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America Prepares New AI Chip Restrictions to Close China’s Backdoor Access
The U.S. wants to limit China’s access to advanced AI chips, reports the Wall Street Journal, with new rules to restrict sales in parts of the world.
“The rules are aimed at China, but they threaten to create conflict between the U.S. and nations that may not want their purchases of chips micromanaged from Washington.
The … ⌘ Read more
America’s FCC Opens 6-GHz Band to Unlicensed Very-Low-Power Devices
America’s telecom-regulating Federal Communications Commission “has opened up the entire 6 GHz frequency band to very low-power devices,” reports the Register, “alongside other unlicensed applications such as Wi-Fi kits.”
The FCC said it has adopted extra rules to allow very low-power device operation across the entire 1,200 MHz of the 6 GH … ⌘ Read more
Chinese Electric Cars are Already Surging in Popularity in Mexico, Europe, Asia, and Africa
“The Chinese government has long subsidized carmakers with the goal of becoming a major auto exporter,” notes the New York Times. But this week they reported on dozens of dealerships around Mexico that are now selling China-made electric vehicles, saying it could be “a potentially grave threa … ⌘ Read more
AirPods To Be Made In India For the First Time Next Year
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple will begin making AirPods in India for the first time early next year, reports Bloomberg. Foxconn will make the wireless earphones at a factory near Hyderabad in Telangana state, beginning around Q1 2025. The factory has reportedly been making AirPods on a trial basis, with manufacturing set to ramp up qu … ⌘ Read more
NASA Thinks It Knows Why Ingenuity Crashed On Mars
NASA believes Ingenuity’s navigation system was responsible for its crash on the surface of Mars. Engineers determined that the helicopter’s navigation system struggled to track features over smooth terrain, leading to a hard landing and structural failure. Universe Today reports: Now, almost a year after the incident, a team of engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labor … ⌘ Read more
Linux Predictions For 2025
BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: As we close out 2024, we Linux enthusiasts are once again looking ahead to what the future holds. While Linux has long been the unsung hero of technology, powering servers, supercomputers, and the cloud, it’s also a dominant force in the consumer space, even if many don’t realize it. With Android leading the way as the most widely used Linux-based operating system, 2025 is sha … ⌘ Read more
Police Report OpenAI Whistleblower Committed Suicide in November
An anonymous reader shared this report from the SF Standard:
San Francisco police found Open AI whistleblower Suchir Balaji, 26, dead in his Lower Haight apartment November 26, SiliconValley.com reported on Friday. Police said there is “no evidence of foul play. “The manner of death has been determined to be suicide,” David Serrano Sewell, direc … ⌘ Read more
25 Years Ago Today: Slashdot Parodied by Suck.com
25 years ago today, the late, great Suck.com played a prank on Slashdot. Their daily column of pop-culture criticism was replaced by… Suckdot, a parody site satirically filed with Slashdot-style headlines like “Linux Possibly Defamed Somewhere.”
RabidZelot was one of a bunch to report: “In Richmond, California, this afternoon, this dude said something bad about Linux at the … ⌘ Read more
Yearlong Supply-Chain Attack Targeting Security Pros Steals 390,000 Credentials
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A sophisticated and ongoing supply-chain attack operating for the past year has been stealing sensitive login credentials from both malicious and benevolent security personnel by infecting them with Trojanized versions of open source software from GitHub and NPM, re … ⌘ Read more
Meta Asks the US Government To Block OpenAI’s Switch To a For-Profit
Meta is asking California Attorney General Rob Bonta to block OpenAI’s planned transition from a non-profit to for-profit entity. From a report: In a letter sent to Bonta’s office this week, Meta says that OpenAI “should not be allowed to flout the law by taking and reappropriating assets it built as a charity and using them for potentiall … ⌘ Read more
Google Says Its New Quantum Chip Indicates That Multiple Universes Exist
Tucked away in a blog post about Google’s quantum computing chip, Willow, Google Quantum AI founder Hartmut Neven wrote that the chip was so “mind-boggling” fast that it seemed to borrow computational power from other universes. According to Neven, the chip’s performance suggests the existence of parallel universes, writing, “We li … ⌘ Read more
Intel Arc B580 Battlemage Tested: $250 Graphics Cards Are Worthy Once Again
MojoKid writes: Today’s release and review launch of the new Intel Arc B580 marks a second-gen effort from the company, with a fully refreshed Intel Xe2 graphics architecture, aka Battlemage, that promises big gains in performance and efficiency. Comparing Arc B580 to its Arc Alchemist ancestors, you can see that it’s somewhat … ⌘ Read more
