Alphabet Shares Jump 14% On Earnings Beat, First-Ever Dividend
Alphabet has reported first quarter results that topped analysts’ estimates with soaring profits in its cloud division. It also announced its first-ever dividend. CNBC shares the results: Earnings per share: $1.89 vs. $1.51 per share expected by LSEG
Revenue: $80.54 billion vs. $78.59 billion expected by LSEG
Wall Street is also watching several other … ⌘ Read more

Seagate Joins the HDD Price Hike Party, Blames AI for Spike in Demand
Seagate has joined Western Digital in increasing the prices of hard drives, with rising demand due to the huge data requirements of AI taking the blame. AI is also behind a rapid growth in orders for Enterprise solid state drives. From a report: One of the big three makers of traditional rotating hard disk drives, Seagate informed cu … ⌘ Read more

Open Sourcing DOS 4
Microsoft releases one of the most popular versions of MS-DOS as open source today. stikves shares a post:Ten years ago, Microsoft released the source for MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0 to the Computer History Museum, and then later republished them for reference purposes. This code holds an important place in history and is a fascinating read of an operating system that was written entirely in 8086 assembly code nearly 45 years ago.

Today, in … ⌘ Read more

US Teacher Charged With Using AI To Frame Principal With Hate Speech Clip
Thomas Claburn reports via The Register: Baltimore police have arrested Dazhon Leslie Darien, the former athletic director of Pikesville High School (PHS), for allegedly impersonating the school’s principal using AI software to make it seem as if he made racist and antisemitic remarks. Darien, of Baltimore, Maryland, was subseque … ⌘ Read more

Garry’s Mod Is Taking Down Decades of Nintendo-Related Add-Ons
Following copyright takedown requests from Nintendo, the popular physics sandbox game Garry’s Mod said it would be pulling all of its Nintendo-related add-ons. “Honestly, this is fair enough. This is Nintendo’s content and what they allow and don’t allow is up to them,” said the developers in a post on Steam. “They don’t want you playing with that stu … ⌘ Read more

US ‘Know Your Customer’ Proposal Will Put an End To Anonymous Cloud Users
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Late January, the U.S. Department of Commerce published a notice of proposed rulemaking for establishing new requirements for Infrastructure as a Service providers (IaaS) . The proposal boils down to a ‘Know Your Customer’ regime for companies operating cloud services, with the … ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS ‘Noble Numbat’ Officially Released
prisoninmate shares a report from 9to5Linux: Canonical released today Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) as the latest version of its popular Linux-based operating system featuring some of the latest GNU/Linux technologies and Open Source software. Powered by Linux kernel 6.8, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS features the latest GNOME 46 desktop environment, an all-new graphical firmware updat … ⌘ Read more

Twilio Founder Buys Satire Site ‘The Onion’
Jeff Lawson, the cofounder of cloud computing company Twilio, appears to have purchased the satirical news website The Onion from G/O Media. Business Insider reports: A trust linked to Lawson is behind a San Francisco-based company called Global Tetrahedron, which shares the name of a fictional evil megacorporation in a long-running Onion gag, business records show. G/O Media CEO … ⌘ Read more

Stripe To Start Taking Crypto Payments, Starting With USDC Stablecoin
Fintech giant Stripe announced on Thursday that it would let customers accept cryptocurrency payments, starting with USDC stablecoins, initially only on Solana, Ethereum and Polygon. TechCrunch reports: This will be the first time that Stripe has taken crypto payments since 2018, when it dropped support for Bitcoin due to it being too un … ⌘ Read more

FCC Votes To Restore Net Neutrality Rules
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to restore regulations that expand government oversight of broadband providersand aim to protect consumer access to the internet, a move that will reignite a long-running battle over the open internet. Known as net neutrality, the regulations were first put in place nearly a d … ⌘ Read more

ByteDance Prefers TikTok Shutdown in US if Legal Options Fail, Report Says
TikTok owner ByteDance would prefer shutting down its loss-making app rather than sell it if the Chinese company exhausts all legal options to fight legislation to ban the platform from app stores in the U.S., Reuters reported Thursday, citing sources. From the report: The algorithms TikTok relies on for its operations are deemed co … ⌘ Read more

New Rule Compels US Coal-Fired Power Plants To Capture Emissions - or Shut Down
Coal-fired power plants would be forced to capture smokestack emissions or shut down under a rule issued on Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). From a report: New limits on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired electric plants are the Biden administration’s most ambitious effort yet to rol … ⌘ Read more

iPhone Activation Market Share Hits New Low as Android Dominates
An anonymous reader shares a report: Consumer Intelligence Research Partners is out with a report on how iPhone activations compare to Android in the US. The latest data shows a notable drop over the last year bringing Apple’s US smartphone market share of new activations back in time six years. CIRP shared its new iPhone report on its Substack … ⌘ Read more

