Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told a judge who found that Google illegally monopolizes online search that a Justice Department proposal to share search data with rivals would be a "de facto" divestiture of the company's search engine. From a report: If Google were required to share both its search data and the information on how it ranks results, rivals could reverse engineer "every aspect of our technology," Pichai testified on Wednesday. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Wikipedia will employ AI to enhance the work of its editors and volunteers, it said Wednesday, also asserting that it has no plans to replace those human roles. The Wikimedia Foundation plans to implement AI specifically for automating tedious tasks, improving information discovery, facilitating translations, and supporting new volunteer onboarding, it said.... [ Read it >> ]

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Electronic Arts is laying off hundreds of workers and canceling a Titanfall game that was in development at its Respawn Entertainment subsidiary. From a report: Between 300 and 400 positions were eliminated, including around 100 at Respawn, according to a person familiar with the cuts. The company had about 13,700 employees at the end of March 2024. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft has pledged to take the US government to court if necessary [alternative source] to protect European customers' access to its cloud services, as concerns mount over potential technology disruptions under President Donald Trump. Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and vice-chair, announced five "digital commitments" to Europe on Wednesday, responding to regional anxieties following Trump's temporary suspension of military support to Ukraine. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Instead of depressing wages or taking jobs, generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have had almost no wage or labor impact so far -- a finding that calls into question the huge capital expenditures required to create and run AI models. In a working paper released earlier this month, economists Anders Humlum and Emilie Vestergaard looked at the labor market impact of AI chatbots on 11 occupations, covering 25,000 workers and 7,000 workplaces in Denmark in 2023 and 2024.... [ Read it >> ]

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Firefly Aerospace's sixth Alpha rocket launch failed on April 29, 2025, after an upper-stage anomaly prevented a Lockheed Martin satellite demo from reaching orbit. Both the stage and payload fell into the Pacific Ocean near Antarctica. Space.com reports: The two-stage, 96.7-foot-tall (29.6 meters) Alpha lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base this morning (April 29), carrying a technology demonstration for aerospace giant Lockheed Martin toward low Earth orbit (LEO). But the payload never got there. Alpha suffered an anomaly shortly after its two stages separated, which led to the loss of the nozzle extension for the upper stage's single Lightning engine. This significantly reduced the engine's thrust, dooming the mission, Firefly said in an update several hours after launch.... [ Read it >> ]

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Kosmos 482, a failed Soviet Venus probe, is expected to make an uncontrolled reentry in mid-May after orbiting Earth for 53 years. Gizmodo reports: The lander module from an old Soviet spacecraft is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere during the second week of May, according to Marco Langbroek, a satellite tracker based in Leiden, the Netherlands. "As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact," Langbroek wrote in a blog update. "The risks involved are not particularly high, but not zero."... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Daily exposure to certain chemicals used to manufacture household plastics may be connected to more than 356,000 cardiovascular-related deaths in 2018 alone, a new analysis has found. These chemicals, called phthalates, are present in products around the world but have particular popularity in the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific -- regions that collectively bore about 75 percent of the global death total, according to the research, published on Tuesday in the Lancet eBioMedicine.... [ Read it >> ]

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Google Play's app marketplace has seen a dramatic 47% drop in available apps
-- from 3.4 million to 1.8 million -- since the start of 2024. An analysis by app intelligence provider Appfigures attributes the decline to stricter quality standards, expanded human reviews, and increased enforcement against low-quality and deceptive apps. TechCrunch reports: In July 2024, Google announced it would raise the minimum quality requirements for apps, which may have impacted the number of available Play Store app listings.... [ Read it >> ]

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Ars Technica's Andrew Cunningham reports: Intel's oddball Core Ultra 200V laptop chips -- codenamed Lunar Lake -- will apparently be a one-off experiment, not to be replicated in future Intel laptop chips. They're Intel's only processors with memory integrated onto the CPU package; the only ones with a neural processing unit that meets Microsoft's Copilot+ performance requirements; and the only ones with Intel's best-performing integrated GPUs, the Intel Arc 130V and 140V.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says a $254 billion state budget deal has been reached, including a "bell-to-bell" school cellphone ban. [...] The distraction-free policy would take effect next school year, making New York the largest state in the country with a "bell-to-bell" cellphone ban. Hochul says the plan will help protect children from addictive technology and improve their mental health. The New York State United Teachers union also came out in support of the ban, saying "we are at a crisis point."... [ Read it >> ]

