An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Authority: Like many other phone makers, Google has a self-repair program for servicing your damaged or malfunctioning Pixel device. As its support site explains, there are options to get repair tools, manuals, and certified parts so you can fix up your Pixel like new. Owners ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Authority: Like many other phone makers, Google has a self-repair program for servicing your damaged or malfunctioning Pixel device. As its support site explains, there are options to get repair tools, manuals, and certified parts so you can fix up your Pixel like new. Owners ... ⌘ Read more
TorrentFreak's Ernesto Van der Sar recalls the rise and fall of Napster, the file-sharing empire that kickstarted a global piracy frenzy 25 years ago. Here's an excerpt from his report: At the end of the nineties, technology and the Internet were a playground for young engineers and 'hackers'. Some of them regularly gathered in the w00w00 IRC chatroom on the EFnet net ... ⌘ Read more
After growing concerned about potential stock manipulation, E\\*Trade is "considering telling meme-stock leader Keith Gill he can no longer use its platform," reports the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter. Gill, known online as "Roaring Kitty," gained notoriety for his role in the 2020 meme stock frenzy, where he en ... ⌘ Read more*
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda apologized Monday for massive cheating on certification tests for seven vehicle models as the automaker suspended production of three of them. The wide-ranging fraudulent testing at Japan's top automaker involved the use of inad ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Samsung isn't waiting around for Oura to file any patent claims over its forthcoming smart ring. Instead, it's preemptively filed its own suit against Oura, seeking a "declaratory judgment" that states the Galaxy Ring doesn't infringe on five Oura patents. The suit alleges that Oura has a pattern of filing paten ... ⌘ Read more
The next "Spider-Verse" film may have a new animation style: AI. From a report: Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) CEO Tony Vinciquerra does not mince words when it comes to AI. He likes the tech -- or at the very least, he likes the economics. "We are very focused on AI. The biggest problem with making films today is the expense," Vinciquer ... ⌘ Read more
Google has accidentally collected childrens' voice data, leaked the trips and home addresses of car pool users, and made YouTube recommendations based on users' deleted watch history, among thousands of other employee-reported privacy incidents, according to a copy of an internal Google database which tracks six years worth of potential privacy and security issues obtained ... ⌘ Read more
CarbonBrief: China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 3% in March 2024, ending a 14-month surge that began when the economy reopened after the nation's "zero-Covid" controls were lifted in December 2022. The new analysis for Carbon Brief, based on official figures and commercial data, reinforces the view that China's emissions coul ... ⌘ Read more
The New York Stock Exchange said Monday it was investigating a "technical issue" that was leading to large fluctuations in the prices of certain stocks including Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. From a report: According to a notice posted on its website, the issue involved "limit up, limit do ... ⌘ Read more
Zoom's CEO Eric Yuan predicts that AI will significantly transform the workplace, potentially ushering in a four-day workweek, he told The Verge in an interview. Yuan said Zoom is transitioning from a videoconferencing platform to a comprehensive collaboration suite called Zoom Workplace. He believes AI will automate routine tasks such as attending meetings, reading emails, and making phone call ... ⌘ Read more
British chip designer Arm expects to capture more than half of the Windows PC market within the next five years, CEO Rene Haas said in an interview. The company's optimism comes as Microsoft and its hardware partners gear up to introduce a new generation of AI-powered PCs running on Arm-designed chips, potentially reshaping the Intel-dominated i ... ⌘ Read more
The highlight of AMD's presentation Sunday at Computex 2024 was "the introduction of AMD's Ryzen AI 300 Series processors for laptops and the Ryzen 9000 Series for desktops," writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli (sharing his report at Beta News):
AMD's Ryzen AI 300 Series processors, designed for next-generation AI lapto ... ⌘ Read more
An anonytmous reader shared a recent report from BleepingComputer:
Cybercriminals are abusing Stack Overflow in an interesting approach to spreading malware — answering users' questions by promoting a malicious PyPi package that installs Windows information-stealing malware... "We further noticed that ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from Computer Weekly:
A former student at the Inns of Court College of Advocacy (ICCA) says he was hauled over the coals by the college for having acted responsibly and "with integrity" in reporting a security blunder that left sensitive information about students exposed. Bartek Wytrzyszczews ... ⌘ Read more
AI models can evaluate how similar voices are to each other. So NPR asked forensic voice experts at Arizona State University to compare the voice and speech patterns of OpenAI's "Sky" to Scarlett Johansson's...
