OpenAI in Talks With Amazon About Investment That Could Exceed $10 Billion
OpenAI is in discussions with Amazon about a potential investment and an agreement to use its AI chips, CNBC confirmed on Tuesday. From the report: The details are fluid and still subject to change but the investment could exceed $10 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the talks a … ⌘ Read more

Uber and DoorDash Try To Halt NYC Law That Encourages Tipping
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Two of the largest food-delivery app companies have made a last-ditch effort to overturn tipping laws in New York City that go into effect in January just as its next mayor, who has been highly critical of the companies and the app industry, takes office. Tips to delivery workers have plummet … ⌘ Read more

Senators Count the Shady Ways Data Centers Pass Energy Costs On To Americans
U.S. senators are probing whether Big Tech data centers are driving up local electricity bills by socializing grid upgrade costs onto residents. Some of the tactics they’re using include NDAs, shell companies, and lobbying. Ars Technica reports: In letters (PDF) to seven AI firms, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ch … ⌘ Read more

The Arctic Is in Dire Straits, 20 Years of Reporting Show
A new Arctic Report Card recap shows how the Arctic has transformed in just 20 years, warming about twice as fast as the global average and losing most of its oldest sea ice. It’s also triggering cascading impacts from “Atlantification” to permafrost-driven “rusting rivers” and more destructive storms. Scientific American reports: The first Arctic Report Card w … ⌘ Read more

Breach At South Korea’s Equivalent of Amazon Exposed Data of Almost Every Adult
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: The alleged perpetrator had improper access to virtually every South Korean adult’s personal information: names, phone numbers and even the keycode to enter residential buildings. It was one of the biggest data breaches of recent years and it has sent the … ⌘ Read more

EU Moves To Ease 2035 Ban On Internal Combustion Cars
The EU is moving to soften its planned 2035 ban on internal combustion cars by allowing a small share of low-emission engines. “The less stringent limit would leave room for automakers to continue selling some plug-in hybrids, which have both electric and internal combustion engines and can use the combustion engine to recharge the battery without the need to find a ch … ⌘ Read more

Meta Tolerates Rampant Ad Fraud From China To Safeguard Billions In Revenue
A Reuters investigation found that Meta knowingly tolerated large volumes of scam and illegal ads from China worth billions in revenue. Reuters reports: Though China’s authoritarian government bans use of Meta social media by its citizens, Beijing lets Chinese companies advertise to foreign consumers on the globe-spanning pl … ⌘ Read more

Dual-PCB Linux Computer With 843 Components Designed By AI Boots On First Attempt
Quilter says its AI designed a complex Linux single-board computer in just one week, booting Debian on first power-up. “Holy crap, it’s working,” exclaimed one of the engineers. Tom’s Hardware reports: LA-based startup Quilter has outlined Project Speedrun, which marks a milestone in computer design by AI. The … ⌘ Read more

Mark Carney Criticised For Using British Spellings In Canadian Documents
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Mark Carney says that amid a fundamental shift to the nature of globalization, his government will catalyze the growth in both the public and private sector. But Canadian linguists say that’s a problem. Language experts have called out the Canadian prime minister’s growing “ut … ⌘ Read more

Intel Quietly Discontinues Its Open-Source User-Space Gaudi Driver Code
Intel has quietly stopped maintaining its open-source user-space driver stack for Gaudi accelerators. Phoronix reports: It turns out earlier this year Intel archived the SynapseAI Core open-source code and is no longer maintained by Intel. The open-source Synapse AI Core GitHub repository was archived in February and README updated … ⌘ Read more

Reporter Suggests Half-Life 3 Will Be a Steam Machine Launch Title
A veteran games journalist claims Half-Life 3 is real and still planned as a Spring 2026 launch title tied to Valve’s next Steam Machine push. Ars Technica reports: On the contrary, veteran journalist Mike Straw insisted on a recent Insider Gaming podcast that “everybody I’ve talked to are still adamant [Half-Life 3] is a game that will be … ⌘ Read more

Volkswagen To End Production At German Plant, a First In Company History
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The last vehicle will roll off the assembly line at Volkswagen’s plant in Dresden, Germany, on Tuesday, marking the first time in the automaker’s 88-year history that it has closed a plant in its home country. Volkswagen warned of potential production cuts last year, as i … ⌘ Read more

Utah Leaders Hinder Efforts To Develop Solar Energy Supply
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed two bills this year that ended solar development tax credits and imposed a new tax on solar generation despite solar power accounting for two-thirds of the new projects waiting to connect to the state’s power grid. The legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature has already had an impact.