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LG will permanently shut down its Android smartphone update servers on June 30, 2025, ending all software, app, and security updates for its devices. If you're still using an smartphone, you'll want to install any remaining updates before that date, as no future updates will be available afterward. 9to5Google reports: When LG called it quits for Android smartphones, the company also committed to a few more updates. That included an Android 12 update for select devices, the last major update the company would put out, as well as security updates for at least three years after each device had been released. That three-year cutoff has long since passed for all LG devices, but any devices still floating around out there will soon no longer be able to pull updates. LG's notice can be read here.... [ Read it >> ]

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In a blog post yesterday, Master I-ranked human GeoGuessr player Sam Patterson said that OpenAI's o3 model outscored him in a head-to-head match, "correctly identifying all five countries and twice landing within a few hundred meters." Geoguessing is a game -- most popularly known through the platform GeoGuessr -- where players are dropped into a random location in Google Street View and must figure out where in the world they are using only visual clues from the environment. With the release of its newest AI models, o3 and o4-mini, OpenAI now does a surprisingly good job of analyzing uploaded images to determine their locations using nothing but subtle visual clues.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Today, open-source software powers the world. It didn't have to be that way. The Open Invention Network's (OIN) origins are rooted in a turbulent era for open source. In the mid-2000s, Linux faced existential threats from copyright and patent litigation. Besides, the infamous SCO lawsuit and Microsoft's claims that Linux infringed on hundreds of its patents cast a shadow over the ecosystem. Business leaders became worried. While SCO's attacks petered out, patent trolls -- formally known as Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs) -- were increasing their attacks. So, open-source friendly industry giants, including IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat, and Sony, formed the Open Invention Network (OIN) to create a bulwark against patent threats targeting Linux and open-source technologies. Founded in 2005, the Open Invention Network (OIN) has evolved into a global community comprising over 4,000 participants, ranging from startups to multinational corporations, collectively holding more than three million patents and patent applications.... [ Read it >> ]

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Mastercard is working with Microsoft and other leading AI companies to give AI agents the ability to shop online and make payments on behalf of consumers. From a report: Under the new program, a shopper could prompt an AI agent -- Microsoft's Copilot, for example -- to search for a pair of yellow running shoes in a particular size. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Electronic Arts (EA) has laid off around 300 employees across multiple departments, including about 100 at Respawn Entertainment. IGN reports: IGN understands that these wider cuts largely impacted EA's Experiences team, which includes groups such as EA's Fan Care team and various others working on customer support and marketing, though other EA departments saw reductions as well. As with other cuts at EA, those impacted will be given the opportunity to apply for other roles internally prior to being let go.... [ Read it >> ]

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Firefox has launched its long-awaited tab groups feature, responding to the most upvoted request in Mozilla Connect's three-year history. The feature allows users to organize tabs by name or color through a drag-and-drop interface.

Mozilla is now developing an AI-powered "smart tab groups" feature that automatically suggests organization based on open tabs. Unlike competitors, the company said, Firefox processes this data locally, keeping tab information on the user's device rather than sending it to cloud servers.... [ Read it >> ]

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A new study [PDF] reveals AI-generated code frequently references non-existent third-party libraries, creating opportunities for supply-chain attacks. Researchers analyzed 576,000 code samples from 16 popular large language models and found 19.7% of package dependencies -- 440,445 in total -- were "hallucinated." ... [ Read it >> ]

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South Korean telecom network SK Telecom is providing free SIM card replacements to all 25 million mobile subscribers following an April 19 security breach where malware compromised Universal Subscriber Identity Module data.

Despite the company's announcement, only 6 million replacement cards will be available through May 2025. The stolen data potentially includes IMSI numbers, authentication keys, and network usage information, though customer names, identification details, and financial information remain secure. The primary risk is unauthorized SIM swapping attacks, where threat actors could clone SIM cards.... [ Read it >> ]

