Renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil, 76, has doubled down on his prediction of the Singularity's imminent arrival in an interview with The New York Times. Gesturing to a graph showing exponential growth in computing power, Kurzweil asserted humanity would merge with AI by 2045, augmenting biological brains with vast computational abilities. "If you create something that is thousands of times -- or millions of times -- more powerful than the brain, we can't anticipate what it is going to do," Kurzweil said. His claims, once dismissed, have gained traction amid recent AI breakthroughs. As Kurzweil ages, his predictions carry personal urgency. "Even a healthy 20-year-old could die tomorrow," he told The Times, hinting at his own mortality race against the Singularity's timeline.

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Nintendo has announced the end of repair services for its Wii U console, following the earlier decision to shut down all Wii U servers. Nintendo cited the expiration of the parts retention period as the reason for discontinuing repairs. The move marks the final chapter for the Wii U, which launched in 2012 but struggled to gain traction, selling only 13.56 million units compared to its successor, the Switch, which has sold over 140 million units.

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Britain's Labour Party was projected on Thursday evening to win a landslide election victory, sweeping the Conservative Party out of power after 14 years, in a thundering anti-incumbent revolt that heralded a new era in British politics. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak accepted defeat Friday, and said he had called Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, to congratulate him. The New York Times: Partial results, and an exit poll conducted for the BBC and two other broadcasters, indicated that Labour was on course to win around 405 of the 650 seats in the British House of Commons, versus 154 for the Conservatives. If the projections are confirmed, it would be the worst defeat for the Conservatives in the nearly 200-year history of the party, one that would raise questions about its future -- and even its very viability. Reform U.K., an insurgent, anti-immigration party, was projected to win 4 seats but a significant share of the vote, a robust performance that came at the expense of the Conservatives. The exit poll, which accurately predicted the winner of the last five British general elections, confirmed the electorate was thoroughly fed up with the Conservatives after a turbulent era that spanned austerity, Brexit, the Covid pandemic, the serial scandals of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the ill-fated tax-cutting proposals of his successor, Liz Truss. While a Labour victory had long been predicted -- it held a double-digit polling lead over the Conservatives for more than 18 months -- the magnitude of the Tory defeat will reverberate through Britain for months, if not years. Further reading: Financial Times; BBC, and The Guardian.

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MattSparkes writes: Secret international discussions have resulted in governments across the world imposing identical export controls on quantum computers, while refusing to disclose the scientific rationale behind the regulations. Although quantum computers theoretically have the potential to threaten national security by breaking encryption techniques, even the most advanced quantum computers currently in public existence are too small and too error-prone to achieve this, rendering the bans seemingly pointless. The UK is one of the countries that has prohibited the export of quantum computers with 34 or more quantum bits, or qubits, and error rates below a certain threshold. The intention seems to be to restrict machines of a certain capability, but the UK government hasn't explicitly said this. A New Scientist freedom of information request for a rationale behind these numbers was turned down on the grounds of national security. France has also introduced export controls with the same specifications on qubit numbers and error rates, as has Spain and the Netherlands. Identical limits across European states might point to a European Union regulation, but that isn't the case. A European Commission spokesperson told New Scientist that EU members are free to adopt national measures, rather than bloc-wide ones, for export restrictions. New Scientist reached out to dozens of nations to ask what the scientific basis for these matching legislative bans on quantum computer exports was, but was told it was kept secret to protect national security.

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Half of the Netherlands' petrol stations are set to close in the next five to 10 years as electric cars start to take over the market, according to ING Research. From a report: The bank's economists say there will be insufficient earnings in future, with only some 2,000 of today's 4,131 gas stations remaining. "It is mainly the small, unmanned petrol stations that will disappear," says ING Research, as reported in De Telegraaf. [...] Owners are trying to maintain turnover by increasing their sales of food and beverages, maintenance services and even car washing, ING says. But the long-term business model of independent stations will be difficult to maintain. "A quick calculation shows how long petrol station owners can still sell petrol," Dirk Mulder, Trade & Retail sector banker at ING Research, said. "A new car remains in the Dutch fleet for an average of 19 years. The last petrol and diesel cars will come onto the market in 2034 and will stay on the road until approximately 2053."

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Roku's recent update has sparked controversy among TV owners, particularly those with TCL and Hisense models. The update, version 13.0.0 released on June 6, introduced a feature called "Roku Smart Picture" that has led to numerous complaints about unwanted motion smoothing effects. The Verge adds: While Roku doesn't explicitly mention motion smoothing, or what Roku calls "action smoothing," the update has made it so that I and many others with Roku TVs see motion smoothing, regardless of whether the picture setting is Roku Smart Picture or not. My TV didn't even support motion smoothing before this. Now, I can't make it go away.

