Slashdot

A new AI system called Aardvark could deliver weather forecasts as accurate as those from advanced public weather services but run on desktop computers, according to a project unveiled Thursday and published in Nature. Developed by the UK's Alan Turing Institute with partners including Cambridge University, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and Microsoft, Aardvark aims to make sophisticated forecasting accessible to countries with fewer resources, particularly in Africa. The system has already outperformed the US Global Forecast System on many variables in testing. Project leader Richard Turner noted the system is "completely open source" and not planned for commercialization by Microsoft.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IBM is laying off thousands of employees across the United States, with approximately 25% of staff at its Cloud Classic operation affected, The Register reports, citing a source. "Concrete numbers are being kept private," a source told the publication. "It is in the thousands." Staff reductions have occurred in Raleigh, North Carolina; New York; Dallas, Texas; and California, the report said. Affected departments include consulting, corporate social responsibility, cloud infrastructure, sales, and internal systems teams. The report adds: With regard to IBM Cloud Classic -- the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) outfit offering built on IBM's 2013 acquisition of SoftLayer -- another source told us: "It's a resource action. I don't know how many people are in IaaS classic. They don't typically make that information easy to find. What I can say is that they have been making a lot of changes to shift employment to India as much as possible." A third source, newly let go by Big Blue, said it was fair to characterize this a layoff. "Everyone I know that was affected, myself included, was simply offered a separation agreement," this individual said, estimating that 10 percent of the Cloud group (which is not the same as Cloud Classic) has been let go.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia is selling its scarce RTX 5080 and 5090 graphics cards from a pop-up "food truck" at its GPU Technology Conference, where attendees paying over $1,000 for tickets can purchase the coveted hardware alongside merchandise. The company has only 2,000 cards available (1,000 each of RTX 5080 and 5090), released in small batches at random times during the three-day conference which concludes tomorrow.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is undergoing a rare shake-up of its executive ranks, aiming to get its artificial intelligence efforts back on track after months of delays and stumbles, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has lost confidence in the ability of AI head John Giannandrea to execute on product development, so he's moving over another top executive to help: Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell. In a new role, Rockwell will be in charge of the Siri virtual assistant, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the moves haven't been announced. Rockwell will report to software chief Craig Federighi, removing Siri completely from Giannandrea's command. Apple is poised to announce the changes to employees this week. The iPhone maker's senior leaders -- a group known as the Top 100 -- just met at a secretive, annual offsite gathering to discuss the future of the company. Its AI efforts were a key talking point at the summit, Bloomberg News has reported. The moves underscore the plight facing Apple: Its AI technology is severely lagging industry rivals, and the company has shown little sign of catching up. The Apple Intelligence platform was late to arrive and largely a flop, despite being the main selling point for the iPhone 16. Further reading: 'Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino'Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cosmologists have uncovered stronger evidence that dark energy -- the mysterious force accelerating cosmic expansion -- may be weakening over time. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration presented their latest findings at the Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California, reinforcing their preliminary results from last year. The DESI team analyzed data from approximately 15 million galaxies collected over three years, more than doubling their previous dataset of 6 million galaxies. Combined with supernova observations and cosmic microwave background data, their analysis shows a 4.2-sigma deviation from the standard Lambda-CDM cosmological model, which assumes dark energy remains constant. "We are much more certain than last year that this is definitely a thing," said Seshadri Nadathur of the University of Portsmouth, a key DESI researcher. These findings align with recent independent results from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), which earlier this month reported a similar 3.2-sigma tension with Lambda-CDM -- a tension that disappears if dark energy is allowed to vary. If confirmed, evolving dark energy could fundamentally alter cosmologists' understanding of the universe's ultimate fate. Instead of expanding indefinitely until all particles become impossibly separated, the universe might follow alternative trajectories. "It challenges the fate of the universe," explained Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki from the University of Texas at Dallas. "It's game-changing." Moreover, these findings challenge the simplest explanation of dark energy as vacuum energy, which quantum physics suggests should remain constant. Instead, the results indicate unknown physics, possibly involving a new particle, a modification to Einstein's theory of gravity, or even a new fundamental theory. DESI will continue observing through 2026, eventually producing a final map expected to include 50 million galaxies, potentially providing definitive evidence for this cosmic paradigm shift.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky has warned that the company's revived smartwatch line will face significant functionality limitations when paired with iPhones, blaming Apple's restrictive policies that favor its own Apple Watch. "It's impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to send text messages, or perform actions on notifications (like dismissing, muting, replying) and many, many other things," Migicovsky wrote in a blog post, adding that the situation has "actually gotten worse over the last 8 years." A 2024 class action lawsuit cited in the post claims Apple has added further restrictions since iOS 13, including requiring users to display full content previews on their lock screens for notifications to reach third-party watches. Pebble is still developing an iOS app because 40% of potential customers use iPhones, he said. Migicovsky warned that the watch will "always appear to have less developed functionality on iOS than Android" and some features will arrive on Android first.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The credit-card market has quietly split in two, Atlantic argues in a new story: one offering generous benefits to wealthy Americans, the other offering expensive debt to the poor. Credit-card balances have reached an all-time high of $1.2 trillion, with serious delinquency rates climbing to their highest point since the Great Recession. "Transactors" pay off balances monthly and earn valuable rewards worth up to $3,000 annually in taxable income equivalent, while "revolvers" carry balances at a brutal 21.5% average APR. The poor subsidize the rich through two mechanisms: swipe fees that drive up retail prices by $1,700 annually for the average family, and late fees and interest charges that finance rewards programs. Interest revenue for credit-card companies has ballooned from $76 billion in 2020 to $170 billion in 2024. The economy now appears to be slowing down. High-income families are increasingly resembling working-class families in credit data, with three in five households earning over $80,000 annually carrying balances for more than a year. Card companies are now offering fewer cards to subprime borrowers, creating a troubling dilemma - while expensive credit cards are harmful, having no credit access might be worse. Bipartisan legislation now aims to cap interest rates and lower swipe fees.