Ford Seeks Patent For Tech That Listens To Driver Conversations To Serve Ads
Ford is seeking a patent for technology that would allow it to tailor in-car advertising by listening to conversations among vehicle occupants, as well as by analyzing a car’s historical location and other data, according to a patent application published late last month. The Record: “In one example, the controller may moni … ⌘ Read more

Telegram Disables ‘Misused’ Features As CEO Faces Criminal Charges
Following the arrest of its CEO Pavel Durov last month, the encrypted messaging service said it has disabled some “outdated” and “misused” features used by anonymous users. The Verge reports: The first changes to the app following his arrest in France last month affect its built-in blog posts and a “People Nearby” location-based feature. […] … ⌘ Read more

PwC ‘Tipping the Balance’ of Hybrid Working and Will Start Tracking Its Workers’ Locations
PwC has demanded staff spend less time working from home – and it’s going to start tracking their location to ensure they comply. From a report: The accountancy firm informed its 26,000 U.K. employees in a memo that from January they’ll be expected to be at their desks – or with clients – at leas … ⌘ Read more

Bluesky Adds 2 Million New Users After Brazil’s X Ban
In the days following Brazil’s shutdown of X, the decentralized social networking startup Bluesky added over 2 million new users, up from just half a million as of Friday. “This rapid growth led some users to encounter the occasional error that would state there were ‘Not Enough Resources’ to handle requests, as Bluesky engineers scrambled to keep the servers stable un … ⌘ Read more

Google’s James Manyika: ‘The Productivity Gains From AI Are Not Guaranteed’
Google executive James Manyika has warned that AI’s impact on productivity is not guaranteed [Editor’s note: the link may be paywalled], despite predictions of trillion-dollar economic potential. From the report: “Right now, everyone from my old colleagues at McKinsey Global Institute to Goldman Sachs are putting out these extra … ⌘ Read more

Apple Stands By Decision To Terminate Account Belonging To WWDC Student Winner
TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez reports: Apple is standing by its decision to terminate the Apple Developer Account of Appstun, a mobile app company created by one of Apple’s own Worldwide Developer Conference 2021 student winners. According to an announcement published on Appstun’s website, Apple moved to terminate the devel … ⌘ Read more

Far-Right ‘Terrorgram’ Chatrooms Are Fueling a Wave of Power Grid Attacks
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: People in a quiet neighborhood in Carthage, a town in Moore County, North Carolina, heard a series of six loud pops a few minutes before 8:00 p.m. on Dec. 3, 2022. A resident named Michael Campbell said he ducked at the sound. Another witness told police they thought they were he … ⌘ Read more

Samsung TVs Will Get 7 Years of Free Tizen OS Upgrades
Samsung Electronics said it will provide Tizen OS updates for its newer TVs for at least seven years, starting with models released in March this year and some 2023 models. Business Korea reports: [Yoon Seok-woo, President of Samsung Electronics’ Visual Display Business Division] emphasized that the seven-year free upgrade for Tizen applied to AI TVs would … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Copilot Studio Exploit Leaks Sensitive Cloud Data
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Dark Reading: Researchers have exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft’s Copilot Studio tool allowing them to make external HTTP requests that can access sensitive information regarding internal services within a cloud environment – with potential impact across multiple tenants. Tenable researchers discovered the ser … ⌘ Read more

China Is Backing Off Coal Power Plant Approvals
Approvals for new coal-fired power plants in China dropped by 80% in the first half of this year compared to last, according to an analysis from Greenpeace and the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies. The Associated Press reports: A review of project documents by Greenpeace East Asia found that 14 new coal plants were approved from January to June with a total capacity of 10 … ⌘ Read more

VPN Apps Vanish from Brazilian App Store
Dozens of VPN apps have vanished from Brazil’s Apple App Store, including popular services NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Surfshark. Simone Magliano, Head of Research at Top10VPN, reports that at least 30 VPN apps have become unavailable, though their store listings remained visible. Proton VPN, a major free VPN provider, confirmed the App Store issues, speculating it could be “a bug, or Apple impleme … ⌘ Read more

New Research Reveals AI Lacks Independent Learning, Poses No Existential Threat
ZipNada writes: New research reveals that large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT cannot learn independently or acquire new skills without explicit instructions, making them predictable and controllable. The study dispels fears of these models developing complex reasoning abilities, emphasizing that while LLMs can genera … ⌘ Read more