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Carbon removal technologies, potentially a $250 billion market, are failing to gain traction as buyers remain scarce. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects a need for 10 billion metric tons of carbon removals annually by 2050, yet only 175 million tons have been sold to date -- less than 2% of requirements. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday directed India's government to block Switzerland-based email service Proton Mail, citing national security concerns and law enforcement challenges. Justice M Nagaprasanna ordered authorities to initiate proceedings under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act to ban the service, while mandating immediate blocking of "offending URLs" until final decisions are made. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Bitcoin mining has crossed a critical economic threshold, with costs now exceeding market value for most operators. According to data cited by CoinShares, large public mining companies spend over $82,000 to produce a single Bitcoin -- nearly double last quarter's figure -- while smaller operations face even steeper costs of approximately $137,000 per coin. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Reddit's top lawyer, Ben Lee, said the company is considering legal action against researchers from the University of Zurich who ran what he called an "improper and highly unethical experiment" by surreptitiously deploying AI chatbots in a popular debate subreddit. The University of Zurich told 404 Media that the experiment results will not be published and said the university is investigating how the research was conducted. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Hackers working for governments were responsible for the majority of attributed zero-day exploits used in real-world cyberattacks last year, per new research from Google. From a report: Google's report said that the number of zero-day exploits -- referring to security flaws that were unknown to the software makers at the time hackers abused them -- had dropped from 98 exploits in 2023 to 75 exploits in 2024. ... [ Read it >> ]

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A former Disney employee who hacked into the company's servers to alter its restaurant menus, including falsifying allergen information and printing profane language, has been sentenced to three years in prison. From a report: Michael Scheuer, a Florida resident, was sentenced last week in federal court and ordered to pay nearly $690,000 in restitution, with most of that going to Disney. He pled guilty in January to one count of computer fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Longtime Slashdot reader me34point5 writes: OpenBSD quietly released the new version (7.7) of its "secure by default" operating system. This is the 58th release. Changes include improved hardware and VMM support, along with many kernel improvements. This release brings several specific improvements, including performance boosts on ARM64, Arm SVE support, AMD SEV virtualization enhancements, better low-memory handling on i386, and improved suspend/hibernate and SMP performance. It also updates graphics drivers with support for AMD Ryzen IA 300, Radeon RX 9070, and Intel Arrow Lake, along with expanded hardware support for MediaTek SoCs.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon doesn't want to shoulder the blame for the cost of President Donald Trump's trade war.

So the e-commerce giant will soon show how much Trump's tariffs are adding to the price of each product, according to a person familiar with the plan. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The once-celebrated partnership between OpenAI's Sam Altman and Microsoft's Satya Nadella is deteriorating amid fundamental disagreements over computing resources, model access, and AI capabilities, according to WSJ. The relationship that Altman once called "the best partnership in tech" has grown strained as both companies prepare for independent futures. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Amazon successfully launched the first 27 satellites for its Project Kuiper internet constellation, kicking off a major effort to compete with Starlink by deploying over 1,600 satellites by mid-2026. It company is investing $10 billion in Kuiper and plans to begin commercial service later this year. CNBC reports: "We had a nice smooth countdown, beautiful weather, beautiful liftoff, and Atlas V is on its way to orbit to take those 27 Kuiper satellites, put them on their way and really start this new era in internet connectivity," Caleb Weiss, a systems engineer at ULA, said on the livestream following the launch.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Automakers are increasingly pushing consumers to accept monthly and annual fees to unlock preinstalled safety and performance features, from hands-free driving systems and heated seats to cameras that can automatically record accident situations. But the additional levels of internet connectivity this subscription model requires can increase drivers' exposure to government surveillance and the likelihood of being caught up in police investigations. A cache of more than two dozen police records recently reviewed by WIRED show US law enforcement agencies regularly trained on how to take advantage of "connected cars," with subscription-based features drastically increasing the amount of data that can be accessed during investigations. The records make clear that law enforcement's knowledge of the surveillance far exceeds that of the public and reveal how corporate policies and technologies -- not the law -- determine driver privacy.... [ Read it >> ]

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Oracle engineers mistakenly triggered a five-day software outage at a number of Community Health Systems hospitals, causing the facilities to temporarily return to paper-based patient records. From a report: CHS told CNBC that the outage involving Oracle Health, the company's electronic health record (EHR) system, affected "several" hospitals, leading them to activate "downtime procedures." Trade publication Becker's Hospital Review reported that 45 hospitals were hit. ... [ Read it >> ]

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According to an email posted on Duolingo's LinkedIn, the language learning app will "gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle." Co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn also said the company will be "AI-first." The Verge reports: According to von Ahn, being "AI-first" means the company will "need to rethink much of how we work" and that "making minor tweaks to systems designed for humans won't get us there." As part of the shift, the company will roll out "a few constructive constraints," including the changes to how it works with contractors, looking for AI use in hiring and in performance reviews, and that "headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work."... [ Read it >> ]