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is developing a new Windows 11 feature that will explain how hardware limitations affect PC performance. The latest preview builds include a hidden FAQ section in system settings that addresses GPU memory, system RAM, and OS version impacts. The feature, discovered by Windows observer "phantomofearth" in this week's Dev Channel build, requires manual activation. It provides specific recommendations for configurations like low RAM or GPUs with less than 4GB memory, and flags outdated Windows versions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The National Archives has released thousands of pages of declassified records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. From a report: The records were posted to the National Archives' website, joining recently released records posted in 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2017-2018. "This release consists of approximately 80,000 pages of previously-classified records that will be published with no redactions," said the announcement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "Additional documents withheld under court seal or for grand jury secrecy, and records subject to section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, must be unsealed before release." President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 23 directing the release of all remaining records related to the assassination, saying it was in the "public interest" to do so. Tuesday's initial release contained 1,123 records comprising 32,000 pages. A subsequent release on Tuesday night contained 1,059 records comprising 31,400 additional pages.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia has not been approached about acquiring a stake in Intel, CEO Jensen Huang said on Wednesday, addressing speculation about potential semiconductor industry consolidation. "Nobody's invited us to a consortium," Huang told reporters at Nvidia's annual developer conference. "Nobody invited me. Maybe other people are involved, but I don't know. There might be a party. I wasn't invited." Reuters previously reported that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) had approached Nvidia, Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices about joining a potential joint venture to operate Intel's factories. Other media outlets reported Intel was considering separating its manufacturing operations with U.S. President Donald Trump's support, potentially transferring control to a TSMC-led consortium.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

prisoninmate writes: GNOME 48 desktop environment has been released after six months of development with major new features that have been expected for more than four years, such as dynamic triple buffering, HDR support, and much more. 9to5Linux reports: "Highlights of GNOME 48 include dynamic triple buffering to boost the performance on low-end GPUs, such as Intel integrated graphics or Raspberry Pi computers, Wayland color management protocol support, new Adwaita fonts, HDR (High Dynamic Range) support, and a new Wellbeing feature with screen time tracking. "GNOME 48 also introduces a new GNOME Display Control (gdctl) utility to view the active monitor configuration and set new monitor configuration using command line arguments, implements a11y keyboard monitoring support, adds output luminance settings, and it now centers new windows by default."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI has launched a more powerful version of its o1 "reasoning" AI model, o1-pro, in its developer API. From a report: According to OpenAI, o1-pro uses more computing than o1 to provide "consistently better responses." Currently, it's only available to select developers -- those who've spent at least $5 on OpenAI API services -- and it's pricey. Very pricey. OpenAI is charging $150 per million tokens (~750,000 words) fed into the model and $600 per million tokens generated by the model. That's twice the price of OpenAI's GPT-4.5 for input and 10x the price of regular.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: LG has ceased its XR product commercialization efforts, it confirmed, though will still continue long-term R&D. The news of LG ending its XR product plans was first reported by South Korean news outlet The Bell, citing an industry source. In a statement given to the outlet, LG confirmed the claim but clarified that it will still continue long-term XR research and development. According to The Bell, LG took the decision because it believes the XR market isn't growing as quickly as it expected, and it wants to focus more on heating, ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC) and robotics.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: PCI Express 7 is nearing completion, the PCI Special Interest Group said, and the final specification should be released later this year. PCI Express 7, the backbone of the modern motherboard, is at the stage 0.9, which the PCI-SIG characterizes as the "final draft" of the specification. The technology was at version 0.5 a year ago, almost to the day, and originally authored in 2022. The situation remains the same, however. While modern PC motherboards are stuck on PCI Express 5.0, the specification itself moves ahead. PCI Express has doubled the data rate about every three years, from 64 gigtransfers per second in PCI Express 6.0 to the upcoming 128 gigatransfers per second in PCIe 7. (Again, it's worth noting that PCIe 6.0 exists solely on paper.) Put another way, PCIe 7 will deliver 512GB/s in both directions, across a x16 connection. It's worth noting that the PCI-SIG doesn't see PCI Express 7 living inside the PC market, at least not initially. Instead, PCIe 7 is expected to be targeted at cloud computing, 800-gigabit Ethernet and, of course, artificial intelligence. It will be backwards-compatible with the previous iterations of PCI Express, the SIG said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Streaming service provider Plex announced Wednesday its first price increase in a decade for its premium Plex Pass subscription, raising monthly rates to $6.99 from $4.99, yearly subscriptions to $69.99 from $39.99, and lifetime access to $249.99 from $119.99, effective April 29. The company is also making remote playback of personal media a paid feature, introducing a Remote Watch Pass subscription at $1.99 monthly or $19.99 annually for users who don't need full Plex Pass features, and removing its one-time mobile activation fee. The price increase applies to new and existing subscriptions, with the exception of existing Lifetime Plex Pass holders, the company said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

EU antitrust regulators ordered Apple on Wednesday to open its closed ecosystem to competitors, detailing how the company must comply with the bloc's Digital Markets Act or face potential fines. The European Commission's decision comes six months after initiating proceedings against the tech giant. The first order requires Apple to grant rival smartphone, headphone and VR headset manufacturers access to its technology for seamless connectivity with Apple devices. A second order establishes specific processes for responding to app developers' interoperability requests. Apple criticized the decision, saying: "Today's decisions wrap us in red tape, slowing down Apple's ability to innovate for users in Europe." EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera countered: "We are simply implementing the law." Non-compliance could trigger investigations resulting in fines up to 10% of Apple's global annual sales.