An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek: Insurance firm Lemonade is notifying roughly 190,000 individuals that their driver's license numbers were likely exposed due to a technical glitch. Copies of the notification letter that were submitted to regulators in several states show that the incident involved an online application that enables individuals to obtain car insurance quotes and purchase policies. According to the company, a vulnerability in the car insurance quote flow resulted in the exposure of certain driver's license numbers for identifiable individuals. The vulnerability has been addressed, Lemonade says.
Between April 2023 and September 2024, the platform transmitted the information unencrypted, which the company says allowed driver's license numbers to be accessed without authorization. "We have no evidence to suggest that your driver's license number has been misused but we are providing this notice as a precaution to inform potentially affected individuals and share some steps you can take to help protect yourself," the company's notification letter reads. The insurer is providing the impacted individuals with 12 months of free credit monitoring and identity protection services.
[Geoffrey Litt] shows that getting an effective digital assistant that’s tailored to one’s own needs just needs a little DIY, and thanks to the kinds of tools that are available today, it doesn’t even have to be particularly complex. Meet Stevens, the AI assistant who provides the family with useful daily briefs. The back end? Little more than one SQLite table and a few cron jobs.
A sample of Stevens’ notebook entries, both events and things to simply remember.
Every day, Stevens sends a daily brief via Telegram that includes calendar events, appointments, weather notes, reminders, and even a fun fact for the day. Stevens isn’t just send-only, either. Users can add new entries or ask questions about items through Telegram.
It’s rudimentary, but [Geoffrey] already finds it far more useful than Siri. This is unsurprising, as it has been astutely observed that big tech’s digital assistants are designed to serve their makers rather than their users. Besides, it’s also fun to have the freedom to give an assistant its own personality, something existing offerings sorely lack.
Architecture-wise, the assistant has a notebook (the single SQLite table) that gets populated with entries. These entries come from things like reading family members’ Google calendars, pulling data from a public weather API, processing delivery notices from the post office, and Telegram conversations. With a notebook of such entries (along with a date the entry is expected to be relevant), generating a daily brief is simple. After all, LLMs (Large Language Models) are amazingly good at handling and formatting natural language. That’s something even a locally-installed LLM can do with ease.
[Geoffrey] says that even this simple architecture is super useful, and it’s not even a particularly complex system. He encourages anyone who’s interested to check out his project, and see for themselves how useful even a minimally-informed assistant can be when it’s designed with ones’ own needs in mind.
Alamo Drafthouse will not implement Meta's new Movie Mate technology during the April 30 nationwide rerelease of Blumhouse's "M3GAN," Variety reports. The specialty theater chain confirmed it will maintain its strict no-phones policy despite Universal's promotion of the second-screen experience, with staff instructed to remove patrons attempting to access the feature during screenings.
Movie Mate represents Meta's first integration of its interactive movie technology, which operates via Instagram direct messaging. Users message the film's official account to activate a chatbot delivering "sneak peeks, exclusive recorded messages from directors and talent" synchronized with the screening. The "M3GAN" event serves as Meta's technological debut ahead of potential wider theatrical implementation.
China's outing of alleged US National Security Agency hackers marks a major escalation in the ongoing tit-for-tat between Chinese and American intelligence agencies, according to analysts. From a report: Chinese authorities Tuesday said three NSA employees hacked the Asian Winter Games held this year in Harbin, accusing them of targeting systems that held vast amounts of personal information on people involved in the event. The hacks "severely endangered the security of China's critical information infrastructure, national defense, finance, society, production, as well as citizens' personal information," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters.
While the US has repeatedly published names of alleged Chinese hackers and filed criminal charges against them, China has historically refrained from making similar accusations against American spies. Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at the cyber firm Sophos' Secureworks unit, said the development may signal a broader policy change from Chinese security agencies, with allegations of US cyberattacks becoming more specific and timely. "This is an escalation in China's experimentation with 'name and shame' policies for the alleged perpetrators of cyberattacks, mirroring US pursuit of a similar policy for a number of years now," said Pilling.
Autism rate rises slightly; RFK Jr. claims he’ll “have answers by September“
Posted on April 15, 2025, 6:09 p.m. | Ars Technica
The rate of autism in a group of 8-year-olds in the US rose from 2.76 percent (1 in 36) in 2020 to 3.22 percent (1 in 31) in 2022, according to a study out Tuesday in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a journal published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The report's authors—researchers at the CDC and academic institutions across the country— suggest that the slight uptick is likely due to improved access to evaluations in underserved groups, including Black, Hispanic, and low-income communities.
The data comes from the CDC-funded Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network. The national network has been tracking the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 8-year-olds at a handful of sites since 2000, publishing estimates every two years. In 2000, ASD prevalence was 1 in 150, with white children from high-income communities having the highest rates of the developmental disability. In 2020, when the rate hit 1 in 36, it was the first year in which higher ASD rates were seen in underserved communities. That year, researchers also noted that the link between ASD and socioeconomic status evaporated in most of the network.
A Canadian math prodigy is accused of stealing over $65 million through complex exploits on decentralized finance platforms and is currently a fugitive from U.S. authorities. Despite facing criminal charges for fraud and money laundering, he has evaded capture by moving internationally, embracing the controversial "Code is Law" philosophy, and maintaining that his actions were legal under the platforms' open-source rules. The Globe and Mail reports: Andean Medjedovic was 18 years old when he made a decision that would irrevocably alter the course of his life. In the fall of 2021, shortly after completing a master's degree at the University of Waterloo, the math prodigy and cryptocurrency trader from Hamilton had conducted a complex series of transactions designed to exploit a vulnerability in the code of a decentralized finance platform. The maneuver had allegedly allowed him to siphon approximately $16.5-million in digital tokens out of two liquidity pools operated by the platform, Indexed Finance, according to a U.S. court document.
Indexed Finance's leaders traced the attack back to Mr. Medjedovic, and made him an offer: Return 90 per cent of the funds, keep the rest as a so-called "bug bounty" -- a reward for having identified an error in the code -- and all would be forgiven. Mr. Medjedovic would then be free to launch his career as a white hat, or ethical, hacker. Mr. Medjedovic didn't take the deal. His social media posts hinted, without overtly stating, that he believed that because he had operated within the confines of the code, he was entitled to the funds -- a controversial philosophy in the world of decentralized finance known as "Code is Law." But instead of testing that argument in court, Mr. Medjedovic went into hiding. By the time authorities arrived on a quiet residential street in Hamilton to search his parents' townhouse less than two months later, Mr. Medjedovic had moved out, taking his electronic devices with him.
