An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In late 2013, the Spike Jonze film Her imagined a future where people would form emotional connections with AI voice assistants. Nearly 12 years later, that fictional premise has veered closer to reality with the release of a new conversational voice model from AI startup Sesame that has left many users both fascinated and unnerved. "I tried the demo, and it was genuinely startling how human it felt," wrote one Hacker News user who tested the system. "I'm almost a bit worried I will start feeling emotionally attached to a voice assistant with this level of human-like sound."

In late February, Sesame released a demo for the company's new Conversational Speech Model (CSM) that appears to cross over what many consider the "uncanny valley" of AI-generated speech, with some testers reporting emotional connections to the male or female voice assistant ("Miles" and "Maya"). In our own evaluation, we spoke with the male voice for about 28 minutes, talking about life in general and how it decides what is "right" or "wrong" based on its training data. The synthesized voice was expressive and dynamic, imitating breath sounds, chuckles, interruptions, and even sometimes stumbling over words and correcting itself. These imperfections are intentional.

"At Sesame, our goal is to achieve 'voice presence' -- the magical quality that makes spoken interactions feel real, understood, and valued," writes the company in a blog post. "We are creating conversational partners that do not just process requests; they engage in genuine dialogue that builds confidence and trust over time. In doing so, we hope to realize the untapped potential of voice as the ultimate interface for instruction and understanding." [...] Sesame sparked a lively discussion on Hacker News about its potential uses and dangers. Some users reported having extended conversations with the two demo voices, with conversations lasting up to the 30-minute limit. In one case, a parent recounted how their 4-year-old daughter developed an emotional connection with the AI model, crying after not being allowed to talk to it again.

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China plans to commercialize nuclear fusion for emissions-free power generation by 2050, with its first operational project expected around 2050 after a demonstration phase starting in 2045. Bloomberg reports: China National Nuclear Corp. (CNNC) last year formed an industry alliance and set up a new national fusion company, the China Fusion Corp. It has attracted about 1.75 billion yuan ($240 million) in investment from CNNC and Zhejiang Zheneng Electric Power Co. for cutting-edge tokamak devices, which use magnetic fields to confine and control superheated plasma to produce power without emissions or significant radioactive waste. CNNC also plans to scale up production of its homegrown designs for regular nuclear fission reactors and small modular reactors over the next five years, the company's Vice General Manager Xin Feng said at the briefing.

China is set to leapfrog the US and France as the owner of the world's biggest reactor fleet by 2030. About 10 new reactors have been approved every year since power shortages emerged in 2022 and the country is expected to keep up that pace through 2030 to meet climate goals, CNNC said on Friday.

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Australian company Cortical Labs has launched the CL1, the world's first commercial "biological computer" that merges human brain cells with silicon hardware to form adaptable, energy-efficient neural networks. New Atlas reports: Known as a Synthetic Biological Intelligence (SBI), Cortical's CL1 system was officially launched in Barcelona on March 2, 2025, and is expected to be a game-changer for science and medical research. The human-cell neural networks that form on the silicon "chip" are essentially an ever-evolving organic computer, and the engineers behind it say it learns so quickly and flexibly that it completely outpaces the silicon-based AI chips used to train existing large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT.

"Today is the culmination of a vision that has powered Cortical Labs for almost six years," said Cortical founder and CEO Dr Hon Weng Chong. "We've enjoyed a series of critical breakthroughs in recent years, most notably our research in the journal Neuron, through which cultures were embedded in a simulated game-world, and were provided with electrophysiological stimulation and recording to mimic the arcade game Pong. However, our long-term mission has been to democratize this technology, making it accessible to researchers without specialized hardware and software. The CL1 is the realization of that mission." He added that while this is a groundbreaking step forward, the full extent of the SBI system won't be seen until it's in users' hands.