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SourceHut, an open-source-friendly git-hosting service, says web crawlers for AI companies are slowing down services through their excessive demands for data. From a report: "SourceHut continues to face disruptions due to aggressive LLM crawlers," the biz reported Monday on its status page. "We are continuously working to deploy mitigations. We have deployed a number of mitigations which are keeping the problem contained for now. However, some of our mitigations may impact end-users." SourceHut said it had deployed Nepenthes, a tar pit to catch web crawlers that scrape data primarily for training large language models, and noted that doing so might degrade access to some web pages for users. "We have unilaterally blocked several cloud providers, including GCP [Google Cloud] and [Microsoft] Azure, for the high volumes of bot traffic originating from their networks," the biz said, advising administrators of services that integrate with SourceHut to get in touch to arrange an exception to the blocking.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The devastating impacts of the climate crisis reached new heights in 2024, with scores of unprecedented heatwaves, floods and storms across the globe, according to the UN's World Meteorological Organization. From a report: The WMO's report on 2024, the hottest year on record, sets out a trail of destruction from extreme weather that took lives, demolished buildings and ravaged vital crops. More than 800,000 people were displaced and made homeless, the highest yearly number since records began in 2008. The report lists 151 unprecedented extreme weather events in 2024, meaning they were worse than any ever recorded in the region. Heatwaves in Japan left hundreds of thousands of people struck down by heatstroke. Soaring temperatures during heatwaves peaked at 49.9C at Carnarvon in Western Australia, 49.7C in the city of Tabas in Iran, and 48.5C in a nationwide heatwave in Mali. Record rains in Italy led to floods, landslides and electricity blackouts; torrents destroyed thousands of homes in Senegal; and flash floods in Pakistan and Brazil caused major crop losses. Storms were also supercharged by global heating in 2024, with an unprecedented six typhoons in under a month hitting the Philippines. Hurricane Helene was the strongest ever recorded to strike the Big Bend region of Florida in the US, while Vietnam was hit by Super Typhoon Yagi, affecting 3.6 million people. Many more unprecedented events will have passed unrecorded.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Federal authorities have broken up an international crime ring that stole thousands of iPhones from porches nationwide [non-paywalled link], arresting 13 people last month after a sophisticated operation that combined high-tech tools with old-fashioned bribery. The thieves created software to scrape FedEx tracking numbers and paid AT&T store employees to provide customer order details and delivery addresses, according to WSJ, which cites prosecutors. Armed with this information, runners intercepted packages at doorsteps moments after delivery. Demetrio Reyes Martinez, known online as "CookieNerd," developed code that circumvented FedEx limits on delivery-data requests, while AT&T employee Alejandro Then Castillo used his credentials to track hundreds of shipments and reportedly received up to $2,500 for recruiting other employees. Stolen devices were funneled through Wyckoff Wireless in Brooklyn, a store owned by Joel Suriel, who was already on supervised release from a previous wire-fraud conviction. The merchandise was then shipped overseas for sale and activation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nature: A Microsoft researcher [this week] presented results behind the company's controversial claim last month to have created the first 'topological' qubits -- a long-sought goal of quantum computing. In front of a packed room at a meeting of the American Physical Society (APS), Chetan Nayak, a theoretical physicist leading Microsoft's quantum computing effort in Redmond, Washington, explained how the company is developing topological qubits, which would be the building blocks for a noise-resistant quantum computer. Physicists in the audience told Nature's news team they are still unsure whether Microsoft really has made the first topological qubits, however. "It's a hard problem," says Ali Yazdani, an experimental physicist at Princeton University in New Jersey. To anyone trying to make topological qubits, he says, "good luck." When Nayak displayed measurement data during his presentation, he acknowledged that a characteristic signal was difficult to see due to electrical noise, prompting Cornell University theorist Eun-Ah Kim to question its robustness. Microsoft says additional details will be available in a forthcoming paper on the arXiv preprint server. Further reading:Scientists Question Microsoft's Quantum Computing Claims;Microsoft Quantum Computing 'Breakthrough' Faces Fresh ChallengeRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony has developed a new TV display technology combining individual red, green, and blue LEDs for backlighting, potentially offering a middle ground between existing Mini LED and OLED panels. Dubbed "General RGB LED Backlight Technology," the system enables precise color control without sacrificing brightness, reaching 4000 cd/m2 -- matching Sony's professional reference monitors. Unlike conventional Mini LED TVs that use arrays of blue LEDs, Sony's RGB implementation delivers significantly improved color accuracy and viewing angles. In side-by-side comparisons with Sony's premium Bravia 9 Mini LED TV, the RGB prototype displayed deeper color gradations and eliminated the characteristic bluish blooming effect around bright objects on dark backgrounds. The technology isn't entirely novel, the Verge reports -- Sony released a Qualia TV with RGB backlighting in 2004 and demonstrated "Crystal LED" prototypes in 2012. Competitors including Hisense, TCL, and Samsung are developing similar systems. While the RGB LED prototype outshone Sony's QD-OLED A95L in brightness, differences in color reproduction were less pronounced. The technology appears particularly promising for larger displays in bright environments where OLED's limitations become apparent.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Belgian prosecutor's office said on Tuesday that it has charged five people in connection with a bribery investigation in the European Parliament allegedly linked to China's Huawei. The five were detained last week. Four have now been arrested and charged with active corruption and involvement in a criminal organization, while a fifth faces money laundering charges and has been released conditionally. The prosecutor's officer did not disclose the names of those involved or give information that could identify them. It said new searches had taken place on Monday, this time at European Parliament offices. Huawei said last week it took the allegations seriously. "Huawei has a zero tolerance policy towards corruption or other wrongdoing, and we are committed to complying with all applicable laws and regulations at all times," it said. The prosecutors have said the alleged corruption took place "very discreetly" since 2021 under the guise of commercial lobbying and involved payments for taking certain political stances or excessive gifts such as food and travel expenses or regular invitations to football matches.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The abstract of a paper published on National Bureau of Economic Research: Ensuring broad access to the patent system is crucial for fostering innovation and promoting economic growth. To support this goal, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office offers reduced fees for small and micro entities. This paper investigates whether fee rates affect the filing of applications by small and micro entities. Exploiting recent fee reforms, the study evaluates the relationship between fee changes and the number of new entrants, controlling for potential confounding factors such as legislative changes. The findings suggest that fee reductions alone are insufficient to significantly increase participation in the patent system among small and micro entities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