Postal Service’s Plan To Electrify Mail Trucks Falling Far Short of Its Goal
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The United States Postal Service unveiled a plan to buy a fleet of all-electric mail trucks for its mail carriers back in 2022, of which 3,000 were supposed to be delivered by now. Unfortunately, those plans aren’t even close to fruition. The Washington Post reported that d … ⌘ Read more
Nvidia Revives LAN Party After 13 Years To Celebrate RTX 50-Series GPU Launch
Nvidia is hosting its first LAN party in over a decade to celebrate the debut of the RTX 50 series. It’ll occur at CES 2025 in January and feature a 50-hour gaming marathon with tournaments, prizes, and global remote sessions. Tom’s Hardware reports: The LAN party (dubbed GeForce LAN 50) will start on January 4 at 4:30 … ⌘ Read more
Google’s NotebookLM AI Podcast Hosts Can Now Talk To You, Too
Google’s NotebookLM and its podcast-like Audio Overviews are being updated with a new feature that allows listeners to interact with the AI “hosts.” Google describes how this feature works in a blog post. The Verge reports: In addition to the interactive Audio Overviews, Google is introducing a new interface for NotebookLM that organizes things into thre … ⌘ Read more
Tumblr Adds Reddit-Like ‘Communities’
Tumblr is introducing a new Community feature similar to subreddits: in-app groups organized by topic or interest. “Topics include things like film photography, marine biology, LGBTQ, and video games, and each topic has its own landing page where posts shared with the community populate,” reports The Verge. From the report: Many of the features mirror Reddit, like a count of how many members are onlin … ⌘ Read more
Russian Watchdog Blocks Viber Messaging App
An anonymous reader writes: Russia’s communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said on Friday it had blocked access to Rakuten-owned Viber messaging app, the latest in a line of social media services to be banned by Russian authorities. In a statement, Roskomnadzor said the block was related to a violation of rules concerning the prevention of terrorism, extremism, and drug dealing.
[ to declare a state of emergency. “We continue to urge our governor to press the federal government to put more … ⌘ Read more
UnitedHealthcare’s Optum Left an AI Chatbot, Used By Employees To Ask Questions About Claims, Exposed To the Internet
Healthcare giant Optum has restricted access to an internal AI chatbot used by employees after a security researcher found it was publicly accessible online, and anyone could access it using only a web browser. TechCrunch: The chatbot, which Tech … ⌘ Read more
Silicon Valley’s Perks Culture is Largely Dead
Major tech companies are scaling back workplace perks amid industry-wide layoffs and increased focus on AI development. Google, Meta, and Salesforce have reduced or eliminated benefits ranging from massage services to retreat centers, marking a shift from the lavish “perks culture” that defined Silicon Valley for two decades.
Netflix has informally shortened its parental leave, while Me … ⌘ Read more
HDMI 2.2 Specs With Increased Bandwidth To Be Announced at CES 2025
HDMI Forum will announce new specifications with increased bandwidth capabilities at CES 2025, ahead of anticipated graphics card launches from AMD and NVIDIA. The announcement, scheduled for January 6, is expected to introduce HDMI 2.2 standard alongside a new cable supporting higher resolutions and refresh rates.
Current HDMI 2.1 specificat … ⌘ Read more
US Lawmakers Tell Apple, Google To Be Ready To Remove TikTok From App Stores on January 19
Leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives committee on China told Apple and Google’s parent Alphabet to prepare to remove TikTok from U.S. app stores on January 19, following a federal appeals court decision upholding legislation requiring Chinese-based ByteDance to divest the platform or face … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Quietly Axes Skype Credit and Phone Number Sales To Push Subscriptions
Bad news for anyone out there who still uses Skype: The Microsoft-owned phone and messaging platform has quietly stopped letting users top-up accounts with credit and buy Skype phone numbers. From a report: Instead, Skype is locking into SaaS mode: It’s pushing users to take monthly subscriptions for regional and global … ⌘ Read more
Klarna Stopped All Hiring a Year Ago To Replace Workers With AI
Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said his company was able to stop hiring a year ago as it invested in AI that’s doing the work of hundreds of staff across the firm. From a report: The buy now, pay later finance provider has seen headcount fall 22% to 3,500 during that time, mostly due to attrition, Siemiatkowski said in an interview with Bloomberg Te … ⌘ Read more