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Apple TV+ Is 'Worst Marketer In the Universe,' Says Producer
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2025-04-26 08:22:01


TV producer Alex Berger criticized Apple TV+ as "the worst marketer in the universe" for failing to promote his French-language show La Maison, despite its success in Europe. Berger said he initially partnered with Apple out of hope, but ultimately felt they undermined their own content by not supporting it properly. 9to5Mac reports: Rafa Sales Ross at Variety recently interviewed TV producer Alex Berger, who made La Maison for Apple TV+. That partnership is apparently not one he intends to repeat: "Marketing makes a show," he emphasized. "Apple, for example, is probably the worst marketer in the universe -- the best for iPhones, the worst for television. They don't do marketing, and it was an issue for us with 'La Maison.' We did a great show that had an amazing success in France and other places in Europe, but they never promoted it. It drove me crazy."... [ Read it >> ]

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World's Biggest Zipper Maker Is Developing a Self-Propelled Zipper
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2025-04-26 08:22:01


YKK, the world's largest zipper maker, has unveiled a prototype self-propelled zipper that uses a motorized worm gear to zip itself closed at the push of a button. It currently relies on a wired remote and external power, and can zip spans up to 16 feet in under a minute. The Verge reports: Although some recent zipper innovations, such as Under Armour's one-handed MagZip upgrade, are designed to improve accessibility and make zippers easier to use for those with limited mobility, YKK envisions more industrial use cases for its prototype. As demonstrated in a video recently shared on the company's YouTube channel, the self-propelled zipper is seen connecting a pair of 16-foot-tall membranes in about 40 seconds. Zipping them together manually would require the use of a ladder or other machinery.... [ Read it >> ]

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Devs Sound Alarm After Microsoft Subtracts C/C++ Extension From VS Code Forks
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2025-04-26 08:22:01


Some developers are "crying foul" after Microsoft's C/C++ extension for Visual Studio Code stopped working with VS Code derivatives like VS Codium and Cursor, reports The Register. The move has prompted Cursor to transition to open-source alternatives, while some developers are calling for a regulatory investigation into Microsoft's alleged anti-competitive behavior. From the report: In early April, programmers using VS Codium, an open-source fork of Microsoft's MIT-licensed VS Code, and Cursor, a commercial AI code assistant built from the VS Code codebase, noticed that the C/C++ extension stopped working. The extension adds C/C++ language support, such as Intellisense code completion and debugging, to VS Code. The removal of these capabilities from competing tools breaks developer workflows, hobbles the editor, and arguably hinders competition. The breaking change appears to have occurred with the release of v1.24.5 on April 3, 2025.... [ Read it >> ]

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Comcast President Bemoans Broadband Customer Losses: 'We Are Not Winning'
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2025-04-26 04:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast executives apparently realized something that customers have known and complained about for years: The Internet provider's prices aren't transparent enough and rise too frequently. This might not have mattered much to cable executives as long as the total number of subscribers met their targets. But after reporting a net loss of 183,000 residential broadband customers in Q1 2025, Comcast President Mike Cavanagh said the company isn't "winning in the marketplace" during an earnings call today. The Q1 2025 customer loss was over three times larger than the net loss in Q1 2024.... [ Read it >> ]

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DoorDash Makes $3.6 Billion Offer For Deliveroo
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2025-04-26 03:22:01


DoorDash has sent a proposal to buy the British meal delivery company Deliveroo for $3.6 billion. "The current offer marks the first formal approach since the last report in the summer," notes Reuters. From the report: The deal is expected to face no regulatory hurdles, as it provides DoorDash access to 10 new markets where it currently has no presence, creating a highly complementary footprint - other competitors might encounter more antitrust issues, the source said. Last year, Reuters reported DoorDash had shown interest in a takeover of Deliveroo, but a source said talks ended after disagreements on valuation.... [ Read it >> ]

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Google Is Killing Software Support For Early Nest Thermostats
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2025-04-26 03:22:01


Google announced it will end software updates and remote control support for the first- and second-generation Nest Learning Thermostats (plus the 2014 European model) starting October 25th. "You will no longer be able to control them remotely from your phone or with
Google Assistant, but can still adjust the temperature and modify schedules directly on the thermostat," the company wrote in a Friday blog post. The Verge reports: In other significant news, Google is flatly stating that it has no plans to release additional Nest thermostats in Europe. "Heating systems in Europe are unique and have a variety of hardware and software requirements that make it challenging to build for the diverse set of homes," the company said. "The Nest Learning Thermostat (3rd gen, 2015) and Nest Thermostat E (2018) will continue to be sold in Europe while current supplies last." [...]... [ Read it >> ]