Then, roughly two years later, he struck again, netting an even larger sum -- approximately $48.4-million -- by conducting a similar exploit on another decentralized finance platform, U.S. authorities allege. Mr. Medjedovic, now 22, faces five criminal charges -- including wire fraud, attempted extortion and money laundering -- according to a U.S. federal court document that was unsealed earlier this year. If convicted, he could be facing decades in prison. First, authorities will have to find him.
Apple has officially designated all Intel-based Mac minis as "vintage" or "obsolete," marking the end of an era. This means Apple no longer guarantees parts or service for these devices, as they've surpassed the 5- to 7-year support window. 9to5Mac reports: Apple periodically adds devices to its ever-growing list of vintage and obsolete products. That happened today, as spotted by MacRumors, with two noteworthy "vintage" additions: iPhone 6s and Mac mini (2018). The latter product is especially significant, because the 2018 Mac mini was the last remaining Intel model that was not yet labeled either vintage or obsolete.
So what are those timelines exactly? Per Apple's definitions:
Vintage: "Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 5 and less than 7 years ago." Obsolete: "Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 7 years ago." [...] Since these products are now considered vintage, Apple no longer guarantees that parts for repairs will be readily available.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Figma has sent a cease-and-desist letter to popular no-code AI startup Lovable, Figma confirmed to TechCrunch. The letter tells Lovable to stop using the term "Dev Mode" for a new product feature. Figma, which also has a feature called Dev Mode, successfully trademarked that term last year, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark office. What's wild is that "dev mode" is a common term used in many products that cater to software programmers. It's like an edit mode. Software products from giant companies like Apple's iOS, Google's Chrome, Microsoft's Xbox have features formally called "developer mode" that then get nicknamed "dev mode" in reference materials.
Even "dev mode" itself is commonly used. For instance Atlassian used it in products that pre-date Figma's copyright by years. And it's a common feature name in countless open source software projects. Figma tells TechCrunch that its trademark refers only to the shortcut "Dev Mode" -- not the full term "developer mode." Still, it's a bit like trademarking the term "bug" to refer to "debugging." Since Figma wants to own the term, it has little choice but send cease-and-desist letters. (The letter, as many on X pointed out, was very polite, too.) If Figma doesn't defend the term, it could be absorbed as a generic term and the trademarked becomes unenforceable.
[Chris Cecil] had a problem. He had a Manncorp/Autotronik MC384V2 pick and place, and needed more feeders. The company was reluctant to support an older machine and wanted over $32,000 to supply [Chris] with more feeders. He contemplated the expenditure… but then came across another project which gave him pause. Could he make Siemens feeders work with his machine?
It’s one of those “standing on the shoulders of giants” stories, with [Chris] building on the work from [Bilsef] and the OpenPNP project. He came across SchultzController, which could be used to work with Siemens Siplace feeders for pick-and-place machines. They were never supposed to work with his Manncorp machine, but it seemed possible to knit them together in some kind of unholy production-focused marriage. [Chris] explains how he hooked up the Manncorp hardware to a Smoothieboard and then Bilsef’s controller boards to get everything working, along with all the nitty gritty details on the software hacks required to get everything playing nice.
For an investment of just $2,500, [Chris] has been able to massively expand the number of feeders on his machine. Now, he’s got his pick and place building more Smoothieboards faster than ever, with less manual work on his part.
We feature a lot of one-off projects and home production methods, but it’s nice to also get a look at methods of more serious production in bigger numbers, too. It’s a topic we follow with interest. Video after the break.
[Editor’s note: Siemens is the parent company of Supplyframe, which is Hackaday’s parent company. This has nothing to do with this story.]
Posted on April 15, 2025, 3:43 p.m. | Ars Technica
Google has announced that yet another AI model is coming to Gemini, but this time, it's more than a chatbot. The company's Veo 2 video generator is rolling out to the Gemini app and website, giving paying customers a chance to create short video clips with Google's allegedly state-of-the-art video model.
Veo 2 works like other video generators, including OpenAI's Sora—you input text describing the video you want, and a Google data center churns through tokens until it has an animation. Google claims that Veo 2 was designed to have a solid grasp of real-world physics, particularly the way humans move. Google's examples do look good, but presumably that's why they were chosen.
Prompt: Aerial shot of a grassy cliff onto a sandy beach where waves crash against the shore, a prominent sea stack rises from the ocean near the beach, bathed in the warm, golden light of either sunrise or sunset, capturing the serene beauty of the Pacific coastline.
White House calls NPR and PBS a “grift,” will ask Congress to rescind funding
Posted on April 15, 2025, 3:31 p.m. | Ars Technica
The Trump White House is proposing to eliminate most federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and issued a statement yesterday alleging that NPR and PBS "spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'"
"The NPR, PBS grift has ripped us off for too long," the White House statement said.
White House budget director Russ Vought drafted a memo for a rescission plan that would eliminate funding already approved by Congress, according to multiple news reports. This includes $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), or about two years' worth of funding for the nonprofit group that provides money to public broadcasting stations.
Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick thinks AI is about to shake up consulting -- and for "traditional" professionals, not in a good way. From a report: The former Uber CEO said consultants who mostly follow instructions or do repetitive tasks are at risk of being replaced by AI. "If you're a traditional consultant and you're just doing the thing, you're executing the thing, you're probably in some big trouble," he said. He joked about what that future of consultancy might look like: "Push a button. Get a consultant."
However, Kalanick said the professionals who would come out ahead would be the ones who build tools rather than just use them. "If you are the consultant that puts the things together that replaces the consultant, maybe you got some stuff," he said. "You're going to profitable companies with competitive moats, making that moat bigger," he explained. "Making their profit bigger is probably pretty interesting from a financial point of view."
The GCC 15.1 compiler release is expected in the coming weeks as the first stable version of GCC 15 as this annual GNU Compiler Collection release. As we approach the finish line, some last minute changes were merged for the AMD Zen 5 "znver5" CPU target...
More than 45 million people in the US are fans of bowling, with national competitions awarding millions of dollars. Bowlers usually rely on instinct and experience, earned through lots and lots of practice, to boost their strike percentage. A team of physicists has come up with a mathematical model to better predict ball trajectories, outlined in a new paper published in the journal AIP Advances. The resulting equations take into account such factors as the composition and resulting pattern of the oil used on bowling lanes, as well as the inevitable asymmetries of bowling balls and player variability.
The authors already had a strong interest in bowling. Three are regular bowlers and quite skilled at the sport; a fourth, Curtis Hooper of Longborough University in the UK, is a coach for Team England at the European Youth Championships. Hooper has been studying the physics of bowling for several years, including an analysis of the 2017 Weber Cup, as well as papers devising mathematical models for the application of lane conditioners and oil patterns in bowling.