During the company's GTC 2025 keynote today, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang announced Isaac GR00T N1 -- the company's first open-source, pre-trained yet customizable foundation model designed to accelerate the development and capabilities of humanoid robots. "The age of generalist robotics is here," said Huang. "With Nvidia Isaac GR00T N1 and new data-generation and robot-learning frameworks, robotics developers everywhere will open the next frontier in the age of AI." The Verge reports: Huang demonstrated 1X's NEO Gamma humanoid robot performing autonomous tidying jobs using a post-trained policy built on the GR00T N1 model. [...] Other companies developing humanoid robots who have had early access to the GR00T N1 model include Boston Dynamics, the creators of Atlas; Agility Robotics; Mentee Robotics; and Neura Robotics. Originally announced as Project GR00T a year ago, the GR00T N1 foundation model utilizes a dual-system architecture inspired by human cognition. System 1, as Nvidia calls it, is described as a "fast-thinking action model" that behaves similarly to human reflexes and intuition. It was trained on data collected through human demonstrations and synthetic data generated by Nvidia's Omniverse platform. System 2, which is powered by a vision language model, is a "slow-thinking model" that "reasons about its environment and the instructions it has received to plan actions." Those plans are passed along to System 1, which translates them into "precise, continuous robot movements" that include grasping, moving objects with one or two arms, as well as more complex multistep tasks that involve combinations of basic skills. While the GR00T N1 foundation model is pretrained with generalized humanoid reasoning and skills, developers can customize its behavior and capabilities for specific needs by post-training it with data gathered from human demonstrations or simulations. Nvidia has made GR00T N1 training data and task evaluation scenarios available for download through Hugging Face and GitHub.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: [A] team of Korean researchers [describe] how they've engineered a bacterial strain that can make a useful polymer starting with nothing but glucose as fuel. The system they developed is based on an enzyme that the bacteria use when they're facing unusual nutritional conditions, and it can be tweaked to make a wide range of polymers. The researchers focused on the system bacterial cells use for producing polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). These chemicals are formed when the bacterial cells continue to have a good supply of carbon sources and energy, but they lack some other key nutrients needed to grow and divide. Under these circumstances, the cell will link together small molecules that contain a handful of carbons, forming a much larger polymer. When nutritional conditions improve, the cell can simply break down the polymer and use the individual molecules it contained. The striking thing about this system is that it's not especially picky about the identity of the molecules it links into the polymer. So far, over 150 different small molecules have been found incorporated into PHAs. It appears that the enzyme that makes the polymer, PHA synthase, only cares about two things: whether the molecule can form an ester bond (PHAs are polyesters), and whether it can be linked to a molecule that's commonly used as an intermediate in the cell's biochemistry, Coenzyme A. Normally, PHA synthase forms links between molecules that run through an oxygen atom. But it's also possible to form a related chemical link that instead runs through a nitrogen atom, like those found on amino acids. There were no known enzymes, however, that catalyze these reactions. So, the researchers decided to test whether any existing enzymes could be induced to do something they don't normally do. [...] Overall, the system they develop is remarkably flexible, able to incorporate a huge range of chemicals into a polymer. This should allow them to tune the resulting plastic across a wide range of properties. And, considering the bonds were formed via enzyme, the resulting polymer will almost certainly be biodegradable. There are, however, some negatives. The process doesn't allow complete control over what gets incorporated into the polymer. You can bias it toward a specific mix of amino acids or other chemicals, but you can't entirely stop the enzyme from incorporating random chemicals from the cell's metabolism into the polymer at some level. There's also the issue of purifying the polymer from all the rest of the cell components before incorporating it into manufacturing. Production is also relatively slow compared to large-scale industrial production. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Italian newspaper Il Foglio claims to have published the world's first entirely AI-generated edition as part of a month-long experiment to explore AI's impact on journalism. The special four-page supplement, available in print and online, features AI-written articles, headlines, and reader letters. The only thing the human journalists provided were prompts. The Guardian reports: The front page of the first edition of Il Foglio AI carries a story referring to the US president, Donald Trump, describing the "paradox of Italian Trumpians" and how they rail against "cancel culture" yet either turn a blind eye, or worse, "celebrate" when "their idol in the US behaves like the despot of a banana republic." The front page also features a column headlined "Putin, the 10 betrayals," with the article highlighting "20 years of broken promises, torn-up agreements and words betrayed" by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. In a rare upbeat story about the Italian economy, another article points to the latest report from Istat, the national statistics agency, on the redistribution of income, which shows the country "is changing, and not for the worse" with salary increases for about 750,000 workers being among the positive effects of income tax reforms. On page 2 is a story about "situationships" and how young Europeans are fleeing steady relationships. The articles were structured, straightforward and clear, with no obvious grammatical errors. However, none of the articles published in the news pages directly quote any human beings. The final page runs AI-generated letters from readers to the editor, with one asking whether AI will render humans "useless" in the future. "AI is a great innovation, but it doesn't yet know how to order a coffee without getting the sugar wrong," reads the AI-generated response.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trend Micro uncovered an eight-year-long spying campaign exploiting a Windows vulnerability involving malicious .LNK shortcut files, which attackers padded with whitespace to conceal commands. Despite being reported to Microsoft in 2023, the company considers it a UI issue rather than a security risk and has not prioritized a fix. The Register reports: The attack method is low-tech but effective, relying on malicious .LNK shortcut files rigged with commands to download malware. While appearing to point to legitimate files or executables, these shortcuts quietly include extra instructions to fetch or unpack and attempt to run malicious payloads. Ordinarily, the shortcut's target and command-line arguments would be clearly visible in Windows, making suspicious commands easy to spot. But Trend's Zero Day Initiative said it observed North Korea-backed crews padding out the command-line arguments with megabytes of whitespace, burying the actual commands deep out of sight in the user interface. Trend reported this to Microsoft in September last year and estimates that it has been used since 2017. It said it had found nearly 1,000 tampered .LNK files in circulation but estimates the actual number of attacks could have been higher. "This is one of many bugs that the attackers are using, but this is one that is not patched and that's why we reported it as a zero day," Dustin Childs, head of threat awareness at the Zero Day Initiative, told The Register. "We told Microsoft but they consider it a UI issue, not a security issue. So it doesn't meet their bar for servicing as a security update, but it might be fixed in a later OS version, or something along those lines." After poring over malicious .LNK samples, the security shop said it found the vast majority of these files were from state-sponsored attackers (around 70 percent), used for espionage or information theft, with another 20 percent going after financial gain. Among the state-sponsored crews, 46 percent of attacks came from North Korea, while Russia, Iran, and China each accounted for around 18 percent of the activity.