SATURDAY, 22 FEBRUARY 2025, 07:37
The decentralised crypto economy—which the Reserve Bank’s Financial Surveillance Department states is all considered offshore investing for regulatory purposes—will have an estimated 378,000 users in 2025.
Some specialists suspect that constantly filtering out background noise may have unintended consequences
They are prized for making the commute more bearable and shielding against the din of daily life. But noise-cancelling headphones have come under scrutiny after audiologists raised concerns that overuse might impair people’s hearing skills.
While the technology has clear benefits, not least...
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A study by the Pew Research Center found that Americans’ views of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg skew more negative than positive. While Zuckerberg has sparked chatter in Silicon Valley with his sudden interest in high fashion, the Meta CEO is less popular than President Trump’s right-hand man, Elon Musk, the report found. While about 54% of...
Microsoft’s announcement of a breakthrough in quantum computing faces skepticism from physicists, who say evidence supporting the company’s claims remains insufficient. The tech giant reported creating Majorana particles – a development it says could revolutionize quantum computing – but the accompanying peer-reviewed paper in Nature does not conclusively demonstrate this achievement, according...
The Register’s Lindsay Clark reports: Fifteen years of big data hype, and guess what? Less than one in four of those in charge of analytics projects actually measure the value of the activity to the organization they work for. The result from Gartner — a staggering one considering the attention heaped on big data and its various hype-oriented successors — found that in a survey of chief data...
Asus has introduced the Fragrance Mouse, a hybrid wireless mouse that features a removable container for fragrance oils. Despite not being a gaming mouse, it includes premium features like PTFE pads, low-noise clicks rated for up to 10 million presses, and three fixed DPI settings (1200, 1600, 2400). Tom’s Hardware reports: The selling point of the new mouse is its fragrance-producing...
OpenAI has banned a group of Chinese accounts using ChatGPT to develop an AI-powered social media surveillance tool. Engadget reports: The campaign, which OpenAI calls Peer Review, saw the group prompt ChatGPT to generate sales pitches for a program those documents suggest was designed to monitor anti-Chinese sentiment on X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms. The operation...
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: On Saturday at the Silverstone Cafe in San Francisco, a smattering of activists gathered to discuss plans to stop the further advancement of artificial intelligence. The name of their non-violent civil resistance group, STOP AI, makes its mission clear. The organization wants to ban something that, by most accounts, doesn’t yet exist —...
The General Services Administration (GSA) is shutting down its nationwide electric vehicle (EV) chargers, deeming them “not mission critical.” The U.S. government agency also plans to offload newly purchased EVs, reversing initiatives from the Biden administration aimed at transitioning the federal vehicle fleet to electric. The Verge reports: The GSA currently operates several hundred EV...
According to The Information (paywalled), OpenAI plans to shift most of its computing power from Microsoft to SoftBank-backed Stargate by 2030. TechCrunch reports: That represents a major shift away from Microsoft, OpenAI’s biggest shareholder, who fulfills most of the startup’s power needs today. The change won’t happen overnight. OpenAI still plans to increase its spending on Microsoft-owned...
Experts say the conflicts posed by Tom Krause’s dual roles are unprecedented in the modern era.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Fourteen-year-old Aaryan Shukla cruised through six mental math calculation world records in a single day, according to a Guinness World Records statement published on February 12, earning the well-deserved nickname, “human calculator kid.” Specifically, it took Shukla: – 30.9 seconds to mentally add 100 four-digit numbers – One minute and 9.68...
The cybersecurity lead for VA.gov was fired last week. He tells WIRED that the Veterans Affairs digital hub will be more vulnerable without someone in his role.
Lenacapavir, a twice yearly injection that prevents HIV transmission, was named the breakthrough medicine of 2024. But without US foreign aid dollars, its delivery to millions worldwide is under threat.
Law enforcement in the country was pressuring the company to create a tool that would act like a backdoor into customers’ data.
Chinese startup DeepSeek will make its models’ code publicly available, it said on Friday, doubling down on its commitment to open-source artificial intelligence. From a report: The company said in a post on social media platform X that it will open source 5 code repositories next week, describing the move as “small but sincere progress” that it will share “with full transparency.” “These...
Case brought during Biden presidency accused space company of refusing, unlawfully, to hire certain immigrants
The US Department of Justice on Thursday said it would drop a case accusing Elon Musk’s space technology company SpaceX of refusing to hire certain immigrants.
The justice department last month signaled it could back away from the case, brought during Joe Biden’s term. Musk, a top...
HP has ended its controversial practice of imposing mandatory 15-minute wait times for customer support calls in several European countries, following internal pushback and customer complaints. The company confirmed the reversal and said it will “continue to prioritize timely access to live phone support.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Should you save up for the iPhone 16 or save some cash with the new iPhone 16e? We break down Apple’s complicated lineup.
Eskom announced today that loadshedding remains suspended, supported by a stable power system and adequate emergency reserves. This progress emphasises the success of the Generation Operational Recovery Plan in improving generation capacity and maintaining a reliable electricity supply. From 1 April 2024 to 20 February 2025, loadshedding was suspended for 323 days (7 787 hours), […]
Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has experienced $1.46 billion worth of “suspicious outflows,” according to blockchain sleuth ZachXBT. From a report: The wallet in question appears to have sent 401,346 ETH ($1.1 billion) as well as several other iterations of staked ether (stETH) to a fresh wallet, which is now liquidating mETH and stETH on decentralized exchanges, etherscan shows. The wallet has...