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Government Censorship Comes To Bluesky
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2025-04-26 02:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Government censorship has found its way to Bluesky, but there's currently a loophole thanks to how the social network is structured. Earlier this month, Bluesky restricted access to 72 accounts in Turkey at the request of Turkish governmental authorities, according to a recent report by the Freedom of Expression Association. As a result, people in Turkey can no longer see these accounts, and their reach is limited. The report indicates that 59 Bluesky accounts were blocked on the grounds of protecting "national security and public order." Bluesky also made another 13 accounts and at least one post invisible from Turkey.... [ Read it >> ]

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Top Colleges Are Too Costly Even for Parents Making $300,000
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2025-04-26 02:22:01


Families earning $300,000 annually -- placing them among America's highest earners -- are increasingly finding themselves unable to afford elite college tuition without taking on substantial debt. Bloomberg's analysis of financial aid data from 50 selective colleges reveals households earning between $100,000 and $300,000 occupy a precarious middle ground: too affluent for meaningful aid but insufficiently wealthy to absorb annual costs approaching $100,000. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft Launches Windows Recall After Year-Long Delay
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2025-04-26 01:22:01


Microsoft has finally released Windows Recall to the general public, nearly a year after first announcing the controversial feature. Available exclusively on Copilot+ PCs, Recall continuously captures screenshots of user activity, storing them in a searchable database with extracted text. The feature's original launch was derailed by significant security concerns, as critics noted anyone with access to a Recall database could potentially view nearly everything done on the device. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Intel's AI PC Chips Aren't Selling Well
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2025-04-26 00:22:01


Intel is grappling with an unexpected market shift as customers eschew its new AI-focused processors for cheaper previous-generation chips. The company revealed during its recent earnings call that demand for older Raptor Lake processors has surged while its newer, more expensive Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake AI PC chips struggle to gain traction. ... [ Read it >> ]

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How Democrats and Republicans Cite Science
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2025-04-25 23:22:01


An anonymous reader shares a Nature story: The United States is known for the deep polarization between its two major political parties -- the right-wing Republicans and left-wing Democrats. Now an analysis of hundreds of thousands of policy documents reveals striking differences in partisan policymakers' use of the scientific literature, with Democratic-led congressional committees and left-wing think tanks more likely to cite research papers than their right-wing counterparts. The analysis also shows that Democrats and left-leaning think tanks are more likely to cite high-impact research, and that the two political sides rarely cite the same studies or even the same topics. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Swiss National Bank Chairman Rebuffs Bitcoin as Reserve Asset
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2025-04-25 23:22:01


The head of the Swiss National Bank said on Friday that cryptocurrencies failed to meet the institution's currency reserve standards, rebuffing calls by crypto advocates that it hold bitcoin as a hedge against growing global economic risks. From a report: Cryptocurrency campaigners are ramping up pressure on the SNB to buy bitcoin, arguing that the economic turmoil triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs made it more important for the central bank to diversify its reserves. They have launched a referendum campaign to change the Swiss constitution and require the SNB to hold bitcoin in its reserves alongside gold. SNB Chairman Martin Schlegel, however, rejected the idea at the central bank's shareholder meeting in Bern.... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft's Big AI Hire Can't Match OpenAI
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2025-04-25 22:22:01


An anonymous reader shares a report: At Microsoft's annual executive huddle last month, the company's chief financial officer, Amy Hood, put up a slide that charted the number of users for its Copilot consumer AI tool over the past year. It was essentially a flat line, showing around 20 million weekly users. On the same slide was another line showing ChatGPT's growth over the same period, arching ever upward toward 400 million weekly users. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft To Kill Windows Maps App in July
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2025-04-25 22:22:01


Microsoft will remove its Maps app from the Microsoft Store in July 2025, delivering an "update" that renders the application completely nonfunctional. Following the cutoff, users won't be able to reinstall the app even if previously downloaded, according to a Microsoft support document. While the app will retain personal data like saved navigation routes and map URLs, this information will become unusable after the deprecation. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The 'You Wouldn't Steal a Car' Campaign Used a Pirated Font
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2025-04-25 21:22:01