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to Politico, Gov. Gavin Newsom has distributed prepaid burner phones to around 100 California business leaders, giving them direct access to him and reinforcing his pro-business stance. "If you ever need anything, I'm a phone call away," read one of the notes. From the report: It was Newsom's idea, a representative said, and has already yielded some "valuable interactions." That arrangement surprised some people POLITICO spoke with, largely because Newsom is already known as an inveterate texter whose digits live in many business titans' contacts. He's also long been seen as more aligned with business interests than the Legislature, the proverbial adult in the room when private pillars like Silicon Valley need a sympathetic ear or a veto. But Newsom wanted to convey that he's intent on maintaining California's competitive edge. Phones are still going out. The California Protocol Foundation picked up the tab. That organization gets money from businesses and nonprofits for gubernatorial expenses like trips abroad -- or, evidently, burner phones -- so taxpayers aren't on the hook. It also drew leftover funds from Newsom's inauguration account, which itself drew business, so in a roundabout way California's private sector helped fund phones nurturing ties with the private sector.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. music streaming services surpassed 100 million subscribers in 2024 [PDF] while industry revenue hit a record $14.9 billion, up 4% from the previous year, according to the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA). Physical media sales outpaced digital growth, with vinyl records increasing 7% to $1.4 billion, outselling CDs ($541 million) for the third consecutive year. Digital downloads plummeted 14.9%, now representing just 2% of industry revenue.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA's SpaceX Crew-9 has returned to Earth safely after a stay of more than nine months aboard the International Space Station. The crew remained in space longer than expected due to issues with Boeing's Starliner capsule, which was originally scheduled to bring them home sooner. While the mission has been politically fraught, the astronauts said in a rare space-to-earth interview last month that they were neither stranded nor abandoned. "That's been the rhetoric. That's been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck -- and I get it. We both get it," [NASA astronaut Butch] Wilmore said. "But that is, again, not what our human spaceflight program is about. We don't feel abandoned, we don't feel stuck, we don't feel stranded." Wilmore added a request: "If you'll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative. Let's change it to 'prepared and committed.' That's what we prefer..." CNN has more details on the arrival: Williams and Wilmore, alongside NASA's Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of Russia's Roscosmos space agency, safely splashed down off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida at 5:57 p.m. ET. The crew's highly anticipated return came after the crew climbed aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and departed the International Space Station at 1:05 a.m. ET. Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov spent Tuesday morning and afternoon in orbit in the roughly 13-foot-wide (4-meter-wide), gumdrop-shaped SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Gradually descending, the capsule carried the astronauts from the space station, which orbits about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, toward the thick inner layer of our planet's atmosphere. Around 5 p.m. ET, the Crew Dragon capsule began firing its engines to begin the final phase of the journey: reentry. This leg of the journey is considered the most dangerous of any flight home from space. The jarring physics of hitting the atmosphere while traveling more than 22 times the speed of sound routinely heats the exterior of returning spacecraft to more than 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,926 degrees Celsius) and can trigger a communication blackout. After plunging toward home, the Crew Dragon spacecraft deployed two sets of parachutes in quick succession to further slow its descent. The capsule decelerated from orbital speeds of more than 17,000 miles per hour (27,359 kilometers per hour) to less than 20 miles per hour (32 kilometers per hour) as the vehicle hit the ocean. After the vehicle hit the ocean, a SpaceX rescue ship waiting nearby worked to haul the spacecraft out of the water. Williams and Wilmore and their crewmates will soon exit Dragon and take their first breaths of earthly air in nine months. Medical teams will evaluate the crew's health, as is routine after astronauts return from space, before deciding next steps. Ultimately, the NASA crew members will return to their home base at Johnson Space Center in Houston. You can watch a recording of the re-entry and splashdown here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission has removed over 300 business guidance blogs published during former President Biden's term, including consumer protection information on AI and privacy lawsuits against Amazon and Microsoft, WIRED reported Tuesday, citing current and former FTC employees. Deleted posts included guidance about Amazon's alleged use of Ring camera data to train algorithms, Microsoft's $20 million settlement over Xbox children's data collection, and compliance standards for AI chatbots. New FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has pledged to pursue tech companies but with focus on alleged conservative censorship rather than data collection practices.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Volkswagen's ultra-cheap EV called the ID EVERY1 -- a small four-door hatchback revealed Wednesday -- will be the first to roll out with software and architecture from Rivian, according to a source familiar with the new model. The EV is expected to go into production in 2027 with a starting price of 20,000 euros ($21,500). A second EV called the ID.2all, which will be priced in the 25,000 euro price category, will be available in 2026. Both vehicles are part of the automaker's new category of electric urban front-wheel-drive cars that are being developed under the "Brand Group Core" that makes up the volume brands in the VW Group. And both vehicles are for the European market. The EVERY1 will be the first to ship with Rivian's vehicle architecture and software as part of a $5.8 billion joint venture struck last year between the German automaker and U.S. EV maker. The ID.2all is based on the E3 1.1 architecture and software developed by VW's software unit Cariad. VW didn't name Rivian in its reveal Wednesday, although there were numerous nods to next-generation software. Kai Grunitz, member of the Volkswagen Brand Board of Management responsible for technical development, noted it would be the first model in the entire VW Group to use a "fundamentally new, particularly powerful software architecture." "This means the future entry-level Volkswagen can be equipped with new functions throughout its entire life cycle," he said. "Even after purchase of a new car, the small Volkswagen can still be individually adapted to customer needs." Volkswagen says the ID EVERY1 concept is a compact electric vehicle with a 70 kW motor, a top speed of 130 km/h, a minimum range of 250 km (150 miles), seating for four, and a 305-liter luggage capacity. Volkswagen has a press release with additional information.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Dutch parliament approved motions urging the government to reduce reliance on U.S. software companies by developing a sovereign cloud platform and reconsidering contracts with American firms. Reuters reports: While such initiatives have foundered in the past due to a lack of viable European alternatives, lawmakers said changing relations with the United States under the presidency of Donald Trump have given the issue fresh urgency. "The question we as Europeans must ask ourselves is: do we feel comfortable with people like Trump, (Meta CEO Mark) Zuckerberg and (X owner Elon) Musk ruling over our data?" said Marieke Koekkoek of the pro-European Volt party, who authored one of the eight motions, in an email to Reuters. In addition to launching a sovereign cloud services platform, the motions called on the government to re-examine a decision to use Amazon's web services for the Netherlands' internet domain hosting, and to develop alternatives to U.S. software and preferential treatment for European firms in public tenders. [...] Bert Hubert, a Dutch technology expert who has advocated for reducing dependency on the U.S., said: "This is only the first step in potentially doing something." But he said one important outcome would be forcing agencies to publicly report on risks related to their reliance on U.S. cloud firms. "With the advent of Trump 2.0, it has become clear that this is not something you can harmlessly sign off on," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