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An Italian video game, 22 years in the making, has finally hit the market, setting a record for the longest development time in gaming history. "Kien," an action platformer for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance, began development in 2002 by a group of five inexperienced enthusiasts, The Guardian reports. Only one, Fabio Belsanti, saw the project through to completion. The game, inspired by 15th-century Tuscan manuscripts and early Japanese graphics, offers a challenging, nonlinear fantasy experience. It's now available on a translucent gray cartridge, complete with a printed manual -- a rarity in modern gaming. Belsanti's company, AgeOfGames, survived the delay by creating educational games. The recent boom in retro gaming finally made Kien's release feasible, he said.

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Amazon's Kindle e-reader system is experiencing a widespread outage, affecting new book downloads and access to undownloaded titles in users' libraries. The issue, confirmed by Amazon support, is expected to last at least 48 hours.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: A new test version of Windows 11 is available for Windows Insiders on the Dev Channel with Build 26120.961, which rolls out a significant change: a new Windows Start menu. You'll immediately notice that Microsoft has redesigned the Microsoft user account display, moving it to the center of the Start menu as soon as you click on the username or profile picture. This new "account manager" feature gives you quicker access to your various Microsoft accounts, such as Microsoft 365, Xbox Game Pass, and OneDrive cloud storage. To no surprise, Microsoft is using this prominent display to remind you of their own products and services. The difference to the current Windows 11 Start menu is obvious, as the following screenshot shows:

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New research aimed at identifying foods that contain higher levels of PFAS found people who eat more white rice, coffee, eggs and seafood typically showed more of the toxic chemicals in their plasma and breast milk. The Guardian adds: The study checked samples from 3,000 pregnant mothers, and is among the first research to suggest coffee and white rice may be contaminated at higher rates than other foods. It also identified an association between red meat consumption and levels of PFOS, one of the most common and dangerous PFAS compounds. The authors said the findings highlight the chemicals' ubiquity and the many ways they can end up in the food supply.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple has removed several apps offering virtual private network services from the Russian App Store, following a request from Roskomnadzor, Russia's media regulator, independent news outlet Mediazona reported on Thursday. The VPN services removed by Apple include leading services such as ProtonVPN, Red Shield VPN, NordVPN and Le VPN. Those living in Russia will no longer be able to download the services, while users who already have them on their phones can continue using them, but will be unable to update them. Red Shield VPN posted a notice from Apple on X, which said that their app would be removed following a request from Roskomnadzor, "because it includes content that is illegal in Russia."

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ZipNada writes: A federal court in Texas has partially blocked the government's ban on noncompete agreements that was set to take effect September 4. An estimated 30 million people, or one in five American workers, are bound by noncompetes. The employment agreements typically prevent workers -- everyone from minimum wage earners to CEOs -- from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own. In its complaint, Ryan LLC accused the FTC of overstepping its statutory authority in declaring all noncompetes unfair and anticompetitive. Judge Brown agreed, writing, "The FTC lacks substantive rulemaking authority with respect to unfair methods of competition." Through a statement Wednesday evening, the FTC said its authority is supported by both statute and precedent. "We will keep fighting to free hardworking Americans from unlawful noncompetes, which reduce innovation, inhibit economic growth, trap workers, and undermine Americans' economic liberty," wrote FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar. The FTC has long argued that noncompetes hurt workers.

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A hacker infiltrated OpenAI's internal messaging systems in early 2023, stealing confidential information about the ChatGPT maker's AI technologies, New York Times reported Thursday. The breach, disclosed to employees in April that year but kept from the public, has sparked internal debate over the company's security protocols and potential national security implications, the report adds. The hacker accessed an employee forum containing sensitive discussions but did not breach core AI systems. OpenAI executives, believing the hacker had no government ties, opted against notifying law enforcement, the Times reported. From the report: After the breach, Leopold Aschenbrenner, an OpenAI technical program manager focused on ensuring that future A.I. technologies do not cause serious harm, sent a memo to OpenAI's board of directors, arguing that the company was not doing enough to prevent the Chinese government and other foreign adversaries from stealing its secrets. Mr. Aschenbrenner said OpenAI had fired him this spring for leaking other information outside the company and argued that his dismissal had been politically motivated. He alluded to the breach on a recent podcast, but details of the incident have not been previously reported. He said OpenAI's security wasn't strong enough to protect against the theft of key secrets if foreign actors were to infiltrate the company.