Jobhunters Flood Recruiters With AI-Generated CVs
About half of all job seekers are using AI tools to apply for roles, inundating employers and recruiters with low-quality applications in an already squeezed labour market. From a report: Candidates are turning increasingly to generative AI – the type used in chatbot products such as ChatGPT and Gemini to produce conversational passages of text – to assist them in writing th … ⌘ Read more

Agile is Killing Software Innovation, Says Moxie Marlinspike
There’s a rot at the heart of modern software development that’s destroying innovation, and infosec legend Moxie Marlinspike believes he knows exactly what’s to blame: Agile development. Marlinspike argued that Agile methodologies, widely adopted over the past two decades, have confined developers to “black box abstraction layers” that limit creativ … ⌘ Read more

ICANN Reserves .Internal For Private Use at the DNS Level
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has agreed to reserve the .internal top-level domain so it can become the equivalent to using the 10.0.0.0, 172.16.0.0 and 192.168.0.0 IPv4 address blocks for internal networks. From a report: Those blocks are reserved for private use by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which … ⌘ Read more

Monday Was Hottest Recorded Day on Earth: ‘Uncharted Territory’
World temperature reached the hottest levels ever measured on Monday, beating the record that was set just one day before, data suggests. From a report: Provisional data published on Wednesday by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which holds data that stretches back to 1940, shows that the global surface air temperature reached 62.87F (17.15C), co … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI’s Latest Model Closes the ‘Ignore All Previous Instructions’ Loophole
Kylie Robison reports via The Verge: Have you seen the memes online where someone tells a bot to “ignore all previous instructions” and proceeds to break it in the funniest ways possible? The way it works goes something like this: Imagine we at The Verge created an AI bot with explicit instructions to direct you to our excellent re … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Outage Hits Users Worldwide, Leading To Canceled Flights
Microsoft grappled with a major service outage, leaving users across the world unable to access its cloud computing platforms and causing airlines to cancel flights. From a report: Thousands of users across the world reported problems with Microsoft 365 apps and services to Downdetector.com, a website that tracks service disruptions. “We’re inve … ⌘ Read more

AI Stocks Balloon Even As Earnings Lag, Jefferies Warns
An anonymous reader shares a report: A Jefferies basket of 27 large-cap AI stocks has surged 127% in value since ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022, adding about $10 trillion in market cap. However, 2025 earnings forecasts for these companies have increased only 25% over the same period, Jefferies warned in a note to clients.

This disconnect has pushed the incremental price … ⌘ Read more

Whataburger App Becomes Unlikely Power Outage Map After Houston Hurricane
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Fast-food chain Whataburger’s app has gone viral in the wake of Hurricane Beryl, which left around 1.8 million utility customers in Houston, Texas without power. Hundreds of thousands of those people may remain without power for days as Houston anticipates a heat wave, wit … ⌘ Read more

FTC Study Finds ‘Dark Patterns’ Used By a Majority of Subscription Apps and Websites
The U.S. FTC, along with two other international consumer protection networks, announced on Thursday the results of a study into the use of “dark patterns” – or manipulative design techniques – that can put users’ privacy at risk or push them to buy products or services or take other actions they otherwise … ⌘ Read more

‘Girls In Tech’ Closes Its Doors After 17 Years
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: The Girls in Tech nonprofit women’s tech community is closing its doors after 17 years, according to a newsletter from founder Adriana Gascoigne. Gascoigne said the decision was made with “sadness and devastation” and was not made lightly. “It is with a heavy heart that I share the news that Girls in Tech will be closing its doo … ⌘ Read more

Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Over GitHub Copilot AI Coding Assistant
A US District Court judge in San Francisco has largely dismissed a class-action lawsuit against GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI, which challenged the legality of using code samples to train GitHub Copilot. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs failed to establish a claim for restitution or unjust enrichment but allowed the claim for breach of open-sourc … ⌘ Read more

US Nuke Agency Buys Internet Backbone Data
A U.S. government agency tasked with supporting the nation’s nuclear deterrence capability has bought access to a data tool that claims to cover more than 90 percent of the world’s internet traffic, and can in some cases let users trace activity through virtual private networks, according to documents obtained by 404 Media. From the report: The documents provide more insight into the use c … ⌘ Read more

Speed Limiters Now Mandatory In All New EU Cars
An anonymous reader shares a report: Cars have been able to figure out when they’re speeding for a while, thanks to GPS as well as traffic sign recognition, and they’ve also been able to pump the brakes automatically when needed. Having a computer automatically slow down a car in response to posted speed limits, therefore, was not really a question of technical feasibility for so … ⌘ Read more

Google Maps Tests New Pop-up Ads That Give Users an Unnecessary Detour
An anonymous reader writes: Google Maps is testing a new ad format that could cause distractions while driving. It brings up a pop-up notification during navigation that covers the bottom half of the screen with an unnecessary detour suggestion.

