An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Italy is in advanced talks with Elon Musk's SpaceX for a deal to provide secure telecommunications for the nation's government -- the largest such project in Europe, people with knowledge of the matter said Sunday. Discussions are ongoing, and a final agreement on the five-year contract hasn't been reached, said the people, who asked not to be identified citing confidential discussions. The project has already been approved by Italy's Intelligence Services as well as Italy's Defense Ministry, they said. Italy on Monday confirmed discussions are ongoing, saying no deal had yet been reached. "The talks with SpaceX are part of normal government business," the government said.... [ Read it >> ]

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Delta Air Lines has partnered with YouTube to provide ad-free YouTube Premium and YouTube Music to SkyMiles members on flights. "The deal includes a selection of curated content from key YouTube creators," notes Variety. The airline also said it would upgrade its fleet with better Wi-Fi and 4K HDR QLED displays, alongside AI-driven enhancements like a personal assistant on the Fly Delta app to improve travel experiences. From the report: Delta executives announced the YouTube deal and other flight-experience enhancements to its Delta Sync platform as the aviation giant gave an expansive presentation Tuesday evening at the Sphere in Las Vegas, in connection with the Consumer Electronics Show. Delta touted plans to mark the company's 100th anniversary this year, noting that it is the first airline to reach the centennial mark.... [ Read it >> ]

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NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), located at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains just north of Los Angeles, has been temporarily shuttered due to the nearby Eaton fire. "JPL is closed except for emergency personnel. No fire damage so far (some wind damage) but it is very close to the lab. Hundreds of JPLers have been evacuated from their homes & many have lost homes. Special thx to our emergency crews. Pls keep us in your thoughts & stay safe," JPL Director Laurie Leshin announced via X today (Jan. 8). Space.com reports: JPL is federally funded but managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The center runs many of NASA's high-profile robotic missions, such as the Perseverance and Curiosity Mars rovers and the $5 billion Europa Clipper, which recently launched to explore an intriguing ocean moon of Jupiter.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: San Francisco startup Based Hardware announced during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week the launch of a new AI wearable, Omi, to boost productivity. The device can be worn as a necklace where Omi's AI assistant can be activated by saying "Hey Omi." The startup also claims Omi can be attached to the side of your head, using medical tape, using a "brain interface" to understand when you're talking to it. The startup's founder, Nik Shevchenko, started marketing this device on Kickstarter as "Friend," but changed the device's name after another San Francisco hardware maker launched his own Friend device and bought the domain name for $1.8 million.... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft temporarily rolled back its Bing Image Creator upgrade from OpenAI's DALL-E 3 PR16 to the previous PR13 version after users reported degraded image quality, including cartoonish and "lifeless" results. TechCrunch reports: Ahead of the holidays, Microsoft said it was upgrading the AI model behind Bing Image Creator, the AI-powered image editing tool built into the company's Bing search engine. Microsoft promised that the new model -- the latest version of OpenAI's DALL-E 3 model, code-named PR16 -- would allow users to create images "twice as fast as before" with "higher quality." But it didn't deliver. Complaints quickly flooded X and Reddit.... [ Read it >> ]

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TikTok has been pushing the platform's sister app, Lemon8, encouraging users to migrate via sponsored posts amid a looming ban. Axios reports: In the last few weeks, Lemon8 has been promoting its app to TikTok users through sponsored TikTok videos. In one sponsored post, TikTok user @miller.dailylife shares a video with a creator saying, "TikTok actually has another backup app. It's called Lemon8 ... and it automatically signs you in with your TikTok so you can still keep the same TikTok name and things like that. And it's supposed to transfer your followers over. ... Once you add Lemon8, it automatically pops up on your TikTok bio, so that people can just click on it. So, just so you guys know, now that they're trying to do this ban, if you want to have somewhere else to go where the government is not 100% controlling what we see, what we consume ... Just go ahead and go on to Lemon8."... [ Read it >> ]

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BleepingComputer's Sergiu Gatlan reports: "Today, the White House announced the launch of the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, a new cybersecurity safety label for internet-connected consumer devices. The Cyber Trust Mark label, which will appear on smart products sold in the United States later this year, will help American consumers determine whether the devices they want to buy are safe to install in their homes. It's designed for consumer smart devices, such as home security cameras, TVs, internet-connected appliances, fitness trackers, climate control systems, and baby monitors, and it signals that the internet-connected device comes with a set of security features approved by NIST.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The Nobel peace prize winner Maria Ressa has said Meta's decision to end factchecking on its platforms and remove restrictions on certain topics means "extremely dangerous times" lie ahead for journalism, democracy and social media users. The American-Filipino journalist said Mark Zuckerberg's move to relax content moderation on the Facebook and Instagram platforms would lead to a "world without facts" and that was "a world that's right for a dictator."... [ Read it >> ]