The iconic "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" anti-piracy campaign, which dramatically equated digital piracy with physical theft, appears to have used a pirated font in its own materials. New evidence indicates the campaign utilized "XBAND Rough," a free clone of the commercial "FF Confidential" font, which requires a license. ... [ Read it >> ]

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YC Partner Argues Most AI Apps Are Currently 'Horseless Carriages'
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2025-04-25 20:22:01


Pete Koomen, a Y Combinator partner, argues that current AI applications often fail by unnecessarily constraining their underlying models, much like early automobiles that mimicked horse-drawn carriages rather than reimagining transportation. In his detailed critique, Koomen uses Gmail's AI email draft feature as a prime example. The tool generates formal, generic emails that don't match users' actual writing styles, often producing drafts longer than what users would naturally write. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple Aims To Source All US iPhones From India in Pivot Away From China
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2025-04-25 20:22:01


Apple plans to shift the assembly of all US-sold iPhones to India [alternative source] as soon as next year, according to Financial Times, which cites people familiar with the matter, as President Donald Trump's trade war forces the tech giant to pivot away from China. From the report: The push builds on Apple's strategy to diversify its supply chain but goes further and faster than investors appreciate, with a goal to source from India the entirety of the more than 60 million iPhones sold annually in the US by the end of 2026.... [ Read it >> ]

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Federal Reserve, FDIC Pull Statements on Crypto
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2025-04-25 19:22:01


The Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. have withdrawn several statements regarding banks' crypto-related activities in an effort to support innovation and clarify current policies. From a report: Two joint statements from 2023 on liquidity and other risks regarding banks' crypto-related activities were pulled on Thursday, the FDIC said. The move aims to clarify that banking organizations may engage in crypto activities so long as they are consistent with current laws and regulations. Banks may also provide products and services to people and firms engaged in crypto-related activities, the FDIC said. Providing more clarity on banks' crypto activities in the coming weeks and months is being considered, the agencies said.... [ Read it >> ]

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Yahoo Wants To Buy Chrome
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2025-04-25 18:22:01


Legacy search brand Yahoo has been working on its own web browser prototype, and says it would like to buy Google's Chrome if the company is forced by a court to sell it. From a report: The information came out during the fourth day of the Justice Department's remedies trial to rectify Google's search monopoly. The DOJ has -- among other proposals -- requested Judge Amit Mehta break up Google by requiring it sell its Chrome browser, which the agency says is a key distribution channel for its popular search engine that's amassed too much power for anyone else to compete. Yahoo isn't the only company interested in buying Chrome. While DuckDuckGo's CEO said they wouldn't be able to afford it, witnesses from Perplexity and OpenAI both expressed interest in the popular browser on the stand this week. Yahoo obviously isn't worth Chrome's estimated price tag of tens of billions of dollars. So the company is saying that its owner, the hedge fund giant Apollo, will help bankroll the purchase should the opportunity present itself.... [ Read it >> ]

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Perplexity CEO Says Its Browser Will Track Everything Users Do Online To Sell Ads
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2025-04-25 17:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said this week on the TBPN podcast that one reason Perplexity is building its own browser is to collect data on everything users do outside of its own app. This so it can sell premium ads. "That's kind of one of the other reasons we wanted to build a browser, is we want to get data even outside the app to better understand you," Srinivas said. "Because some of the prompts that people do in these AIs is purely work-related. It's not like that's personal."... [ Read it >> ]

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Intel Says Employees Must Return To the Office 4 Days a Week
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2025-04-25 14:22:01


New Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has mandated that employees return to the office four days a week starting September 1 to boost collaboration and decision-making. Tan also signaled upcoming job cuts and organizational changes, including a flatter management structure and fewer meetings. "When we spend time together in person, it fosters more engaging and productive discussion and debate," Tan wrote in a note to employees posted on Intel's website Thursday. "It drives better and faster decision-making. And it strengthens our connection with colleagues." Oregon Live reports: Intel factory workers and many researchers are already on site every day, in cleanrooms and labs. But Intel has thousands of employees in corporate roles who have spent at least part of their time working from home since the pandemic. The company adopted a "hybrid-first" approach in 2021, allowing most employees the flexibility to work from home much of the time. More recently, it sought to have workers on site about three days a week.... [ Read it >> ]