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OpenAI's ChatGPT app for macOS contained a security vulnerability until Friday, potentially exposing users' conversations to unauthorized access, according to a developer's findings. The flaw allowed stored chats to be easily located and read in plain text on users' computers. Pedro Jose Pereira Vieito demonstrated the issue on social media, showing how a separate application could access and display recent ChatGPT conversations.

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Microsoft conducted another round of layoffs this week in the latest workforce reduction implemented by the Redmond tech giant this year. From a report: The cuts impacted multiple teams and geographies. Posts on LinkedIn from impacted employees show the cuts affecting employees in product and program management roles. "Organizational and workforce adjustments are a necessary and regular part of managing our business," a spokesperson said in a statement. "We will continue to prioritize and invest in strategic growth areas for our future and in support of our customers and partners."

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The FTC has issued warnings to several tech firms, including PC manufacturers ASRock, Gigabyte, and Zotac, regarding potential violations of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. The agency expressed concerns that the companies' warranty and repair policies may be infringing on consumer rights. PCWorld adds: While the specific concerns vary by company, the FTC reminded the three companies that they can't, for example, place stickers on a laptop that caution consumers that opening or repairing the laptop violates warranty policies. Neither can they state or imply that their products can only be repaired via an authorized service from the company. In the letter sent to Gigabyte (PDF), the FTC said that its staff is "concerned" by the Gigabyte written warranty, which includes the phrase: "If the manufacturing sticker inside the product was removed or damaged, it would no longer be covered by the warranty."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Sony plans to eventually stop producing consumer-grade recordable Blu-ray discs, but commercial products such as game and film Blu-rays will still be produced. Sony Group will lay off 250 employees at a division that produces recordable media discs, and start winding down the production of specific Blu-ray products, sources have told Japanese newspaper Mainichi. However, contrary to recent reports, this decision will not affect Blu-ray discs that contain games, TV shows, or films. The staff reduction is happening to the Sony Sendai Technology Center, which produces recordable disc formats like CD-R, DVD-R, BD-R and archival discs for the Japanese region. Standard Blu-rays, 4K UHD discs, and PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Blu-ray discs--which are made at Sony's separate DADC (Digital Audio Disc Corporation) facility--will still be manufactured, shipped, and sold worldwide. In other words, physical media will not go anywhere anytime soon, despite the prevalence and growth of streaming and/or digital media.

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Mario and Luigi aren't jumping on the AI train. From a report: In a recent Q&A with investors, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa addressed the issue. Though he said generative AI can be creative, Furukawa told his audience that the company isn't planning to use the technology in its games. "In the game industry, AI-like technology has long been used to control enemy character movements, so game development and AI technology have always been closely related," Furukawa said, according to TweakTown. "Generative AI, which has been a hot topic in recent years, can be more creative, but we also recognize that it has issues with intellectual property rights. "We have decades of know-how in creating optimal gaming experiences for our customers, and while we remain flexible in responding to technological developments, we hope to continue to deliver value that is unique to us and cannot be achieved through technology alone."

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Twilio, a major U.S. messaging company, has confirmed that unauthorized actors had identified phone numbers associated with users of its Authy two-factor authentication app. The disclosure comes after a hacker claimed last week to have obtained 33 million phone numbers from Twilio. A Twilio spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company had detected an unauthenticated endpoint allowing access to Authy account data, including phone numbers. The endpoint has since been secured.

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Astro is leaving its job to spend more time with family. From a report: Amazon informed customers and employees Wednesday morning that it plans to discontinue its Astro for Business program, less than a year after launching the robot security guard for small- and medium-sized businesses. The decision will help the company focus on its home version of Astro, according to an internal email. Astro for Business robots will stop working Sept. 25, the company said in a separate email to customers, encouraging them to recycle the devices. Businesses will receive full refunds for the original cost of the device, plus a $300 credit "to help support a replacement solution for your workplace," the email said. They will also receive refunds for unused, pre-paid Astro Secure subscription fees. Announced in November 2023, the business version of Amazon's rolling robot used an HD periscope and night vision technology to autonomously patrol and map up to 5,000 square feet of space. It followed preprogrammed routes and routines, and could be controlled manually and remotely via the Amazon Astro app.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The US Supreme Court has issued a decision that could upend all federal cybersecurity regulations, moving ultimate regulatory approval to the courts and away from regulatory agencies. A host of likely lawsuits could gut the Biden administration's spate of cyber incident reporting requirements and other recent cyber regulatory actions. [...] While the Court's decision has the potential to weaken or substantially alter all federal agency cybersecurity requirements ever adopted, a series of cyber regulatory initiatives implemented over the past four years could become the particular focus of legal challenges. Parties who previously objected to these initiatives but were possibly reluctant to fight due to the Chevron deference will likely be encouraged to challenge these regulations. Although all existing regulations are still in effect, the upshot for CISOs is almost certainly some degree of uncertainty as the legal challenges get underway. A host of conflicting decisions across the various judicial circuits in the US could lead to confusion in compliance programs until the smoke clears. CISOs should expect some court cases to water down or eliminate many existing cybersecurity regulatory requirements. A host of recently adopted cyber regulations will likely be challenged following the Court's ruling, but some recent regulations stand out as leading candidates for litigation. Among these are:

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Speaking of Japan, joshuark shares a report: Japan's government has finally eliminated the use of floppy disks in all its systems, two decades since their heyday, reaching a long-awaited milestone in a campaign to modernise the bureaucracy. By the middle of last month, the Digital Agency had scrapped all 1,034 regulations governing their use, except for one environmental stricture related to vehicle recycling. "We have won the war on floppy disks on June 28!" Digital Minister Taro Kono, who has been vocal about wiping out fax machines and other analogue technology in government, told Reuters in a statement on Wednesday.

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Tech companies scouring the country for electricity supplies have zeroed in on a key target: America's nuclear-power plants. From a report: The owners of roughly a third of U.S. nuclear-power plants are in talks with tech companies to provide electricity to new data centers needed to meet the demands of an artificial-intelligence boom. Among them, Amazon Web Services is nearing a deal for electricity supplied directly from a nuclear plant on the East Coast with Constellation Energy, the largest owner of U.S. nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the matter. In a separate deal in March, the Amazon subsidiary purchased a nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania for $650 million. The discussions have the potential to remove stable power generation from the grid while reliability concerns are rising across much of the U.S. and new kinds of electricity users -- including AI, manufacturing and transportation -- are significantly increasing the demand for electricity in pockets of the country. Nuclear-powered data centers would match the grid's highest-reliability workhorse with a wealthy customer that wants 24-7 carbon-free power, likely speeding the addition of data centers needed in the global AI race. But instead of adding new green energy to meet their soaring power needs, tech companies would be effectively diverting existing electricity resources. That could raise prices for other customers and hold back emission-cutting goals.

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Proton, the privacy-focused technology company, has launched Proton Docs, a new document editing tool that bears a striking resemblance to Google Docs. The service, launched as part of Proton Drive, offers features such as rich text editing, real-time collaboration, and multimedia support.

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theodp writes: As with last year," tweeted College Board's AP Program Chief Trevor Packer, "the most challenging free-response question on this year's AP Computer Science A exam was Q4 on 2D Array." While it takes six pages of the AP CS A exam document [PDF] to ask question 4 (of 4), the ask of students essentially boils down to using Java to move from the current location in a 2-D grid to either immediately below or to the right of that location based on which neighbor contains the lesser value, and adding the value at that location to a total (suggested Java solution, alternative Excel VBA solution). Much like rules of the children's game Pop-O-Matic Trouble, moves are subject to the constraint that you cannot move to the right or ahead if it takes you to an invalid position (beyond the grid dimensions). Ironically, many of the AP CS A students who struggled with the grid coding problem were likely exposed by their schools from kindergarten on to more than a decade's worth of annual Hour of Code tutorials that focused on the concepts of using code to move about in 2-D grids. The move-up-down-left-right tutorials promoted by schools came from tech-backed nonprofit Code.org and its tech giant partners and have been taught over the years by the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and President Obama, as well as characters from Star Wars, Disney Princess movies, and Microsoft Minecraft. The news of American high school students struggling again with fairly straightforward coding problems after a year-long course of instruction comes not only as tech companies and tech-tied nonprofits lobby state lawmakers to pass bills making CS a high school graduation requirement in the US, but also as a new report from King's College urges lawmakers and educators to address a stark decline in the number of UK students studying computing at secondary school, which is blamed on the replacement of more approachable ICT (Information and Communications Technology) courses with more rigorous computer science courses in 2013 (a switch pushed by Google and Microsoft), which it notes students have perceived as too difficult and avoided taking.