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Telegram's Transparency Report reveals a sharp increase in U.S. government data requests, with 900 fulfilled requests affecting 2,253 users. "The news shows a massive spike in the number of data requests fulfilled by Telegram after French authorities arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in August, in part because of the company's unwillingness to provide user data in a child abuse investigation," notes 404 Media. From the report: Between January 1 and September 30, 2024, Telegram fulfilled 14 requests "for IP addresses and/or phone numbers" from the United States, which affected a total of 108 users, according to Telegram's Transparency Reports bot. But for the entire year of 2024, it fulfilled 900 requests from the U.S. affecting a total of 2,253 users, meaning that the number of fulfilled requests skyrocketed between October and December, according to the newly released data. "Fulfilled requests from the United States of America for IP address and/or phone number: 900," Telegram's Transparency Reports bot said when prompted for the latest report by 404 Media. "Affected users: 2253," it added.... [ Read it >> ]

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The Register's Connor Jones reports: Marc Rogers, DEF CON's head of security, faces tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills following an accident that left him with a broken neck and temporary quadriplegia. The prominent industry figure, whose work has spanned roles at tech companies such as Vodafone and Okta, including ensuring the story lines on Mr Robot and The Real Hustle were factually sound, is recovering in hospital. [...] Rogers said it will be around four to six weeks before he returns to basic independence and is able to travel, but a full recovery will take up to six months. He begins a course of physical therapy today, but his insurance will only cover the first of three required weeks, prompting friends to set up a fundraiser to cover the difference.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T, following last year's embarrassing botched update that kicked every device off its wireless network and blocked over 92 million phone calls, is now promising full-day bill credits to mobile customers for future outages that last at least 60 minutes and meet certain other criteria. A similar promise is being made to fiber customers for unplanned outages lasting at least 20 minutes, but only if the customer uses an AT&T-provided gateway. The "AT&T Guarantee" announced today has caveats that can make it possible for a disruption to not be covered. AT&T says the promised mobile bill credits are "for wireless downtime lasting 60 minutes or more caused by a single incident impacting 10 or more towers."... [ Read it >> ]

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Indonesia will continue to block iPhone 16 sales despite Apple's planned $1 billion AirTag factory investment, as the facility does not meet local content requirements for smartphones, Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita said on Wednesday. Indonesia banned iPhone 16 sales last year after Apple failed to meet rules requiring 35% locally-made components in smartphones sold domestically.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: It looks like Samsung is finally ready to roll out a paid subscription for its AI-powered smartphones, but it might not look like what we were expecting.

According to ETNews, Samsung Electronics vice chair Han Jong-hee has confirmed that the company's AI Subscription Club, which launched last December for some of Samsung's home appliances in South Korea, will soon roll out to both Galaxy phones and the upcoming Ballie AI robot. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: As music sales and streaming revenue reaches a high of $3 billion -- the highest since 2001, not accounting for significant inflation -- the UK video game market, which has grown almost continually for decades, has shrunk by 4.4%. The most significant decline was in boxed video game sales, down 35%. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft will begin enforcing storage limits on unlicensed OneDrive accounts from January 27, 2025, ending a loophole that allowed organizations to retain departed employees' data without cost.

Data from accounts unlicensed for over 93 days will move to recycle bins for another 93 days before permanent deletion, unless under retention policies. Archived data retrieval will cost $0.60 per gigabyte plus $0.05 monthly per gigabyte. Organizations must either retrieve data, add licenses, or risk losing access, Microsoft has warned.... [ Read it >> ]

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The Japanese government published an alert on Wednesday accusing a Chinese hacking group of targeting and breaching dozens of government organizations, companies, and individuals in the country since 2019. From a report: Japan's National Police Agency and the National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity attributed the years-long hacking spree to a group called MirrorFace. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The six biggest banks in the US have all quit the global banking industry's net zero target-setting group, with the imminent inauguration of Donald Trump as president expected to bring political backlash against climate action.