Net Neutrality is About To Make a Comeback
The Federal Communications Commission is set to vote to restore net neutrality on Thursday in the latest volley of a yearslong game of political ping-pong. From a report: The commission is expected to reclassify internet service providers (ISPs) – e.g., broadband companies like AT&T and Comcast – as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. That classification would open … ⌘ Read more

Ford Just Reported a Massive Loss on Every Electric Vehicle It Sold
Ford’s electric vehicle unit reported that losses soared in the first quarter to $1.3 billion, or $132,000 for each of the 10,000 vehicles it sold in the first three months of the year, helping to drag down earnings for the company overall. From a report: Ford, like most automakers, has announced plans to shift from traditional gas-powered … ⌘ Read more

Spotify Says Apple Has Rejected Its App Update With Price Information for EU Users
Apple has rejected Spotify’s new version of its iOS app with in-app pricing information for users in the European Union, the audio streaming firm said on Thursday. Reuters: The Swedish company submitted a new version of its app to Apple with basic pricing and website information, which is a minimum requirement … ⌘ Read more

AI Could Kill Off Most Call Centres, Says TCS Head
The head of Indian IT company Tata Consultancy Services has said AI will result in “minimal” need for call centres in as soon as a year, with AI’s rapid advances set to upend a vast industry across Asia and beyond. From a report: K Krithivasan, TCS chief executive, told the Financial Times that while “we have not seen any job reduction” so far, wider adoption of generative AI amo … ⌘ Read more

US Fertility Rate Falls To Lowest In a Century
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The fertility rate in the United States has been trending down for decades, and a new report shows that another drop in births in 2023 brought the rate down to the lowest it’s been in more than century. There were about 3.6 million babies born in 2023, or 54.4 live births for every 1,000 females ages 15 to 44, according to provisional da … ⌘ Read more

Vast DNA Tree of Life For Plants Revealed By Global Science Team
An international team of scientists used 1.8 billion letters of genetic code from more than 9,500 species covering almost 8,000 known flowering plant genera to create the most up-to-date understanding of the flowering plant tree of life. The research has been published in the journal Nature. Phys.Org reports: The major milestone for plant science … ⌘ Read more

Airlines Required To Refund Passengers For Canceled, Delayed Flights
Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced new rules for the airline industry that will require airlines to automatically give cash refunds to passengers for canceled and significantly delayed flights. They will also require airlines to give cash refunds if your bags are lost and not delivered within 12 hours.

“This i … ⌘ Read more

Almost Every Chinese Keyboard App Has a Security Flaw That Reveals What Users Type
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Almost all keyboard apps used by Chinese people around the world share a security loophole that makes it possible to spy on what users are typing. The vulnerability, which allows the keystroke data that these apps send to the cloud to be intercepted, … ⌘ Read more

Manga Site Blocks Adult Content, But Only For US and UK Users
Samantha Cole reports via 404 Media: A Japan-based online art platform is banning kink content for users based in the US and UK, as laws in these countries continue to tighten around sites that allow erotic content. Pixiv is an image gallery site where artists primarily share illustrations, manga, and novels. The site announced on April 22 that … ⌘ Read more

Apple Reportedly Developing Its Own Custom Silicon For AI Servers
Hartley Charlton reports via MacRumors: Apple is said to be developing its own AI server processor using TSMC’s 3nm process, targeting mass production by the second half of 2025. According to a post by the Weibo user known as “Phone Chip Expert,” Apple has ambitious plans to design its own artificial intelligence server processor. The user, wh … ⌘ Read more

Google Delays Third-Party Cookie Demise Yet Again
Google is delaying the end of third-party cookies in Chrome – again. This marks the third time Google pushed back its original deadline set in January 2020, when the company said it would phase out third-party cookies “within two years” to improve internet security. Digiday reports: The announcement was made on Tuesday ahead of quarterly reports from Google and the ever-watc … ⌘ Read more

‘ArcaneDoor’ Cyberspies Hacked Cisco Firewalls To Access Government Networks
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Network security appliances like firewalls are meant to keep hackers out. Instead, digital intruders are increasingly targeting them as the weak link that lets them pillage the very systems those devices are meant to protect. In the case of one hacking campaign over recent months … ⌘ Read more