US Deaths Expected To Outpace Births Within the Decade
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: The number of deaths in the U.S. is expected to exceed the number of births by 2033, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) annual 30-year projection of the U.S. population released on Monday. That estimation comes seven years earlier than what the CBO estimated in its 30-year population outlook releas … ⌘ Read more

Australian Open Avatars Helping Tennis Reach New Audience
The Australian Open has introduced a project called AO Animated – “near-live, commentated coverage of the Australian Open, free to anyone across the world via YouTube, enhanced via a stream of comments from a like-minded online community,” reports The Guardian. Blending real-world data with virtual avatars, the animated coverage has garnered significant viewer int … ⌘ Read more

Pixelfed, Instagram’s Decentralized Competitor, Is Now On iOS and Android
Pixelfed has launched its mobile app for iOS and Android, solidifying its position as a viable alternative to Instagram. The move also comes at a pivotal moment, as a potential Supreme Court ban on TikTok could drive users to explore other social media platforms. Pixelfed is ad-free, open source, decentralized, defaults to chronolo … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI’s AI Reasoning Model ‘Thinks’ In Chinese Sometimes, No One Really Knows Why
OpenAI’s “reasoning” AI model, o1, has exhibited a puzzling behavior of “thinking” in Chinese, Persian, or some other language – “even when asked a question in English,” reports TechCrunch. While the exact cause remains unclear, as OpenAI has yet to provide an explanation, AI experts have proposed a few theories. From t … ⌘ Read more

US Finalizes Rule To Effectively Ban Chinese Vehicles
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Biden administration finalized a new rule that would effectively ban all Chinese vehicles from the US under the auspices of blocking the “sale or import” of connected vehicle software from “countries of concern.” The rule could have wide-ranging effects on big automakers, like Ford and GM, as well as smaller manuf … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Pauses Hiring In US Consulting Unit
A week after announcing performance-based job cuts similar to those at Meta, Microsoft said it also plans to pause hiring in part of its consulting unit. CNBC reports: The changes by the U.S. consulting division are meant to align with a policy by the Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions organization, which has about 60,000 employees, according to a page on Microsoft’s website. The ch … ⌘ Read more

ChatGPT Now Lets You Schedule Reminders and Recurring Tasks
ChatGPT can now schedule reminders and recurring tasks – but only if you’re a ChatGPT Plus, Team, or Pro subscriber. TechCrunch reports: With tasks, users can set simple reminders with ChatGPT such as, “Remind me when my passport expires in six months,” and the AI assistant will follow up with a push notification on whatever platform you have tasks enabled. Us … ⌘ Read more

Texas Sues Allstate For Collecting Driver Data To Raise Premiums
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Texas has sued (PDF) one of the nation’s largest car insurance providers alleging that it violated the state’s privacy laws by surreptitiously collecting detailed location data on millions of drivers and using that information to justify raising insurance premiums. The state’s attorney general, Ke … ⌘ Read more

How Research Credibility Suffers in a Quantified Society
An anonymous reader shares a report: Academia is in a credibility crisis. A record-breaking 10,000 scientific papers were retracted in 2023 because of scientific misconduct, and academic journals are overwhelmed by AI-generated images, data, and texts. To understand the roots of this problem, we must look at the role of metrics in evaluating the academic perf … ⌘ Read more

US Removes Malware Allegedly Planted on Computers By Chinese-Backed Hackers
The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday that it has deleted malware planted on more than 4,200 computers by a group of criminal hackers who were backed by the People’s Republic of China. From a report: The malware, known as “PlugX,” affected thousands of computers around the globe and was used to infect and steal informa … ⌘ Read more

Double-keyed Browser Caching Is Hitting Web Performance
A Google engineer has warned that a major shift in web browser caching is upending long-standing performance optimization practices. Browsers have overhauled their caching systems that forces websites to maintain separate copies of shared resources instead of reusing them across domains.

The new “double-keyed caching” system, implemented to enhance privacy, is en … ⌘ Read more

Nearly Three-Quarters of All Known Bacterial Species Have Never Been Studied
Nearly three-quarters of all known bacterial species have never been studied in scientific literature, while just 10 species account for half of all published research, according to a new analysis published on bioRxiv.

The study of over 43,000 bacterial species found that E. coli dominates with 21% of all publications, … ⌘ Read more

Nobel Prize Winners Call For Urgent ‘Moonshot’ Effort To Avert Global Hunger Catastrophe
More than 150 Nobel and World Food prize laureates have signed an open letter calling for “moonshot” efforts to ramp up food production before an impending world hunger catastrophe. From a report: The coalition of some of the world’s greatest living thinkers called for urgent action to prioritise rese … ⌘ Read more

Developer Makes Doom Run Inside a PDF File
Programmers have found ways to run the 1993 first-person shooter Doom on an array of unexpected platforms, and now a PDF file joins that list.