JP Morgan is the latest to withdraw from the UN-sponsored net zero banking alliance (NZBA), following Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs. All six have left since the start of December. Analysts have said the withdrawals are an attempt to head off "anti-woke" attacks from rightwing US politicians, which are expected to escalate when Trump is sworn in as the country's 47th president in just under a fortnight. Trump's vows to deregulate the energy sector, dismantle environmental rules and "drill, baby, drill," were a big part of his campaign platform and are expected to form a key part of his blueprint for governing the US, the world's biggest oil and gas producer.... [ Read it >> ]

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Former MoviePass CEO Theodore Farnsworth has pleaded guilty to securities fraud and conspiracy charges for misleading investors about the movie subscription service's "unlimited plan" and its parent company's capabilities, U.S. prosecutors said.

Farnsworth falsely claimed the $9.95 monthly unlimited movie plan was sustainable and that Helios & Matheson Analytics could monetize subscriber data through artificial intelligence, knowing both statements were untrue. He faces up to 20 years in prison for MoviePass-related fraud and five years for a separate conspiracy charge involving Vinco Ventures.... [ Read it >> ]

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Nvidia's AI chips are advancing faster than Moore's Law, the semiconductor industry's historical performance benchmark, according to chief executive Jensen Huang. "Our systems are progressing way faster than Moore's Law," Huang told TechCrunch. Nvidia's chips have improved thousand-fold over the past decade, outpacing Moore's Law's prediction of doubled transistor density every year, Huang said. He adds: We can build the architecture, the chip, the system, the libraries, and the algorithms all at the same time. If you do that, then you can move faster than Moore's Law, because you can innovate across the entire stack. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Nvidia founder and chief executive Jensen Huang believes "very useful" quantum computers are likely decades away, tempering expectations for the emerging technology. "If you kind of said 15 years for very useful quantum computers, that would probably be on the early side. If you said 30, it's probably on the late side," Huang said during Nvidia's analyst day. "If you picked 20, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it."... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Akamai has decided to end its content delivery network services in China, but not because it's finding it hard to do business in the Middle Kingdom. News of Akamai's decision to end CDN services in China emerged in a letter it recently published and sent to customers and partners that opens by reminding them the company has a "commitment to providing world-class delivery and security solutions" -- and must therefore inform them that "Effective June 30, 2026, all China CDN services will reach their decommission date." ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: People who get their coffee hit in the morning reap benefits that are not seen in those who have shots later in the day, according to the first major study into the health benefits of the drink at different times. Analysis of the coffee consumption of more than 40,000 adults found that morning coffee drinkers were 16% less likely to die of any cause and 31% less likely to die from cardiovascular disease during a 10-year follow-up period than those who went without. But the benefits to heart health appeared to vanish in people who drank coffee throughout the day, the researchers found, with medical records showing no significant reduction in mortality for all-day drinkers compared with those who avoided coffee. [...]... [ Read it >> ]

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China's Xiangshan project aims to deliver a high-performance RISC-V processor by 2025. If it succeeds, it could be "enormously significant" for three reasons, writes The Register's Simon Sharwood. It would elevate RISC-V from low-end silicon to datacenter-level capabilities, leverage the open-source Mulan PSL-2.0 license to disrupt proprietary chip models like Arm and Intel, and reduce China's dependence on foreign technology, mitigating the impact of international sanctions on advanced processors. From the report: The prospect of a 2025 debut appeared on Sunday in a post to Chinese social media service Weibo, penned by Yungang Bao of the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The academy has created a project called Xiangshan that aims to use the permissively licensed RISC-V ISA to create a high-performance chip, with the Scala source code to the designs openly available.... [ Read it >> ]

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Scientists have discovered that quarks and gluons inside protons are quantum entangled, challenging traditional views of proton structure and revealing a more complex, dynamic system influenced by strong interactions. Space.com reports: Entanglement is the aspect of quantum physics that says two affected particles can instantaneously influence each other's "state" no matter how widely separated they are -- even if they are on opposite sides of the universe. Albert Einstein founded his theories of relativity on the notion that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, however, something that should preclude the instantaneous nature of entanglement.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: To members of his synagogue, the voice that played over the speakers of Congregation Emanu El in Houston sounded just like Rabbi Josh Fixler's. In the same steady rhythm his congregation had grown used to, the voice delivered a sermon about what it meant to be a neighbor in the age of artificial intelligence. Then, Rabbi Fixler took to the bimah himself. "The audio you heard a moment ago may have sounded like my words," he said. "But they weren't." The recording was created by what Rabbi Fixler called "Rabbi Bot," an A.I. chatbot trained on his old sermons. The chatbot, created with the help of a data scientist, wrote the sermon, even delivering it in an A.I. version of his voice. During the rest of the service, Rabbi Fixler intermittently asked Rabbi Bot questions aloud, which it would promptly answer.... [ Read it >> ]