"We're offering 'Wetware-as-a-Service' (WaaS)," he added -- customers will be able to buy the CL-1 biocomputer outright, or simply buy time on the chips, accessing them remotely to work with the cultured cell technology via the cloud. "This platform will enable the millions of researchers, innovators and big-thinkers around the world to turn the CL1's potential into tangible, real-word impact. We'll provide the platform and support for them to invest in R&D and drive new breakthroughs and research." These remarkable brain-cell biocomputers could revolutionize everything from drug discovery and clinical testing to how robotic "intelligence" is built, allowing unlimited personalization depending on need. The CL1, which will be widely available in the second half of 2025, is an enormous achievement for Cortical -- and as New Atlas saw recently with a visit to the company's Melbourne headquarters -- the potential here is much more far-reaching than Pong. [...]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Science: On March 2, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost made history, becoming the first commercial lunar lander to successfully touchdown on the moon's surface. The groundbreaking lander is wasting no time in getting to work. According to NASA, the joint public-private mission has already successfully demonstrated the ability to use Earth-based GPS signals on the lunar surface, marking a major step ahead of future Artemis missions. Accurate and reliable navigation will be vital for future astronauts as they travel across the moon, but traditional GPS tools aren't much good when you're around 225,000 miles from Earth. One solution could be transmitting data from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to the lunar surface in order to autonomously measure time, velocity, and position. That's what mission engineers from NASA and the Italian Space Agency hoped to demonstrate through the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), one of the 10 projects packed aboard Blue Ghost. [...]

"On Earth we can use GNSS signals to navigate in everything from smartphones to airplanes," Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator for NASA's SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program, said in a statement. "Now, LuGRE shows us that we can successfully acquire and track GNSS signals at the Moon." LuGRE relied on two GNSS constellations, GPS and Galileo, which triangulate positioning based on dozens of medium Earth orbit satellites that provide real-time tracking data. It performed its navigational fix at approximately 2 a.m. EST on March 3, while about 225,000 miles from Earth. Blue Ghost's LuGRE system will continue collecting information over the next two weeks almost continuously while the lander's other tools begin their own experiments.

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Reinforcement learning pioneers Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton have warned against the unsafe deployment of AI systems [alternative source] after winning computing's prestigious $1 million Turing Award Wednesday. "Releasing software to millions of people without safeguards is not good engineering practice," said Barto, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, comparing it to testing a bridge by having people use it.

Barto and Sutton developed reinforcement learning in the 1980s, inspired by psychological studies of human learning. The technique, which rewards AI systems for desired behaviors, has become fundamental to advances at OpenAI and Google. Sutton, a University of Alberta professor and former DeepMind researcher, dismissed tech companies' artificial general intelligence narrative as "hype."

Both laureates also criticized President Trump's proposed cuts to federal research funding, with Barto calling it "wrong and a tragedy" that would eliminate opportunities for exploratory research like their early work.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/03/05/1330242/turing-award-winners-sound-alarm-on-hasty-ai-deployment?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Google is urging officials at President Donald Trump's Justice Department to back away from a push to break up the search engine company, citing national security concerns, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the discussions. From the report: Representatives for the Alphabet unit asked the government in a meeting last week to take a less aggressive stance as the US looks to end what a judge ruled to be an illegal online search monopoly, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the private deliberations. The Biden administration in November had called for Google to sell its Chrome web browser and make other changes to its business including an end to billions of dollars in exclusivity payments to companies including Apple.

Although Google has previously pushed back on the Biden-era plan, the recent discussions may preview aspects of the company's approach to the case as it continues under the Trump administration. A federal judge is set to rule on how Google must change its practices following hearings scheduled for next month. Both sides are due to file their final proposals to the judge on Friday.

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Apple has refreshed its MacBook Air lineup with the M4 processor, adding a new sky blue color option and reducing prices across the board. The 13-inch model now starts at $999, while the 15-inch begins at $1,199. Both models are available to order immediately and will ship on March 12.

The updated MacBook Airs feature the same thin design as previous generations but now include the 12-megapixel Center Stage webcam found in current MacBook Pro models. Both variants come with the M4 chip, aligning them with Apple's recent Mac Mini, iMac, and MacBook Pro refreshes.