Developer ading2210’s DoomPDF project shows the game operating within a document format primarily designed for static content display. The creator says he drew inspiration from pdftris, another PDF-based game port by Thomas Rinsma.

[![](https://a.fs … ⌘ Read more

LA Wildfires Push California Insurance Market To Its Limit
Five wildfires in Los Angeles have already burned more than 10,000 structures, threatening to upend California’s fragile balance between climate risk and home insurance. The Palisades Fire has damaged or destroyed more than 5,000 buildings in an area that liability experts had previously identified as one of three particularly vulnerable regions in the state … ⌘ Read more

Meta To Cut 3,600 Jobs, Targeting Lowest Performers
Meta is cutting roughly 5% of its staff through performance-based eliminations and plans to hire new people to fill their roles this year, according to a company memo. From a report: As of September, Meta employed about 72,000 people, so a 5% reduction could affect roughly 3,600 jobs. “I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faste … ⌘ Read more

UK Plans To Ban Public Sector Organizations From Paying Ransomware Hackers
U.K. public sector and critical infrastructure organizations could be banned from making ransom payments under new proposals from the U.K. government. From a report: The U.K.’s Home Office launched a consultation on Tuesday that proposes a “targeted ban” on ransomware payments. Under the proposal, public sector bodies – includ … ⌘ Read more

The New $30,000 Side Hustle: Making Job Referrals for Strangers
Tech workers at major U.S. companies are earning thousands of dollars by referring job candidates they’ve never met, creating an underground marketplace for employment referrals at firms like Microsoft and Nvidia, according to Bloomberg.

One tech worker cited in the report earned $30,000 in referral bonuses after recommending over 1,000 strangers to h … ⌘ Read more

US Employee Engagement Sinks To 10-Year Low
Employee engagement in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in a decade in 2024, Gallup reported Tuesday, with only 31% of employees engaged. This matches the figure last seen in 2014. The percentage of actively disengaged employees, at 17%, also reflects 2014 levels. Gallup: The percentage of engaged employees has declined by two percentage points since 2023, highlighting a growing trend o … ⌘ Read more

Snyk Researcher Caught Deploying Malicious Code Targeting AI Startup
A Snyk security researcher has published malicious NPM packages targeting Cursor, an AI coding startup, in what appears to be a dependency confusion attack. The packages, which collect and transmit system data to an attacker-controlled server, were published under a verified Snyk email address, according to security researcher Paul McCarty. … ⌘ Read more

161 Years Ago, a New Zealand Sheep Farmer Predicted AI Doom
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Benj Edwards: While worrying about AI takeover might seem like a modern idea that sprung from War Games or The Terminator, it turns out that a similar concern about machine dominance dates back to the time of the American Civil War, albeit from an English sheep farmer living in New Zealan … ⌘ Read more

Ransomware Crew Abuses AWS Native Encryption, Sets Data-Destruct Timer for 7 Days
A new ransomware group called Codefinger targets AWS S3 buckets by exploiting compromised or publicly exposed AWS keys to encrypt victims’ data using AWS’s own SSE-C encryption, rendering it inaccessible without the attacker-generated AES-256 keys. While other security researchers have documented techniques for encr … ⌘ Read more

Snyk Researcher Caught Deploying Malicious Code Targeting AI Startup
A Snyk security researcher has published malicious NPM packages targeting Cursor, an AI coding startup, in what appears to be a dependency confusion attack. The packages, which collect and transmit system data to an attacker-controlled server, were published under a verified Snyk email address, according to security researcher Paul McCarty. … ⌘ Read more

US Employee Engagement Sinks To 10-Year Low
Employee engagement in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in a decade in 2024, Gallup reported Tuesday, with only 31% of employees engaged. This matches the figure last seen in 2014. The percentage of actively disengaged employees, at 17%, also reflects 2014 levels. Gallup: The percentage of engaged employees has declined by two percentage points since 2023, highlighting a growing trend o … ⌘ Read more

Annual US Dementia Cases Projected to Rise to 1 Million by 2060
By 2060, around one million Americans may develop dementia annually, with the lifetime risk after age 55 estimated at 42% and rising sharply with age. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Medicine. Scientific American reports: The latest forecast suggests a massive and harrowing increase from annual cases predicted for 2020, in … ⌘ Read more

Supreme Court Allows Hawaii To Sue Oil Companies Over Climate Change Effects
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: The Supreme Court on Monday said it will not consider whether to quash lawsuits brought by Honolulu seeking billions of dollars from oil and gas companies for the damage caused by the effects of climate change, clearing the way for the cases to move forward. The legal battl … ⌘ Read more

Ministers Mull Allowing Private Firms to Make Profit From NHS Data In AI Push
UK ministers are considering allowing private companies to profit from anonymized NHS data as part of a push to leverage AI for medical advancements, despite concerns over privacy and ethical risks. The Guardian reports: Keir Starmer on Monday announced a push to open up the government to AI innovation, including allowing … ⌘ Read more