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Nearly half of Americans are using third-party antivirus software and the rest are either using the default protection in their operating system -- or none at all. From a report: In all, 46 percent of almost 1,000 US citizens surveyed by the reviews site Security.org said they used third-party antivirus on their computers, with 49 percent on their PCs, 18 percent using it on their tablets, and 17 percent on their phones. Of those who solely rely on their operating system's built-in security -- such as Microsoft's Windows Defender, Apple's XProtect, and Android's Google Play -- 12 percent are planning to switch to third-party software in the next six months. Of those who do look outside the OS, 54 percent of people pay for the security software, 43 percent choose the stripped-down free version, and worryingly, three percent aren't sure whether they pay or not. Among paying users, the most popular brands were Norton, McAfee, and Malwarebytes, while free users preferred -- in order -- McAfee, Avast, and Malwarebytes. The overwhelming reason for purchasing, cited by 84 percent of respondents, was, of course, fear of malware. The next most common reasons were privacy, at 54 percent, and worries over online shopping, at 48 percent. Fear of losing cryptocurrency stashes from wallets was at eight percent, doubled since last year's survey.

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Canned water distilled from the air will be available to buy in the US later this year, in an effort to promote solar-powered "hydropanels" that provide an off-grid method of producing drinking water. New Scientist adds: The panels, created by Arizona-based firm Source, use solar energy to power fans, which draw water vapour from the air. A water-absorbing substance, known as a desiccant, traps the moisture, before solar energy from the panel releases the moisture into a collection area within the panel. The distilled water is then sent to a pressurised tank, where the pH is tweaked and minerals like calcium and magnesium are added. Each panel can produce up to 3 litres of drinking water water a day, about the average daily intake for one person. The process works effectively even in hot, arid conditions such as Arizona, says Friesen. Source, which launched in 2014 as Zero Mass Water, already has hydropanels installed in 56 countries around the world. The panels can be installed as ground arrays, or on rooftops, linked into a building's drinking water pipes. Many sites serve off-grid communities without easy access to potable water, says Friesen. Most of the panels, which retail at almost $3000 apiece, are purchased by governments or development banks, although households can also install panels privately.

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The Rubik's Cube turns 50 this year, but it's far from retiring. At a recent San Francisco conference, math buffs and puzzle fans celebrated the enduring appeal of Erno Rubik's invention, reports The New York Times. With a mind-boggling 43 quintillion possible configurations, the Cube has inspired countless variants and found uses in education and art.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: ChromeOS Flex extends the lifespan of older hardware and contributes to reducing e-waste, making it an environmentally conscious choice. Unfortunately, recent developments hint at a potential end for ChromeOS Flex. As detailed in a June 12 blog post by Prajakta Gudadhe, senior director of engineering for ChromeOS, and Alexander Kuscher, senior director of product management for ChromeOS, Google's announcement about integrating ChromeOS with Android to enhance AI capabilities suggests that Flex might not be part of this future. Google's plan, as detailed, suggests that ChromeOS Flex could be phased out, leaving its current users in a difficult position. The ChromiumOS community around ChromeOS Flex may attempt to adjust to these changes if Google open sources ChromeOS Flex, but this is not a guarantee. In the meantime, users may want to consider alternatives, such as various Linux distributions, to keep their older hardware functional.

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Netflix is following through on its plan to phase out its cheapest ad-free tier for existing subscribers. From a report: As spotted in numerous posts on Reddit, Netflix is now asking some basic plan subscribers to choose a new plan to stay subscribed to Netflix. One Reddit user received a notification on their Netflix app, saying "Your last day to watch Netflix is July 13th. Choose a new plan to keep watching." Subscribers paying $11.99 / month for the basic plan will have to choose either the $6.99 ad-supported tier, the $15.49 ad-free tier, or the $22.99 ad-free 4K premium plan.

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Greece has introduced a six-day working week for some businesses in a bid to boost productivity and employment in the southern European country. From a report: The regulation, which came into force on July 1, bucks a global trend of companies exploring a shorter working week. Under the new legislation, which was passed as part of a broader set of labor laws last year, employees of private businesses that provide round-the-clock services will reportedly have the option of working an additional two hours per day or an extra eight-hour shift. The change means a traditional 40-hour workweek could be extended to 48 hours per week for some businesses. Food service and tourism workers are not included in the six-day working week initiative.

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Design startup Figma is temporarily disabling its "Make Design" AI feature that was said to be ripping off the designs of Apple's own Weather app. TechCrunch: The problem was first spotted by Andy Allen, the founder of NotBoring Software, which makes a suite of apps that includes a popular, skinnable Weather app and other utilities. He found by testing Figma's tool that it would repeatedly reproduce Apple's Weather app when used as a design aid. John Gruber, writing at DaringFireball: This is even more disgraceful than a human rip-off. Figma knows what they trained this thing on, and they know what it outputs. In the case of this utter, shameless, abject rip-off of Apple Weather, they're even copying Weather's semi-inscrutable (semi-scrutable?) daily temperature range bars. "AI" didn't do this. Figma did this. And they're handing this feature to designers who trust Figma and are the ones who are going to be on the hook when they present a design that, unbeknownst to them, is a blatant rip-off of some existing app.