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Sydney Radio Station Secretly Used AI-Generated Host For 6 Months Without Disclosure
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2025-04-25 11:22:01


The Sydney-based CADA station secretly used an AI-generated host named "Thy" for its weekday shows over six months without disclosure. The Sydney Morning Herald reports: After initial questioning from Stephanie Coombes in The Carpet newsletter, it was revealed that the station used ElevenLabs -- a generative AI audio platform that transforms text into speech -- to create Thy, whose likeness and voice were cloned from a real employee in the ARN finance team. The Australian Communications and Media Authority said there were currently no specific restrictions on the use of AI in broadcast content, and no obligation to disclose its use.... [ Read it >> ]

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Air Pollution Still Plagues Nearly Half of Americans
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2025-04-25 08:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Air in the U.S. has gotten cleaner for decades, adding years to people's lives and preventing millions of asthma attacks, but nearly half of Americans still live with unhealthy air pollution, a new report finds. The report comes as the Trump administration is considering rolling back some key air quality regulations. Air quality across the country has improved dramatically since regulations like the Clean Air Act were put in place in the 1970s to govern sources of pollution like coal-fired power plants and emissions from diesel trucks. Despite that progress, the air is still unhealthy and polluted in many parts of the country. In 2023, nearly half of the country's inhabitants -- 156 million people -- lived in places heavy in smog or soot pollution that harms their lungs, hearts, and brains, according to the newest edition of the American Lung Association's State of the Air report.... [ Read it >> ]

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Waymo Reports 250,000 Paid Robotaxi Rides Per Week In US
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2025-04-25 06:22:01


Waymo is now providing over 250,000 paid robotaxi rides per week in the U.S., up from 200,000 in February, as it expands into cities like Austin and grows partnerships with Uber and automakers. CNBC reports: "We can't possibly do it all ourselves," said Pichai on a call with analysts for Alphabet's first-quarter earnings. Pichai noted that Waymo has not entirely defined its long-term business model, and there is "future optionality around personal ownership" of vehicles equipped with Waymo's self-driving technology. The company is also exploring the ways it can scale up its operations, he said.... [ Read it >> ]

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US Agency To Ease Self-Driving Vehicle Deployment Hurdles, Retain Reporting Rules
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2025-04-25 06:22:01


The Trump administration introduced a new framework to expedite self-driving vehicle deployment by reducing regulatory hurdles, while maintaining mandatory safety incident reporting. NHTSA is also expanding its exemption program, allowing domestically produced autonomous vehicles lacking traditional safety controls to operate on U.S. roads. Reuters reports: The Trump administration said Thursday it aims to speed up the deployment of self-driving vehicles but will maintain rules requiring reporting of safety incidents involving advanced vehicles. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Thursday released a new framework to boost autonomous vehicles. "This administration understands that we're in a race with China to out-innovate, and the stakes couldn't be higher," Duffy said. "Our new framework will slash red tape."... [ Read it >> ]

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You'll Soon Manage a Team of AI Agents, Says Microsoft's Work Trend Report
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2025-04-25 05:22:02


ZipNada shares a report from ZDNet: Microsoft's latest research identifies a new type of organization known as the Frontier Firm, where on-demand intelligence requirements are managed by hybrid teams of AI agents and humans. The report identified real productivity gains from implementing AI into organizations, with one of the biggest being filling the capacity gap -- as many as 80% of the global workforce, both employees and leaders, report having too much work to do, but not enough time or energy to do it. ... According to the report, business leaders need to separate knowledge workers from knowledge work, acknowledging that humans who can complete higher-level tasks, such as creativity and judgment, should not be stuck answering emails. Rather, in the same way working professionals say they send emails or create pivot tables, soon they will be able to say they create and manage agents -- and Frontier Firms are showing the potential possibilities of this approach. ... "Everyone will need to manage agents," said Cambron. "I think it's exciting to me to think that, you know, with agents, every early-career person will be able to experience management from day one, from their first job."... [ Read it >> ]