The researchers measured Sky, based on audio from demos OpenAI delivered last week, against the voices of ... ⌘ Read more
Gizmodo reports there's been progress on a male birth-control gel "being developed with the help of several organizations, including the U.S. government's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the larger NIH."
It's now being tested in a larger-scale Phase IIB trial, which involves around 400 couples. [Five milliliters of gel — about a teaspon — is ... ⌘ [Read more](https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/06/02/230205/male-birth-control-gel-continues-to-show-promise?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed)
"Few computer keyboards are as iconic, as influential, or as beige as the IBM Model-M," writes the blog OMG Ubuntu adding that it's "no surprise then that it's been given a modern reimagining by 8BitDo."
Following on from their Nintendo NES and Famicom and Commodore 64 homages, 8BitDo has unveiled its latest retro-inspired mechanical ... ⌘ Read more
The Associated Press reports that U.S. federal regulators "have given Amazon key permission that will allow it to expand its drone delivery program, the company announced Thursday."
In a blog post published on its website, Seattle-based Amazon said that the Federal Aviation Administration has given its Prime Air delivery service th ... ⌘ Read more
Will appetite-suppressing drugs hurt the sugar industry? Executives from Walmart warned that Ozempic and Zepbound "are impacting food sales," reports Bloomberg, "and multiple analyst surveys have showed that less-hungry customers are spending fewer dollars at grocery stores and restaurants."
The drugs, which cut cravings, will result in a decline in calorie consumption in ... ⌘ Read more
Slashdot reader storagedude shares a provocative post from the cybersecurity news blog of Cyble Inc. (a Ycombinator-backed company promising "AI-powered actionable threat intelligence").
The post delves into concerns that the new "Recall" feature planned for Windows (on upcoming Copilot+ PCs) is "a security and privacy nightmare."
C ... ⌘ Read more
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: "This is truly game-changing news!" exclaims Minecraft Education's Laylah Bulman in a LinkedIn post targeting high school CS educators. "We're thrilled to announce that the AP Computer Science Principles with Minecraft and MakeCode Curriculum has officially been approved by The Co ... ⌘ Read more
"There is one big thing holding the United States back from a pollution-free electricity grid running on wind, solar and battery power," writes the Washington Post. "Not enough power lines... the nation's sagging, out-of-date power lines are being overwhelmed — slowing the transition to clean energy and the fight against climate change."
But exp ... ⌘ Read more
"To save itself, TikTok in 2022 offered the U.S. government an extraordinary deal," reports the Washington Post.
The video app, owned by a Chinese company, said it would let federal officials pick its U.S. operation's board of directors, would give the government veto power over each new hire and would pay an American company that contracts with the Defense ... ⌘ Read more
The New York Times reports on a program to forgive U.S. student loans from private lenders — a kind of private parallel to a federal program which "allows those who were seriously misled by their schools to have their federal student loans eliminated."
The problem? Eight U.S. senators complain the loan dischar ... ⌘ Read more
"Chinese scientists develop cure for diabetes," reads the headline from the world's second-most widely read English-language newspaper. ("Insulin patient becomes medicine-free in just 3 months.")
The researchers' results were published earlier in May in Cell Discovery, and are now getting some serious scrutiny from the press. The Economic Times cites a University of British Columbia professor's as ... ⌘ Read more
China's Chang'e-6 probe successfully lands on far side of the moon
China's moon probe has "successfully touched down on the far side of the moon," CNN reports, in "a significant step for the ambitious mission that could advance the country's aspirations of putting astronauts on the moon" by 2030.
The mission's ul ... ⌘ Read more
'"As AI programs shake up the office, potentially making millions of jobs obsolete, one group of perpetually stressed workers seems especially vulnerable..." writes the New York Times.
"The chief executive is increasingly imperiled by A.I."