General Motors is partnering with Nvidia to enhance its self-driving and manufacturing capabilities by leveraging Nvidia's AI chips, software, and simulation tools. "GM says it will apply several of Nvidia's products to its business, such as the Omniverse 3D graphics platform which will run simulations on virtual assembly lines with an eye on reducing downtime and improving efficiency," reports The Verge. "The automaker also plans to equip its next-generation vehicles with Nvidia's 'AI brain' for advanced driver assistance and autonomous driving. And it will employ the chipmaker's AI training software to make its vehicle assembly line robots better at certain tasks, like precision welding and material handling." From the report: GM already uses Nvidia's GPUs to train its AI software for simulation and validation. Today's announcement was about expanding those use cases into improving its manufacturing operations and autonomous vehicles, GM CEO Mary Barra said in a statement. (Dave Richardson, GM's senior VP of Software and Services Engineering will be joining NVIDIA's Norm Marks for a fireside chat at the conference.) "AI not only optimizes manufacturing processes and accelerates virtual testing but also helps us build smarter vehicles while empowering our workforce to focus on craftsmanship," Barra said. "By merging technology with human ingenuity, we unlock new levels of innovation in vehicle manufacturing and beyond." GM will adopt Nvidia's in-car software products to build next-gen vehicles with autonomous driving capabilities. That includes the company's Drive AGX system-on-a-chip (SoC), similar to Tesla's Full Self-Driving chip or Intel's Mobileye EyeQ. The SoC runs the "safety-certified" DriveOS operating system, built on the Blackwell GPU architecture, which is capable of delivering 1,000 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of high-performance compute, the company says. [...] In a briefing with reporters, Ali Kani, Nvidia's vice president and general manager of automotive, described the chipmaking company's automotive business as still in its "infancy," with the expectation that it will only bring in $5 billion this year. (Nvidia reported over $130 billion in revenue in 2024 for all its divisions.) Nvidia's chips are in less than 1 percent of the billions of cars on the road today, he added. But the future looks promising. The company is also announcing deals with Tier 1 auto supplier Magna, which helped build Sony's Afeela concept, to use Drive AGX in the company's next-generation advanced driver assist software. "We believe automotive is a trillion dollar opportunity for Nvidia," Kani said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia unveiled its next wave of AI processors at GTC on Tuesday, announcing Blackwell Ultra chips that will ship in the second half of 2025, followed by the Vera Rubin architecture in 2026. CEO Jensen Huang also revealed that its 2028 chips will be named after physicist Richard Feynman. The Blackwell Ultra maintains the same 20 petaflops of AI performance as standard Blackwell chips but increases memory from 192GB to 288GB of HBM3e. Nvidia claims these chips can process 1,000 tokens per second -- ten times faster than its 2022 hardware -- enabling AI reasoning tasks like running DeepSeek-R1 models with 10-second response times versus 1.5 minutes on H100 chips. Vera Rubin will deliver a substantial leap to 50 petaflops in 2026, featuring Nvidia's first custom Arm-based CPU design called Olympus. Nvidia is also changing how it counts GPUs -- Rubin itself contains two dies working as one chip. The annual release cadence represents a strategic shift for Nvidia, which previously introduced new architectures every two years before the AI boom transformed its business.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday affirmed that a work of art generated by artificial intelligence without human input cannot be copyrighted under U.S. law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with the U.S. Copyright Office that an image created by Stephen Thaler's AI system "DABUS" was not entitled to copyright protection, and that only works with human authors can be copyrighted. Tuesday's decision marks the latest attempt by U.S. officials to grapple with the copyright implications of the fast-growing generative AI industry. The Copyright Office has separately rejected artists' bids for copyrights on images generated by the AI system Midjourney. The artists argued they were entitled to copyrights for images they created with AI assistance -- unlike Thaler, who said that his "sentient" system created the image in his case independently. [...] U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel on Tuesday that U.S. copyright law "requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being." "Because many of the Copyright Act's provisions make sense only if an author is a human being, the best reading of the Copyright Act is that human authorship is required for registration," the appeals court said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance denounced decades of globalization for hampering American innovation in a speech to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists on Tuesday, arguing that offshoring has eroded U.S. technological leadership. "Our workers have been failed by the government of the last 40 years," Vance told the American Dynamism Summit, criticizing two "conceits" of globalization: that nations manufacturing products wouldn't eventually design them too, and that cheap foreign labor benefits innovation. "As they got better at the low end of the value chain, they also started catching up on the higher end. We were squeezed from both ends," Vance said, adding that "cheap labor is fundamentally a crutch" that inhibits technological advancement. The Trump administration recently rolled back Biden-era AI regulations, with Vance emphasizing their goal to "incentivize investment in our own borders, in our own businesses, our own workers and our own innovation." Vance, a former venture capitalist, dismissed fears about AI eliminating jobs, comparing it to ATMs which ultimately created more financial sector roles.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Eric Migicovsky, founder of Pebble, will release two new smartwatches running the newly open-sourced Pebble operating system through his company Core Devices. The Core 2 Duo, priced at $149 and shipping in July, utilizes unused Pebble 2 frames with the same black-and-white E Ink display. The device features a 30-day battery life -- quadruple its predecessor's -- and incorporates a speaker for AI assistant interaction. Approximately 10,000 units will be available. The Core Time 2, arriving in December at $225, adds touchscreen functionality to the classic Pebble design while maintaining physical buttons and month-long battery life. Both devices face iPhone integration challenges. Migicovsky cautioned potential tariff increases would be passed to consumers, stating, "We're going to charge more if it costs more." "I'm not building a company to sell millions of these," Migicovsky said. "The goal is to make something I really want."