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Employee Monitoring App Leaks 21 Million Screenshots In Real Time
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2025-04-25 04:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cybernews: Researchers at Cybernews have uncovered a major privacy breach involving WorkComposer, a workplace surveillance app used by over 200,000 people across countless companies. The app, designed to track productivity by logging activity and snapping regular screenshots of employees' screens, left over 21 million images exposed in an unsecured Amazon S3 bucket, broadcasting how workers go about their day frame by frame. The leaked data is extremely sensitive, as millions of screenshots from employees' devices could not only expose full-screen captures of emails, internal chats, and confidential business documents, but also contain login pages, credentials, API keys, and other sensitive information that could be exploited to attack businesses worldwide. After the company was contacted, access to the unsecured database was secured. An official comment has yet to be received.... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft Brings Native PyTorch Arm Support To Windows Devices
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2025-04-25 04:22:01


Microsoft has announced native PyTorch support for Windows on Arm devices with the release of PyTorch 2.7, making it significantly easier for developers to build and run machine learning models directly on Arm-powered Windows machines. This eliminates the need for manual compilation and opens up performance gains for AI tasks like image classification, NLP, and generative AI. Neowin reports: With the release of PyTorch 2.7, native Arm builds for Windows on Arm are now readily available for Python 3.12. This means developers can simply install PyTorch using a standard package manager like pip.... [ Read it >> ]

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AMD Publishes Open-Source GIM Driver For GPU Virtualization, Radeon 'In The Roadmap'
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2025-04-25 03:22:02


AMD has open-sourced its "GPU-IOV Module" for enabling SR-IOV-based virtualization on Instinct accelerators using the Linux kernel and KVM hypervisor, with features like GPU scheduling and VF/PF management. Notably, AMD plans to extend this virtualization support to client Radeon GPUs. Phoronix reports: The AMD GPU-IOV Module is for the Linux kernel and for providing SR-IOV based hardware virtualization in conjunction with the KVM hypervisor. GIM provides the GPU IOV virtualization, virtual function (VF) configuration and enablement, GPU scheduling for world switch, hang detection and FLR reset, and PF/VF handshake capabilities. Initially the AMD GIM driver is for the Instinct MI300X hardware and tested atop Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with ROCm 6.4. Those interested can find the AMD GIM code currently via GitHub. It's not laid out in the repository or any other public communications I've seen what any upstreaming plans are for this GIM driver to get it into the mainline Linux kernel.... [ Read it >> ]

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New Android Spyware Is Targeting Russian Military Personnel On the Front Lines
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2025-04-25 02:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Russian military personnel are being targeted with recently discovered Android malware that steals their contacts and tracks their location. The malware is hidden inside a modified app for Alpine Quest mapping software, which is used by, among others, hunters, athletes, and Russian personnel stationed in the war zone in Ukraine. The app displays various topographical maps for use online and offline. The trojanized Alpine Quest app is being pushed on a dedicated Telegram channel and in unofficial Android app repositories. The chief selling point of the trojanized app is that it provides a free version of Alpine Quest Pro, which is usually available only to paying users.... [ Read it >> ]

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South Korea Says DeepSeek Transferred User Data, Prompts Without Consent
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2025-04-25 02:22:01


South Korea's data protection authority said on Thursday that Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek transferred user information and prompts without permission when the service was still available for download in the country's app market. From a report: The Personal Information Protection Commission said in a statement that Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co Ltd did not obtain user consent while transferring personal information to a number of companies in China and the United States at the time of its South Korean launch in January.... [ Read it >> ]

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Apple To Strip Secret Robotics Unit From AI Chief Weeks After Moving Siri
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2025-04-25 01:22:02


An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple will remove its secret robotics unit from the command of its artificial intelligence chief, the latest shake-up in response to the company's AI struggles. Apple plans to relocate the robotics team from John Giannandrea's AI organization to the hardware division later this month, according to people with knowledge of the move. ... [ Read it >> ]

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India's Delhi Plans To Curb Gasoline Car Sales, Ban Gas-Guzzling Bikes To Shed Polluter Tag
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2025-04-25 00:22:01


India's capital New Delhi plans to limit gasoline and diesel-powered cars a family can buy as well as ban sales of fuel-guzzling motorbikes and scooters, according to a draft policy aimed at cleaning up one of the world's most polluted cities. From a report: The measures represent one of the most drastic steps the city has lined up to tackle pollution, which often forces local authorities to ban some construction, shut schools and disrupt flights in the city of more than 30 million people during the winter season. ... [ Read it >> ]

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11-Year-Old GTA V Dominated Twitch in 2024
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2025-04-25 00:22:01