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The Biden administration said Tuesday that it was providing $504 million in implementation grants for a dozen technology hubs in Ohio, Montana, Nevada and Florida, among other locations. From a report: The money would support the development of quantum computing, biomanufacturing, lithium batteries, computer chips, personal medicine and other technologies. The Democratic administration is trying to encourage more technological innovation across the country, instead of allowing it be concentrated in a few metro areas such as San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and New York City. "The reality is there are smart people, great entrepreneurs, and leading-edge research institutions all across the country," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a call previewing the announcement. "We're leaving so much potential on the table if we don't give them the resources to compete and win in the tech sectors that will define the 21st century global economy."

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China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has announced plans to develop standards for brain-computer interface technology, signaling the country's intent to advance in this emerging field. The ministry said it would assemble a committee of experts from various sectors to draft guidelines for brain information encoding and decoding, data communication, and visualization. Brain-computer interface technology, which enables direct communication between the brain and external devices, has gained prominence with ventures like Elon Musk's Neuralink in the United States. China's move suggests a shift from primarily academic research to more focused development, potentially rivaling Western competitors. Previous Chinese brain-computer interface efforts have been largely confined to university research. In March, state media reported a paralyzed patient regaining some mobility after receiving a brain implant developed by Tsinghua University.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The money transfer and fintech company Wise says some of its customers' personal data may have been stolen in the recent data breach at Evolve Bank and Trust. The news highlights that the fallout from the Evolve data breach on third-party companies -- and their customers and users -- is still unclear, and it's likely that it includes companies and startups that are yet unknown. In a statement published on its official website, Wise wrote that the company worked with Evolve from 2020 until 2023 "to provide USD account details." And given that Evolve was breached recently, "some Wise customers' personal information may have been involved." [...] So far, Affirm, EarnIn, Marqeta, Melio and Mercury -- all Evolve partners -- have acknowledged that they are investigating how the Evolve breach impacted their customers.

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AI firm Anthropic launched a funding program Monday to develop new benchmarks for evaluating AI models, including its chatbot Claude. The initiative will pay third-party organizations to create metrics for assessing advanced AI capabilities. Anthropic aims to "elevate the entire field of AI safety" with this investment, according to its blog. TechCrunch adds: As we've highlighted before, AI has a benchmarking problem. The most commonly cited benchmarks for AI today do a poor job of capturing how the average person actually uses the systems being tested. There are also questions as to whether some benchmarks, particularly those released before the dawn of modern generative AI, even measure what they purport to measure, given their age. The very-high-level, harder-than-it-sounds solution Anthropic is proposing is creating challenging benchmarks with a focus on AI security and societal implications via new tools, infrastructure and methods.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon built a $2 trillion company through years of aggressive spending on its retail and logistics businesses. Its future gains will likely be determined by the billions designated to fund its artificial-intelligence push. Amazon is planning to spend more than $100 billion over the next decade on data centers, an impressive level of investment even for a company known for its spending ways. The Seattle company is now devoting more investment money to its cloud computing and AI infrastructure than to its sprawling network of e-commerce warehouses. Amazon Web Services, the arm that manages Amazon's cloud business, has opened data centers for years, but executives said there is a surge in investment now to meet demand triggered by the excitement around AI. "We have to dive in. We have to figure it out," said John Felton, who took over as AWS's chief financial officer this year after spending most of his career in Amazon's retail fulfillment operations. The company's financial commitment reflects the importance and high costs of AI. Felton said building for AI today feels like building that massive delivery network in years past. "It's a little uncertain," he said. AWS is expanding in Virginia, Ohio and elsewhere.

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Tennis is betting on video games to lure young fans. Two titles are set to compete: TopSpin 2K25, out now, and Tiebreak, coming in August. TopSpin lets players match legends like Federer against newcomers like Alcaraz. Tiebreak, backed by pro tours, features Djokovic on its cover. The push comes as TV viewership among youth plummets. Only a third of 18-24 year-olds watch live matches, versus 75% of over-55s. Game makers claim playing increases the odds of buying tickets and hitting real courts. Football's EA Sports FC, with 150 million users, has shown gaming's pull. Tennis officials hope pixelated rallies will spark real-world passion.