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Despite spending hundreds of millions on blockbuster films, Netflix continues to churn out critically panned big-budget fare with its latest $300 million flop, "The Electric State," starring Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown. While the streaming giant has produced acclaimed films by giving talented directors creative freedom -- resulting in successes like "The Irishman," "Marriage Story" and "The Power of the Dog" -- it has repeatedly failed to create genuinely compelling blockbusters despite attracting major talent and pouring massive resources into productions like "Red Notice," "The Gray Man" and now "The Electric State." These expensive Netflix "mockbusters" lack the overwhelming sensations that theatrical blockbusters deliver, instead feeling like glorified content designed primarily for home viewing. The Russo brothers' "Electric State," with its drab visuals and lifeless performances, exemplifies how Netflix's biggest productions feel infused with the knowledge they're merely "content first."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta's open AI model family Llama has reached 1 billion downloads, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday, marking a 53% increase from the 650 million reported in early December. Llama, which powers Meta's AI assistant across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, operates under a proprietary license that some developers consider commercially restrictive despite its free availability. Major corporations including Spotify, AT&T and DoorDash currently deploy Llama models in production environments.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple lost an appeal on Tuesday against a regulatory assessment that opens the iPhone maker up to stricter controls in Germany, the Federal Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday, following years of debate over the company's market position. Federal judges backed the German cartel office's 2023 designation of Apple as a "company of paramount cross-market significance for competition".Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan said startups are reaching $1-10 million annual revenue with fewer than 10 employees due to "vibe coding," a term coined by OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy in February. "You can just talk to the large language models and they will code entire apps," Tan told CNBC (video). "You don't have to hire someone to do it, you just talk directly to the large language model that wrote it and it'll fix it for you." What would've once taken "50 or 100" engineers to build, he believes can now be accomplished by a team of 10, "when they are fully vibe coders." He adds: "When they are actually really, really good at using the cutting edge tools for code gen today, like Cursor or Windsurf, they will literally do the work of 10 or 100 engineers in the course of a single day." According to Tan, 81% of Y Combinator's current startup batch consists of AI companies, with 25% having 95% of their code written by large language models. Despite limitations in debugging capabilities, Tan said the technology enables small teams to perform work previously requiring dozens of engineers and makes previously overlooked niche markets viable for software businesses.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The rumors were right: Google parent Alphabet has agreed to buy cyber security start-up Wiz for $32 billion, the biggest acquisition in the search group's history. From the report: Alphabet held talks over a $23 billion acquisition of Wiz last year, although the negotiations collapsed after some of the cyber security company's directors and investors became worried about antitrust hurdles. The deal, which will rank as the biggest deal of the year so far, was announced on Tuesday morning. It will probably still face scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission under President Donald Trump, whose new chair Andrew Ferguson has maintained guidelines giving the agency the ability to block large deals used by his predecessor Lina Khan.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google parent Alphabet has agreed to buy cyber security start-up Wiz for $32 billion, the biggest acquisition in the search group's history, according to Financial Times, which cites sources. From the report: Alphabet held talks over a $23 billion acquisition of Wiz last year, although the negotiations collapsed after some of the cyber security company's directors and investors became worried about antitrust hurdles. The deal, which will rank as the biggest deal of the year so far, will be announced on Tuesday morning, a person said. It will probably still face scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission under President Donald Trump, whose new chair Andrew Ferguson has maintained guidelines giving the agency the ability to block large deals used by his predecessor Lina Khan.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

HR software startup Rippling has sued competitor Deel, alleging that Deel orchestrated corporate espionage by recruiting an employee within Rippling to steal trade secrets, including customer data, sales strategies, and internal records. The lawsuit (PDF) claims the spy shared confidential information with Deel executives and a reporter, leading to legal action under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Deel denies wrongdoing and plans to counter the claims. CNBC reports: The two startups are among the most world's most valuable. Investors valued Rippling at $13.5 billion in a funding round announced last year, while Deel told media outlets in 2023 that it was worth $12 billion. Deel ranked No. 28 on CNBC's 2024 Disruptor 50 list. "Weeks after Rippling is accused of violating sanctions law in Russia and seeding falsehoods about Deel, Rippling is trying to shift the narrative with these sensationalized claims," a Deel spokesperson told CNBC in an email. "We deny all legal wrongdoing and look forward to asserting our counterclaims." Rippling confirmed its findings earlier this month. The company's general counsel sent a letter to three Deel executives that referred to a new Slack channel, and the Deel spy quickly looked for it. Rippling subsequently served a court order to the spy at its office in Dublin, Ireland requiring him to preserve information on his mobile phone. "Deel's spy lied to the court-appointed solicitor about the location of his phone, and then locked himself in a bathroom -- seemingly in order to delete evidence from his phone -- all while the independent solicitor repeatedly warned him not to delete materials from his device and that his non-compliance was breaching a court order with penal endorsement," Rippling said in Monday's filing. "The spy responded: 'I'm willing to take that risk.' He then fled the premises." "We always prefer to win by building the best products and we don't turn to the legal system lightly," Parker Conrad, Rippling's co-founder and CEO, said in a Monday X post. "But we are taking this extraordinary step to send a clear message that this type of misconduct has no place in our industry."