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Nixplay has dramatically reduced its free cloud storage offering for digital photo frame users from the original 10GB to just 500MB. The previously announced update, which took effect last week, also removed the formerly free ability to sync Google Photos albums. Users whose accounts already exceed the new 500MB limit will find their content "restricted from sharing or viewing" unless they edit their library or purchase a subscription. Nixplay now offers two paid tiers: Nixplay Lite at $19.99 annually for 100GB storage and Nixplay Plus at $29.99 yearly for unlimited storage.... [ Read it >> ]

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OpenAI has upgraded ChatGPT's search tool to include shopping features, allowing users to receive personalized product recommendations, view images and reviews, and access direct purchase links using natural language queries. TechCrunch reports: When ChatGPT users search for products, the chatbot will now offer a few recommendations, present images and reviews for those items, and include direct links to webpages where users can buy the products. OpenAI says users can ask hyper-specific questions in natural language and receive customized results. To start, OpenAI is experimenting with categories including fashion, beauty, home goods, and electronics. OpenAI is rolling out the feature in the default AI model for ChatGPT, GPT-4o, today for ChatGPT Pro, Plus, and Free users, as well as logged-out users around the globe.... [ Read it >> ]

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New submitter MicroBitz shares a report: SPROUT, short for Soft Pathfinding Robotic Observation Unit, is a flexible, vine-like robot developed by MIT Lincoln Laboratory in collaboration with the University of Notre Dame. Unlike rigid robots or static cameras, SPROUT can "grow" into tight, winding spaces that are otherwise inaccessible, giving first responders a new way to explore, map and assess collapsed structures. Beyond disaster response, the technology could be adapted for inspecting military systems or critical infrastructure in hard-to-reach places, making SPROUT a versatile tool for a variety of high-stakes scenarios. "The urban search-and-rescue environment can be brutal and unforgiving, where even the most hardened technology struggles to operate. The fundamental way a vine robot works mitigates a lot of the challenges that other platforms face," says Chad Council, a member of the SPROUT team, which is led by Nathaniel Hanson.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee police are mulling a trade: 2.5 million mugshots for free use of facial recognition technology. Officials from the Milwaukee Police Department say swapping the photos with the software firm Biometrica will lead to quicker arrests and solving of crimes. But that benefit is unpersuasive for those who say the trade is startling, due to the concerns of the surveillance of city residents and possible federal agency access. "We recognize the very delicate balance between advancement in technology and ensuring we as a department do not violate the rights of all of those in this diverse community," Milwaukee Police Chief of Staff Heather Hough said during an April 17 meeting.... [ Read it >> ]

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Onchain investigator ZachXBT flagged a suspicious $330.7 million Bitcoin transfer that was quickly laundered into Monero, causing XMR's price to spike by 50%. CoinTelegraph reports: The transaction, reported on April 28, saw funds moved from a potential victim's wallet to the address bc1qcry...vz55g. Following the transfer, the stolen stash was quickly laundered through over six instant exchanges and swapped into privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero. The large-scale conversion led to a 50% spike in XMR's price with the token reaching an intraday high of $339, according to data from CoinMarketCap.... [ Read it >> ]

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Three Democratic senators are sounding the alarm over brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies' ability to collect -- and potentially sell -- our neural data. From a report: In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Maria Cantwell (D-IN), and Ed Markey (D-MA) called for an investigation into neurotechnology companies' handling of user data, and for tighter regulations on their data-sharing policies. "Unlike other personal data, neural data -- captured directly from the human brain -- can reveal mental health conditions, emotional states, and cognitive patterns, even when anonymized," the letter reads. "This information is not only deeply personal; it is also strategically sensitive."... [ Read it >> ]

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The sale of bankrupt DNA data bank 23andMe is delayed as the company struggles to secure a lead bidder who can meet regulatory and privacy requirements, pushing the initial auction deadline from Friday to Monday. Seeking Alpha reports: 23andMe Holdings (OTC:MEHCQ), currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, is requiring that any potential bidders for the company's assets "guaranty that they will comply with the Company's privacy policies and applicable law." The genetics company said this is necessary to protect customers' data.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Here's an easy to understand example of how Donald Trump's tariffs on imported products have completely screwed small U.S. businesses and entrepreneurs: the crowdfunding site Kickstarter is introducing a "Tariff Manager tool" that will allow creators to add extra charges to projects that were already fully funded in order to deal with the higher and unexpected costs of the president's global trade war. "Over the past few weeks, we've been hard at work developing tariff-relevant resources to support our community. From guidance to help creators navigate rapidly changing policies, to tips on shipping logistics, and even information to help backers better understand the challenges creators are facing. Our focus has been supporting you through uncertain times, but we also know that information alone isn't always enough," Kickstarter said in a blog post published last week announcing the Tariff Manager tool. "Built specifically to address the financial challenges posed by U.S. import tariffs, Kickstarter's Tariff Manager is designed to give creators more control, flexibility, and transparency at one of the most critical phases of your journey: fulfillment."... [ Read it >> ]

