. "It's of a quality comparable to separated plutonium and is thus very dangerous," says Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C. If the fuel is circulating in and out of the reactor core during operation, this movement introduces routes for the theft of uranium-233, he says.

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Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered Zhulong, the most distant grand-design spiral galaxy identified so far, located at a redshift of approximately 5.2. Phys.Org reports: The galaxy was named Zhulong, after a giant red solar dragon and god in Chinese mythology. [...] Its mass was found to be comparable to that of the Milky Way, which is relatively high for a galaxy that formed within one billion years after the Big Bang, as the redshift indicates. The study found that Zhulong has a classical bulge and a large face-on stellar disk with spiral arms extending across 62,000 light years. The spectral energy distribution (SED) analysis points to a quiescent-like core and a star-forming stellar disk. Furthermore, it turned out that compared to the stellar disk, the center core of Zhulong is red and has the highest stellar mass surface densities measured among quiescent galaxies. The core is quiescent, which is consistent with the expectations of inside-out galaxy growth and quenching. The study also found that although the disk is still forming stars, Zhulong has a relatively low overall star-formation rate -- at a level of 66 solar masses per year. The baryons-to-stars conversion efficiency was calculated to be approximately 0.3, which is about 1.5 times higher than even the most efficient galaxies at later epochs. These results suggest that Zhulong must have been forming stars very efficiently and is in the transformation phase from star-forming to quiescence. In concluding remarks, the authors of the paper note that Zhulong appears to be the most distant spiral galaxy discovered to date. The properties of this galaxy seem to suggest that mature galaxies emerged much earlier than expected in the first billion years after the Big Bang. The findings have been published on the pre-print server arXiv.

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