Grand Theft Auto V topped Twitch viewership charts in 2024 with a staggering 1.4 billion hours watched, according to data released by the streaming platform. The 11-year-old game outperformed all competitors, including League of Legends, which also surpassed the billion-hour mark. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Google AI Fabricates Explanations For Nonexistent Idioms
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2025-04-24 23:22:01


Google's search AI is confidently generating explanations for nonexistent idioms, once again revealing fundamental flaws in large language models. Users discovered that entering any made-up phrase plus "meaning" triggers AI Overviews that present fabricated etymologies with unwarranted authority. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Young Men in US Abandoning College Education at Record Rates
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2025-04-24 22:22:01


Male college enrollment in Lake County, Ohio plummeted by more than 15% over the last decade -- the steepest decline among any large U.S. county. Nationwide, men now constitute virtually the entirety of the 1.2 million student drop in college attendance between 2011 and 2022.
... [ Read it >> ]

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AI Tackles Aging COBOL Systems as Legacy Code Expertise Dwindles
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2025-04-24 22:22:01


US government agencies and Fortune 500 companies are turning to AI to modernize mission-critical systems built on COBOL, a programming language dating back to the late 1950s. The US Social Security Administration plans a three-year, $1 billion AI-assisted upgrade of its legacy COBOL codebase [alternative source], according to Bloomberg. ... [ Read it >> ]

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AI Compute Costs Drive Shift To Usage-Based Software Pricing
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2025-04-24 21:22:01


The software-as-a-service industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation, abandoning the decades-old "per seat" licensing model in favor of usage-based pricing structures. This shift, Business Insider reports, is primarily driven by the astronomical compute costs associated with new "reasoning" AI models that power modern enterprise software. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Even the US Government Says AI Requires Massive Amounts of Water
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2025-04-24 20:22:01


A Government Accountability Office report released this week reveals generative AI systems consume staggering amounts of water, with 250 million daily queries requiring over 1.1 million gallons -- all while companies provide minimal transparency about resource usage. The 47-page analysis [PDF] found cooling data centers -- which demand between 100-1000 megawatts of power -- constitutes 40% of their energy consumption, a figure expected to rise as global temperatures increase. ... [ Read it >> ]

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New Smartphone Labels For Battery Life and Repairability Are Coming To the EU
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2025-04-24 20:22:01


The European Union has announced details of new mandatory labels for smartphones and tablets sold in the bloc, which include ratings for energy efficiency, durability, and repairability. From a report: Hardware will also have to meet new "ecodesign requirements" to be sold in the EU, including a requirement to make spare parts available for repair. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft Offers Underperformers Cash To Quit
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2025-04-24 19:22:02


Microsoft has instituted a new "globally consistent" performance improvement process. According to internal documents, employees flagged as underperformers now face two options: enter a performance improvement plan with "clear expectations and a timeline for improvement" or accept a "Global Voluntary Separation Agreement" worth 16 weeks' pay. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Hackers Can Now Bypass Linux Security Thanks To Terrifying New Curing Rootkit
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2025-04-24 18:22:01


BrianFagioli writes: ARMO, the company behind Kubescape, has uncovered what could be one of the biggest blind spots in Linux security today. The company has released a working rootkit called "Curing" that uses io_uring, a feature built into the Linux kernel, to stealthily perform malicious activities without being caught by many of the detection solutions currently on the market. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Scientists Say They Can Calculate the Cost of Oil Giants' Role In Global Warming
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2025-04-24 17:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Oil and gas companies are facing hundreds of lawsuits around the world testing whether they can be held responsible for their role in causing climate change. Now, two scientists say they've built a tool that can calculate how much damage each company's planet-warming pollution has caused -- and how much money they could be forced to pay if they're successfully sued. Collectively, greenhouse emissions from 111 fossil fuel companies caused the world $28 trillion in damage from extreme heat from 1991 to 2020, according to a paper published Wednesday in Nature. The new analysis could fuel an emerging legal fight.The authors, Dartmouth associate professor Justin Mankin and Chris Callahan, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, say their model can determine a specific company's share of responsibility over any time period. [...]... [ Read it >> ]

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Hubble Celebrates 35th Year In Orbit
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2025-04-24 14:22:01


To celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope's 35th anniversary in orbit, NASA and ESA released a series of new, out-out-of-this-world images spanning planets, nebulae, and galaxies. From a press release: Hubble today is at the peak of its scientific return thanks to the dedication, perseverance and skills of engineers, scientists and mission operators. Astronaut shuttle crews gallantly chased and rendezvoused with Hubble on five servicing missions from 1993 to 2009. The astronauts, including ESA astronauts on two of the servicing missions, upgraded Hubble's cameras, computers and other support systems.... [ Read it >> ]