These employees analyze new markets and discern trends, both tasks a computer could do more efficiently. They spend much of their time communicating with colleagues, a laborious activity that ... ⌘ Read more
"The seemingly star-cross Boeing Starliner — within minutes of its long-delayed blastoff on the spacecraft's first piloted test flight — was grounded again Saturday," writes CBS News, "when one of three redundant computers managing the countdown from the base of the launch pad ran into a prob ... ⌘ Read more
"The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has added a critical security bug in Linux to its list of vulnerabilities known to be actively exploited in the wild," reported Ars Technica on Friday.
"The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-1086 and carrying a severity rating of 7.8 out of a possibl ... ⌘ Read more
"Within less than a minute, I'm approached by a store worker who comes up to me and says, 'You're a thief, you need to leave the store'."
That's a quote from the BBC by a wrongly accused customer who was flagged by a facial-recognition system called Facewatch. "She says after her bag was searched she was led out of the shop, an ... ⌘ Read more
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares the announcement of a new report from the International Energy Forum:
The seemingly universal presumption persists that the copper needed for the green transition will somehow be available... This paper addresses this issue by projecting copper supply and demand from 201 ... ⌘ Read more
Journalist Steven Brill has written a new book called The Death of Truth. Its subtitle? "How Social Media and the Internet Gave Snake Oil Salesmen and Demagogues the Weapons They Needed to Destroy Trust and Polarize the World-And What We Can Do."
An excerpt published by Wired points out that last year around ... ⌘ Read more
A new article in the Washington Post argues that a phenomenon called "Quiet vacationing" has "joined 'quiet quitting' and 'quiet firing' as the latest (and least poetic) scourge of the modern workplace.
"Also known as the hush trip, workcation, hush-cation, or bleisure travel — you get the idea — quiet vacationing refers to workers taking time off, even tra ... ⌘ Read more
How will Apple protect user data while their requests are being processed by AI in applications like Siri?
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this report from Apple Insider:
According to sources of The Information [four different former Apple employees who worked on the project], Apple intends to process data from AI applications inside a virtual black box.
The conc ... ⌘ Read more
This week the Washington Post reported that Americans "are more hesitant to buy EVs now than they were a year ago, according to a March Gallup poll, which found that just 44 percent of American adults say they'd consider buying an EV in the future, down from 55 percent last year. High prices and charging worries consistently rank a ... ⌘ Read more
"A Swiss biocomputing startup has launched an online platform that provides remote access to 16 human brain organoids," reports Tom's Hardware:
FinalSpark claims its Neuroplatform is the world's first online platform delivering access to biological neurons in vitro. Moreover, bioprocessors like this "consume a million t ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:
Twice before, this Virginia carpenter had awoken in the predawn to start his work day only to find one of his vans broken into. Tools he depends on for a living had been stolen, and there was little hope of retrieving them. Determined to shut down thieves, he said, he bought a ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Digital Trends: HP researchers have published a paper detailing a new modular monitor design they call "composable microLED monitors." Using advancing microLED tech to make smaller screens with no bezels, they imagine a Lego-like system that allows customers to buy different monitor modules and slot them together at home. In the paper ... ⌘ Read more
Benj Edwards and Ashley Belanger reports via Ars Technica: On Wednesday, Axios broke the news that OpenAI had signed deals with The Atlantic and Vox Media that will allow the ChatGPT maker to license their editorial content to further train its language models. But some of the publications' writers -- and the unions that r ... ⌘ Read more
On June 3, a "planet parade" of six planets -- Jupiter, Mercury, Uranus, Mars, Neptune and Saturn -- will form a straight line through the pre-dawn sky. Astronomy.com reports: Some 20 minutes before sunrise, all six planets should be visible, though note that Uranus (magnitude 5.9) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8) will be too faint for naked-eye ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Last year, Jaume Pellicer led a team of fellow scientists into a forest on Grande Terre, an island east of Australia. They were in search of a fern called Tmesipteris oblanceolata. Standing just a few inches tall, it was not easy to find on the forest floor. "It doesn't catch the eye," sai ... ⌘ Read more