Base configurations include an M4 with a 10-core CPU and 8-core GPU, 16GB of unified memory, and 256GB of storage. Customers can upgrade to a 10-core GPU (matching the base 14-inch MacBook Pro), 32GB of RAM, and up to 2TB of storage. A significant technical improvement is the support for two external 6K displays while keeping the laptop's lid open, addressing a limitation of previous Air models.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/03/05/1522201/apple-refreshes-macbook-air-with-m4-chip-lower-pricing?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

OpenAI is preparing to launch a tiered pricing structure for its AI agent products, with high-end research assistants potentially costing $20,000 per month, [alternative source] according to The Information. The AI startup, which already generates approximately $4 billion in annualized revenue from ChatGPT, plans three service levels: $2,000 monthly agents for "high-income knowledge workers," $10,000 monthly agents for software development, and $20,000 monthly PhD-level research agents. OpenAI has told some investors that agent products could eventually constitute 20-25% of company revenue, the report added.

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Microsoft warned that an advanced Chinese hacking group is waging a campaign of supply-chain attacks. From a report: The company's threat intelligence division said in a blog post Wednesday that the group, known as Silk Typhoon, was targeting remote management tools and cloud applications in order to spy on a range of companies and organizations in the US and abroad.

Microsoft said it observed in late 2024 that hackers were targeting cloud storage services, from which they would steal keys that could be used to access customer data. The group breached state and local government organizations and companies in the technology sector, seeking information on US government policy and documents related to law enforcement investigations. Silk Typhoon was behind a December hack that targeted the US Treasury Department, compromising more than 400 computers, Bloomberg News previously reported.

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Half of the world's climate-heating carbon emissions come from the fossil fuels produced by just 36 companies, analysis has revealed. From a report: The researchers said the 2023 data strengthened the case for holding fossil fuel companies to account for their contribution to global heating. Previous versions of the annual report have been used in legal cases against companies and investors.

The report found that the 36 major fossil fuel companies, including Saudi Aramco, Coal India, ExxonMobil, Shell and numerous Chinese companies, produced coal, oil and gas responsible for more than 20bn tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2023. If Saudi Aramco was a country, it would be the fourth biggest polluter in the world after China, the US and India, while ExxonMobil is responsible for about the same emissions as Germany, the world's ninth biggest polluter, according to the data.

Global emissions must fall by 45% by 2030 if the world is to have a good chance of limiting temperature rise to 1.5C, the internationally agreed target. However, emissions are still rising, supercharging the extreme weather that is taking lives and livelihoods across the planet. The International Energy Agency has said new fossil fuel projects started after 2021 are incompatible with reaching net zero emissions by 2050. Most of the 169 companies in the Carbon Majors database increased their emissions in 2023, which was the hottest year on record at the time.

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Geoffrey.landis writes: Over the last three months of 2024, more than 800 cases of GPS interference were recorded in Lithuanian airspace. Estonia and Finland have also raised concerns, accusing Russia of deploying technology to jam satellite navigation signals near Nato's eastern flank.

A group of British scientists -- dubbed the "Time Lords" -- are working on a solution: to develop portable atomic clocks. By carrying a group of atoms cooled to -273C on the plane itself, rather than relying on an external signal, the technology can't be interfered with by jamming. But the problem is that the equipment is still too large to be used routinely on planes.

The UK Hub for Quantum Enabled Position Navigation and Timing (QEPNT) was set up last December by the government to shrink the devices on to a chip, making them robust enough for everyday life and affordable for everyone. Henry White, part of the team from BAE Systems that worked on the test flight, told BBC News that he thought the first application could be aboard ships, "where there's a bit more space".

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Nintendo has trumpeted its latest legal success in the company's ongoing fight against pirated games as "significant" not only for itself, "but for the entire games industry." From a report: The Mario maker today confirmed it had won a final victory over French file-sharing company Dstorage, which operates the website 1fichier.com, following years of legal wrangling and repeated appeals. Nintendo's victory means European file-sharing companies must now remove illegal copies of games when asked to do so, or be held accountable and cough up potentially sizable fines as punishment.