The calculations involved in such research are very complicated because there are so many variables that can affect a ball's trajectory after being thrown. Case in point: the thin layer of oil that is applied to bowling lanes, which Hooper found can vary widely in volume and shape among different venues, plus the lack of uniformity in applying the layer, which creates an uneven friction surface.
You should still learn to code, says GitHub's CEO. And you should start as soon as possible. From a report: "I strongly believe that every kid, every child, should learn coding," Thomas Dohmke said in a recent podcast interview with EO. "We should actually teach them coding in school, in the same way that we teach them physics and geography and literacy and math and what-not." Coding, he added, is one such fundamental skill -- and the only reason it's not part of the curriculum is because it took "us too long to actually realize that."
Dohmke, who's been a programmer since the 90s, said he's never seen "anything more exciting" than the current moment in engineering -- the advent of AI, he believes, has made the field that much easier to break into, and is poised to make software more ubiquitous than ever. "It's so much easier to get into software development. You can just write a prompt into Copilot or ChatGPT or similar tools, and it will likely write you a basic webpage, or a small application, a game in Python," Dohmke said. "And so, AI makes software development so much more accessible for anyone who wants to learn coding."
AI, Dohmke said, helps to "realize the dream" of bringing an idea to life, meaning that fewer projects will end up dead in the water, and smaller teams of developers will be enabled to tackle larger-scale projects. Dohmke said he believes it makes the overall process of creation more efficient. "You see some of the early signs of that, where very small startups -- sometimes five developers and some of them actually only one developer -- believe they can become million, if not billion dollar businesses by leveraging all the AI agents that are available to them," he added.
4chan has been down since Monday night after “pretty comprehensive own”
Posted on April 15, 2025, 2:43 p.m. | Ars Technica
Infamous Internet imageboard and wretched hive of scum and villainy 4chan was apparently hacked at some point Monday evening and remains mostly unreachable as of this writing. DownDetector showed reports of outages spiking at about 10:07 pm Eastern time on Monday, and they've remained elevated since.
Posters at Soyjack Party, a rival imageboard that began as a 4chan offshoot, claimed responsibility for the hack. But as with all posts on these intensely insular boards, it's difficult to separate fact from fiction. The thread shows screenshots of what appear to be 4chan's PHP admin interface, among other screenshots, that suggest extensive access to 4chan's databases of posts and users.
Security researcher Kevin Beaumont described the hack as "a pretty comprehensive own" that included "SQL databases, source, and shell access." 404Media reports that the site used an outdated version of PHP that could have been used to gain access, including the phpMyAdmin tool, a common attack vector that is frequently patched for security vulnerabilities. Ars staffers pointed to the presence of long-deprecated and removed functions like mysql_real_escape_string in the screenshots as possible signs of an old, unpatched PHP version.
Netflix plans to bring streaming into the $1 trillion club by 2030
Posted on April 15, 2025, 2:32 p.m. | Ars Technica
Netflix plans to reach a market capitalization of $1 trillion by 2030,The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported this week, citing anonymous people who attended an “annual business review meeting” that Netflix held in March. Netflix's current market capitalization is nearly $400 billion.
Netflix is reportedly partnering its market cap goals with plans to double revenue within the same time frame. For 2024, Netflix reported $39 billion in revenue, meaning the company aims to raise its annual revenue to $78 billion in five years.
Compared to the prior five years, Netflix’s revenue grew 93.5 percent from 2019 ($20.16 billion) to 2024. However, that time period represented a different market, one where streaming subscriber counts were rising rapidly, and Netflix faced less competition than it does today. However, Netflix's 2030 revenue goals are also dependent on its advertising business, something Netflix lacked in 2019.
If you’ve worked on a high-end mountain or road bike for any length of time, you have likely cursed the Presta valve. This humble century-old invention is the bane of many a home and professional mechanic. What if there is a better option? [Seth] decided to find out by putting four valves on a single rim.
The contenders include the aforementioned Presta, as well as Schrader, Dunlop and the young gun, Click. Schrader and Dunlop both pre-date Presta, with Schrader finding prevalence in cruiser bicycles along with cars and even aircraft. Dunlop is still found on bicycles in parts of Asia and Europe. Then came along Presta some time around 1893, and was designed to hold higher pressures and be lower profile then Schrader and Dunlop. It found prevalence among the weight conscious and narrow rimmed road bike world and, for better or worse, stuck around ever since.
But there’s a new contender from industry legend Schwalbe called Click. Click comes with a wealth of nifty modern engineering tricks including its party piece, and namesake, of a clicking mechanical locking system, no lever, no screw attachment. Click also fits into a Presta valve core and works on most Presta pumps. Yet, it remains to be seen weather Click is just another doomed standard, or the solution to many a cyclists greatest headache.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen clever engineering going into a bike valve.
An anonymous reader shares a report: None of the frontier AI research labs have presented any evidence that they are on the brink of achieving artificial general intelligence, no matter how they define that goal, but Google is already planning for a "Post-AGI" world by hiring a scientist for its DeepMind AI lab to research the "profound impact" that technology will have on society.
"Spearhead research projects exploring the influence of AGI on domains such as economics, law, health/wellbeing, AGI to ASI [artificial superintelligence], machine consciousness, and education," Google says in the first item on a list of key responsibilities for the job. Artificial superintelligence refers to a hypothetical form of AI that is smarter than the smartest human in all domains. This is self explanatory, but just to be clear, when Google refers to "machine consciousness" it's referring to the science fiction idea of a sentient machine.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Elon Musk, and other major and minor players in the AI industry are all working on AGI and have previously talked about the likelihood of humanity achieving AGI, when that might happen, and what the consequences might be, but the Google job listing shows that companies are now taking concrete steps for what comes after, or are at least are continuing to signal that they believe it can be achieved.
Here’s how a satellite ended up as a ghostly apparition on Google Earth
Posted on April 15, 2025, 1:24 p.m. | Ars Technica
Dig deep on Google Earth and you'll inevitably find a surprise or two. Maybe you're looking at far-flung islands in the middle of an ocean or checking in on something closer to home.
A few years ago, online sleuths found an image of a B-2 stealth bomber in flight over Missouri. The aircraft is smeared in the image because it was in motion, while the farm fields below appear as crisp as any other view on Google Earth.
There's something else that now appears on Google Earth. Zoom in over rural North Texas, and you'll find a satellite. It appears five times in different colors, each projected over wooded bottomlands in a remote wildlife refuge about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Dallas.
