"Only the United States, China and Germany have larger economies than California," reports CNN. In fact, they add that California "outpaced all three countries with growth of 6% last year," according to the California governor's office (which cites new data from the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis): In 2024, ...

A New York Times technology columnist has a question. "Is there any threshold at which an A.I. would start to deserve, if not human-level rights, at least the same moral consideration we give to animals?" [W]hen I heard that researchers at Anthropic, the AI company that made the Claude chatbot, were starting to study "model welfare" — the idea that AI ...

"A group of researchers says it has identified a hidden reason we use Google for nearly all web searches," reports the Washington Post. "We've never given other options a real shot." Their research experiment suggests that Google is overwhelmingly popular partly because we believe it's the best, whether that's true or not. It's like a preference for your ...

It's a pickup truck "that can change into whatever you need it to be — even an SUV," according to the manufacturer's web site. Selling in America for just $20,000 (after federal incentives), the new electric truck is "affordable, deeply customizable, and very analog," says TechCrunch. "It has manual windows and it doesn't come with a main infotainment ...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: The XPrize Foundation today announced the winners of its four-year, $100 million XPrize competition in carbon removal. The contest is one of dozens hosted by the foundation in its 20-year effort to encourage technological development. Contestants in the carbon removal XPrize had to demonstrate ways to ...

Initial claims that life-associated gases were detected on exoplanet K2-18b are being challenged, with independent reanalysis by Jake Taylor suggesting the data is too noisy to support such conclusions and that stronger, model-independent evidence is needed. NPR reports: Rather than seeing a bump or a wiggle that indicated a signal, "the data is consistent ...

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: China will let scientists from six countries, including the U.S., examine the rocks it collected from the Moon -- a scientific collaboration that comes as the two countries remain locked in a bitter trade war. Two NASA-funded U.S. institutions have been granted access to the lunar samples ...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Multiple studies and investigations have found that about half of American households watch TV and movies with subtitles on, but only a relatively small portion of those include someone with a hearing disability. That's because of the trouble many people have understanding dialogue in modern viewing ...

TV producer Alex Berger criticized Apple TV+ as "the worst marketer in the universe" for failing to promote his French-language show La Maison, despite its success in Europe. Berger said he initially partnered with Apple out of hope, but ultimately felt they undermined their own content by not supporting it properly. 9to5Mac reports: Rafa Sales Ross at ...

Some developers are "crying foul" after Microsoft's C/C++ extension for Visual Studio Code stopped working with VS Code derivatives like VS Codium and Cursor, reports The Register. The move has prompted Cursor to transition to open-source alternatives, while some developers are calling for a regulatory investigation into Microsoft's alleged anti-competitive ...

YKK, the world's largest zipper maker, has unveiled a prototype self-propelled zipper that uses a motorized worm gear to zip itself closed at the push of a button. It currently relies on a wired remote and external power, and can zip spans up to 16 feet in under a minute. The Verge reports: Although some recent zipper innovations, such as Under Armour's ...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast executives apparently realized something that customers have known and complained about for years: The Internet provider's prices aren't transparent enough and rise too frequently. This might not have mattered much to cable executives as long as the total number of subscribers met their targets. ...

Google announced it will end software updates and remote control support for the first- and second-generation Nest Learning Thermostats (plus the 2014 European model) starting October 25th. "You will no longer be able to control them remotely from your phone or with Google Assistant, but can still adjust the temperature and modify schedules directly on the ...

DoorDash has sent a proposal to buy the British meal delivery company Deliveroo for $3.6 billion. "The current offer marks the first formal approach since the last report in the summer," notes Reuters. From the report: The deal is expected to face no regulatory hurdles, as it provides DoorDash access to 10 new markets where it currently has no presence, ...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Government censorship has found its way to Bluesky, but there's currently a loophole thanks to how the social network is structured. Earlier this month, Bluesky restricted access to 72 accounts in Turkey at the request of Turkish governmental authorities, according to a recent report by the Freedom of ...

Microsoft has finally released Windows Recall to the general public, nearly a year after first announcing the controversial feature. Available exclusively on Copilot+ PCs, Recall continuously captures screenshots of user activity, storing them in a searchable database with extracted text. The feature's original launch was derailed by significant security ...

Families earning $300,000 annually -- placing them among America's highest earners -- are increasingly finding themselves unable to afford elite college tuition without taking on substantial debt. Bloomberg's analysis of financial aid data from 50 selective colleges reveals households earning between $100,000 and $300,000 occupy a precarious middle ground: ...

Intel is grappling with an unexpected market shift as customers eschew its new AI-focused processors for cheaper previous-generation chips. The company revealed during its recent earnings call that demand for older Raptor Lake processors has surged while its newer, more expensive Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake AI PC chips struggle to gain traction. This ...

The head of the Swiss National Bank said on Friday that cryptocurrencies failed to meet the institution's currency reserve standards, rebuffing calls by crypto advocates that it hold bitcoin as a hedge against growing global economic risks. From a report: Cryptocurrency campaigners are ramping up pressure on the SNB to buy bitcoin, arguing that the economic ...

An anonymous reader shares a Nature story: The United States is known for the deep polarization between its two major political parties -- the right-wing Republicans and left-wing Democrats. Now an analysis of hundreds of thousands of policy documents reveals striking differences in partisan policymakers' use of the scientific literature, with ...

Microsoft will remove its Maps app from the Microsoft Store in July 2025, delivering an "update" that renders the application completely nonfunctional. Following the cutoff, users won't be able to reinstall the app even if previously downloaded, according to a Microsoft support document. While the app will retain personal data like saved navigation routes ...

An anonymous reader shares a report: At Microsoft's annual executive huddle last month, the company's chief financial officer, Amy Hood, put up a slide that charted the number of users for its Copilot consumer AI tool over the past year. It was essentially a flat line, showing around 20 million weekly users. On the same slide was another line showing ...

The iconic "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" anti-piracy campaign, which dramatically equated digital piracy with physical theft, appears to have used a pirated font in its own materials. New evidence indicates the campaign utilized "XBAND Rough," a free clone of the commercial "FF Confidential" font, which requires a license. TorrentFreak independently ...

Pete Koomen, a Y Combinator partner, argues that current AI applications often fail by unnecessarily constraining their underlying models, much like early automobiles that mimicked horse-drawn carriages rather than reimagining transportation. In his detailed critique, Koomen uses Gmail's AI email draft feature as a prime example. The tool generates formal, ...

The Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. have withdrawn several statements regarding banks' crypto-related activities in an effort to support innovation and clarify current policies. From a report: Two joint statements from 2023 on liquidity and other risks regarding banks' crypto-related activities were pulled on Thursday, the FDIC ...