Since May, when the … ⌘ Read more

MI6 Chief: We’ll Be as Fluent in Python As We Are in Russian
The new chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service told officers this week that they must become as fluent in programming languages like Python as they are in foreign languages like Russian as the spy agency adapts to what she described as a space between peace and war. Blaise Metreweli, MI6’s first female chief and previously the service’s direc … ⌘ Read more

Racks of AI Chips Are Too Damn Heavy
The weight of AI server racks has reached a point where legacy data centers cannot accommodate them even with significant retrofitting efforts, The Verge reports. Chris Brown, chief technical officer at Uptime Institute, said most retrofitting attempts would require “bulldozing the building and starting over from scratch.”

AI racks are projected to reach 5,000 pounds compared to the 400 to 600 pounds … ⌘ Read more

US Threatens Penalties Against European Tech Firms Amid Regulatory Fight
U.S. officials excoriated the European Union for discriminating against American technology companies and threatened to penalize European tech companies in return, in a social media post on Tuesday. From a report: The pronouncement appeared to signal a rockier period for U.S.-E.U. trade relations, as the two governments work to fi … ⌘ Read more

Texas Sues TV Makers For Taking Screenshots of What People Watch
mprindle writes: The Texas Attorney General sued five major television manufacturers, accusing them of illegally collecting their users’ data by secretly recording what they watch using Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology.

The lawsuits target Sony, Samsung, LG, and China-based companies Hisense and TCL Technology Group Corporation. Att … ⌘ Read more

McKinsey Plots Thousands of Job Cuts in Slowdown for Consulting Industry
McKinsey, the consulting giant that has spent a century advising companies on how to cut costs and restructure operations, is now turning that advice inward as it plans to eliminate thousands of jobs across its non-client-facing departments over the next 18 to 24 months.

The firm’s leadership has discussed a roughly 10% headcount redu … ⌘ Read more

High-Speed Traders Are Feuding Over a Way To Save 3.2 Billionths of a Second
A millisecond used to be a big deal for the world’s quickest traders. A dispute over huge trading profits at one of the world’s largest futures exchanges shows they now think a million times faster [non-paywalled source]. From a report: The controversy is about an arcane technical maneuver in which high-speed traders bombar … ⌘ Read more

Tech Giants Can’t Agree On What To Call Their AI-Powered Glasses
The glasses-shaped face computers that tech companies have been building for years now face an identity crisis, and their makers can’t agree on what to call them. Meta has asked a journalist to refer to its Ray-Ban glasses as “AI glasses” to distinguish them from Google Glass. Google, whose Project Aura is a collaboration with Xreal, calls the pro … ⌘ Read more

The Entry-Level Hiring Process Is Breaking Down
The traditional signals that employers used to evaluate entry-level job candidates – college GPAs, cover letters, and interview performance – have lost much of their value as grade inflation and widespread AI use render these metrics nearly meaningless, writes The Atlantic.

The recent-graduate unemployment rate now sits slightly higher than the overall workforce’s, a reversal … ⌘ Read more

Mozilla’s New CEO Bets Firefox’s Future on AI
Mozilla has named Anthony Enzor-DeMeo as its new chief executive, promoting the executive who has spent the past year leading the Firefox browser team and who now plans to make AI central to the company’s future.

Enzor-DeMeo announced on Tuesday that an “AI Mode” is coming to Firefox next year. The feature will let users choose from multiple AI models rather than being locked into a s … ⌘ Read more

Google’s Real Estate Listings ‘Experiment’ Sends Zillow Shares Down More Than 8%
Google’s data partner HouseCanary has begun displaying home listings directly in search results in select markets, sending Zillow’s shares tumbling more than 8% yesterday as investors weighed whether the search giant might eventually cut into the portal business that Zillow dominates.

The experiment places property de … ⌘ Read more

SoundCloud Confirms Breach After Member Data Stolen, VPN Access Disrupted
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Audio streaming platform SoundCloud has confirmed that outages and VPN connection issues over the past few days were caused by a security breach in which threat actors stole a database containing user information. The disclosure follows widespread reports over the past four … ⌘ Read more

PayPal Applies To Become a Bank As US Loosens Regulatory Reins
PayPal has applied to become a US bank by forming a Utah-chartered industrial loan company, signaling a push to deepen its financial services “as companies rush to capitalize on a friendly regulatory environment under the Trump administration,” reports Reuters. From the report: If approved, the move will help PayPal to strengthen its lending offering … ⌘ Read more

