Google’s $15 Billion India Data Center Project Battles Water, Wildlife Concerns
Google’s $15 billion data-center project in Visakhapatnam is facing protests and legal challenges over fears that it will worsen local water shortages and disturb wildlife near the Kambalakonda sanctuary. Google says the campus will use advanced air cooling and comply with Indian law, while state officials deny that resi … ⌘ Read more
Times Magazine Now Serves Ads That Only AI Chatbots Can See
Longtime Slashdot reader mccalli writes: Times Magazine has started serving adverts with “brand messages” to AI crawlers, which are not part of its main page. The aim seems to be to influence chatbots to talk about the brand offerings in a positive light that can’t be traced back to the actual page. Notably, they’ve excluded Google chatbots from this, likely be … ⌘ Read more
Page Alloc Hogger Lets You Better Stress Memory Behavior On Linux For Testing/Debugging
A new kernel feature proposed by a Google engineer is Page Alloc Hogger to allow for fine control over where memory pages are allocated in order to more easily reproduce low-memory conditions, make it simpler to exert memory pressure, and enable other stressful memory conditions for testing/debugging how Linux copes… ⌘ Read more
Google Overhauls AI Leadership As DeepMind CEO Steps Aside
Google is reshuffling its AI leadership as Demis Hassabis steps away from day-to-day management of DeepMind to become chairman and Alphabet’s chief scientist, while CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu takes operational control. Meanwhile, longtime chief scientist Jeff Dean and several prominent researchers are leaving to launch their own company. Axios reports: Hassabis w … ⌘ Read more
As Reddit Stock Falls, CEO Questions Value of Google’s AI Overviews
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman criticized Google’s AI Overviews for summarizing publishers’ content without delivering the traffic benefits of traditional search, arguing that users increasingly value Reddit’s human perspectives and firsthand experiences. Ars Technica reports: First, there was a letter to investors (PDF), wherein Huffman spun his n … ⌘ Read more
Group of Teen Hikers Relied on Google Maps. It Was a Disaster.
“When a group of teenagers set out to hike British Columbia’s famed Howe Sound Crest Trail in early July, Google Maps suggested the trek would take about five hours,” reports SFGate.
“Instead, the hike stretched deep into the night, leaving the group exhausted, dehydrated, injured and in need of a helicopter rescue…”
Although the approximately 18-m … ⌘ Read more
Google Plans To Exempt Sanctioned Nations From Android Developer Verification
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: We are a month away from the initial rollout of Google’s Android developer verification system, and the company contends this policy does not impinge on the platform’s open nature. Still, the restrictions will be a big change, and there are still some unanswered ques … ⌘ Read more
New Google Earth AI Tool Could Fuel Misinformation, Experts Say
Google has integrated its Nano Banana 2 image generator into Google Earth, allowing users to place AI-generated events and objects onto real satellite imagery. The company says its AI-generated images contain invisible watermarks detectable through Gemini or Lens, but the BBC found those safeguards and some third-party detection tools can be fooled … ⌘ Read more
Publishers Are Losing Google Traffic As AI Answers Replace Links
alternative_right shares a report from Axios: Google has basically stopped sending people to websites (including our site) for answers and information. Instead, it’s using AI to answer them on its platform, in its words. Chartbeat data shared with Axios shows Google Search traffic to publishers fell 34% over the past year. That pain is regressiv … ⌘ Read more
Chrome Is Using AI To Fix Hundreds of Bugs, Eliminate Full Browser Restarts
Google says AI-assisted workflows helped Chrome fix 1,072 security bugs across versions 149 and 150, more than the previous 23 releases combined. The company is also testing twice-weekly security updates and “dynamic patching,” which could apply most fixes without requiring users to restart the entire browser. “By leveraging … ⌘ Read more
Google’s Gemini Can Now Stomp Around as a Humanoid Robot
Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics 2 combines vision, language, and action models to control multiple types of robots, including humanoids performing tasks such as organizing shelves, tying bags, and replacing lightbulbs. “It’s another milestone in our path towards really getting towards what we call like physical AGI, which means we get a robot to do anything tha … ⌘ Read more
Google Brings Its Age-Assurance Tech To Android Developers Worldwide
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google is expanding its answer to Apple’s age-assurance tools with Wednesday’s news that it will bring its Play Signal API to users worldwide by the end of 2026. The technology, already available in Brazil, allows Android developers to identify younger users of their apps in order … ⌘ Read more
Google Shuts Down Its Nobel-Prize Winning AlphaFold Project
Google has dismantled the original AlphaFold team, according to Financial Times (paywalled), reassigning many researchers to Gemini and Isomorphic Labs. Several other key members, including Nobel laureate John Jumper, left for Anthropic. Engadget reports: AlphaFold is an AI program that can accurately predict three-dimensional structures of proteins from t … ⌘ Read more
Tons of Peoples’ Claude Chats and Creations Are Exposed On Google
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Claude is exposing a wealth of users’ chats and creations in Google search results, meaning anyone can dig through conversations or other material that people used Claude to make but may not have realized were publicly available for strangers to see. The exposed data includes an AI-powered thera … ⌘ Read more
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Germans love consonants – and it’s the opposite with Scandinavian languages, isn’t it? 😅 This is so crazy for me to listen to:
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@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Hmm! I expected worse. 😅 (Never heard Czech in person.)
