An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Multiple studies and investigations have found that about half of American households watch TV and movies with subtitles on, but only a relatively small portion of those include someone with a hearing disability. That’s because of the trouble many people have understanding dialogue in modern viewing situations, and Netflix has now...

TV producer Alex Berger criticized Apple TV+ as “the worst marketer in the universe” for failing to promote his French-language show La Maison, despite its success in Europe. Berger said he initially partnered with Apple out of hope, but ultimately felt they undermined their own content by not supporting it properly. 9to5Mac reports: Rafa Sales Ross at Variety recently interviewed TV producer...

YKK, the world’s largest zipper maker, has unveiled a prototype self-propelled zipper that uses a motorized worm gear to zip itself closed at the push of a button. It currently relies on a wired remote and external power, and can zip spans up to 16 feet in under a minute. The Verge reports: Although some recent zipper innovations, such as Under Armour’s one-handed MagZip upgrade, are designed...

Some developers are “crying foul” after Microsoft’s C/C++ extension for Visual Studio Code stopped working with VS Code derivatives like VS Codium and Cursor, reports The Register. The move has prompted Cursor to transition to open-source alternatives, while some developers are calling for a regulatory investigation into Microsoft’s alleged anti-competitive behavior. From the report: In early...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast executives apparently realized something that customers have known and complained about for years: The Internet provider’s prices aren’t transparent enough and rise too frequently. This might not have mattered much to cable executives as long as the total number of subscribers met their targets. But after reporting a net loss of...

DoorDash has sent a proposal to buy the British meal delivery company Deliveroo for $3.6 billion. “The current offer marks the first formal approach since the last report in the summer,” notes Reuters. From the report: The deal is expected to face no regulatory hurdles, as it provides DoorDash access to 10 new markets where it currently has no presence, creating a highly complementary footprint...

Google announced it will end software updates and remote control support for the first- and second-generation Nest Learning Thermostats (plus the 2014 European model) starting October 25th. “You will no longer be able to control them remotely from your phone or withGoogle Assistant, but can still adjust the temperature and modify schedules directly on the thermostat,” the company wrote in a...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Government censorship has found its way to Bluesky, but there’s currently a loophole thanks to how the social network is structured. Earlier this month, Bluesky restricted access to 72 accounts in Turkey at the request of Turkish governmental authorities, according to a recent report by the Freedom of Expression Association. As a result,...

Families earning $300,000 annually — placing them among America’s highest earners — are increasingly finding themselves unable to afford elite college tuition without taking on substantial debt. Bloomberg’s analysis of financial aid data from 50 selective colleges reveals households earning between $100,000 and $300,000 occupy a precarious middle ground: too affluent for meaningful aid but...

Microsoft has finally released Windows Recall to the general public, nearly a year after first announcing the controversial feature. Available exclusively on Copilot+ PCs, Recall continuously captures screenshots of user activity, storing them in a searchable database with extracted text. The feature’s original launch was derailed by significant security concerns, as critics noted anyone with...

Intel is grappling with an unexpected market shift as customers eschew its new AI-focused processors for cheaper previous-generation chips. The company revealed during its recent earnings call that demand for older Raptor Lake processors has surged while its newer, more expensive Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake AI PC chips struggle to gain traction. This surprising trend, first reported by Tom’s...

An anonymous reader shares a Nature story: The United States is known for the deep polarization between its two major political parties — the right-wing Republicans and left-wing Democrats. Now an analysis of hundreds of thousands of policy documents reveals striking differences in partisan policymakers’ use of the scientific literature, with Democratic-led congressional committees and...

The head of the Swiss National Bank said on Friday that cryptocurrencies failed to meet the institution’s currency reserve standards, rebuffing calls by crypto advocates that it hold bitcoin as a hedge against growing global economic risks. From a report: Cryptocurrency campaigners are ramping up pressure on the SNB to buy bitcoin, arguing that the economic turmoil triggered by U.S. President...

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

Microsoft will remove its Maps app from the Microsoft Store in July 2025, delivering an “update” that renders the application completely nonfunctional. Following the cutoff, users won’t be able to reinstall the app even if previously downloaded, according to a Microsoft support document. While the app will retain personal data like saved navigation routes and map URLs, this information will...

The iconic “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” anti-piracy campaign, which dramatically equated digital piracy with physical theft, appears to have used a pirated font in its own materials. New evidence indicates the campaign utilized “XBAND Rough,” a free clone of the commercial “FF Confidential” font, which requires a license. TorrentFreak independently confirmed campaign materials from 2005 embedded...

Pete Koomen, a Y Combinator partner, argues that current AI applications often fail by unnecessarily constraining their underlying models, much like early automobiles that mimicked horse-drawn carriages rather than reimagining transportation. In his detailed critique, Koomen uses Gmail’s AI email draft feature as a prime example. The tool generates formal, generic emails that don’t match users’...

Apple plans to shift the assembly of all US-sold iPhones to India [alternative source] as soon as next year, according to Financial Times, which cites people familiar with the matter, as President Donald Trump’s trade war forces the tech giant to pivot away from China. From the report: The push builds on Apple’s strategy to diversify its supply chain but goes further and faster than investors...