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The shift from paywalled to open-access scientific publishing is progressing, driven in part by platforms like Sci-Hub -- a website that allows users to upload PDFs of published papers and share them with anyone. While the shadow library website has faced ongoing attempts by publishers to block access, it has another problem: the platform features many outdated or retracted papers that could spread misinformation or flawed findings. Ars Technica reports: Sci-Hub works a bit like a combination of cache and aggregator for published materials. Whenever it gets a request for a paper that's not already in its database, it uses leaked login credentials to go to the website of whatever journal published the paper and obtain a copy. If it already has a copy, however, it will simply serve that up instead. This leaves open the possibility that it will have obtained a copy of a paper prior to its retraction and continue to distribute that copy after the paper has been retracted.... [ Read it >> ]

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According to police, the man killed in the January 1st Las Vegas Cybertruck blast used ChatGPT to plan the explosion. The Hill reports: In a press conference, Tuesday, Las Vegas police released more details of the intentions of 37-year-old Matthew Livelsberger, who died of a gunshot wound prior to the car exploding. Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill said it was concerning that Livelsberger used ChatGPT, a popular artificial intelligence model created by OpenAI, to carry out the explosion. According to police, Livelsberger asked ChatGPT various questions, including where the largest gun stores in Denver were, information about the explosive targets Tannerite and pistols. "We knew that AI was going to change the game at some point or another in really all of our lives and certainly, I think this is the first incidence that I'm aware of on U.S. soil where ChatGPT is utilized to help an individual build a particular device, to learn information all across the country as they're moving forward," McMahill said.... [ Read it >> ]

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At CES 2025 today, Lenovo introduced the Legion Go S handheld gaming console. It marks the first officially licensed handheld that comes pre-loaded with Valve's Arch Linux based SteamOS operating system. Phoronix reports: This first officially licensed SteamOS handheld is making use of the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoC with Radeon 700M graphics, an 8-inch 1200p LCD touchscreen with VRR support, up to 32GB of LPDDR5x-6400 memory, up to 1TB of PCIe Gen4 SSD storage, and a 55 Whr battery. Pricing starts at $500 USD with availability beginning in May. Sadly this Lenovo Legion Go handheld running SteamOS is making use of the Ryzen Z1 Extreme and not the Ryzen Z2 announced by AMD yesterday with the Zen 5 cores. But at CES Lenovo is showing off the Lenovo Legion Go (8.8", 2) prototype that uses the AMD Ryzen Z2 Go SoC along with an OLED display albeit a Windows gaming device. Additional details are available in Lenovo's press release.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Laptop screens can feel cramped. But what if you could magically get more real estate without having to carry around a portable monitor? That's precisely the purpose of Lenovo's ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable AI PC -- yes, rollable. It has an OLED display that, with the push of a button, extends the 14-inch screen upward to make for an awkward aspect ratio, but roughly doubles the screen space to 16.7 inches. Two screens are better than one for productivity, but what if one screen could be two but still one? Yes.... [ Read it >> ]

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The OnePlus 13 launched in the North American market today, making it the first flagship smartphone of 2025. As the smartphone market continues to consolidate, it has become increasingly difficult for non-Samsung, Google, and Apple devices to gain significant traction in the competitive U.S. market. Nevertheless, OnePlus has continually released premium flagship-tier devices at relatively modest price points, hoping to pry users away from the Big Tech monoliths.... [ Read it >> ]

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"Nvidia has officially introduced its highly anticipated GeForce 50 Series graphics cards, accompanied by the debut of DLSS 4 technology," writes Slashdot reader jjslash. "The lineup includes four premium GPUs: the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 are slated for release on January 30, with the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti following in February. TechSpot recount of the Jensen Huang keynote tries to differentiate between dubious performance claims and actual expected raw output": The new RTX 5090 flagship comes packing significantly more hardware over its predecessor. Not only does this GPU use Nvidia's new Blackwell architecture, but it also packs significantly more CUDA cores, greater memory bandwidth, and a higher VRAM capacity. The SM count has increased from 128 with the RTX 4090 to a whopping 170 with the RTX 5090 -- a 33% increase in the core size. The memory subsystem is overhauled, now featuring GDDR7 technology on a massive 512-bit bus. With this GDDR7 memory clocked at 28 Gbps, memory bandwidth reaches 1,792 GB/s -- a near 80% increase over the RTX 4090's bandwidth. It also includes 32GB of VRAM, the most Nvidia has ever provided on a consumer GPU. [...]... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US Justice Department today announced it filed an antitrust lawsuit against "six of the nation's largest landlords for participating in algorithmic pricing schemes that harmed renters." One of the landlords, Cortland Management, agreed to a settlement "that requires it to cooperate with the government, stop using its competitors' sensitive data to set rents and stop using the same algorithm as its competitors without a corporate monitor," the DOJ said. The pending settlement requires Cortland to "cooperate fully and truthfully... in any civil investigation or civil litigation the United States brings or has brought" on this subject matter.... [ Read it >> ]

