SATURDAY, 13 DECEMBER 2025, 06:16
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dozens of Ukrainian civilians filed a series of lawsuits in Texas this week, accusing some of the biggest US chip firms of negligently failing to track chips that evaded export curbs. Those chips were ultimately used to power Russian and Iranian weapon systems, causing wrongful deaths last year. Their complaints alleged that for years,...
Chandler, Arizona unanimously rejected a proposed AI data center despite heavy lobbying from Big Tech interests and former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Politico reports: The Chandler City Council last night voted down a request by a New York developer to rezone land to build a data center and business complex. The local battle escalated in October after Sinema showed up at a planning commission meeting...
Framework Computer raised DDR5 memory prices for its Laptop DIY Editions by 50% due to industry-wide memory shortages. Phoronix reports: Framework Computer is keeping the prior prices for existing pre-orders and also is foregoing any price changes for their pre-built laptops or the Framework Desktop. Framework Computer also lets you order DIY laptops without any memory at all if so desired for...
id Software employees voted to form a wall-to-wall union with the CWA, covering all roles at the Doom studio. “The vote wasn’t unanimous, though a majority did vote in favor of the union,” notes Engadget. From the report: The union will work in conjunction with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which is the same organization involved with parent company ZeniMax’s recent unionization...
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. government will require artificial intelligence vendors to measure political “bias” to sell their chatbots to federal agencies, according to a Trump administration statement (PDF) released on Thursday. The requirement will apply to all large language models bought by federal agencies, with the exception of national security systems,...
A sale of insider shares at $421 a share would make Mr. Musk’s rocket company the most valuable private company in the world, as it readies for a possible initial public offering next year.
The pro-Russian CyberVolk group resurfaced with a Telegram-based ransomware-as-a-service platform, but fatally undermined its own operation by hardcoding master encryption keys in plaintext. The Register reports: First, the bad news: the CyberVolk 2.x (aka VolkLocker) ransomware-as-a-service operation that launched in late summer. It’s run entirely through Telegram, which makes it very easy for...
Phoebe Gates, Bill Gates’ youngest daughter, has raised $30 million for the AI shopping app she built in her Stanford dorm room with classmate Sophia Kianni. The app is called Phia and is pitched as a way to simplify price comparison and secondhand shopping. “Its AI-powered search engine — available as an app and as a browser extension for Chrome and Safari — pulls listings from more than...
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google has increasingly moved toward keeping features locked to its hardware products, but the Translate app is bucking that trend. The live translate feature is breaking out of the Google bubble with support for any earbuds you happen to have connected to your Android phone. The app is also getting improved translation quality across...
A deal to sell TikTok has remained elusive, despite earlier claims that a deal was done.
Online retailer Coupang, often called South Korea’s Amazon, is dealing with the fallout from a breach that exposed the personal information of more than 33 million accounts — roughly two-thirds of the country’s population — after a former contractor allegedly used credentials that remained active months after his departure to access customer data through the company’s overseas servers. The...
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon has quietly added a new AI feature to its Kindle iOS app — a feature that “lets you ask questions about the book you’re reading and receive spoiler-free answers,” according to an Amazon announcement. The company says the feature, which is called Ask this Book, serves as “your expert reading assistant, instantly answering questions about plot details,...
joshuark writes: Arkansas is becoming the first state to officially end its public television affiliation with PBS. The Arkansas Educational Television Commission, whose members are all appointed by the governor, voted to disaffiliate from PBS effective July 1, 2026, citing the $2.5 million annual membership dues as “not feasible.” The decision was also driven by the loss of a similar amount in...
Parents and experts say gaming poses many of the same risks for kids as social media, and want them included.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon Prime Video has pulled its AI-powered video recap of Fallout after viewers noticed that it got key parts of the story wrong. The streaming service began testing Video Recaps last month, and now they’re missing from the shows included in the test, including Fallout, The Rig, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Upload, and Bosch. The feature is supposed to use AI...
In this episode of Uncanny Valley we take you through our recent conversation with Lisa Su, and go behind the scenes of our Big Interview event.
Like so many things in Elon Musk’s orbit, a lot of it may come down to AI.
Berlin’s regional parliament has passed a far-reaching overhaul of its “security” law, giving police new authority to conduct both digital and physical surveillance. From a report: The CDU-SPD coalition, supported by AfD votes, approved the reform of the General Security and Public Order Act (ASOG), changing the limits that once protected Berliners from intrusive policing. Interior Senator Iris...
The errors included getting dialogue wrong and incorrectly claiming a scene was set 100 years earlier than it was.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has almost entirely upheld a scathing April ruling that found Apple in willful violation of a 2021 injunction meant to open up iOS App Store payments in its long-running legal battle against Epic Games. A three-judge panel affirmed that Apple’s 27% fee for developers using outside payment options had a “prohibitive effect” and that the company’s design...
Fulu sets repair bounties on consumer products that employ sneaky features that limit user control. Just this week, it awarded more than $10,000 to the person who hacked the Molekule air purifier.