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A new study suggests at least 10% of scientific abstracts in 2024 were processed using large language models, researchers from the University of Tubingen and Northwestern University report. Analyzing 14 million PubMed abstracts from 2010-2024, the team identified an unprecedented surge in certain "style words" following LLMs' widespread adoption in late 2022. Words like "delves" and "showcasing" saw a 25-fold and 9-fold increase respectively in 2024 abstracts compared to pre-LLM trends. Common terms such as "potential" and "findings" also spiked in usage. The researchers drew parallels to studies measuring COVID-19's impact through excess deaths, applying a similar methodology to detect "excess word usage" in scientific writing.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: When someone loses part of a leg, a prosthetic can make it easier to get around. But most prosthetics are static, cumbersome, and hard to move. A new neural interface connects a bionic limb to nerve endings in the thigh, allowing the limb to be controlled by the brain. The new device, which is described today in Nature Medicine, could help people with lower-leg amputations feel as if their prosthesis is part of them. "When you ask a patient 'What is your body?' They don't include the prosthesis," says MIT biophysicist Hugh Herr, one of the lead authors on the study. The work is personal for him: he lost both his lower legs in a climbing accident when he was 17. He says linking the brain to the prosthesis can make it feel more like part of someone's anatomy, which can have a positive emotional impact. Getting the neural interface hooked up to a prosthetic takes two steps. First, patients undergo surgery. Following a lower leg amputation, portions of shin and calf muscle still remain. The operation connects shin muscle, which contracts to make the ankle flex upward, to calf muscle, which counteracts this movement. The prosthetic can also be fitted at this point. Reattaching the remnants of these muscles can enable the prosthetic to move more dynamically. It can also reduce phantom limb pain, and patients are less likely to trip and fall. "The surgery stands on its own," says Amy Pietrafitta, a para-athlete who received it in 2018. "I feel like I have my leg back." But natural movements are still limited when the prosthetic isn't connected to the nervous system. In step two, surface electrodes measure nerve activity from the brain to the calf and shin muscles, indicating an intention to move the lower leg. A small computer in the bionic leg decodes those nerve signals and moves the leg accordingly, allowing the patient to move the limb more naturally. "If you have intact biological limbs, you can walk up and down steps, for example, and not even think about it. It's involuntary," says Herr. "That's the case with our patients, but their limb is made of titanium and silicone." The authors compared the mobility of seven patients using a neural interface with that of patients who had not received the surgery. Patients using the neural interface could walk 41% faster and climb sloped surfaces and steps. They could also dodge obstacles more nimbly and had better balance. And they described feeling that the prosthetic was truly a part of their body rather than just a tool that they used to get around.

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French antitrust regulators are preparing to charge Nvidia for allegedly anti-competitive practices, Reuters reported Monday, citing sources. From the report: The French so-called statement of objections or charge sheet would follow dawn raids in the graphics cards sector in September last year which sources said targeted Nvidia. The world's largest maker of chips used both for artificial intelligence and for computer graphics has seen demand for its chips jump following the release of the generative AI application ChatGPT, triggering regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic.

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The Supreme Court on Monday ordered lower courts to take another look at a pair of laws from Florida and Texas that imposed restrictions on how social media companies can moderate the content posted to their platforms. From a report: Justice Elena Kagan delivered the court's opinion, which tossed out lower court rulings and sent the two cases back for additional proceedings. The court said neither lower court conducted the proper analysis of the First Amendment challenges to the laws regulating major social media platforms. "[T]he question in such a case is whether a law's unconstitutional applications are substantial compared to its constitutional ones. To make that judgment, a court must determine a law's full set of applications, evaluate which are constitutional and which are not, and compare the one to the other," Kagan wrote. "Neither court performed that necessary inquiry."

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Apple's decision not to launch its own AI features in the EU is a "stunning declaration" of its anticompetitive behavior, European Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager said. From a report: About two weeks ago, Apple announced it will not launch its homegrown AI features in the EU, saying that interoperability required by the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) could hurt user privacy and security. A few days later, the Commission accused Apple's App Store of DMA breaches. Apple's move to roll back its AI plans in Europe is the most "stunning, open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already," Vestager, the Commission's vice president for a Europe fit for the digital age and Commissioner for Competition, told a Forum Europa event. The "short version of the DMA [Digital Markets Act]" is that to operate in Europe, companies have to be open for competition, said Vestager. The DMA foresees fines of up to 10% of annual revenue, which in Apple's case could be over $32.2 billion, based on its previous financial performance. For repeated infringements, that percentage could double.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Starting with those builds, Windows 11 will show a Game Pass recommendation / ad within the Settings app. The advertisement will appear on both Windows 11 Home and Windows 11 Pro if you actively play games on your PC. Microsoft lists this feature first under the "Highlights" section of its blog post about the update. Some users aren't pleased. "Microsoft has gone too far," news blog TechRadar wrote.