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Thailand has banned plastic waste imports over concerns about toxic pollution, as experts warn that failure to agree a global treaty to cut plastic waste will harm human health. From a report: A law banning imports of plastic waste came into force this month in Thailand, after years of campaigning by activists. Thailand is one of several south-east Asian countries that has historically been paid to receive plastic waste from developed nations. The country became a leading destination for exports of plastic waste from Europe, the US, the UK and Japan in 2018 after China, the world's biggest market for household waste, imposed a ban. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Hackers claim to have compromised Gravy Analytics, the parent company of Venntel which has sold masses of smartphone location data to the U.S. government. 404 Media: The hackers said they have stolen a massive amount of data, including customer lists, information on the broader industry, and even location data harvested from smartphones which show peoples' precise movements, and they are threatening to publish the data publicly. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Sony-owned anime streaming service Crunchyroll plans to launch a manga reading app in 2025, its second attempt at entering the digital manga market after shuttering a similar service in 2023. The new app, Crunchyroll Manga, will be available initially in the United States and Canada in English, as a premium add-on for subscribers. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese venture capitalists are hounding failed founders [non-paywalled source], pursuing personal assets and adding the individuals to a national debtor blacklist when they fail to pay up, in moves that are throwing the country's startup funding ecosystem into crisis. The hard-nosed tactics by risk capital providers have been facilitated by clauses known as redemption rights, included in nearly all the financing deals struck during China's boom times. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Anthropic is in advanced talks to raise $2 billion dollars in a deal that would value it at $60 billion, making it the latest artificial-intelligence startup to seize upon investor euphoria for the technology. WSJ: The funding round is being led by the venture firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, people familiar with the matter said. The $60 billion valuation includes the money Anthropic plans to raise in the round. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Mark Zuckerberg built up Facebook's content-policing efforts in the wake of Donald Trump's first presidential election. Now the Meta Platforms CEO is reversing course as he embraces a second Trump presidency. Meta is ending fact-checking and removing restrictions on speech across Facebook and Instagram, Zuckerberg said in a video Tuesday, a move he described as an attempt to restore free expression on its platforms. ... [ Read it >> ]

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A widely used DNA sequencer lacks crucial firmware security protections, potentially exposing genetic research facilities to cyberattacks, security researchers said on Tuesday. The Illumina iSeq 100, deployed at 23andMe and thousands of laboratories worldwide, runs on outdated BIOS firmware from 2018 that doesn't enforce Secure Boot protection against malware infections, ArsTechnica reported today, citing researchers from Eclypsium. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Complaints and ridicule have been mounting about mistakes by the iPhone maker's hyped feature, and its flaws risk a serious setback. Bloomberg: If you've seen any of Apple's marketing lately, you'll know the latest iPhone is billed as the first "built for Apple Intelligence." The "for" in that sentence is doing a great deal of work. It couldn't be "with" because Apple's AI features weren't ready when the device came out, and some are still yet to be released. The first were added to devices in iOS version 18.1, which came out in October. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Nvidia will begin selling a personal AI supercomputer in May that can run sophisticated AI models with up to 200 billion parameters, the chipmaker has announced. The $3,000 Project Digits system is powered by the new GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip and can operate from a standard power outlet. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Nvidia has unveiled plans to introduce AI-powered autonomous characters in video games this year, starting with a virtual teammate in the battle royale game PUBG, the chip maker said at CES 2025 in Las Vegas.