An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI is working on its own X-like social network, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. While the project is still in early stages, we're told there's an internal prototype focused on ChatGPT's image generation that has a social feed. CEO Sam Altman has been privately asking outsiders for feedback about the project, our sources say. It's unclear if OpenAI's plan is to release the social network as a separate app or integrate it into ChatGPT, which became the most downloaded app globally last month.
Launching a social network in or around ChatGPT would likely increase Altman's already-bitter rivalry with Elon Musk. In February, after Musk made an unsolicited offer to purchase OpenAI for $97.4 billion, Altman responded: "no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want." Entering the social media market also puts OpenAI on more of a collision course with Meta, which we're told is planning to add a social feed to its coming standalone app for its AI assistant. When reports of Meta building a rival to the ChatGPT app first surfaced a couple of months ago, Altman shot back on X again by saying, "ok fine maybe we'll do a social app."
A dog may be man’s best friend, but many of us live with cats, fish, iguanas, or even wilder animals. And naturally, we like to share our hacks with our pets. Whether it’s a robot ball-thrower, a hamster wheel that’s integrated into your smart home system, or even just an automatic feeder for when you’re not home, we want to see what kind of projects that your animal friends have inspired you to pull off.
Of course, we have a couple thoughts about fun directions to take this contest, and we’ll be featuring entries along the way. Just to whet your whistle, here are our four honorable mention categories.
Pet Safety: Nothing is better than a hack that helps your pet stay out of trouble. If your hack contributes to pet safety, we want to see it.
Playful Pets: Some hacks are just for fun, and that goes for our pet hacks too. If it’s about amusing either your animal friend or even yourself, it’s a playful pet hack.
Cyborg Pets: Sometimes the hacks aren’t for your pet, but on your pet. Custom pet prosthetics or simply ultra-blinky LED accouterments belong here.
Home Alone: This category is for systems that aim to make your pet more autonomous. That’s not limited to vacation feeders – anything that helps your pet get along in this world designed for humans is fair game.
Inspiration
We’ve seen an amazing number of pet hacks here at Hackaday, from simple to wildly overkill. And we love them all! Here are a few of our favorite pet hacks past, but feel free to chime in the comments if you have one that didn’t make our short list.
Let’s start off with a fishy hack. Simple aquariums don’t require all that much attention or automation, so they’re a great place to start small with maybe a light controller or something that turns off your wave machine every once in a while. But when you get to the point of multiple setups, you might also want to spend a little more time on the automation. Or at least that’s how we imagine that [Blue Blade Fish] got to the point of a system with multiple light setups, temperature control, water level sensing, and more. It’s a 15-video series, so buckle in.
We had a lot of fun looking through Hackaday’s back-catalog of pet hacks, but we’re still missing yours! If you’ve got something you’d like us all to see, head on over to Hackaday.io and enter it in the contest. Fame, fortune, and a DigiKey gift certificate await!
An anonymous reader shares a report: A silent update rolling out to virtually all Android devices will make your phone more secure, and all you have to do is not touch it for a few days. The new feature implements auto-restart of a locked device, which will keep your personal data more secure. It's coming as part of a Google Play Services update, though, so there's nothing you can do to speed along the process.
Google is preparing to release a new update to Play Services (v25.14), which brings a raft of tweaks and improvements to myriad system features. First spotted by 9to5Google, the update was officially released on April 14, but as with all Play Services updates, it could take a week or more to reach all devices. When 25.14 arrives, Android devices will see a few minor improvements, including prettier settings screens, improved connection with cars and watches, and content previews when using Quick Share.
Nvidia nudges mainstream gaming PCs forward with RTX 5060 series, starting at $299
Posted on April 15, 2025, 12:36 p.m. | Ars Technica
Nvidia is rounding out its GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards today with the official announcement of the mainstream RTX 5060 series. The company is announcing three new GPUs today: The 5060 Ti will launch on April 16 in both 8GB and 16GB variations, for $379 and $429, respectively. The regular RTX 5060 will follow at some point in May for the same $299 MSRP as the last-generation RTX 4060. It is also sticking with 8GB of RAM.
Obviously, it remains to be seen whether the company and its partners can actually stock these cards at these prices. GPUs from the top-tier RTX 5090 to the mainstream RTX 5070 have been difficult to impossible to buy at their announced MSRPs. And it's not just Nvidia's problem or a high-end problem—AMD's Radeon RX 9070 series GPUs have also been hard to buy, as have Intel's Arc B580 and B570 cards.
The new graphics cards' specs essentially match numbers that have been floating around for a couple of months now. Both models include modest increases in the number of CUDA cores compared to the last-generation 4060 and 4060 Ti models, with the same amount of RAM and the same 128-bit memory interface. But an upgrade to GDDR7 instead of GDDR6 provides a healthy bump to memory bandwidth and is probably also partially responsible for an increase in peak power consumption. The 4060 Ti in particular was memory bandwidth-constrained at higher resolutions, so hopefully some extra bandwidth will make it a better choice for a decent 1440p gaming PC.
Adding to the busy week of Linux distribution releases from Ubuntu 25.04 to Manjaro 25.04 and Fedora 42, TrueNAS 25.04 debuted today as a major step forward for this open enterprise storage platform...
A silent update rolling out to virtually all Android devices will make your phone more secure, and all you have to do is not touch it for a few days. The new feature implements auto-restart of a locked device, which will keep your personal data more secure. It's coming as part of a Google Play Services update, though, so there's nothing you can do to speed along the process.
Google is preparing to release a new update to Play Services (v25.14), which brings a raft of tweaks and improvements to myriad system features. First spotted by 9to5Google, the update was officially released on April 14, but as with all Play Services updates, it could take a week or more to reach all devices. When 25.14 arrives, Android devices will see a few minor improvements, including prettier settings screens, improved connection with cars and watches, and content previews when using Quick Share.
Most importantly, Play Services 25.14 adds a feature that Google describes thusly: "With this feature, your device automatically restarts if locked for 3 consecutive days."
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg considered resetting all Facebook users' friend connections to boost the platform's declining relevance, according to internal emails revealed Monday in a landmark FTC antitrust trial. In a 2022 message to executives, Zuckerberg proposed "wiping everyone's graphs and having them start again," referring to users' friend networks. Facebook head Tom Alison questioned the idea's viability, citing Instagram's reliance on friend connections. Zuckerberg later testified that the plan was never implemented and that Facebook has "evolved" from its original purpose.