Germans love consonants – and it’s the opposite with Scandinavian languages, isn’t it? 😅 This is so crazy for me to listen to:
Love me some Finnish:
Apple Will ‘Watch Everything Burn’ When AI Bubble Bursts
MacRumors interviewed AI critic Ed Zitron, author of the Where’s Your Ed At newsletter and host of the Better Offline podcast, about what could happen to Apple if the costly AI infrastructure boom collapses. Zitron argued that Apple is relatively well insulated because it has spent far less on data centers than rivals such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. He sai … ⌘ Read more
Google’s Anti-search-scraping Lawsuit Dismissed
A U.S. district court “has dismissed Google’s case against SerpApi over that company’s scraping of search results to train AI models,” reports Computerworld. Google had claimed that it was protecting copyright holders — and that SerpApi’s actions breached America’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA):
[Google] made two claims: first, that no person shall circumvent a technol … ⌘ Read more
Top Online Sites Debate Cutting Off Google’s Crawlers
Futurism reports:
[Some online publications] are now debating whether to cut Google off entirely, as the Wall Street Journal reports, illustrating an increasingly fraught relationship between the tech giant and the publishers that are creating content its AI models are regurgitating. According to the newspaper, prominent outlets including USA Today, Politico, the Eco … ⌘ Read more
Trump Threatens New Tariffs Against EU Over Google Fine
President Trump threatened a “substantial” new tariff on the European Union after Brussels fined Google more than $1 billion over alleged illegal trade practices. “The European Union will pay a very big price for this illegal and highly unethical conduct, which I have consistently warned them about,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The penalties will be entirely reve … ⌘ Read more
Google Adds Selfie Video As a Log-In Option
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: You’ll now be able to use selfie videos to log into your Google account. It has long been possible to log into Google using your face, via your phone’s face unlock or if your passkey login uses biometrics for verification. This is yet another option to get into your account using your face to authenticate your identity, which could be esp … ⌘ Read more
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Anyone using XMPP? I've been hearing a lot about how it is the OG messaging protocol. That G00gle Talk used to use it as a back-end, that FB messanger and w_hatsapp use some modified version of it or something; And that setting up a server (or even using a public one) would be a better alternative to the aforementioned apps, so I did. Now the question is: "Where the Fu__ are my video calls at!!? 🤣" ... The protocol supports videoconferencing and I'm yet to find a decent Desktop/Mobile client that implements it. I wish I knew enough Code-Fu to contribute/help implement some, somewhere.
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XMPP greatest peak was when Google Talk was around. Being able to chat with thousands, if not millions, of Google users at that time, using your own domain, and your own XMPP server was amazing. Then Google, in all its wisdom, and as it does very often, decided to kill it.
I might be on the minority, but can care less about video calls. Heck, even calls! Text is King. 🤪
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Anyone using XMPP? I've been hearing a lot about how it is the OG messaging protocol. That G00gle Talk used to use it as a back-end, that FB messanger and w_hatsapp use some modified version of it or something; And that setting up a server (or even using a public one) would be a better alternative to the aforementioned apps, so I did. Now the question is: "Where the Fu__ are my video calls at!!? 🤣" ... The protocol supports videoconferencing and I'm yet to find a decent Desktop/Mobile client that implements it. I wish I knew enough Code-Fu to contribute/help implement some, somewhere.
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@arne@uplegger.eu You have Matrix at work? No Teams, Google Chat, Slack, Discord, whatever, but Matrix? Really? Where do you work, is this Socialist Russia?!
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The original twt is unavailable. It may have been edited or deleted, or is from an unknown or muted feed.
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@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org simplified it a little bit. Using only *bot* will bring collateral damage I want to avoid (there are, still some “good” bots):
@aibots {
header_regexp User-Agent (?i)(GPTBot|ChatGPT|OAI-Search|anthropic|Claude|Google-Extended|FacebookBot|CCBot|Perplexity|Applebot-Extended|cohere|Omgili|Bytespider)
}
abort @aibots
New Google Ad Imagines America’s ‘Declaration of Independence’ Written With AI Help
An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch:
Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a new commercial from Google asks: What if the Founding Fathers had access to Google Workspace?