In 2021, the Judicial Court of Paris ordered Dstorage pay Nintendo $1 million in damages after it was found to be hosting pirate games. Dstorage launched an appeal, which then failed in 2023, and was ordered to pay Nintendo further costs. But the case didn't end there. Dstorage finally took the matter to the highest French judiciary court, where it argued that a specific court order was required before it needed to remove content from its hosting services. This bid has also now failed, ending the long-running matter for good.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/03/05/1842243/nintendo-says-latest-legal-win-against-piracy-significant-for-entire-games-industry?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

European nations have heightened security after a series of suspected sabotage attacks on submarine infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, with officials increasingly pointing to Russia as the likely culprit.

Finnish authorities detained the tanker Eagle S in December after it allegedly damaged three undersea fiber-optic connections with Estonia and one with Germany. The vessel, carrying Russian oil as part of a "shadow fleet" evading sanctions, made suspicious course changes while crossing cable routes.

In November, two more submarine cables in the Baltic were damaged, with investigations focusing on Chinese-owned cargo ship Yi Peng 3, which reduced speed near the cables and turned off its transponder. NATO launched Baltic Sentry in January to enhance surveillance, deploying ships and naval drones off Estonia's coast. The alliance also established a coordination cell following the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage.

Russia has denied involvement, accusing NATO of using "myths" to increase its Baltic presence.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/05/1928223/europe-on-alert-over-suspected-sabotage-of-undersea-cables?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Google announced Wednesday it is expanding its AI Overviews to more query types and users worldwide, including those not logged into Google accounts, while introducing a new "AI Mode" chatbot feature. AI Mode, which resembles competitors like Perplexity or ChatGPT Search, will initially be limited to Google One AI Premium subscribers who enable it through the Labs section of Search.

The feature delivers AI-generated answers with supporting links interspersed throughout, powered by Google's search index. "What we're finding from people who are using AI Overviews is that they're really bringing different kinds of questions to Google," said Robby Stein, VP of product on the Search team. "They're more complex questions, that may have been a little bit harder before." Google is also upgrading AI Overviews with its Gemini 2.0 model, which Stein says will improve responses for math, coding and reasoning-based queries.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/05/1944216/google-is-adding-more-ai-overviews-and-a-new-ai-mode-to-search?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Amazon has launched a pilot program testing "AI-aided dubbing" for select content on Prime Video, offering translations between English and Latin American Spanish for 12 licensed movies and series including "El Cid: La Leyenda," "Mi Mama Lora" and "Long Lost." The company describes a hybrid approach where "localization professionals collaborate with AI," suggesting automated dubbing receives professional editing for accuracy. The initiative, the company said, aims to increase content accessibility as streaming services expand globally.

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Utah has become the first U.S. state to pass legislation requiring app store operators to verify users' ages and obtain parental consent for minors downloading apps.

The App Store Accountability Act adds to a wave of children's online safety bills advancing through state legislatures nationwide. Similar legislation has faced legal challenges, with many being blocked in courts. A comparable federal bill failed last year amid free expression concerns.

The approach shifts verification responsibility to mobile app stores rather than individual websites, a move supported by Meta, Snap, and X in a joint statement urging Congress to follow suit. "Parents want a one-stop shop to verify their child's age and grant permission," they stated. Critics, including Chamber of Progress, warn the law threatens privacy and constitutional rights. A federal judge previously blocked a similar Utah law over First Amendment concerns.

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Goldman Sachs, in a research note Thursday (the note isn't publicly posted): Annualized revenue for public companies exposed to the build-out of AI infrastructure increased by over $340 billion from 2022 through 2024Q4 (and is projected to increase by almost $580 billion by end-2025). In contrast, annualized real investment in AI-related categories in the US GDP accounts has only risen by $42 billion over the same period. This sharp divergence has prompted questions from investors about why US GDP is not receiving a larger boost from AI.