The FTC argues Meta violated competition laws by acquiring Instagram ($1B) and WhatsApp ($19B) as part of a "buy or bury" strategy outlined in Zuckerberg's 2008 email stating, "It is better to buy than compete."
If you’re into electronics you can never have too many digital multimeters (DMMs). They all have different features, and if you want to make multiple measurements simultaneously, it can pay to have a few. Over on his video blog [joe smith] reviews the new Brymen BM788BT, which is a new entry into the Bluetooth logging meter category.
According to a post on the EEVblog, this Bluetooth variant was promised five years ago, and back then Brymen even had the Bluetooth module pin header on the PCB, but it has taken a long time to get the feature right. If you scroll through the thread you will find that Brymen has made its protocol specification available for the BM780 series meters.
It looks like some Bluetooth hacking might be required to get the best out of this meter. Of course we’re no strangers to hacking DMMs around here. We’ve taken on the Fluke 77 for example, and these DMM tweezers.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has issued a stark ultimatum to European allies, telling them to choose between US and Chinese communications technology. In an interview with Financial Times, Carr urged "allied western democracies" to "focus on the real long-term bogey: the rise of the Chinese Communist party." The warning comes as European governments question Starlink's reliability after Washington threatened to switch off its services in Ukraine.
UK telecoms BT and Virgin Media O2 are currently trialing Starlink's satellite internet technology but haven't signed full agreements. "If you're concerned about Starlink, just wait for the CCP's version, then you'll be really worried," said Carr. Carr claimed Europe is "caught" between Washington and Beijing, with a "great divide" emerging between "CCP-aligned countries and others" in AI and satellite technology. He also accused the European Commission of "protectionism" and an "anti-American" attitude while suggesting Nokia and Ericsson should relocate manufacturing to the US to avoid Trump's import tariffs.
ISPs and robocallers love the FCC plan to “delete” as many rules as possible
Posted on April 15, 2025, 11:06 a.m. | Ars Technica
Industry groups have submitted deregulatory wishlists for the Federal Communications Commission's "Delete, Delete, Delete" initiative that aims to eliminate as many regulations as possible.
Broadband providers that want fewer telecom regulations and debt collectors opposed to robocall rules were among those submitting comments to the FCC in response to Chairman Brendan Carr's request for public input. The Carr-led FCC last month issued a public notice asking for help with "identifying FCC rules for the purpose of alleviating unnecessary regulatory burdens."
The FCC said it opened the official proceeding—which is titled "Delete, Delete, Delete"—because "President Trump has called on administrative agencies to unleash prosperity through deregulation and ensure that they are efficiently delivering great results for the American people." Initial comments were due on Friday, and there is an April 28 deadline for reply comments.
Following the recent benchmarking of Ubuntu Server 25.04 in its near final state compared to prior Ubuntu Linux releases, I turned my attention to Fedora Server 42. On the same AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" server I carried out some comparison benchmarks of Fedora Server 42 compared to the prior Fedora Server 41 and other Linux distribution releases for seeing how Fedora 42 is competing with other Linux distributions on this 5th Gen AMD EPYC dual socket server.
Image by [akavel] via GitHubReader [akavel] was kind enough to notify me about Clawtype, which is a custom wearable chorded keyboard/mouse combo based on the Chordite by [John W. McKown].
First of all, I love the brass rails — they give it that lovely circuit sculpture vibe. This bad boy was written in Rust and currently runs on a SparkFun ProMicro RP2040 board. For the mouse portion of the program, there’s an MPU6050 gyro/accelerometer.
[akavel]’s intent was to pair it with XR glasses, which sounds like a great combination to me. While typing is still a bit slow, [akavel] is improving at a noticeable pace and does some vim coding during hobby time.
In the future, [akavel] plans to try a BLE version, maybe even running off a single AA Ni-MH cell, and probably using an nRF52840. As for the 3D-printed shape, that was designed and printed by [akavel]’s dear friend [Cunfusu], who has made the files available over at Printables. Be sure to check it out in the brief demo video after the break.
Wooden You Like To Use the Typewriter?
Image by [bilbonbigos] via redditI feel a bit late to the party on this one, but that’s okay, I made an nice entrance. The Typewriter is [bilbonbigos]’ lovely distraction-free writing instrument that happens to be primarily constructed of wood. In fact, [bilbonbigos] didn’t use any screws or nails — the whole thing is glued together.
The Typewriter uses a Raspberry Pi 3B+, and [bilbonbigos] is FocusWriter to get real work done on it. it runs off of a 10,000 mAh power bank and uses a 7.9″ Waveshare display.
The 60% mechanical keyboard was supposed to be Bluetooth but turned out not to be when it arrived, so that’s why you might notice a cable sticking out.
The whole thing all closed up is about the size of a ream of A4, and [bilbonbigos] intends to add a shoulder strap in order to make it more portable.
That cool notebook shelf doubles as a mousing surface, which is pretty swell and rounds out the build nicely. Still, there are some things [bilbonbigos] would change — a new Raspi, or a lighter different physical support for the screen, and a cooling system.
The Centerfold: A Keyboard For Your House In Palm Springs
Image by [the_real_jamied] via redditCan’t you feel the space age Palm Springs breezes just looking at this thing? No? Well, at least admit that it looks quite atomic-age with that font and those life-preserver modifier keycaps. This baby would look great on one of those giant Steelcase office desks. Just don’t spill your La Croix on it, or whatever they drink in Palm Springs.
Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad? Send me a picture along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!
Historical Clackers: the Odell Typewriter
First of all, the machine pictured here is not the true Odell number 1 model, which has a pair of seals’ feet at each end of the base and is referred to as the “Seal-Foot Odell“. Ye olde Seal-Foot was only produced briefly in 1889.
But then inventor Levi Judson Odell completely redesigned the thing into what you see here — model 1b, for which he was awarded a patent in 1890. I particularly like the markings on the base. The nickel-plated, rimless model you see here was not typical; most had gold bases.
These babies cost 1/5th of a standard typewriter, and were quite easy to use to boot. With everything laid out in a line, it was far easier to use a slide mechanism than your ten fingers to select each character. On top of everything else, these machines were small enough to take with you.
No matter their appearance, or whether they typed upper case only or both, Odells were all linear index typewriters. The print element is called a type-rail. There is a fabric roller under the type-rail that applies ink to the characters as they pass. Pinch levers on the sides of the carriage did double duty as the carriage advance mechanism and the escapement.
Round-based Odells went by the wayside in 1906 and were replaced by square-based New American No. 5 models. They functioned the same, but looked quite different.
