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Negotiations on a global treaty to end plastic pollution are drawing to a close Thursday, as nations remain deadlocked over whether to tackle the exponential growth of plastic production. From a report: A draft of the treaty released...

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Former Sony Worldwide Studios chairman Shawn Layden criticized subscription gaming services like Xbox Game Pass, arguing that developers working under such models become "wage slaves." Speaking in a recent industry discussion, Layden...

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An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI is considering ways to bring in additional revenue, and bringing ads to ChatGPT is one option on the table. While being interviewed on Decoder, ChatGPT head Nick Turley said he's "humble enough...

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Meta's internal policy document permitted the company's AI chatbots to engage children in "romantic or sensual" conversations and generate content arguing that "Black people are dumber than white people," according to a Reuters review of...

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Twenty years after Michelin introduced the Tweel in 2005, airless tires remain absent from passenger vehicles despite their promise to "eliminate nearly 200 million scrap tires a year caused by flats and underinflation," according to...

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Electricity rates for individuals and small businesses could rise sharply as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other technology companies build data centers and expand into the energy business. Residential electricity bills increased at least...

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The Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections (OCCE) has revealed in its annual report that it will "explore the use" AI and emerging technologies to see how they will shape the government body's approach for the next year. From a...

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Kodak says it remains confident it can avoid shutdown despite filing required "going concern" disclosures about $500 million in debt obligations due within 12 months. The 133-year-old photography company plans to draw approximately $300...

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The next version of Windows will become "more ambient, pervasive, and multi-modal" as AI transforms how users interact with computers, Microsoft's Windows chief Pavan Davuluri said in a company video. Davuluri, Corporate Vice President and...

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Top fintech and crypto executives urged the Trump administration to block US banks from charging fees for access to customer data, levies that strike at the heart of their business models. From a report: Klarna, Robinhood and crypto...

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BrianFagioli writes: Lenovo is starting its fiscal year with a major win, delivering record-breaking PC sales and claiming dominance in the AI PC space. For the first quarter of its 2025/26 fiscal year, the company reported $18.8 billion...

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Igor Babuschkin, co-founder of xAI, has left the company to start Babuschkin Ventures, a VC firm focused on AI safety and humanity-advancing startups. TechCrunch reports: Babuschkin led engineering teams at xAI and helped build the startup...

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Data brokers are required by California law to provide ways for consumers to request their data be deleted. But good luck finding them. From a report: More than 30 of the companies, which collect and sell consumers' personal information,...

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An anonymous reader shares a report: India's blueprint for displacing China as the world's electronics workshop contains a rather extraordinary feature: the entire Indian edifice requires Chinese companies to supply the technical...

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Russian authorities are "partially" restricting calls in messaging apps Telegram and WhatsApp, the latest step in an effort to tighten control over the internet. From a report: In a statement, government media and internet regulator...

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An anonymous reader New Atlas: An engineered protein that acts like a molecular sponge has the potential to change how carbon monoxide poisoning is treated, chasing down CO molecules in the bloodstream and helping the body flush them out...

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The Pentagon is poised to cancel two nearly finished Navy and Air Force HR software projects worth over $800 million so new contracts can be awarded to other vendors, including Salesforce, Palantir, and Workday. "The reason for the unusual...

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After over 130 years in business, Kodak has warned it may not survive. From a report: The Rochester, New York-based Eastman Kodak Co. offered a bleak picture of its financials in earnings reports and filings, tracking a second quarter loss...

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google is rolling out an update for Gemini that will allow the AI chatbot to "remember" your past conversations without prompting. With the setting turned on, Gemini will automatically...

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New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued Zelle's parent company, Early Warning Services, alleging it knowingly enabled over $1 billion in fraud from 2017 to 2023 by failing to implement basic safeguards. CNBC reports: "EWS knew...

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Pebble has unveiled the final design of its rebooted Pebble Time 2 smartwatch, featuring a stainless steel body, color accents, knurled buttons, a flat glass display, customizable RGB backlight, and a built-in compass. 9to5Google reports:...

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: [O]ver in the UK, a single-motor version of the Polestar 3 just set a world record for the farthest drive in an electric car on a single charge. Three "professional efficiency...

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Apple is plotting its AI comeback with an ambitious slate of new devices, including robots, a lifelike version of Siri, a smart speaker with a display and home-security cameras, according to Bloomberg. From the report: A tabletop robot...

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A countrywide study of smartphone users who relocated between US cities found that moving to more walkable environments increased daily walking by 1,100 steps on average. Stanford University researchers analyzed 248,266 days of step data...