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A newly FDA-approved form of adaptive deep-brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson's disease adjusts electrical stimulation in real time based on an individual's brain signals, improving symptom control and reducing medication dependence. Scientific American: For decades, Keith Krehbiel took high doses of medications with a debilitating side effect -- severe nausea -- following his diagnosis with early-onset Parkinson's disease at age 42 in 1997. When each dose wore off, he experienced dyskinesia -- involuntary, repetitive muscle movements. In his case, this consisted of head bobbing and weaving. Krehbiel is among one million Americans who live with this progressive neurological disorder, which causes slowed movements, tremors and balance problems. But soon after surgery to implant electrodes into specific areas of his brain in 2020, his life dramatically improved. "My tremor went away almost entirely," says Krehbiel, now age 70 and a professor emeritus of political science at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, whose Parkinson's symptoms began at age 40 and were initially misdiagnosed as repetitive stress injury from computer use. "I reduced my Parkinson's meds by more than two thirds," he adds. "And I no longer have a sensation of a foggy brain, nor nausea or dyskinesia." Krehbiel was the first participant to enroll in a clinical trial testing a new form of deep-brain stimulation (DBS), a technology that gained approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for Parkinson's tremor and essential tremor in 1997 (it was later approved for other symptoms and conditions). The new adaptive system adjusts stimulation levels automatically based on the person's individual brain signals. In late February it received FDA approval for Parkinson's disease "based on results of the international multicenter trial, which involved participants at 10 sites across a total of four countries -- the U.S., the Netherlands, Canada and France. This technology is suitable for anyone with Parkinson's, not just individuals in clinical trials, says Helen Bronte-Stewart, the recent trial's global lead investigator and a neurologist specializing in movement disorders at Stanford Medicine. "Like a cardiac pacemaker that responds to the rhythms of the heart, adaptive deep-brain stimulation uses a person's individual brain signals to control the electric pulses it delivers," Bronte-Stewart says. "This makes it more personalized, precise and efficient than older DBS methods." "Traditional DBS delivers constant stimulation, which doesn't always match the fluctuating symptoms of Parkinson's disease," adds neurologist Todd Herrington, another of the trial's investigators and director of the deep-brain stimulation program at Massachusetts General Hospital. With adaptive DBS, "the goal is to adjust stimulation in real time to provide more effective symptom control, fewer side effects and improved patient quality of life." Current FDA approval of this adaptive system is for the treatment of Parkinson's only, not essential tremor, dystonia (a neurological disorder that causes excessive, repetitive and involuntary muscle contractions) or epilepsy, which still rely on traditional, continuous DBS, Herrington says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: More than 400 Hollywood creative leaders signed an open letter to the Trump White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, urging the administration to not roll back copyright protections at the behest of AI companies. The filmmakers, writers, actors, musicians and others -- which included Ben Stiller, Mark Ruffalo, Cynthia Erivo, Cate Blanchett, Cord Jefferson, Paul McCartney, Ron Howard and Taika Waititi -- were submitting comments for the Trump administration's U.S. AI Action Plan. The letter specifically was penned in response to recent submissions to the Office of Science and Technology Policy from OpenAI and Google, which asserted that U.S. copyright law allows (or should allow) allow AI companies to train their system on copyrighted works without obtaining permission from (or compensating) rights holders. "We firmly believe that America's global AI leadership must not come at the expense of our essential creative industries," the letter says in part. The letter claims that "AI companies are asking to undermine this economic and cultural strength by weakening copyright protections for the films, television series, artworks, writing, music and voices used to train AI models at the core of multibillion-dollar corporate valuations." [...] The letter says Google and OpenAI "are arguing for a special government exemption so they can freely exploit America's creative and knowledge industries, despite their substantial revenues and available funds. There is no reason to weaken or eliminate the copyright protections that have helped America flourish." You can read the full statement and list of signatories here. The letter was issued in response to recent submissions from OpenAI (PDF) and Google (PDF) claiming that U.S. law allows, or should allow, AI companies to train their programs on copyrighted works under the fair use legal doctrine.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Reuters: BYD on Monday unveiled a new platform for electric vehicles (EVs) that it said could charge EVs as quickly as it takes to pump gas and announced for the first time that it would build a charging network across China. The so-called "super e-platform" will be capable of peak charging speeds of 1,000 kilowatts (kW), enabling cars that use it to travel 400 km (249 miles) on a 5-minute charge, founder Wang Chuanfu said at an event livestreamed from the company's Shenzhen headquarters. Charging speeds of 1,000 kW would be twice as fast as Tesla's superchargers whose latest version offers up to 500 kw charging speeds. The new charging architecture will be initially available in two new EVs -- Han L sedan and Tang L SUV priced from 270,000 yuan ($37,328.91) and BYD said it would build over 4,000 ultra-fast charging piles, or units, across China to match the new platform. "In order to completely solve our user's charging anxiety, we have been pursuing a goal to make the charging time of electric vehicles as short as the refuelling time of petrol vehicles," Wang said. "This is the first time in the industry that the unit of megawatt (charge) has been achieved on charging power," he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to The Verge, legacy G Suite accounts will soon lose their individual storage allotment perks and be transitioned to pooled storage, which will be "shared across all users within your organization." The changes will come into effect starting May 1st. From the report: G Suite was rebranded as Workspace in 2020. G Suite legacy free edition, which Google stopped offering in 2012, provides each user with 15GB of free allocated storage and was offered for personal use -- making it ideal for families or groups that need to share a collective domain. Existing users have been permitted to access Workspace services at no additional charge, but Google says it's now making this change because pooled storage provides a "simpler and more flexible way to manage storage." "Google Workspace customers have had the benefit of pooled storage for years, and now we're rolling it out to users with this legacy offering," Google spokesperson Jenny Thomson told The Verge. No action is required for the switch according to Google, and users cannot opt out of the pooled storage transition. The total amount of storage allocated to the entire G Suite account won't be reduced, but if more storage is required then it can be purchased "at a discount" starting at increments of 100GB, which typically costs $15. Google hasn't specified how large this discount will be. Storage limitations can still be set for each user within the G Suite account after the transition to prevent the collective storage pool from being hogged by individual users. These limits will have to be manually assigned by an account admin, however.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roku is testing autoplaying video ads that play before users can access the home screen. While Roku claims this is just an experiment, users are threatening to abandon the platform if the change becomes permanent. Ars Technica reports: Reports of Roku customers seeing video ads automatically play before they could view the OS' home screen started appearing online this week. A Reddit user, for example, posted yesterday: "I just turned on my Roku and got an unskippable ad for a movie, before I got to the regular Roku home screen." Multiple apparent users reported seeing an ad for the movie Moana 2. When reached for comment, a Roku spokesperson shared a company statement that confirms that the autoplaying ads are expected behavior but not a permanent part of Roku OS currently. Instead, Roku claimed, it was just trying the ad capability out. Roku's representative said that Roku's business "has and will always require continuous testing and innovation across design, navigation, content, and our first-rate advertising products," adding: "Our recent test is just the latest example, as we explore new ways to showcase brands and programming while still providing a delightful and simple user experience."Read more of this story at Slashdot.