This machine, an SCM (Smith-Corona Marchant) Electra 120, is an interesting one; it’s electric, but the carriage return is still manual. I myself have an SCM Secretarial 300, which looks very much the same, but has a frightening ‘Power Return’ that sends the carriage back toward the right with enough power to shake the floor, depending upon the fortitude of your table.
Apparently Lennon would use the machine when traveling, but gave it to a close friend in the music industry when he upgraded or otherwise no longer needed it. A booking agent named Irwin Pate worked with this friend and obtained the typewriter from him, and Irwin and his wife Clarine held on to it until they sold it to Paul Fraser Collectibles. I find it interesting that this didn’t go to auction at Christie’s — I think it would ultimately go for more, but I’m a writer, not an auction-ologist.
Publishers and law professors have filed amicus briefs supporting authors who sued Meta over its AI training practices, arguing that the company's use of "thousands of pirated books" fails to qualify as fair use under copyright law.
The filings [PDF] in California's Northern District federal court came from copyright law professors, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), Copyright Alliance, and Association of American Publishers. The briefs counter earlier support for Meta from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and IP professors.
While Meta's defenders pointed to the 2015 Google Books ruling as precedent, the copyright professors distinguished Meta's use, arguing Google Books told users something "about" books without "exploiting expressive elements," whereas AI models leverage the books' creative content.
"Meta's use wasn't transformative because, like the AI models, the plaintiffs' works also increased 'knowledge and skill,'" the professors wrote, warning of a "cascading effect" if Meta prevails. STM is specifically challenging Meta's data sources: "While Meta attempts to label them 'publicly available datasets,' they are only 'publicly available' because those perpetuating their existence are breaking the law."
With the newest Mesa 25.1-devel Git code merged today the Panfrost Gallium3D and PanVK Vulkan drivers for Arm Mali open-source graphics are supporting Mali 5th Gen gen 1 (v12) and gen 2 (v13) devices...
FCC head Brendan Carr tells Europe to get on board with Starlink
Posted on April 15, 2025, 9:27 a.m. | Ars Technica
One of President Donald Trump’s top officials has warned European allies hesitant about working with Elon Musk’s satellite Internet company that they needed to choose between US and Chinese technology.
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr told the Financial Times that “allied western democracies” needed to “focus on the real long-term bogey: the rise of the Chinese Communist party.”
His comments come as European governments and some European companies consider whether Starlink—which is owned by Musk’s SpaceX and provides satellite broadband and limited mobile services—is a reliable partner after Washington threatened to switch off its services in Ukraine.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Car rental giant Hertz has begun notifying its customers of a data breach that included their personal information and driver's licenses. The rental company, which also owns the Dollar and Thrifty brands, said in notices on its website that the breach relates to a cyberattack on one of its vendors between October 2024 and December 2024. The stolen data varies by region, but largely includes Hertz customer names, dates of birth, contact information, driver's licenses, payment card information, and workers' compensation claims. Hertz said a smaller number of customers had their Social Security numbers taken in the breach, along with other government-issued identification numbers. Notices on Hertz's websites disclosed the breach to customers in Australia, Canada, the European Union, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Hertz also disclosed the breach with several U.S. states, including California and Maine. Hertz said at least 3,400 customers in Maine were affected but did not list the total number of affected individuals, which is likely to be significantly higher. Emily Spencer, a spokesperson for Hertz, would not provide TechCrunch with a specific number of individuals affected by the breach but said it would be "inaccurate to say millions" of customers are affected. The company attributed the breach to a vendor, software maker Cleo, which last year was at the center of a mass-hacking campaign by a prolific Russia-linked ransomware gang.
Fedora 42 is out today as a fabulous update to this prominent leading-edge Linux distribution sponsored by Red Hat. I've been running Fedora 42 on several systems already -- including upgrading my main production system to it -- and it's been working out very well. Fedora 42 is packed full of new features and software updates making it a great H1'2025 Linux operating system release...
Well, $10 billion is a lot of money. Even when spread over a couple of decades, that's still a huge chunk of NASA's annual science budget. (And given the recent Trump administration attack on NASA's science budget, money is about to get a whole lot tighter.)
However, it is difficult to put a price on advancing our species' understanding of the natural world and the wide Universe we're swimming in. And Webb is doing an amazing job of that.
We’re probably all familiar with the Hall Effect, at least to the extent that it can be used to make solid-state sensors for magnetic fields. It’s a cool bit of applied physics, but there are other ways to sense magnetic fields, including leveraging the weird world of quantum physics with this diamond, laser, and microwave open-source sensor.
Having never heard of quantum sensors before, we took the plunge and read up on the topic using some of the material provided by [Mark C] and his colleagues at Quantum Village. The gist of it seems to be that certain lab-grown diamonds can be manufactured with impurities such as nitrogen, which disrupt the normally very orderly lattice of carbon atoms and create a “nitrogen vacancy,” small pockets within the diamond with extra electrons. Shining a green laser on N-V diamonds can stimulate those electrons to jump up to higher energy states, releasing red light when they return to the ground state. Turning this into a sensor involves sweeping the N-V diamond with microwave energy in the presence of a magnetic field, which modifies which spin states of the electrons and hence how much red light is emitted.
Building a practical version of this quantum sensor isn’t as difficult as it sounds. The trickiest part seems to be building the diamond assembly, which has the N-V diamond — about the size of a grain of sand and actually not that expensive — potted in clear epoxy along with a loop of copper wire for the microwave antenna, a photodiode, and a small fleck of red filter material. The electronics primarily consist of an ADF4531 phase-locked loop RF signal generator and a 40-dB RF amplifier to generate the microwave signals, a green laser diode module, and an ESP32 dev board.
All the design files and firmware have been open-sourced, and everything about the build seems quite approachable. The write-up emphasizes Quantum Village’s desire to make this quantum technology’s “Apple II moment,” which we heartily endorse. We’ve seen N-V sensors detailed before, but this project might make it easier to play with quantum physics at home.
The Intel Video Processing Library GPU Runtime "VPL-GPU-RT" as the run-time component to the Intel VPL API for video processing with a variety of video encoders/decoders and filters is preparing to end mainline support for Intel graphics prior to Tiger Lake...
The Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) intended for online gaming, IP telephony, multimedia streaming, and other online real-time purposes for this transport layer protocol is expected to be stripped out of the Linux kernel with the upcoming v6.16 cycle...
Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares the news that China has halted all rare earth exports globally -- including to the U.S., Japan, and Germany. Fortune reports: After Trump unveiled his "Liberation Day" tariffs on April 2, China retaliated on April 4 with its own duties as well as export controls on several rare earth minerals and magnets made from them. So far, those export controls have translated to a halt across the board, cutting off the U.S. and other countries, according to the New York Times. That's because any exports of the minerals and magnets now require special licenses, but Beijing has yet to fully establish a system for issuing them, the report said.