A large share of the nominal revenue increase reported by public companies reflects cost inflation (particularly for semiconductors) and foreign revenue, neither of which should boost real US GDP. Indeed, we find that margin expansion ($30 billion) and increased revenue from other countries ($130 billion) account for around half of the publicly reported AI spending surge.

That said, the BEA's (Bureau of Economic Analysis) methodology potentially understates the impact of AI-related investment on real GDP by around $100 billion. Manufacturing shipments and net imports imply that US semiconductor supply has increased by over $35 billion since 2022, but the BEA records semiconductor purchases as intermediate inputs rather than investment (since semiconductors have historically been embedded in products that are later resold) and therefore excludes them from GDP. Cloud services used to train and support AI models are similarly mostly recorded as intermediate inputs.

Combined, we find that these explanations can explain most of the AI investment discrepancy, with only $50 billion unexplained. Looking ahead, we see more scope for AI-related investment to provide a moderate boost to real US GDP in 2025 since AI investment should broaden to categories like data centers, servers and networking hardware, and utilities that will likely be captured as real investment. However, we expect the bulk of investment in semiconductors and cloud computing will remain unmeasured barring changes to US national account methodology.

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India's income tax department will gain powers to access citizens' social media accounts, emails and other digital spaces beginning April 2026 under the new income tax bill, in a significant expansion of its search and seizure authority.

The legislation, which has raised privacy concerns among legal experts, allows tax officers to "gain access by overriding the access code" to computer systems and "virtual digital spaces" if they suspect tax evasion.

The bill broadly defines virtual digital spaces to include email servers, social media accounts, online investment accounts, banking platforms, and cloud servers.

"The expansion raises significant concerns regarding constitutional validity, potential state overreach, and practical enforcement," Sonam Chandwani, Managing Partner at KS Legal and Associates, told Indian newspaper Economic Times.

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In a policy paper, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, and Center for AI Safety Director Dan Hendrycks said that the U.S. should not pursue a Manhattan Project-style push to develop AI systems with "superhuman" intelligence, also known as AGI. From a report: The paper, titled "Superintelligence Strategy," asserts that an aggressive bid by the U.S. to exclusively control superintelligent AI systems could prompt fierce retaliation from China, potentially in the form of a cyberattack, which could destabilize international relations.

"[A] Manhattan Project [for AGI] assumes that rivals will acquiesce to an enduring imbalance or omnicide rather than move to prevent it," the co-authors write. "What begins as a push for a superweapon and global control risks prompting hostile countermeasures and escalating tensions, thereby undermining the very stability the strategy purports to secure."

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AmiMoJo writes: China plans to issue guidance to encourage the use of open-source RISC-V chips nationwide for the first time, Reuters reports, citing two sources briefed on the matter, as Beijing accelerates efforts to curb the country's dependence on Western-owned technology.

The policy guidance on boosting the use of RISC-V chips could be released as soon as this month, although the final date could change, the sources said. It is being drafted jointly by eight government bodies, including the Cyberspace Administration of China, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the China National Intellectual Property Administration, they added.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/06/1316253/china-to-publish-policy-to-boost-risc-v-chip-use-nationwide?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

A quarter of startups in Y Combinator's Winter 2025 batch have 95% of their codebases generated by AI, YC managing partner Jared Friedman said. "Every one of these people is highly technical, completely capable of building their own products from scratch. A year ago, they would have built their product from scratch -- but now 95% of it is built by an AI," Friedman said.

YC CEO Garry Tan warned that AI-generated code may face challenges at scale and developers need classical coding skills to sustain products. He predicted: "This isn't a fad. This is the dominant way to code."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/03/06/159208/a-quarter-of-startups-in-ycs-current-cohort-have-codebases-that-are-almost-entirely-ai-generated?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

A U.S. congressional committee has urged Americans to remove Chinese-made wireless routers from their homes, including those made by TP-Link, calling them a security threat that opened the door for China to hack U.S. critical infrastructure. From a report: The House of Representatives Select Committee on China has pushed the Commerce Department to investigate China's TP-Link Technology Co, which according to research firm IDC is the top seller of WiFi routers internationally by unit volume. U.S. authorities are considering a ban on the sale of the company's routers, according to media reports.