With the tagline “Group project, but make it 1776,” the ad depicts a large … ⌘ Read more
GNOME Mutter GPU Reset Recovery Becoming A Reality
While typically quite rare encountering a GPU reset under Linux in most conditions, currently if encountering one under GNOME your session gets wiped out. But thanks to a Google Summer of Code “GSoC” project this year, GNOME’s Mutter compositor is finally seeing real GPU reset recovery handling… ⌘ Read more
Google Pulls the Plug On Tenor API, Killing GIF Pickers Around the Web
Google has shut down the Tenor API, breaking GIF pickers in services that still relied on it and forcing platforms such as X to migrate elsewhere. 9to5Google notes that the library itself remains available at Tenor.com and “integrations within Google products are also still active, including Gboard, Google Messages, and more.” From the … ⌘ Read more
Linux Foundation Launches Akrites To Coordinate AI-Driven Open Source Security
BrianFagioli writes: The Linux Foundation has announced Akrites, a new initiative to coordinate vulnerability disclosure and remediation for critical open source software as AI dramatically speeds up vulnerability discovery. Founding members include AWS, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Red Hat, NVIDIA, IBM, Cisco, JPMorgan … ⌘ Read more
Google Starts Lowering Play Store Fees, Making Good On Epic Games Settlement
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google spent the last few years locked in a legal grudge match with Epic Games, which claimed that Google’s stewardship of the Play Store was anticompetitive. Now, the companies are thick as thieves, and Google is beginning to implement app store changes as agreed in it … ⌘ Read more
Google Invests $75 Million In A24 To Develop AI-Powered Filmmaking Tools
Google is investing roughly $75 million in A24 as part of a research partnership with DeepMind to develop AI-powered filmmaking tools and workflows. “The deal represents the latest marriage between a Hollywood studio and AI in an era where companies have oscillated between partnerships and lawsuits,” reports Variety. From t … ⌘ Read more
2,000 Retired Google Pixel Phones Get a Second Life As a Private Cloud
UC San Diego researchers are working with Google to build a private cloud from 2,000 retired Pixel Fold motherboards, demonstrating how discarded smartphones could provide useful, low-cost computing capacity. “The full smartphone cluster is expected to launch this fall,” reports The Register. “Depending on how well the initial phas … ⌘ Read more
Google’s Gemini Partially Figures Out A Lengthy Linux Boot Time On Modern ASUS Laptop
Google Antigravity with the Gemini 3.5 Flash model helped a Linux user sort out a situation where his laptop was taking around 36 seconds to boot the kernel, which shouldn’t be the case for the high-end laptop with AMD Ryzen 9 processor and 32GB of RAM. It ended up being yet another case of device firmware issues, but now a Linux kernel patch is pending for working around the issue on the ASUS ROG Strix G16 G614 laptop while … ⌘ Read more
Android 17 Drops For Pixel Phones and Watch
Google has begun rolling out Android 17, the June Pixel Feature Drop, and Wear OS 7 simultaneously across supported Pixel phones and watches. Highlights include floating app bubbles, improved foldable multitasking and gaming, tighter location and contact permissions, stronger lost-device protections, new Pixel AI tools, and up to 10% better Pixel Watch battery life. PhoneArena reports: … ⌘ Read more
Google Toldl Researchers ‘Nice Catch!’ Then Denied Bug Bounty For Flaw It Still Hasn’t Fixed
Security researcher Justin O’Leary says Google initially accepted his Config Connector privilege-escalation report as a high-priority, high-severity bug, then denied a bounty by declaring the behavior “working as intended.” “Google initially rated the bug high priority and high severity, with a re … ⌘ Read more
Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI Back Linux Foundation’s Appia AI Standards Initiative
BrianFagioli writes: Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Arm, Mastercard, Siemens, and other companies have joined the newly launched Appia Foundation under the Linux Foundation. The project aims to create common specifications and assessment frameworks that organizations can use to demonstrate AI systems meet emerging s … ⌘ Read more
Google Chrome’s Next Update Will Mark the End of Popular Ad Blockers
Google is removing Chrome’s last remaining workarounds for Manifest V2 extensions, effectively ending support for legacy ad blockers such as the original uBlock Origin. 9to5Google reports: CyberNews points out a Chromium commit that removes support for the “kExtensionManifestV2Disabled” flag, which is referred to as “dead code” seeing as Ch … ⌘ Read more
FreeBSD Receives Funding To Launch AI-Assisted Vulnerability Discovery
The FreeBSD Project announced today the launch of an AI-Assisted Vulnerability Discovery Project with grant funding provided by the Linux Foundation backed Alpha-Omega project. Alpha-Mega has sponsors including Microsoft, AWS, Google, Anthrophic, OpenAI, and others who will now be helping with FreeBSD uncovering new vulnerabilities by leveraging AI… ⌘ Read more
Google CEO Largely Avoids Discussing AI In Stanford Commencement Speech
BrianFagioli writes: Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivered Stanford University’s 2026 commencement address, but despite leading one of the companies at the center of the AI boom, he spent very little time discussing artificial intelligence. Instead, the speech focused on optimism, working on hard things, and following your interests. T … ⌘ Read more
Will Meta’s $14 Billion Bet on AI Ever Pay Off?