London's famed Evening Standard newspaper has announced plans to end its daily outlet, "bringing an end to almost 200 years of publication in the capital," reports The Guardian. Going forward, the company plans to launch "a brand new weekly newspaper later this year and consider options for retaining ES Magazine with reduced frequenc ... ⌘ Read more
Last than two weeks after it was announced, "Windows enthusiasts have managed to crack Microsoft's flagship AI-powered Recall feature to run on unsupported hardware," reports The Verge. From the report: Recall leverages local AI models on new Copilot Plus PCs to run in the background and take snapshots of anything you ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: California expects to avoid rolling blackouts this summer as new solar plants and large batteries plug into the state's grid at a rapid clip. The state's electricity system has been strained by years of drought, wildfires that knock out transmission lines and record-setting heat waves. But of ... ⌘ Read more
The New York Times, owner of the once-viral, word game Wordle, is suing a geography-based spinoff called Worldle, accusing its similar name of "creating confusion" and attempting to capitalize on "the enormous goodwill" associated with its own brand. Worldle's creator, Kory McDonald, vows to fight back. The BBC reports: "There's a whole industry of [dot]LE games," he told t ... ⌘ Read more
The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which provided monthly internet bill credits for low-income Americans, will officially end on June 1 due to a lack of additional funding from Congress. This termination threatens nearly 60 million Americans with increased financial hardship, as the program's lapse leaves them without the subsidies that made internet a ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Hackers are attempting to sell what they say is confidential information belonging to millions of Santander staff and customers. They belong to the same gang which this week claimed to have hacked Ticketmaster. The bank -- which employs 200,000 people worldwide, includin ... ⌘ Read more
Japanese crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin confirmed on Friday that it had been the victim of a hack resulting in the theft of 4,502.9 bitcoin, or about $305 million. From a report: According to crypto security firm Elliptic, this is the eighth largest crypto theft in history. DMM Bitcoin said it detected "an unauthorized leak of Bitcoin (BTC) from our wallet" on F ... ⌘ Read more
The retraction rate for European biomedical-science papers increased fourfold between 2000 and 2021, a study of thousands of retractions has found. Nature: Two-thirds of these papers were withdrawn for reasons relating to research misconduct, such as data and image manipulation or authorship fraud. These factors accounted for an increasing proportion of retra ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: The sound of the 1990s still resonates in the German capital. Like techno music, the fax machine remains on trend. According to the latest figures from Germany's digital industry association, four out of five companies in Europe's largest economy continue to use fax machines and a ... ⌘ Read more
Vermont has become the first state to enact a law requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a share of the damage caused by climate change after the state suffered catastrophic summer flooding and damage from other extreme weather. From a report: Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed the ... ⌘ Read more
The Japanese government is pushing ahead with a plan to make Japan's publicly funded research output free to read. From a report: In June, the science ministry will assign funding to universities to build the infrastructure needed to make research papers free to read on a national scale. The move follows the ministry's announcement in February that r ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a CR report: Based on the name, you'd think Filmmaker Mode is strictly for watching movies. But in our labs, we find that it can get you pretty close to what we consider to be the ideal settings for all types of programming. Filmmaker Mode is the product of a joint effort by the Hollywood film community, TV manufacturers, and the UHD Alliance to help ... ⌘ Read more
Long before people develop dementia, they often begin falling behind on mortgage payments, credit card bills and other financial obligations, new research shows. The New York Times: A team of economists and medical experts at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Georgetown University combined Medicare records with data from Equifax ... ⌘ Read more
Google has published an update on the deprecation timeline of so-called Manifest V2 extensions in the Chrome web browser. Starting this June, Chrome will inform users with classic extensions about the deprecation. From a report: Manifests are rulesets for extensions. They define the capabilities of extensions. When Google published the in ... ⌘ Read more