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Huawei is gearing up to test its newest and most powerful AI processor, which the company hopes could replace some higher-end products of U.S. chip giant Nvidia. From a WSJ report: Huawei has approached some Chinese tech companies about testing the technical feasibility of the new chip, called the Ascend 910D, people familiar with the matter said. The company is slated to receive the first batch of samples of the processor as soon as late May, some of the people said. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Researchers claiming affiliation with the University of Zurich secretly deployed AI-powered bots in a popular Reddit forum to test whether AI could change users' minds on contentious topics. The unauthorized experiment, which targeted the r/changemyview subreddit, involved bots making over 1,700 comments across several months while adopting fabricated identities including a sexual assault survivor, a Black man opposing Black Lives Matter, and a domestic violence shelter worker. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Inventor James Dyson described his career as "a life of failure" in a recent Wall Street Journal interview, citing setbacks as drivers of innovation. The 77-year-old creator of the bagless vacuum cleaner, who built a $16.8 billion fortune according to Bloomberg's Billionaire Index, created 5,127 prototypes over five years before successfully launching his signature product in 1993. "If something works, it's less challenging, it's less interesting," Dyson said. "If something's gone wrong, you want to know why it's gone wrong, and it's a learning process." ... [ Read it >> ]

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IBM announced plans to invest $150 billion in the United States over the next five years, with more than $30 billion earmarked specifically for research and development of mainframes and quantum computing technology. The investment follows similar commitments from tech giants including Apple and Nvidia -- each pledging approximately $500 billion -- in the wake of President Trump's election and tariff threats. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Ruby on Rails creator and Basecamp CTO David Heinemeier Hansson, makes a case for why Google shouldn't be forced to sell Chrome: First, Chrome won the browser war fair and square by building a better surfboard for the internet. This wasn't some opportune acquisition. This was the result of grand investments, great technical prowess, and markets doing what they're supposed to do: rewarding the best. Besides, we have a million alternatives. Firefox still exists, so does Safari, so does the billion Chromium-based browsers like Brave and Edge. And we finally even have new engines on the way with the Ladybird browser. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Widespread power outages were reported Monday in parts of Spain, Portugal and France, affecting critical infrastructure like airports and causing transportation disruptions. From a report: "The interruption was due to a problem in the European electricity grid," E-Redes, the national energy supplier of Portugal, said in a statement. In addition to Portugal, it said, "The blackout also affected regions of Spain and France, due to faults in very high voltage lines." ... [ Read it >> ]

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Sales of electric vehicles in America jumped 10.6% in the first three months of 2025 (compared to the same period in 2024), reports Bloomberg.

And research provider BloombergNEF expects all of 2025 will see a 31.5% sales increase from 2024's sales in the U:S. — slightly above the global increase rate of 30%. (That's 22 million battery-powered vehicles around the world.) ... [ Read it >> ]

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"A new study found that a gene recently recognized as a biomarker for Alzheimer's disease is actually a cause of it," announced the University of California, San Diego, "due to its previously unknown secondary function."

"Researchers at the University of California San Diego used artificial intelligence to help both unravel this mystery of Alzheimer's disease and discover a potential treatment that obstructs the gene's moonlighting role." ... [ Read it >> ]

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A new DARPA project called expMath "aims to jumpstart math innovation with the help of AI," writes The Register. America's "Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency" believes mathematics isn't advancing fast enough, according to their article...

So to accelerate — or "exponentiate" — the rate of mathematical research, DARPA this week held a Proposers Day event to engage with the technical community in the hope that attendees will prepare proposals to submit once the actual Broad Agency Announcement solicitation goes out... ... [ Read it >> ]

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Remember First Light Fusion? Founded in 2011, it was a pioneering British startup that in 2022 "successfully combined atomic nuclei, which U.K. regulators called a milestone in the decades-long push for fusion energy.

It's now "pulled the plug on plans to build its first reactor," reports the Telegraph, abandoning its push for a prototype power plant based on its "projectile fusion" technology due to a lack of funding.... [ Read it >> ]

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