Rob Joyce, former director of cybersecurity at the National Security Agency, told Wednesday's committee hearing that TP-Link devices exposed individuals to cyber intrusion that hackers could use to gain leverage to attack critical infrastructure. "We need to all take action and replace those devices so they don't become the tools that are used in the attacks on the U.S.," Joyce said, adding that he understood the Commerce Department was considering a ban.

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NASA has begun shutting down science instruments aboard the twin Voyager spacecraft to extend their 47-year journey through interstellar space, officials said. Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem was deactivated on February 25, while Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument will be shut down on March 24. Both spacecraft will then operate with just three of their original ten science instruments.

The radioisotope power systems aboard the Voyagers lose approximately 4 watts annually, threatening to end their mission within months without intervention. "Electrical power is running low," said Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd. "The Voyagers have been deep space rock stars since launch, and we want to keep it that way as long as possible." NASA engineers believe these measures could enable the probes to continue operating into the 2030s, far beyond their initial five-year design life.

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Budget carrier Ryanair has delayed its move to 100% paperless boarding passes to the start of its winter schedule on November 3. From a report: Media reports had suggested that the change could come in May, ahead of the busy summer season. But the implementation will now begin at the start of the winter season in November, and means Ryanair passengers will no longer download and print a physical paper boarding pass. Instead they will use the digital boarding pass generated in their 'myRyanair' app during check-in.

Currently almost 80% of Ryanair's 200 million annual passengers already use this digital boarding pass. As a result of this initiative, Ryanair expects to eliminate almost all airport check-in fees from November, as all passengers will have checked-in online or in-app to generate their digital boarding pass. The airline said it will also reduce passengers' carbon footprint by eliminating unnecessary paper, saving more than 300 tonnes in paper waste each year.

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The folks at Bafta are running a public survey to identify the most influential video game ever made. When The Guardian asked prominent gaming figures to weigh in, they received a fascinating array of responses with zero overlap. Game designer Mike Bithell picked Metal Gear Solid 2, while Blumhouse's Louise Blain chose the short-lived horror experiment PT. The Guardian's own games editor backed Ocarina of Time for establishing 3D game world standards.

Other notable selections included Tomb Raider (pioneering female protagonists), QWOP (inspiring experimental design), Doom (revolutionizing FPS and modding), Mario Kart (competitive social play), Journey (emotional storytelling), Princess Maker (branching narrative systems), Paperboy (everyday world simulation), and Super Mario Bros (fundamental game design principles).
So, Slashdotters, what's your pick for the most influential video game ever created? Which title fundamentally changed how games are designed, played, or experienced? Did it influence you personally, the industry as a whole, or both?

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Denmark's state-run postal service, PostNord, is to end all letter deliveries at the end of 2025, citing a 90% decline in letter volumes since the start of the century. From a report: The decision brings to an end 400 years of the company's letter service. Denmark's 1,500 post boxes will start to disappear from the start of June. Transport Minister Thomas Danielsen sought to reassure Danes, saying letters would still be sent and received as "there is a free market for both letters and parcels." Postal services across Europe are grappling with the decline in letter volumes. Germany's Deutsche Post said on Thursday it was axing 8,000 jobs, in what it called a "socially responsible manner."

Deutsche Post has 187,000 employees and staff representatives said they feared more cuts were to come. Denmark had a universal postal service for 400 years until the end of 2023, but as digital mail services have taken hold, the use of letters has fallen dramatically. PostNord says it will switch its focus to parcel deliveries and that any postage stamps bought this year or in 2024 can be refunded for a limited period in 2026.

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The FCC says it plans to vote next month to explore alternatives to GPS after national security concerns have been raised about relying on a single system crucial to modern life. From a report: "Continuing to rely so heavily on one system leaves us exposed," FCC Chair Brendan Carr said. "We need to develop redundant technologies." There have been reports of a rise in GPS interference around the world, particularly since 2023, known as spoofing raising fears of an increased risk of accidents if planes veer off-course. "Disruptions to GPS have the potential to undermine the nation's economic and national security. And the risks to our current system are only increasing," Carr said, noting President Donald Trump and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have called for action for years.