Private-equity investors have poured billions into healthcare but often game the system, hurting both doctors and patients. From a report: Consolidation is as American as apple pie. When a business gets bigger, it forces mom-and-pop players out of the market, but it can boost profits and bring down costs, too. Think about the pros and cons of Walmart a ... ⌘ Read more
Vista Equity Partners has written off the entire equity value of its investment in tech learning platform Pluralsight, three years after taking it private for $3.5 billion, Axios reported Friday. From the report: One source says that the Utah-based company's financials have improved, with around 26 ... ⌘ Read more
Increasingly redundant copper wires may be worth over $7 billion to telecommunications firms, should they take the trouble to recycle them. From a report: The estimate comes from British engineering company TXO, which claims there's up to 800,000 metric tons of copper wiring that could be harvested in the next ten years. TXO claims over a dozen telcos ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Liz Reid, the Head of Google Search, has admitted that the company's search engine has returned some "odd, inaccurate or unhelpful AI Overviews" after they rolled out to everyone in the US. The executive published an explanation for Google's more peculiar AI-generated responses in a blog post, where it also announced that the company ha ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Best Buy is set to post its tenth consecutive quarter of sales decline on Thursday when the U.S. electronics retailer reports quarterly results, as spending on big-ticket electronics remains pressured despite easing inflation. Although results from big-box retailers Walmart and Target indicate that consumers have resum ... ⌘ Read more
David Snow reports via Cult of Mac: A new report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) shows Apple News+ growing its subscription rate about four times as fast as major news sites are. CIRP showed Apple increased its News+ subscriptions in the United States from 15% to 24% between 2020 to 2024, a 9% increase. In that same period, The New Yor ... ⌘ Read more
With the help of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers discovered a galaxy at a redshift of 14.32, indicating it existed just 290 million years post-Big Bang. In a NASA release today, Stefano Carniani from Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, and Kevin Hainline from the University of Arizona in Tuc ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The slashing of pollution from shipping in 2020 led to a big "termination shock" that is estimated have pushed the rate of global heating to double the long-term average, according to research. Until 2020, global shipping used dirty, high-sulphur fuels that produced air pollution. The pollution particles blocked sunligh ... ⌘ Read more
Now included in Amazon Prime is free delivery via Grubhub. According to The Verge, "Amazon is now embedding Grubhub into Amazon.com and the Amazon Shopping app, and Amazon Prime customers paying $139 per year for Amazon Prime will now pay $0 for food delivery fees on orders of $12 or more, among other benefits." From the report: Amazon had previously offered Prime custom ... ⌘ Read more
Computer hardware manufacturer Cooler Master has confirmed that it suffered a data breach on May 19 after a threat actor breached the company's website, stealing the Fanzone member information of 500,000 customers. BleepingComputer reports: [A] threat actor known as 'Ghostr' told us they hacked the company's Fanzone website on May 18 and downloaded its ... ⌘ Read more
According to CNBC, Twitch is expected to terminate all members of its Safety Advisory Council on Friday. "The council is a resource of nine industry experts, streamers and moderators who consulted on trust and safety issues related to children on Twitch, nudity, banned users and more," notes the report. From the report: The Amazon-owned game-streaming c ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: TikTok is working on a clone of its recommendation algorithm for its 170 million U.S. users that may result in a version that operates independently of its Chinese parent and be more palatable to American lawmakers who want to ban it, according to sources with direct knowledge of the efforts. The work on splitting the ... ⌘ Read more
The free online tax filing program known as IRS Direct File will be made permanent for the 2025 tax season, with all 50 states and Washington D.C. invited to participate. Axios reports: Treasury announced earlier this month that more than 140,000 people participated in the Direct File pilot program in a dozen states claiming more than $90 million in refunds. The ... ⌘ Read more
If you contact Spotify's customer service with a valid receipt, the company will refund your Car Thing purchase. That's the latest development reported by Engadget. When Spotify first announced that it would brick every Car Thing device on December 9, 2024, it said that it wouldn't offer owners any subscription credit or automatic refund. From the report: Spotify has taken some h ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Sam Altman-led OpenAI said on Thursday it had disrupted five covert influence operations that sought to use its artificial intelligence models for "deceptive activity" across the internet. The artificial intelligence firm said the threat actors used its AI models to generate short comm ... ⌘ Read more