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Quantum Messages Travel 254 km Using Existing Infrastructure For the First Time
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2025-04-24 11:22:01


Researchers in Germany successfully demonstrated coherent quantum communications over 254 km of existing commercial telecom fiber, marking the first real-world deployment of such a system without cryogenic cooling. Phys.Org reports: Their system uses a coherence-based twin-field quantum key distribution, which facilitates the distribution of secure information over long distances. The quantum communications network was deployed over three telecommunication data centers in Germany (Frankfurt, Kehl and Kirchfeld), connected by 254 km of commercial optical fiber -- a new record distance for real-world and practical quantum key distribution, according to the authors. This demonstration indicates that advanced quantum communications protocols that exploit the coherence of light can be made to work over existing telecom infrastructure. The research has been published in the journal Nature.... [ Read it >> ]

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Stroke Patients Have High Levels of Microplastics Clogging Their Arteries, Researchers Find
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-04-24 08:22:01


An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: There is some microplastics in normal, healthy arteries," Dr. Ross Clark, a University of New Mexico medical researcher who led the study, told Business Insider before he presented his findings at the meeting of the American Heart Association in Baltimore on Tuesday. "But the amount that's there when they become diseased -- and become diseased with symptoms -- is really, really different," Clark said. Clark and his team measured microplastics and nanoplastics in the dangerous, fatty plaque that can build up in arteries, block blood flow, and cause strokes or heart attacks. Compared to the walls of healthy plaque-free arteries, plaque buildup had 16 times more plastic -- just in the people who didn't have symptoms. In people who had experienced stroke, mini-stroke, or vision loss, the plaque had 51 times more plastic. [...]... [ Read it >> ]

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Google Forcing Some Remote Workers To Come Back 3 Days a Week or Lose Their Jobs
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-04-24 06:22:01


Five years removed from the onset of the Covid pandemic, Google is demanding that some remote employees return to the office if they want to keep their jobs and avoid being part of broader cost cuts at the company. CNBC reports: Several units within Google have told remote staffers that their roles may be at risk if they don't start showing up at the closest office for a hybrid work schedule, according to internal documents viewed by CNBC. Some of those employees were previously approved for remote work.... [ Read it >> ]

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New Jersey Sues Property Management Software Firm RealPage, Says Collusion With Landlords Drives Up Rents
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-04-24 05:22:01


New Jersey sued the property management software company RealPage, accusing it and 10 of the state's largest landlords of conspiring to drive up residential rents, violating federal and state antitrust laws and New Jersey consumer fraud laws. From a report: The complaint filed on Wednesday by state Attorney General Matthew Platkin said the defendants, including AvalonBay Communities illegally used RealPage's revenue management software and algorithms to inflate rents for apartments in multifamily properties. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Draft Executive Order Outlines Plan To Integrate AI Into K-12 Schools
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-04-24 05:22:01


A draft executive order from the Trump administration proposes integrating AI into K-12 education by directing federal agencies to promote AI literacy, train teachers, and establish public-private partnerships. "The draft is marked 'predecisional' and could be subject to change before it is signed, or it could be abandoned," notes the Washington Post. From the report: Titled "Advancing artificial intelligence education for American youth," the draft order would establish a White House task force on AI education that would be chaired by Michael Kratsios, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and would include the secretaries of education, agriculture, labor and energy, as well as Trump's special adviser for AI and cryptocurrency, David Sacks. The draft order would instruct federal agencies to seek public-private partnerships with industry, academia and nonprofit groups in efforts to teach students "foundational AI literacy and critical thinking skills."... [ Read it >> ]

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Google Gemini Has 350 Million Monthly Users, Reveals Court Hearing
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-04-24 04:22:01


Google revealed in court that its Gemini AI chatbot reached 350 million monthly active users worldwide as of March 2025 -- up from 9 million daily users in October 2024. TechCrunch reports: Usage of Google's AI offerings has exploded in the last year. Gemini had just 9 million daily active users in October 2024, but last month, the company reportedly logged 35 million daily active users, according to its data. Gemini still lags behind the industry's most popular AI tools, however.... [ Read it >> ]

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