Anthony Higman on X (formerly Twitter) recently spotted the new ad format during their co … ⌘ Read more

‘How Good Is ChatGPT at Coding, Really?’
IEEE Spectrum (the IEEE’s official publication) asks the question. “How does an AI code generator compare to a human programmer?”

A study published in the June issue of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering evaluated the code produced by OpenAI’s ChatGPT in terms of functionality, complexity and security. The results show that ChatGPT has an extremely broad range of success when it come … ⌘ Read more

Researchers Upend AI Status Quo By Eliminating Matrix Multiplication In LLMs
Researchers from UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis, LuxiTech, and Soochow University have developed a new method to run AI language models more efficiently by eliminating matrix multiplication, potentially reducing the environmental impact and operational costs of AI systems. Ars Technica’s Benj Edwards reports: Matrix multi … ⌘ Read more

Windows 11 is Now Automatically Enabling OneDrive Folder Backup Without Asking Permission
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has made OneDrive slightly more annoying for Windows 11 users. Quietly and without any announcement, the company changed Windows 11’s initial setup so that it could turn on the automatic folder backup without asking for it. Now, those setting up a new W … ⌘ Read more

Multiple AI Companies Ignore Robots.Txt Files, Scrape Web Content, Says Licensing Firm
Multiple AI companies are ignoring Robots.txt files meant to block the scraping of web content for generative AI systems, reports Reuters — citing a warning sent to publisher by content licensing startup TollBit.

TollBit, an early-stage startup, is positioning itself as a matchmaker between content-hungry … ⌘ Read more

New York Bans ‘Addictive Feeds’ For Teens
New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) signed two bills into law on Thursday that aim to protect kids and teens from social media harms, making it the latest state to take action as federal proposals still await votes. From a report: One of the bills, the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act, will require parental consent for social media companies to use “addictive feeds” powered … ⌘ Read more

Car Dealerships Hit With Massive Computer System Outage
An anonymous reader shares a report: CDK Global, the company that provides management software for nearly 15,000 car dealerships in North America, is down for a second day following a cyberattack, according to a report from Automotive News. The outage has left car dealerships across North America unable to access the internal systems used to track car sales, view cu … ⌘ Read more

TikTok Says US Ban Inevitable Without a Court Order Blocking Law
TikTok and Chinese parent ByteDance on Thursday urged a U.S. court to strike down a law they say will ban the popular short app in the United States on Jan. 19, saying the U.S. government refused to engage in any serious settlement talks after 2022. From a report: Legislation signed in April by President Joe Biden gives ByteDance until Jan. 19 of … ⌘ Read more

Meta’s Customer Service is So Bad, Users Are Suing in Small Claims Court To Resolve Issues
Facebook and Instagram users are increasingly turning to small claims courts to regain access to their accounts or seek damages from Meta, amid frustrations with the company’s customer support. In several cases across multiple states, Engadget reports, plaintiffs have successfully restored account … ⌘ Read more

London Premiere of Movie With AI-Generated Script Cancelled After Backlash
A cinema in London has cancelled the world premiere of a film with a script generated by AI after a backlash. From a report: The Prince Charles cinema, located in London’s West End and which traditionally screens cult and art films, was due to host a showing of a new production called The Last Screenwriter on Sunday. However the cin … ⌘ Read more

World’s Largest Music Company Is Helping Musicians Make Their Own AI Voice Clones
Universal Music Group has partnered with AI startup SoundLabs to offer voice modeling technology to its artists. The MicDrop feature, launching this summer, will allow UMG artists to create and control their own AI voice models. The tool includes voice-to-instrument functionality and language transposition … ⌘ Read more

EU Delays Decision Over Scanning Encrypted Messages For CSAM
European Union officials have delayed talks over proposed legislation that could lead to messaging services having to scan photos and links to detect possible child sexual abuse material (CSAM). From a report: Were the proposal to become law, it may require the likes of WhatsApp, Messenger and Signal to scan all images that users upload – which would esse … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Launches Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Says New Model Outperforms GPT-4 Omni
Anthropic launched Claude 3.5 Sonnet on Thursday, claiming it outperforms previous models and OpenAI’s GPT-4 Omni. The AI startup also introduced Artifacts, a workspace for users to edit AI-generated projects. This release, part of the Claude 3.5 family, follows three months after Claude 3. Claude 3.5 Sonnet is available for free o … ⌘ Read more

YouTube Is Cracking Down on Cheap Premium Plans Bought With a VPN
An anonymous reader shares a report: YouTube Premium subscribers who use VPNs are reporting that their plans are being automatically canceled by the Google-owned company, according to multiple subscribers who have posted screenshots and descriptions of the issue on Reddit.