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Brother has rejected claims that its firmware updates intentionally disable printer functionality when third-party cartridges are installed. The controversy emerged after a YouTube video by Louis Rossman, which has garnered over 160,000 views, alleged the company had joined competitors in anti-consumer practices. The allegations stem from online reports, including a 2022 Reddit post claiming firmware update W1.56 disabled automatic color registration on a Brother MFC-3750 using non-Brother toner, rendering it "effectively non-functional."

In a statement to Ars Technica, Brother explicitly denied these accusations: "Please be assured that Brother firmware updates do not block the use of third-party ink in our machines." The company said it recommends genuine supplies for "optimal performance" and performs a "Brother Genuine check" during troubleshooting, which may have caused "misunderstanding."

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Global sea ice fell to a record low in February, scientists have said, a symptom of an atmosphere fouled by planet-heating pollutants. From a report: The combined area of ice around the north and south poles hit a new daily minimum in early February and stayed below the previous record for the rest of the month, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Thursday. "One of the consequences of a warmer world is melting sea ice," said the C3S deputy director, Samantha Burgess. "The record or near-record low sea ice cover at both poles has pushed global sea ice cover to an all-time minimum."

The agency found the area of sea ice hit its lowest monthly level for February in the Arctic, at 8% below average, and its fourth-lowest monthly level for February in the Antarctic, at 26% below average. Its satellite observations stretch back to the late 1970s and its historical observations to the middle of the 20th century. Scientists had already observed an extreme heat anomaly in the north pole at the start of February, which caused temperatures to soar more than 20C above average and cross the threshold for ice to melt. They described the latest broken record as "particularly worrying" because ice reflects sunlight and cools the planet. The agency found the area of sea ice hit its lowest monthly level for February in the Arctic, at 8% below average, and its fourth-lowest monthly level for February in the Antarctic, at 26% below average. Its satellite observations stretch back to the late 1970s and its historical observations to the middle of the 20th century.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Trump administration is eliminating a preference for fiber Internet in a $42.45 billion broadband deployment program, a change that is expected to reduce spending on the most advanced wired networks while directing more money to Starlink and other non-fiber Internet service providers. One report suggests Starlink could obtain $10 billion to $20 billion under the new rules. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick criticized the Biden administration's handling of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program in a statement yesterday. Lutnick said that "because of the prior Administration's woke mandates, favoritism towards certain technologies, and burdensome regulations, the program has not connected a single person to the Internet and is in dire need of a readjustment."

The BEAD program was authorized by Congress in November 2021, and the US was finalizing plans to distribute funding before Trump's inauguration. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), part of the Commerce Department, developed rules for the program in the Biden era and approved initial funding plans submitted by every state and territory. The program has been on hold since the change in administration, with Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and other Republicans seeking rule changes. In addition to demanding an end to the fiber preference, Cruz wants to kill a requirement that ISPs receiving network-construction subsidies provide cheap broadband to people with low incomes. Cruz also criticized "unionized workforce and DEI labor requirements; climate change assessments; excessive per-location costs; and other central planning mandates."

Lutnick's statement yesterday confirmed that the Trump administration will end the fiber preference and replace it with a "tech-neutral" set of rules, and explore additional changes. He said: "Under my leadership, the Commerce Department has launched a rigorous review of the BEAD program. The Department is ripping out the Biden Administration's pointless requirements. It is revamping the BEAD program to take a tech-neutral approach that is rigorously driven by outcomes, so states can provide Internet access for the lowest cost. Additionally, the Department is exploring ways to cut government red tape that slows down infrastructure construction. We will work with states and territories to quickly get rid of the delays and the waste. Thereafter we will move quickly to implementation in order to get households connected." Lutnick said the department's goal is to "deliver high-speed Internet access... efficiently and effectively at the lowest cost to taxpayers."