“A year after spending over $14 billion to bring in Alexandr Wang and a group of his top Scale AI engineers to revamp its artificial intelligence efforts, Meta is at least back on the map in AI,” reports CNBC, “though it’s still far behind OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in the market.”
Wang’s big accomplishment was the delivery of the Muse Spark AI model in April, marking Meta’s firs … ⌘ Read more
Revised AVX-512 xor_gen() Implementation For Linux RAID Yielding More Performance Gains
A few days back I wrote about Google’s Eric Biggers spearheading an AVX-512 implementation of xor_gen() as the Linux kernel function used for generating and validating parity blocks such as for RAID5/RAID6. That initial implementation was yielding up to 41% better performance while a new implementation has now been posted for scoring some additional victories… ⌘ Read more
A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones
Article URL: https://research.google/blog/a-low-carbon-computing-platform-from-your-retired-phones/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515336
Points: 6
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A German Court Has Ruled That Google Is Liable for False Statements Generated by AI Overviews
The ruling holds that a company that designs, trains, operates, and manages an AI system must assume legal liability for any damages caused by the responses it generates. ⌘ Read more
Google Sues Chinese Cybercrime Operation That Used Gemini AI To Send Scam Texts
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google is suing to dismantle the infrastructure behind an alleged massive AI-powered cybercrime operation. On Friday, the tech giant announced a lawsuit against an alleged Chinese cybercrime network called Outsider Enterprise, which Google says uses AI in its campaig … ⌘ Read more
Google-freies Android: Murena präsentiert /e/OS 4.0
Die neue Version von /e/OS soll den Umzug von Google-Diensten erleichtern - und nun auch bei Gmail helfen. ( Android-ROM, Smartphone)
Security updates for Friday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (.NET 10.0, .NET 8.0, .NET 9.0, bind, expat, httpd:2.4, kernel, kernel-rt, mod_http2, openssl, poppler, redis, redis:7, samba, and unbound), Debian (ironic, kernel-wedge, libinput, linux-base, and neutron), Fedora (kernel, openssl, vaultwarden, and vaultwarden-web), Mageia (erlang-hex_core, erlang-rebar3, gnupg2, and sqlite3), Red Hat (buildah, podman, and skopeo), SUSE (flannel, gdk-pixbuf-loader-libheif, gnutls, google-cloud-sap-age … ⌘ Read more
Любими радиостанции се обединяват в обща онлайн платформа FRESH PLAY
Приложението е разработено според принципите на бързата навигация, с … ⌘ Read more
Suchmaschine: Google haftet für KI-Übersichten
Google muss für fehlerhafte KI-Antworten geradestehen. Das Urteil könnte Folgen für den Umgang mit KI-Inhalten im Internet haben. ( Google, KI)
Euro-Office 1.0 Arrives To Open-Source Infighting: ‘Compatibility Is Not Sovereignty’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: If digital sovereignty is important to you, and it certainly is in the European Union (EU), then you’ll be pleased to know that EuroOffice, a new open-source browser-based office suite alternative to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, has officially reached its … ⌘ Read more
Streaming: Youtube Premium wird in Deutschland teurer
Kunden zahlen künftig für Youtube Premium im Einzelabo über 15 Prozent mehr. Auch Bestandskunden sollen die Preisänderungen betreffen. ( Youtube, Google)
Security updates for Thursday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (.NET 10.0, .NET 8.0, .NET 9.0, podman, poppler, and postgresql-jdbc), Debian (chromium, jackson-core, libdbi-perl, and libinput), Fedora (httpd, rust, and xmlstarlet), Mageia (openssh, postfix, and roundcubemail), Oracle (frr, kernel, libyang, n, postgresql-jdbc, and unbound), Red Hat (.NET 10.0, .NET 8.0, .NET 9.0, redis, and redis:7), SUSE (agama-web-ui, cockpit, cosign, glibc, google-cloud-sap-agent, google-osconfig-agent, kan … ⌘ Read more