Framework, a company known for its modular laptops, has announced a fourth round of iterative updates and upgrade options for its Framework Laptop 13. The upgrades include motherboards and pre-built laptops featuring new Intel Meteor Lake Core Ultra processors with Intel Arc dedicated GPUs, lower prices for AMD R ... ⌘ Read more
Microsoft seems to be concerned about some of OpenAI's business dealings. From a report: Satya Nadella recently met with Sam Altman to discuss an apparent deal between OpenAI and Apple, The Information reported [hard-paywalled]. According to the outlet, the OpenAI CEO recently reached an agreement with the iPhone maker to incorpo ... ⌘ Read more
The New York governor, Kathy Hochul, plans to introduce a bill banning smartphones in schools, the latest in a series of legislative moves aimed at online child safety by New York's top official. From a report: "I have seen these addictive algorithms pull in young people, literally capture them and make them prisoners in a space where they are cut ... ⌘ Read more
Google Cloud faced a major setback earlier this month when it accidentally deleted the account of UniSuper, an Australian pension fund managing $135 billion in assets, causing a two-week outage for its 647,000 members. Google Cloud has since completed an internal review of the incident and published a blog post detailing the findings. Ars ... ⌘ Read more
Some of the world's most profitable -- and most polluting corporations -- have invested in carbon offset projects that have fundamental failings and are "probably junk," suggesting industry claims about greenhouse gas reductions were likely overblown, according to new analysis. From a report: Delta, Gucci, Volkswagen, Exx ... ⌘ Read more
Mishaal Rahman, reporting for AndroidAuthority: Google just unveiled its latest Android Feature Drop earlier today, and it's one of the most exciting feature drops I can remember. The two features I'm most excited about are part of Play Services's new Cross-Device Services module, which brings some Apple Continuity-style magic to y ... ⌘ Read more
Apple prioritizes device durability over easier repairs, according to John Ternus, the company's head of hardware engineering, in a recent interview with YouTuber MKBHD. "It's objectively better for the customer to have that reliability," Ternus stated, adding that it is "ultimately better for the planet" due to significantly lower failure rates. Apple ... ⌘ Read more
A widespread outage affecting over 600,000 routers connected to Windstream's Kinetic broadband service left customers without internet access for several days last October, according to a report by security firm Lumen Technologies' Black Lotus Labs. The incident, dubbed "Pumpkin Eclipse," is believed to be the result of a ... ⌘ Read more
The staggering electricity demand needed to power next-generation technology is forcing the US to rely on yesterday's fuel source: coal. From a report: Retirement dates for the country's ageing fleet of coal-fired power plants are being pushed back as concerns over grid reliability and expectations of soaring electricity demand ... ⌘ Read more
Google has confirmed the authenticity of 2,500 leaked internal documents detailing the company's data collection practices. The documents offer insights into Google's closely guarded search ranking algorithm. However, Google cautioned against making inaccurate assumptions based on incomplete information. The Verge adds: The leaked material suggests that Google collects ... ⌘ Read more
Alphabet's Google and augmented reality startup Magic Leap are forming a strategic technology partnership and working on building immersive experiences that blend the physical and digital worlds. From a report: Magic Leap said in a blog post on Thursday that the two companies have agreed to a partnership. While short on details, the announcement adds to signals that Goo ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Yesterday, Amazon failed to convince a US district court to dismiss the Federal Trade Commission's lawsuit targeting the tech giant's alleged history of tricking people into signing up for Prime. The FTC has alleged that Amazon "tricked, coerced, and manipulated consume ... ⌘ Read more
A survey of 12,000 people in six countries -- Argentina, Denmark, France, Japan, the UK, and the USA -- found that very few people are regularly using AI products like ChatGPT. Unsurprisingly, the group bucking the trend are young people ages 18 to 24. The BBC reports: Dr Richard Fletcher, the report's lead author, told the BBC ... ⌘ Read more
Last August, PayPal became the first major financial company to roll out a stablecoin. Labeled PayPal USD, or PYUSD, the coin was issued on the Ethereum blockchain and "fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term Treasuries and similar cash equivalents." Now, the financial company is adding Solana as an option, "making PayPal's stablecoin faster and cheaper to use."