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OpenAI's ChatGPT app for macOS now directly edits code in tools like Xcode, VS Code, and JetBrains. "Users can optionally turn on an 'auto-apply' mode so ChatGPT can make edits without the need for additional clicks," adds TechCrunch. The feature is available now for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Team users, and will expand to Enterprise, Edu, and free users next week. Windows support is coming "soon." From the report: Direct code editing builds on OpenAI's "work with apps" ChatGPT capability, which the company launched in beta in November 2024. "Work with apps" allows the ChatGPT app for macOS to read code in a handful of dev-focused coding environments, minimizing the need to copy and paste code into ChatGPT. With the ability to directly edit code, ChatGPT now competes more directly with popular AI coding tools like Cursor and GitHub Copilot. OpenAI reportedly has ambitions to launch a dedicated product to support software engineering in the months ahead.

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1Password has introduced a 'nearby items' feature, allowing users to tag credentials with physical locations so the relevant information automatically surfaces when users are near those locations. Engadget reports: Location information can be added to any new or existing item in a 1Password vault. The app has also been updated with a map view for setting and viewing the locations of your items. In the blog post announcing the feature, the company cited examples such as door codes for a workplace, health records at a doctor's office, WiFi access at the gym and rewards membership information for local shops as potential uses for location data.

Privacy and security are paramount for a password manager, and 1Password confirmed that a user's location coordinates are only used locally and do not leave the device. Nearby items is available to 1Password customers starting today.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Alphabet on Thursday seeking its communications with former President Joe Biden's administration about content moderation policies. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, a Republican, also asked the YouTube parent company for similar communications with companies and groups outside government, according to a copy of the subpoena seen by Reuters. The subpoena seeks communications about limits or bans on content about President Donald Trump, Tesla CEO and close Trump ally Elon Musk, the virus that causes COVID-19 and a host of other conservative discussion topics. "Alphabet, to our knowledge, has not similarly disavowed the Biden-Harris Administration's attempts to censor speech," Jordan said in a letter.

Meanwhile, Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said the company will "continue to show the committee how we enforce our policies independently, rooted in our commitment to free expression."

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Earlier this week, Meta chief product officer Chris Cox said the company's upcoming open-source Llama 4 AI will help power AI agents for hundreds of millions of businesses. CNBC reports: The AI agents won't just be responding to prompts. They will be capable of new levels of reasoning and action -- surfing the web and handling many tasks that might be of use to consumers and businesses. And that's where Shih comes in. Meta's AI is already being used by over 700 million consumers, according to Shih, and her job is to bring the same technologies to businesses. "Not every business, especially small businesses, has the ability to hire these large AI teams, and so now we're building business AIs for these small businesses so that even they can benefit from all of this innovation that's happening," she told CNBC's Julia Boorstin in an interview for the CNBC Changemakers Spotlight series.

She expects the uptake among businesses to happen soon, and spread far and wide. "We're quickly coming to a place where every business, from the very large to the very small, they're going to have a business agent representing it and acting on its behalf, in its voice -- the way that businesses today have websites and email addresses," Shih said. While major companies across sectors of the economy are investing millions of dollars to develop customer LLMs, "doing fancy things like fine tuning models," as Shih put it, "If you're a small business -- you own a coffee shop, you own a jewelry shop online, you're distributing through Instagram -- you don't have the resources to hire a big AI team, and so now our dream is that they won't have to."

For both consumers and businesses, the implications of the advances discussed by Cox and Shih will be significant in daily life. For consumers, Shih says, "Their AI assistant [will] do all kinds of things, from researching products to planning trips, planning social outings with their friends." On the business side, Shih pointed to the 200 million small businesses around the world that are already using Meta services and platforms. "They're using WhatsApp, they're using Facebook, they're using Instagram, both to acquire customers, but also engage and deepen each of those relationships. Very soon, each of those businesses are going to have these AIs that can represent them and help automate redundant tasks, help speak in their voice, help them find more customers and provide almost like a concierge service to every single one of their customers, 24/7."

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