Glaciers To Reach Peak Rate of Extinction In the Alps In Eight Years
A new study warns that glaciers in the European Alps will hit their peak extinction rate within eight years, with global glacier loss accelerating toward thousands per year unless emissions are rapidly cut. “Glaciers in the western US and Canada are forecast to reach their peak year of loss less than a decade later, with more than 800 dis … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Will Finally Kill Obsolete Cipher That Has Wrecked Decades of Havoc
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft is killing off an obsolete and vulnerable encryption cipher that Windows has supported by default for 26 years following more than a decade of devastating hacks that exploited it and recently faced blistering criticism from a prominent US senator. When the so … ⌘ Read more

Lidar-Maker Luminar Files For Bankruptcy
Once a star of the self-driving hype cycle, lidar maker Luminar has filed for bankruptcy amid legal turmoil, layoffs, and a cooling autonomous-vehicle market. It plans to sell off its assets before shutting down entirely. The Verge reports: As part of its bankruptcy, Luminar is seeking permission to sell both its lidar and semiconductor businesses, the latter of which it has already agreed to … ⌘ Read more

Google Search Homepage Adds a ‘Plus’ Menu
After introducing an AI Mode shortcut earlier this year, Google has now added a new “plus” menu to its Search homepage, highlighting options for image and file uploads. 9to5Google reports: On google.com, the Search bar now has a plus icon at the far left that replaces the magnifying glass. Clicking lets you “Upload image” or “Upload file.” It very much matches the AI Mode experience. Those t … ⌘ Read more

China, Iran Are Having a Field Day With React2Shell, Google Warns
A critical React vulnerability (CVE-2025-55182) is being actively exploited at scale by Chinese, Iranian, North Korean, and criminal groups to gain remote code execution, deploy backdoors, and mine crypto. The Register reports: React maintainers disclosed the critical bug on December 3, and exploitation began almost immediately. According to Amazon … ⌘ Read more

JPMorgan Steps Further Into Crypto With Tokenized Money Fund
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: JPMorgan Chase is joining the list of traditional financial firms seeking to bring blockchain technology to an investing staple: the money-market fund. The banking giant’s $4 trillion asset-management arm is rolling out its first tokenized money-market fund on the Ethereum blockchain. JPMo … ⌘ Read more

Merriam-Webster’s 2025 Word of the Year Is ‘Slop’
Merriam-Webster crowned “slop” its 2025 Word of the Year, reflecting growing public awareness and and fatigue around low-quality, AI-generated content flooding the internet. “It’s such an illustrative word,” said Greg Barlow, Merriam-Webster’s president. “It’s part of a transformative technology, AI, and it’s something that people have found fascinating, annoying and a little bi … ⌘ Read more

Ford Ends F-150 Lightning Production, Starts Battery Storage Business
Ford has effectively pulled the plug on the all-electric F-150 Lightning, pivoting away from full-size BEV pickups toward hybrids, range-extended EVs (EREVs), and even data-center battery storage. Ars Technica reports: Ford’s announcements today can’t be said to have come out of the blue. Rumors of the F-150’s demise have been circul … ⌘ Read more

Russian Ban On Roblox Gaming Platform Sparks Rare Protest
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Several dozen people protested on Sunday in the Siberian city of Tomsk against Russia’s ban on U.S. children’s gaming platform Roblox, a rare show of public dissent as popular irritation over the ban gains some momentum. In wartime Russia, censorship is extensive: Moscow blocks or restricts social media platform … ⌘ Read more

Verizon Refused To Unlock Man’s iPhone, So He Sued the Carrier and Won
A Kansas man who sued Verizon in small claims court after the carrier refused to unlock his iPhone has won his case, scoring a small but meaningful victory against a company that retroactively applied a policy change to deny his unlock request.

Patrick Roach bought a discounted iPhone 16e from Verizon’s Straight Talk brand in February 2 … ⌘ Read more

Why Floods Threaten One of the Driest Places in the World
One of the most water-scarce regions on Earth is now experiencing a dramatic atmospheric shift that’s pushing moisture onto Oman’s northern coast at rates more than 1.5 times the global average, according to a Washington Post investigation of global atmospheric data [non-paywalled source]. The change has turned extreme rainfall into a recurrent source of cat … ⌘ Read more

Cloudflare Reveals How Bots and Governments Reshaped the Internet in 2025
Cloudflare’s sixth annual Year in Review report describes an internet increasingly shaped by two forces: automated traffic and government intervention, as global connectivity grew 19% year over year in 2025.

Google’s web crawler now dominates automated traffic, dwarfing other AI and indexing bots to become the single largest so … ⌘ Read more

Google To Retire ‘Dark Web Report’ Tool That Scanned for Leaked User Data
Google has decided to retire its free dark web monitoring tool, saying it wasn’t as helpful as the company hoped. From a report: In a support page, Google announced the discontinuation of the “dark web report” tool, two years after offering it as a free perk to Gmail users before expanding it more broadly. The feature worked by sca … ⌘ Read more

US Tech Force Aims To Recruit 1,000 Technologists
The Trump administration announced Monday the United States Tech Force, a new program to recruit around 1,000 technologists for two-year government stints starting as soon as March – less than a year after dismantling several federal technology teams and driving thousands of tech workers out of their jobs.