A Google support representative confirmed to PCMag that YouTube has star … ⌘ Read more

Biden To Ban US Sales of Kaspersky Software Over Ties To Russia
The Biden administration on Thursday will announce plans to bar the sale of Kaspersky Lab’s antivirus software in the United States, citing the firm’s large U.S. customers including critical infrastructure providers and state and local governments, according to Reuters. From the report: The company’s close ties to the Russian government were found … ⌘ Read more

Perplexity AI Faces Scrutiny Over Web Scraping and Chatbot Accuracy
Perplexity AI, a billion-dollar “AI” search startup, has come under scrutiny for its data collection practices and accuracy of its chatbot responses. Despite claiming to respect website operators’ wishes, Perplexity appears to scrape content from sites that have blocked its crawler, using an undisclosed IP address, a Wired investigation found. T … ⌘ Read more

Heat Waves Grip 3 Continents as Climate Change Warms Earth
An anonymous reader shares a report: Punishing heat waves gripped three continents on Tuesday, breaking records in cities around the Northern Hemisphere less than two weeks after the Earth recorded what scientists said were likely its hottest days in modern history. Firefighters in Greece scrambled to put out wildfires, as parched conditions raised the risk o … ⌘ Read more

Microplastics Discovered In Human Penises For the First Time
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists have found microplastics in human penises for the first time, as concerns over the tiny particles’ proliferation and potential health effects mount. Seven different kinds of microplastics were found in four out of five samples of penis tissue taken from five different men as part of a study published in IJIR: You … ⌘ Read more

Pornhub To Block Five More States Over Age Verification Laws
Pornhub plans to block access to its website in Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, and Nebraska in response to age verification laws designed to prevent children from accessing adult websites. From a report: The website has now cut off access in more than half a dozen states in protest of similar age verification laws that have quickly spread across conse … ⌘ Read more

FedEx’s Secretive Police Force Is Helping Cops Build An AI Car Surveillance Network
Twenty years ago, FedEx established its own police force. Now it’s working with local police to build out an AI car surveillance network. From a report: Forbes has learned the shipping and business services company is using AI tools made by Flock Safety, a $4 billion car surveillance startup, to monitor its dist … ⌘ Read more

Plan for New Accounting Rules on Software Costs Moves Forward
U.S. companies may need to report cash amounts tied to their software expenditures, more of which would be moved off corporate balance sheets under a forthcoming proposal to update decades-old accounting rules. From a report: The Financial Accounting Standards Board voted Tuesday, 7-0, to propose requiring companies to report cash amounts tied to their … ⌘ Read more

EU Chat Control Law Proposes Scanning Your Messages - Even Encrypted Ones
The European Union is getting closer to passing new rules that would mandate the bulk scanning of digital messages – including encrypted ones. On Thursday, EU governments will adopt a position on the proposed legislation, which is aimed at detecting child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The vote will determine whether the proposal … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Co-Founder Ilya Sutskever Launches Venture For Safe Superintelligence
Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI who recently left the startup, has launched a new venture called Safe Superintelligence Inc., aiming to create a powerful AI system within a pure research organization. Sutskever has made AI safety the top priority for his new company. Safe Superintelligence has two more co-founders: investo … ⌘ Read more

Senate Passes Bill To Support Advanced Nuclear Energy Deployment
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill to accelerate the deployment of nuclear energy capacity, including by speeding permitting and creating new incentives for advanced nuclear reactor technologies. From a report: Expanding nuclear power has broad bipartisan support, with Democrats seeing it as critical to decarbonizing the power sector to fight clima … ⌘ Read more

Officials Query if Any Deaths Directly Linked To UK Hospital Hack
Officials are asking if this month’s UK hospital hack resulted in fatalities. From a report: As the fallout from a cyberattack affecting hospitals in London enters its third week, doctors have been asked to report any deaths or other serious harms directly linked to the incident. On June 3, a group of ransomware hackers compromised a lab servic … ⌘ Read more