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T-Mobile is facing customer outrage after announcing a $5-per-line price increase on plans that were marketed with a "lifetime" price guarantee. The move has sparked over 1,600 complaints to the Federal Communications Commission, ArsTechnica reports Kathleen Odean, 70, of Rhode Island, is among the affected customers. "The promise was absolutely clear," she told Ars. "It's right there in writing: 'T-Mobile will never change the price you pay for your T-Mobile One plan.'" T-Mobile claims an FAQ page allows for price changes, but customers argue this caveat was never prominently disclosed. The company's 2017 press release touted the guarantee without mentioning exceptions.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Bill Gates has defended the rapid rise in energy use caused by AI systems, arguing the technology would ultimately offset its heavy consumption of electricity. Speaking in London, Gates urged environmentalists and governments to "not go overboard" on concerns about the huge amounts of power required to run new generative AI systems, as Big Tech companies such as Microsoft race to invest tens of billions of dollars in vast new data centres. Data centres will drive a rise in global electricity usage of between 2-6 per cent, the billionaire said. "The question is, will AI accelerate a more than 6 per cent reduction? And the answer is: certainly," said Gates, the Microsoft co-founder who has been a prolific investor in companies developing sustainable energy and carbon- reduction technologies. In May, Microsoft admitted that its greenhouse gas emissions had risen by almost a third since 2020, in large part due to the construction of data centres. Gates, who left Microsoft's board in 2020 but remains an adviser to chief executive Satya Nadella, said tech companies would pay a "green premium" -- or higher price -- for clean energy as they seek new sources of power, which was helping to drive its development and deployment. "The tech companies are the people willing to pay a premium and to help bootstrap green energy capacity," he said at the Breakthrough Energy Summit in London on Thursday.

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Google is severing its trust in Entrust after what it describes as a protracted period of failures around compliance and general improvements. From a report: Entrust is one of the many certificate authorities (CA) used by Chrome to verify that the websites end users visit are trustworthy. From November 1 in Chrome 127, which recently entered beta, TLS server authentication certificates validating to Entrust or AffirmTrust roots won't be trusted by default. Google pointed to a series of incident reports over the past few years concerning Entrust, saying they "highlighted a pattern of concerning behaviors" that have ultimately seen the security company fall down in Google's estimations. The incidents have "eroded confidence in [Entrust's] competence, reliability, and integrity as a publicly trusted CA owner," Google stated in a blog. The move follows a May publication by Mozilla, which compiled a sprawling list of Entrust's certificate issues between March and May this year. Entrust -- after an initial PR disaster -- acknowledged its procedural failures and said it was treating the feedback as a learning opportunity.

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For the first two decades of the social internet, lurkers ruled. Among Gen Z, they're in the minority, according to survey data from YouTube. From a report: Tech industry insiders used to cite a rule of thumb stating that only one in ten of an online community's users generally post new content, with the masses logging on only to consume images, video or other updates. Now younger generations are flipping that divide, a survey by the video platform said. YouTube found that 65 percent of Gen Z, which it defined as people between the ages of 14 and 24, describe themselves as video content creators -- making lurkers a minority. The finding came from responses from 350 members of Gen Z in the U.S., out of a wider survey that asked thousands of people about how they spend time online, including whether they consider themselves video creators. YouTube did the survey in partnership with research firm SmithGeiger, as part of its annual report on trends on the platform. YouTube's report says that after watching videos online, many members of Gen Z respond with videos of their own, uploading their own commentary, reaction videos, deep dives into content posted by others and more. This kind of interaction often develops in response to videos on pop culture topics such as "RuPaul's Drag Race" or the Fallout video game series. Fan-created content can win more watch time than the original source material, the report says.

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The Supreme Court on Friday overturned a long-standing legal doctrine in the US, making a transformative ruling that could hamper federal agencies' ability to regulate all kinds of industry. The Verge adds: Six Republican-appointed justices voted to overturn the doctrine, called Chevron deference, a decision that could affect everything from pollution limits to consumer protections in the US. Chevron deference allows courts to defer to federal agencies when there are disputes over how to interpret ambiguous language in legislation passed by Congress. That's supposed to lead to more informed decisions by leaning on expertise within those agencies. By overturning the Chevron doctrine, the conservative-dominated SCOTUS decided that judges ought to make the call instead of agency experts.

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