In the meantime, shipments of rare earths have been halted at many ports, with customs officials blocking exports to any country, including to the U.S. as well as Japan and Germany, sources told theÂTimes. China's Ministry of Commerce issued export restrictions alongside the General Administration of Customs, prohibiting Chinese businesses from any engagement with U.S. firms, especially defense contractors. While the Trump administration unveiled tariff exemptions on a range of key tech imports late Friday night, China's magnet exports were still halted through the weekend, industry sources told the Times. Beijing's export halt is notable because China has a stranglehold on global supplies of rare earths and magnets derived from them. They also represent an asymmetric advantage in that rare earths constitute a small share of China's exports but have an outsize impact on trade partners like the U.S., which relies on them as critical inputs for the auto, chip, aerospace, and defense industries.
In addition to yesterday's alpha release of the semi-immutable Majaro Summit distribution, Manjaro Linux has now resolved Manjaro 25.0 as the newest version of this (non-immutable) Arch Linux based desktop operating system...
Hear me, O islands,
listen, O distant peoples.
The LORD called me from birth,
from my mother's womb he gave me my name.
He made of me a sharp-edged sword
and concealed me in the shadow of his arm.
He made me a polished arrow,
in his quiver he hid me.
You are my servant, he said to me,
Israel, through whom I show my glory.
Though I thought I had toiled in vain,
and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength,
Yet my reward is with the LORD,
my recompense is with my God.
For now the LORD has spoken
who formed me as his servant from the womb,
That Jacob may be brought back to him
and Israel gathered to him;
And I am made glorious in the sight of the LORD,
and my God is now my strength!
It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant,
to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
and restore the survivors of Israel;
I will make you a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
R. (see 15ab) I will sing of your salvation.
In you, O LORD, I take refuge;
let me never be put to shame.
In your justice rescue me, and deliver me;
incline your ear to me, and save me.
R. I will sing of your salvation.
Be my rock of refuge,
a stronghold to give me safety,
for you are my rock and my fortress.
O my God, rescue me from the hand of the wicked.
R. I will sing of your salvation.
For you are my hope, O LORD;
my trust, O God, from my youth.
On you I depend from birth;
from my mother's womb you are my strength.
R. I will sing of your salvation.
My mouth shall declare your justice,
day by day your salvation.
O God, you have taught me from my youth,
and till the present I proclaim your wondrous deeds.
R. I will sing of your salvation.
Verse Before the Gospel
Hail to you, our King, obedient to the Father;
you were led to your crucifixion like a gentle lamb to the slaughter.
Reclining at table with his disciples, Jesus was deeply troubled and testified,
"Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me."
The disciples looked at one another, at a loss as to whom he meant.
One of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved,
was reclining at Jesus' side.
So Simon Peter nodded to him to find out whom he meant.
He leaned back against Jesus' chest and said to him,
"Master, who is it?"
Jesus answered,
"It is the one to whom I hand the morsel after I have dipped it."
So he dipped the morsel and took it and handed it to Judas,
son of Simon the Iscariot.
After Judas took the morsel, Satan entered him.
So Jesus said to him, "What you are going to do, do quickly."
Now none of those reclining at table realized why he said this to him.
Some thought that since Judas kept the money bag, Jesus had told him,
"Buy what we need for the feast,"
or to give something to the poor.
So Judas took the morsel and left at once. And it was night.
When he had left, Jesus said,
"Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself,
and he will glorify him at once.
My children, I will be with you only a little while longer.
You will look for me, and as I told the Jews,
'Where I go you cannot come,' so now I say it to you."
Simon Peter said to him, "Master, where are you going?"
Jesus answered him,
"Where I am going, you cannot follow me now,
though you will follow later."
Peter said to him,
"Master, why can I not follow you now?
I will lay down my life for you."
Jesus answered, "Will you lay down your life for me?
Amen, amen, I say to you, the cock will not crow
before you deny me three times."
There are a number of reasons you might want to build your own smart speaker virtual assistant. Usually, getting your weather forecast from a snarky, malicious AI potato isn’t one of them, unless you’re a huge Portal fan like [Binh Pham].
[Binh Pham] built the potato incarnation of GLaDOS from the Portal 2 video game with the help of a ReSpeaker Light kit, an ESP32-based board designed for speech recognition and voice control, and as an interface for home assistant running on a Raspberry Pi.
He resisted the temptation to use a real potato as an enclosure and wisely opted instead to print one from a 3D file he found on Thingiverse of the original GLaDOS potato. Providing the assistant with the iconic synthetic voice of GLaDOS was a matter of repackaging an existing voice model for use with Home Assistant.
Of course all of this attention to detail would be for not if you had to refer to the assistant as “Google” or “Alexa” to get its attention. A bit of custom modelling and on-device wake word detection, and the cyborg tuber was ready to switch lights on and off with it’s signature sinister wit.
A new study projects that CT scans conducted in 2023 may result in around 103,000 future cancer cases in the U.S. due to low-dose ionizing radiation. "[I]t would put CT scans on par with other significant risk factors for cancer, like alcohol consumption, at least at a population level," reports ScienceAlert. From the report: At an individual level, the theoretical chance of developing cancer from a CT scan is thought to be very minimal, if it exists at all, and patients should not be scared of undergoing these tests if they are deemed medically necessary. However, the number of CT examinations performed each year in the US has increased by more than 30 percent since 2007, and researchers suggest that unwarranted tests are exposing the population to unnecessary radiation. [...]
The anonymous data comes from 143 hospitals and outpatient facilities across the US, catalogued in the UCSF International CT Dose Registry. Using statistics from 2016 to 2022, researchers predicted 93 million CT examinations were carried out in 2023, on roughly 62 million patients. Based on the associated radiation risks, the team estimates that CT scans in 2023 may be tied to 103,000 future cancers. The findings have been published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
A tornado can be an awe-inspiring sight, but it can also flip your car, trash your house, and otherwise injure you with flying debris. If you’d like to look at swirling air currents in a safer context, you might appreciate this tornado tower build from [Gary Boyd].
[Gary]’s build was inspired by museum demonstrations and the tornado machine designs of [Harald Edens]. His build generates a vortex that spans 1 meter tall in a semi-open cylindrical chamber. A fan in the top of the device sucks in air from the chamber, and exhausts it through a vertical column of holes in the wall of the cylinder. This creates a vortex in the air, though it’s not something you can see on its own. To visualize the flow, the cylindrical chamber is also fitted with an ultrasonic mist generator in the base. The vortex in the chamber is able to pick up this mist, and it can be seen swirling upwards as it is sucked towards the fan at the top.
It’s a nice educational build, and one that’s as nice to look at as it is to study. It produces a thick white vortex that we’re sure someone could turn into an admirable lamp or clock or something, this being Hackaday, after all. In any case, vortexes are well worth your study. If you’re cooking up neat projects with this physical principle, you should absolutely let us know!
An anonymous reader shares a report: Generative AI offers remarkable efficiency gains while presenting a profound challenge for the global IT services industry -- a sector concentrated in India and central to its export economy.
For decades, Indian technology firms thrived by deploying their engineering talent to serve primarily Western clients. Now they face a critical question. Will AI's productivity dividend translate into revenue growth? Or will fierce competition see these gains competed away through price reductions?
Industry soundings suggest the deflationary dynamic may already be taking hold. JPMorgan's conversations with executives, deal advisors and consultants across India's technology hubs reveal growing concern -- AI-driven efficiencies are fuelling pricing pressures. This threatens to constrain medium-term industry growth to a modest 4-5%, with little prospect of acceleration into fiscal year 2026. This emerging reality challenges the earlier narrative that AI would primarily unlock new revenue streams.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: Robotaxi development is speeding at a fast pace in China, but we don't hear much about it in the USA, where the news focuses mostly on Waymo, with a bit about Zoox, Motional, May, trucking projects and other domestic players. China has 4 main players with robotaxi service, dominated by Baidu (the Chinese Google.) A recent session at last week's Ride AI conference in Los Angeles revealed some details about the different regulatory regime in China, and featured a report from a Chinese-American YouTuber who has taken on a mission to ride in the different vehicles.
Zion Maffeo, deputy general counsel for Pony.AI, provided some details on regulations in China. While Pony began with U.S. operations, its public operations are entirely in China, and it does only testing in the USA. Famously it was one of the few companies to get a California "no safety driver" test permit, but then lost it after a crash, and later regained it. Chinese authorities at many levels keep a close watch over Chinese robotaxi companies. They must get approval for all levels of operation which control where they can test and operate, and how much supervision is needed. Operation begins with testing with a safety driver behind the wheel (as almost everywhere in the world,) with eventual graduation to having the safety driver in the passenger seat but with an emergency stop. Then they move to having a supervisor in the back seat before they can test with nobody in the vehicle, usually limited to an area with simpler streets.
The big jump can then come to allow testing with nobody in the vehicle, but with full time monitoring by a remote employee who can stop the vehicle. From there they can graduate to taking passengers, and then expanding the service to more complex areas. Later they can go further, and not have full time remote monitoring, though there do need to be remote employees able to monitor and assist part time. Pony has a permit allowing it to have 3 vehicles per remote operator, and has one for 15 vehicles in process, but they declined comment on just how many vehicles they actually have per operator. Baidu also did not respond to queries on this. [...] In addition, Chinese jurisdictions require that the system in a car independently log any "interventions" by safety drivers in a sort of "black box" system. These reports are regularly given to regulators, though they are not made public. In California, companies must file an annual disengagement report, but they have considerable leeway on what they consider a disengagement so the numbers can't be readily compared. Chinese companies have no discretion on what is reported, and they may notify authorities of a specific objection if they wish to declare that an intervention logged in their black box should not be counted. On her first trip, YouTuber Sophia Tung found Baidu's 5th generation robotaxi to offer a poor experience in ride quality, wait time, and overall service. However, during a return trip she tried Baidu's 6th generation vehicle in Wuhan and rated it as the best among Chinese robotaxis, approaching the quality of Waymo.
A major bottleneck with high-frequency wireless communications is the conversion from radio frequencies to optical signals and vice versa. This is performed by an electro-optic modulator (EOM), which generally are limited to GHz-level signals. To reach THz speeds, a new approach was needed, which researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland claim to have found in the form of a plasmonic phase modulator.
Although sounding like something from a Star Trek episode, plasmonics is a very real field, which involves the interaction between optical frequencies along metal-dielectric interfaces. The original 2015 paper by [Yannick Salamin] et al. as published in Nano Letters provides the foundations of the achievement, with the recent paper in Optica by [Yannik Horst] et al. covering the THz plasmonic EOM demonstration.
The demonstrated prototype can achieve 1.14 THz, though signal degradation begins to occur around 1 THz. This is achieved by using plasmons (quanta of electron oscillators) generated on the gold surface, who affect the optical beam as it passes small slots in the gold surface that contain a nonlinear organic electro optic material that ‘writes’ the original wireless signal onto the optical beam.
The climate crisis has tripled the length of ocean heatwaves, a study has found, supercharging deadly storms and destroying critical ecosystems such as kelp forests and coral reefs. From a report: Half of the marine heatwaves since 2000 would not have happened without global heating, which is caused by burning fossil fuels. The heatwaves have not only become more frequent but also more intense: 1C warmer on average, but much hotter in some places, the scientists said.
The research is the first comprehensive assessment of the impact of the climate crisis on heatwaves in the world's oceans, and it reveals profound changes. Hotter oceans also soak up fewer of the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving temperatures up. "Here in the Mediterranean, we have some marine heatwaves that are 5C hotter," said Dr Marta Marcos at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies in Mallorca, Spain, who led the study. "It's horrible when you go swimming. It looks like soup."
As well as devastating underwater ecosystems such as sea grass meadows, Marcos said: "Warmer oceans provide more energy to the strong storms that affect people at the coast and inland."
Apple will begin analyzing data on customers' devices in a bid to improve its AI platform, a move designed to safeguard user information while still helping it catch up with AI rivals. From a report: Today, Apple typically trains AI models using synthetic data -- information that's meant to mimic real-world inputs without any personal details. But that synthetic information isn't always representative of actual customer data, making it harder for its AI systems to work properly.
The new approach will address that problem while ensuring that user data remains on customers' devices and isn't directly used to train AI models. The idea is to help Apple catch up with competitors such as OpenAI and Alphabet, which have fewer privacy restrictions. The technology works like this: It takes the synthetic data that Apple has created and compares it to a recent sample of user emails within the iPhone, iPad and Mac email app. By using actual emails to check the fake inputs, Apple can then determine which items within its synthetic dataset are most in line with real-world messages.
Oracle today debuted the newest version of their Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel "UEK" designed to be paired with their RHEL-derived Oracle Linux operating system as a heavily-patched version of the Linux kernel. With today's release of UEK 8 they have rebased atop the current Linux 6.12 long-term support codebase...