"The Solana blockcha ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When used to generate power or move vehicles, fossil fuels kill people. Particulates and ozone resulting from fossil fuel burning cause direct health impacts, while climate change will act indirectly. Regardless of the immediacy, premature deaths and illness prior to death are felt throug ... ⌘ Read more
schwit1 shares a report from NPR: When you first approach this bridge over Interstate 66 in northern Virginia, it may feel like you're driving on the wrong side of the road. Because, in a way, you are. "There were a lot of people who looked at me like I was a little nuts," says traffic engineer Gilbert Chlewicki, the invento ... ⌘ Read more
Satellite-to-phones service provider AST SpaceMobile announced a deal with Verizon to provide remote coverage across the United States. "Verizon's deal effectively includes a $100 million raise for AST, as well, in the form of $65 million in commercial service prepayments and $35 million in debt via convertible notes," reports CNBC. ... ⌘ Read more
Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: A massive uptick in traffic to Fedora's package mirrors is causing problems for the Linux distribution. Some five million additional systems have started putting additional strain on Fedora's mirror resources since March and appear to be coming from Amazon's cloud. Stephen Smoogen of Red Hat wrote a blog post today around 5+ million ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes an op-ed from The Globe and Mail, written by Kate Robertson and Ron Deibert. Robertson is a senior research associate and Deibert is director at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. From the piece: A federal cybersecurity bill, slated to advance through Parliament soon, contains secretive, encryption-breaking po ... ⌘ Read more
The notorious hacker group ShinyHunters has claimed to have breached the security of Ticketmaster-Live Nation, compromising the personal data more than half a billion users. "This massive 1.3 terabytes of data, is now being offered for sale on Breach Forums for a one-time sale for $500,000," reports Ha ... ⌘ Read more
Salesforce shares dropped as much as 17% in extended trading due to weaker-than-expected revenue and guidance that fell short of Wall Street expectations. "Revenue in the fiscal first quarter, which ended April 30, increased 11% from $8.25 billion a year earlier," reports CNBC. "It's the first time since 2006 that Salesforce fell short on revenue, according ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: The U.S. Department of the Treasury today unveiled sanctions against three Chinese nationals for allegedly operating 911 S5, an online anonymity service that for many years was the easiest and cheapest way to route one's Web traffic through malware-infected computers around the globe. KrebsOnSecurity identified one of ... ⌘ Read more
American Lidar, a company registered in Michigan in December, is a subsidiary of China-based lidar maker Hesai Group, which the U.S. has labeled a security concern, WSJ reported Wednesday, citing policymakers and national-security experts. Chinese firms facing regulatory or reputational problems are rebranding and creating U.S.-domiciled ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google is killing off a messaging service! This one is the odd "Google Business Messaging" service -- basically an instant messaging client that is built into Google Maps. If you looked up a participating business in Google Maps or Google Search on a phone, the main row of buttons in the place card would read some ... ⌘ Read more
An anonymous reader shares a report: At a two-hour drive from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capital, rows of solar panels extend to the horizon like waves on an ocean. Despite having almost limitless reserves of oil, the kingdom is embracing solar and wind power, partly in an effort to retain a leading position in the energy industry, which is vitally important to the country but fast changing. Looking out ... ⌘ Read more
Apple is seeking a senior engineer to help build a television and sports app for Android, a sign the company is finally bringing its TV+ service to the rival smartphone platform. From a report: In a job listing published in recent days, Apple said it's looking for someone to lead the development of "fun new features" and "help build an application used ... ⌘ Read more
House Republicans this week accused officials at the National Institutes of Health of orchestrating "a conspiracy at the highest levels" of the agency to hide public records related to the origins of the Covid pandemic. And the lawmakers promised to expand an investigation that has turned up emails in which senior health officials talked openl ... ⌘ Read more
Mistral, the French AI startup backed by Microsoft and valued at $6 billion, has released its first generative AI model for coding, dubbed Codestral. From a report: Codestral, like other code-generating models, is designed to help developers write and interact with code. It was trained on over 80 programming languages, including Python, ... ⌘ Read more
Data centers could use up to 9% of total electricity generated in the United States by the end of the decade, more than doubling their current consumption, as technology companies pour funds into expanding their computing hubs, the Electric Power Research Institute said on Wednesday. From a report: Depending on the adopt ... ⌘ Read more
IP core designer Arm announced its next-generation CPU and GPU designs for flagship smartphones: the Cortex-X925 CPU and Immortalis G925 GPU. Both are direct successors to the Cortex-X4 and Immortalis G720 that currently power MediaTek's Dimensity 9300 chip inside flagship smartphones like the Vivo X100 and X100 Pro and ... ⌘ Read more