Meta Is Blocking Links to Decentralized Instagram Competitor Pixelfed
Meta is deleting links to Pixelfed, a decentralized, open-source Instagram competitor, labeling them as “spam” on Facebook and removing them immediately. 404 Media reports: Pixelfed is an open-source, community funded and decentralized image sharing platform that runs on Activity Pub, which is the same technology that supports Mastodon … ⌘ Read more

Linus Torvalds Offers to Build Guitar Effects Pedal For Kernel Developer
Linux creator Linus Torvalds announced a playful giveaway for kernel contributors: he’ll hand-build a guitar effects pedal for one lucky developer selected at random, using his holiday hobby skills with pedal kits. To qualify, developers must have a 2024 commit in Torvalds’ kernel git tree and email him with the subject “I WANT A … ⌘ Read more

CEO of AI Music Company Says People Don’t Like Making Music
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Mikey Shulman, the CEO and founder of the AI music generator company Suno AI, thinks people don’t enjoy making music. “We didn’t just want to build a company that makes the current crop of creators 10 percent faster or makes it 10 percent easier to make music. If you want to impact the way a billio … ⌘ Read more

New York Starts Enforcing $15 Broadband Law That ISPs Tried To Kill
Ars Technica’s Jon Brodkin reports: The New York law requiring Internet providers to offer cheap plans to people with low incomes will take effect on Wednesday this week following a multi-year court battle in which the state defeated broadband industry lobby groups. A US appeals court upheld the law in April 2024, reversing the ruling of a di … ⌘ Read more

Euro-Cloud Anexia Moves 12,000 VMs Off VMware to Homebrew KVM Platform
The Register’s Simon Sharwood reports: Broadcom has lost another sizable customer for its VMware platform: Austrian cloud provider Anexia has moved 12,000 VMs, some of them rented by major European businesses, to an open-source system based on the KVM hypervisor. Anexia was founded in 2006, is based in Austria, and provides cloud servi … ⌘ Read more

Mastodon Announces Transition To Nonprofit Structure
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch, written by Ivan Mehta: Decentralized social network organization Mastodon said Monday that it is planning to create a new nonprofit organization in Europe and hand over ownership of entities responsible for key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components. This means one person won’t have control over the entire project … ⌘ Read more

EU Probes Apple’s New App Store Fees
European Union regulators are investigating Apple’s revised app store fees amid concerns they may increase costs for developers, according to Bloomberg News.

The European Commission sent questionnaires to developers in December focusing on Apple’s new “core technology fee” of $0.51 per app installation, part of its compliance with EU’s Digital Markets Act. Under Apple’s revised structure, developers … ⌘ Read more

After Years of USB Word Salad, New Labels Strip Everything But the Speed
The USB Implementers Forum has simplified its labeling system for USB docking stations and cables, dropping technical terms like “USB4v2” in favor of straightforward speed ratings such as “USB 80Gbps” or “USB 40Gbps.”

The move follows criticism of previous complex naming conventions like “USB 3.2 Gen 2.” The new logos will also disp … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Is Testing 45% M365 Price Hikes in Asia
Microsoft is raising Microsoft 365 subscription prices by up to 46% across six Asian markets to fund AI features. In Australia, annual Microsoft 365 Family subscriptions will increase to AU$179 ($110) from AU$139, while Personal subscriptions will jump to AU$159 ($98) from AU$109. The price hikes also affect New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand customers.

[![]( … ⌘ Read more

Companies Deploy AI To Curb Hiring as ‘Cost Avoidance’ Gains Ground
U.S. companies are increasingly using AI to curb hiring plans, citing “cost avoidance” as a key metric to justify AI investments amid pressure to show returns. At software firm TS Imagine, AI-powered email sorting saves 4,000 work hours annually at 3% of employee costs, while Palantir reported AI reduced future headcount needs by 10-15%, acco … ⌘ Read more

Ghost Jobs Haunt Online Listings
One in five online job postings may be “ghost jobs” that companies never intend to fill, according to new data from hiring platform Greenhouse examining its clients’ recruitment patterns in 2024. The analysis found that 18-22% of advertised positions across technology, finance, and healthcare sectors went unfilled, while nearly 70% of companies posted at least one ghost job in the second quarter of 2024.

Construc … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia Snaps Back at Biden’s ‘Innovation-Killing’ AI Chip Export Restrictions
Nvidia has hit back at the outgoing Biden administration’s AI chip tech export restrictions designed to tighten America’s stranglehold on supply chains and maintain market dominance. From a report: The White House today unveiled what it calls the Final Rule on Artificial Intelligence Diffusion from the Biden-Harris governme … ⌘ Read more