The technology, called ACE, enables in-game characters to communicate, make decisions and interact with players using small language models. The AI companions will also feature in Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile PC Version in March 2025 and other upcoming titles including inZOI and MIR5, Nvidia said.... [ Read it >> ]

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Getty Images and Shutterstock have agreed to combine in a deal that creates a $3.7 billion visual content company. From a report: The deal underscores the soaring demand for images and related content from content creators and platforms. Getty CEO Craig Peters will remain chief executive of the combined business, which will trade under the GETY ticker symbol.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Instagram has begun testing a feature in which Meta's AI will automatically generate images of users in various situations and put them into that user's feed. One Redditor posted over the weekend that they were scrolling through Instagram and were presented an AI-generated slideshow of themselves standing in front of "an endless maze of mirrors," for example. "Used Meta AI to edit a selfie, now Instagram is using my face on ads targeted at me," the person posted. The user was shown a slideshow of AI-generated images in which an AI version of himself is standing in front of an endless "mirror maze." "Imagined for you: Mirror maze," the "location of the post reads."... [ Read it >> ]

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America's aging elevators are facing significant repair delays and rising costs, creating accessibility challenges and leaving vulnerable populations stranded. Experts argue that implementing federal standards and modernizing systems could address these issues. However, fixing the nation's approximately one million elevators is "becoming a heavy lift," reports Axios. From the report: America's aging elevators are time-consuming and costly to fix. The workforce of technicians who know how to fix them is aging. And buildings with elevators in need of repair often need to wait ages for replacement parts due to arcane supply-chain issues. [...] Elevator parts shortages appear to stem largely from two issues: Parts suppliers often prioritize their biggest customers, which in this case happens to be builders in China, where the vast majority of the world's new elevators are installed, according to [Stephen Smith, executive director of the Center for Building in North America]. And parts are often no longer available for aging -- and often obsolete -- elevators, meaning they often have to be custom made.... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft plans to invest $3 billion to expand its artificial intelligence and cloud Azure services in India, turning to the world's most populous nation to fuel its revenue growth engine. From a report: The firm, which has been operating in India for more than two decades, will also train an additional 10 million people in the country with AI, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at an event in Bengaluru Tuesday. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Before NASA Administrator Bill Nelson retires in a couple of weeks, he has one final message for the next administration: Don't give up on the agency's Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon. In an interview with Ars Technica's Eric Berger, Nelson discussed his time in office, the major decisions he made, and his concerns for the space agency's future under the Trump administration. Here's an excerpt from the interview: Ars: I wanted to start with the state of Artemis. You all had an event a few weeks ago where you talked about Artemis II and Artemis III delays. And you know, both those missions have slipped a couple of years now since you've been administrator. So I'm just wondering, do you know how confident we should be in the current timeline?... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: John Deere is going all in on autonomous tractors. The company, which first introduced a driverless vehicle in 2022, said self-driving machines will revolutionize the field and address labor shortages. It will soon be selling self-driving dump trucks, more driverless tractors, and a robot lawn mower. "When we talk about autonomy, we mean full autonomy," Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer at John Deere, said at CES on Monday, according to The Verge. "No one's in the machine."... [ Read it >> ]

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A 65-year-old patient in the United States with underlying medical conditions has died from bird flu. According to NBC News, "health officials considered the case to be the "country's first severe human H5N1 infection." From the report: The Louisiana Department of Health said the patient had been exposed to a combination of a backyard flock and wild birds. "The Department expresses its deepest condolences to the patient's family and friends as they mourn the loss of their loved one," it said in a statement. "Due to patient confidentiality and respect for the family, this will be the final update about the patient." All but one of the [67] human bird flu infections confirmed so far in the U.S. were diagnosed in the last 10 months, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most cases have been relatively mild, with symptoms including pinkeye, coughs or sneezes. The majority of the patients became sick after exposure to infected cattle or poultry. The Louisiana patient was the first case linked to exposure to a backyard flock. [...]... [ Read it >> ]

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Google DeepMind is forming a new team to develop AI models capable of simulating the physical world. It's being led by former OpenAI Sora co-lead Tim Brooks and builds on Google's Gemini, Veo, and Genie projects. "DeepMind has ambitious plans to make massive generative models that simulate the world," Brooks wrote on X. "I'm hiring for a new team with this mission." TechCrunch reports: According to job listings Brooks linked to in his post, the new modeling team will collaborate with and build on work from Google's Gemini, Veo, and Genie teams to tackle "critical new problems" and scale models "to the highest levels of compute." Gemini is Google's flagship series of AI models for tasks like analyzing images and generating text, while Veo is Google's own video generation model. As for Genie, it's Google's take on a world model -- AI that can simulate games and 3D environments in real time. Google's latest Genie model, previewed in December, can generate a massive variety of playable 3D worlds.... [ Read it >> ]

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