The program will primarily recruit early-career software engineers an … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Thought Parkinson’s Was in Our Genes. It Might Be in the Water
For decades, Parkinson’s disease research has overwhelmingly focused on genetics – more than half of all research dollars in the past two decades flowed toward genomic studies – but a growing body of evidence now points to something far more mundane as a primary culprit: contaminated drinking water.

A landmark study by epide … ⌘ Read more

How Did the CIA Lose a Nuclear Device?
Sixty years after a team of American and Indian climbers abandoned a plutonium-powered generator on the slopes of Nanda Devi, one of the world’s most forbidding Himalayan peaks, the U.S. government still refuses to acknowledge that the mission ever happened. The device, a SNAP-19C portable generator containing plutonium isotopes including Pu-239 – the same material used in the Nagasaki bomb – was … ⌘ Read more

Electricity Is Now Holding Back Growth Across the Global Economy
Grid constraints that were once a hallmark of developing economies are now plaguing the world’s richest nations, and new research from Bloomberg Economics finds that rising electricity system stress is directly hurting investment. The analysis examined all G20 countries and found that a one-standard-deviation increase in grid stress relative … ⌘ Read more

LG’s Software Update Forces Microsoft Copilot Onto Smart TVs
LG smart TV owners discovered over the weekend that a recent webOS software update had quietly installed Microsoft Copilot on their devices, and the app cannot be uninstalled. Affected users report the feature appears automatically after installing the latest webOS update on certain models, sitting alongside streaming apps like Netflix and YouTub … ⌘ Read more

Security Researcher Found Critical Kindle Vulnerabilities That Allowed Hijacking Amazon Accounts
The Black Hat Europe hacker conference in London included a session titled “Don’t Judge an Audiobook by Its Cover” about a two critical (and now fixed) flaws in Amazon’s Kindle. The Times reports both flaws were discovered by engineering analyst Valentino Ricotta (from the cybersecurit … ⌘ Read more

Are Warnings of Superintelligence ‘Inevitability’ Masking a Grab for Power?
Superintelligence has become “a quasi-political forecast” with “very little to do with any scientific consensus, emerging instead from particular corridors of power.” That’s the warning from James O’Sullivan, a lecturer in digital humanities from University College Cork. In a refreshing 5,600-word essay in Noema magazine, he notes t … ⌘ Read more

SpaceX Alleges a Chinese-Deployed Satellite Risked Colliding with Starlink
“A SpaceX executive says a satellite deployed from a Chinese rocket risked colliding with a Starlink satellite,” reports PC Magazine:

On Friday, company VP for Starlink engineering, Michael Nicolls, tweeted about the incident and blamed a lack of coordination from the Chinese launch provider CAS Space. “When satellite opera … ⌘ Read more

Roomba Maker ‘iRobot’ Files for Bankruptcy After 35 Years
Roomba manufacturer iRobot filed for bankruptcy today, reports Bloomberg.

After 35 years, iRobot reached a “restructuring support agrement that will hand control of the consumer robot maker to Shenzhen PICEA Robotics Co, its main supplier and lender, and Santrum Hong Kong Compny.”

Under the restructuring, vacuum cleaner maker Shenzhen PICEA will receive th … ⌘ Read more

Like Australia, Denmark Plans to Severely Restrict Social Media Use for Teenagers
“As Australia began enforcing a world-first social media ban for children under 16 years old this week, Denmark is planning to follow its lead,” reports the Associated Press, “and severely restrict social media access for young people.”

The Danish government announced last month that it had secured an agreement b … ⌘ Read more

CEOS Plan to Spend More on AI in 2026 - Despite Spotty Returns
The Wall Street Journal reports that 68% of CEOs “plan to spend even more on AI in 2026, according to an annual survey of more than 350 public-company CEOs from advisory firm Teneo.”

And yet “less than half of current AI projects had generated more in returns than they had cost, respondents said.”

They reported the most success using AI in marketing … ⌘ Read more

‘Investors in Limbo’. Will the TikTok Deal’s Deadline Be Extended Again?
An anonymous reader shared this report from the BBC:

A billionaire investor keen on buying TikTok’s US operations has told the BBC he has been left in limbo as the latest deadline for the app’s sale looms.
The US has repeatedly delayed the date by which the platform’s Chinese owner, Bytedance, must sell or be blocked for American use … ⌘ Read more