WIRED identified 10 local governments in China that are offering discounts to consumers who choose cars running Huawei software. It’s not always clear who is footing the bill.
The Verge’s Emma Roth reports: The News/Media Alliance, a trade association behind major news publishers, announced that it has “successfully secured” the removal of 12ft.io, a website that helped users bypass paywalls online. The trade association says 12ft.io’s webhost took down the site on July 14th “following the News/Media Alliance’s efforts.” 12ft.io — or 12 Foot Ladder — also allowed...
After a week of squabbling in Washington, the cryptocurrency industry secured one of its primary legislative objectives and made progress toward a second one.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Mark Zuckerberg and current and former directors and officers of Meta Platforms agreed on Thursday to settle claims seeking $8 billion for the damage they allegedly caused the company by allowing repeated violations of Facebook users’ privacy, a lawyer for the shareholders told a Delaware judge on Thursday. The parties did not disclose details...
The Commerce Department plans to impose a 93.5 percent levy on Chinese graphite, an essential ingredient in the batteries that power electric vehicles.
Roblox will scan video selfies of teens to assess their ages as part of a new “Trusted Connections” feature that gives users access to unfiltered chatting with people they know.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has said that the majority of his company’s new code is written by AI, with “close to 100%” of engineers using AI code editors. Speaking on the 20VC podcast, Tenev estimated around 50% of new code at the trading platform is AI-generated. Tenev said the 50% figure is imprecise due to advanced “agentic” code editors that have made it difficult to distinguish human-written...
Mozilla will ship WebGPU support in Firefox 141 when the browser launches July 22, bringing graphics processing capabilities that Chrome users have had since 2023. The initial release supports Windows only, with Mac, Linux, and Android planned for the coming months. WebGPU provides web content direct access to graphics processors for high-performance computation and rendering in games and...
The House this week took up a trio of bills that would establish a federal framework for regulating the cryptocurrency industry. One of the measures is about to clear Congress and become law.
British universities face mounting financial pressures with four in ten institutions running deficits, according to the Office for Students regulator. Half have closed courses to save money, while Durham and Newcastle each shed 200 staff members. Lancaster’s cost-saving plan could eliminate one in five academic positions. The crisis, writes Economist, stems from frozen tuition fees for English...
OpenAI launched ChatGPT agent Thursday, an AI tool that can complete multi-step tasks including online shopping, creating PowerPoint presentations, and generating spreadsheets. The agent combines capabilities from two existing OpenAI services: Operator, which can browse and interact with websites like a human, and Deep Research, which handles complex online research tasks. The tool runs on a...
Sony removed the tiltable screen from its new RX1R III full-frame compact camera to maintain similar dimensions to the previous model, despite adding numerous new features and charging $5,100 for the device, The Verge reports. The company increased the camera’s size by only 2.5mm in height and 15.5mm in depth while incorporating the high-resolution sensor from the A7R V, Sony’s latest autofocus...
Exclusive: Fellows called on academy to act over Tesla owner’s role in Trump administration’s attacks on research
The Royal Society suggested to Elon Musk he should consider resigning his fellowship if he felt unable to help mitigate the Trump administration’s attacks on research, the Guardian has learned.
The owner of X, who is also CEO of Tesla and Space X, was elected a fellow of the UK’s...
A California federal judge has ruled that three authors suing Anthropic for copyright infringement can represent writers nationwide whose books the AI startup allegedly pirated to train its Claude chatbot. U.S. District Judge William Alsup said the authors can bring a class action on behalf of all U.S. writers whose works Anthropic allegedly downloaded from pirate libraries LibGen and PiLiMi to...
South Africa and China are at a crucial juncture in redefining their economic partnership, moving from a focus on raw material trade to a collaborative approach to industrialisation. This is according to Deputy President Paul Mashatile, who was speaking during a working dinner with the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) and Standard Bank at […]