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Samsung has finally launched a TV featuring the company's new Micro RGB backlight technology. From a report: The 115-inch TV is first launching in South Korea for over $32,000, according to SamMobile, but Samsung says it's coming to the US...

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Young listeners are accelerating audio and video consumption, with an Economist/YouGov poll finding 31% of Americans aged 18-29 using faster-than-1x playback versus 8% among those 45 and older, as Apple, Spotify, newspapers' audio,...

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Microsoft has made "Pull Print" for Universal Print generally available, letting users authenticate at any registered printer to release queued jobs and reducing the chance that confidential pages sit unattended. The feature, also called...

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China has established a lead in the field of open-source AI, a development that is reportedly sending jolts through both Washington and Silicon Valley. The nation's progress has become a significant event for American policymakers in the...

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Extreme heat is breaking temperature records across Europe, early measurements suggest, and driving bigger and stronger wildfires. From a report: In south-west France, records were broken on Monday in Angouleme, Bergerac, Bordeaux,...

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An anonymous reader shares a report: U.S. authorities have secretly placed location tracking devices in targeted shipments of advanced chips they see as being at high risk of illegal diversion to China, according to two people with direct...

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Experts at the University of Edinburgh carried out a post-mortem brain examination on 25 cats which had symptoms of dementia in life, including confusion, sleep disruption and an increase...

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United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur rocket successfully completed its first-ever national security mission, launching the U.S. military's first experimental navigation satellite in 48 years. Space.com reports: The mission saw the...

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: You can't say Linux creator Linus Torvalds didn't give the kernel developers fair warning. He'd told them: "The upcoming merge window for 6.17 is going to be slightly chaotic for me. I have...

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Cornell University researchers have developed an "invisible" light-based watermarking system that embeds unique codes into the physical light that illuminates the subject during recording, allowing any camera to capture authentication data...

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Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court to conspiracy to defraud and wire fraud over the $40 billion collapse of TerraUSD and Luna in 2022. Reuters reports: Kwon, 33, who co-founded Singapore-based Terraform...

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ole_timer shares a report from the New York Times: Investigators have uncovered evidence that Russia is at least partly responsible for a recent hack of the computer system that manages federal court documents, including highly sensitive...

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Boston Public Library, one of the oldest and largest public library systems in the country, is launching a project this summer with OpenAI and Harvard Law School to make its trove of...

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IBM and Google report they will build industrial-scale quantum computers containing one million or more qubits by 2030, following IBM's June publication of a quantum computer blueprint addressing previous design gaps and Google's late-2023...

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spatwei shares a report from SC Media: Just as it had at BSides Las Vegas earlier in the week, the risks of artificial intelligence dominated the Black Hat USA 2025 security conference on Aug. 6 and 7. We couldn't see all the AI-related...

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Meta's Threads has surpassed 400 million monthly active users, adding 50 million in the last quarter and closing the gap with rival X in mobile daily usage. "As of a few weeks ago [there are] more than 400 million people active on Threads...

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Beijing has urged local companies to avoid using Nvidia's H20 processors, particularly for government-related purposes, complicating the chipmaker's return to China after the Trump...

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Can deleting old emails and photos help the UK tackle ongoing drought this year? That's the hope, according to recommendations for the public included in a press release today from the National Drought...

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Google, Cisco, and McKinsey have reintroduced in-person interviews to combat AI-assisted cheating in virtual technical assessments. Coda Search/Staffing reports client requests for face-to-face meetings has surged to 30% this year from 5%...

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Google is rolling out a new feature called "Preferred Sources" in the U.S. and India, which allows users to select their preferred choice of news sites and blogs to be shown in the Top Stories section of Google's search results. From a...

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is starting to roll out lightweight taskbar apps for Microsoft 365 users on Windows 11. These taskbar apps will automatically launch at startup and provide quick access to contacts, file...

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Microsoft has compiled a spreadsheet of Meta AI employees by name, location and position as part of an aggressive recruiting push to sustain its AI-driven march toward a $4 trillion market valuation, according to internal documents viewed...

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Australia's Federal Court ruled Tuesday that Apple and Google violated competition law through anti-competitive app store practices. Judge Jonathan Beach found both companies breached section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act by...

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AI startup Perplexity on Tuesday offered to purchase Google's Chrome browser for $34.5 billion as it works to challenge the tech giant's web-search dominance. From a report: Perplexity's offer is significantly more than its own valuation,...

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Spirit Airlines has warned investors that it may go out of business, just months after exiting bankruptcy. From a report: In a quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, it said there was "substantial...

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Elon Musk has threatened Apple with legal action over alleged antitrust violations related to rankings of the Grok AI chatbot app, which is owned by his AI startup xAI. From a report: "Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible...