FRIDAY, 31 JANUARY 2025, 11:02
Researchers found that muscles move to orient ears toward sound source in vestigial reaction
Wiggling your ears might be more of a pub party piece than a survival skill, but humans still try to prick up their ears when listening hard, researchers have found.
Ear movement is crucial in many animals, not least in helping them focus their attention on particular noises and work out which direction...
In seeking to overturn the proclamation authorising a probe into corruption at the National Lotteries Commission (NLC), former NLC boss Alfred Nevhutanda is trying to avoid accountability and to “retain the proceeds of his corrupt conduct”, the Pretoria High Court has been told. Special Investigating Unit (SIU) Chief Forensic Investigator Tsholofelo Mkise has filed an […]
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Video Game History Foundation has officially opened up digital access to a large portion of its massive archives today, offering fans and researchers unprecedented access to information and ephemera surrounding the past 50 years of the game industry. Today’s launch of the VGHF Library comprises more than 30,000 indexed and curated...
Is Barbiecore still a thing? Casio is betting it is.
Italy’s data protection agency has blocked the Chinese AI chatbot DeekSeek after its developers failed to disclose how it collects user data or whether it is stored on Chinese servers. Reuters reports: DeepSeek could not be accessed on Wednesday in Apple or Google app stores in Italy, the day after the authority, known also as the Garante, requested information on its use of personal data. In...
Oral drug from Vertex, branded as Journavx, represents alternative to addictive opioids that have fueled US crisis
The US Food and Drug Administration approved a new drug to treat acute pain, the health regulator said on Thursday, offering a first-of-its-kind alternative to addictive opioid painkillers that have fueled a national crisis.
The Vertex Pharmaceuticals oral drug, branded Journavx,...
Apple reported a record-breaking first quarter of 2025 with $124.3 billion in revenue and $36.3 billion in profit, or $2.40 per diluted share, driven by strong growth in its services business. That’s “compared to revenue of $119.6 billion and net quarterly profit of $33.9 billion, or $2.18 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter,” notes MacRumors. From the report: Apple set all-time records...
A recent high school graduate and former Neuralink intern has joined meetings to review lines of code and other work history of career public servants, sparking chaos at a major government agency.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Datasets aggregated on data.gov, the largest repository of U.S. government open data on the internet, are being deleted, according to the website’s own information. Since Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, more than 2,000 datasets have disappeared from the database. As people in the Data Hoarding and archiving communities have pointed...
President Donald Trump blamed DEI efforts at the FAA for the tragedy. But experts and investigators say open minds are critical to finding out what really happened.
A proposed class-action lawsuit accuses Amazon of secretly tracking consumers’ movements through their cellphones via its Amazon Ads SDK embedded in third-party apps, allegedly collecting sensitive geolocation data without consent. The complaint, filed by a California resident in a San Francisco federal court, claims Amazon violated state laws on unauthorized computer access in the process....
Longtime Slashdot reader nunya_bizns shares a report from Reuters: The U.S. Department of Justice has sued to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion deal to acquire networking gear maker Juniper Networks, arguing that it would stifle competition, according to a complaint filed on Thursday. The DOJ argued that the acquisition would eliminate competition and would lead to only two...
Tiny plastic pollution more than 50% higher in placentas from preterm births than in those from full-term births
A study has found microplastic and nanoplastic pollution to be significantly higher in placentas from premature births than in those from full-term births.
The levels were much higher than previously detected in blood, suggesting the tiny plastic particles were accumulating in the...
The Register’s Dan Robinson reports: Google promised a decade of updates for its Chromebooks in 2023 to stop them being binned so soon after purchase, but many are still set to reach the end of the road sooner than later. The appliance-like laptop devices were introduced by megacorp in 2011, running its Linux-based ChromeOS platform. They have been produced by a number of hardware vendors and...
In a meeting with Meta employees on Thursday, Mr. Zuckerberg also defended recent changes to the company’s online speech policies and ending its diversity initiatives.
The tech giant’s sales of apps and services helped profit grow 7 percent from a year ago, even as the company contended with slumping sales in China.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, OpenAI announced that it is deepening its ties with the US government through a partnership with the National Laboratories and expects to use AI to “supercharge” research across a wide range of fields to better serve the public. “This is the beginning of a new era, where AI will advance science, strengthen national security,...
Cuts to diversity programs and other policy changes have frustrated some of Meta’s workers. One former employee calls it “a slow, painful death.”
Raiders of the Lost Ark, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Elton John: Never Too Late are just a few of the movies you should be watching on Disney+ this month.
The company that Jeff Bezos founded has gone to court to keep the newspaper he owns from finding out too much about the inner workings of its business. From a report: Amazon is suing Washington state to limit the release of public records to The Washington Post from a series of state Department of Labor and Industries investigations of an Amazon Project Kuiper satellite facility in the Seattle...
Google is offering U.S. employees in its Platforms & Devices division a voluntary exit program with severance packages, following last year’s merger of its Pixel hardware and Android software teams. The program affects staff working on Android, Chrome, Google Photos, Pixel, Fitbit, and Nest products, according to a memo from Senior Vice President Rick Osterloh. The move comes after the hardware...