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Tech
Industry, products, and the wires that hold it all together.
745 stories archived
UK manufacturers face rising hacking risk as survey shows 30% were hit last year
Big companies describe being under constant threat but only half have a plan in place to respond to an attack Nearly a third of British manufacturers have been hit by a cyber-attack on them or a company in their supply chain, according to a survey that highlighted the growing hacking risk to companies. The findings come almost a year after Britain’s largest automotive employer, JLR, was hit by an attack that forced it to halt production for weeks. Continue reading...
‘People were giving me dirty looks’: the backlash against Meta smartglasses
Influencers accused of using ‘pervert glasses’ amid fears about people being filmed without their consent It was hardly an offensive video. Amid the buzz of the Tour de France finale, Oliver Hooson filmed himself whipping up a delicious-looking flat white for a fellow cycling enthusiast. But after posting the footage on social media, the comments that soon rolled in were a real shock. “PERV,” read one. “Out here pushing creep glasses,” said another. His mistake? Documenting the moment with Meta’s “spy glasses”. Despite being marketed as the latest must-have gadget, Meta’s smartglasses, which can record video footage while being worn, have faced a vicious backlash, particularly relating to concerns about surveillance. There are widespread fears about the glasses being used to film people, especially women, without their consent, and the resultant footage being posted on social media. This has earned them the label of “pervert glasses”, and content creators, no matter how they are used, have faced a flood of negative comments for deploying them. Continue reading...
Mount Toba eruption doesn't seem like it could nearly kill our species
The massive Toba eruption seems to have had little climate impact.
Google DeepMind enters a new era as co-founder Demis Hassabis shifts AI role
Observers express concern that the division has lost its independence and commercial reality has taken over When Sir Demis Hassabis said AI had brought the world to a “pivotal moment in human history” last month, he knew another big change was imminent. This shift was closer to home. The Nobel prize-winning head of Google DeepMind, Google’s AI unit, announced this week he was relinquishing his day-to-day duties as chief executive and becoming chair. He is also taking on the role of chief scientist at DeepMind’s parent, Alphabet. Continue reading...
The first self-driving vehicle on Mars has proven to be a smashing success
About 90 percent of the distance driven by Perseverance has been autonomous.
DeepMind’s hurricane breakthrough has surprised weather scientists
Open source WeatherNext model can make accurate predictions with lower-resolution weather data.
Crab Odyssey: Crustacean Wandered the Seas in a Bottle for Months, Scientists Find
Scientists discovered a crab that had spent months at sea stuck in a bottle, subsisting on algae and fish that wandered into its plastic lair. The lonely mariner offers a warning about the impacts of human pollution on wildlife worldwide.
Europe's free satellite service just made it easier to track wildfires
Copernicus Browser adds wildfire visualization amid record wildfire season.
Flesh-eating screwworms feast on humans in Mexico; human cases top 500
Six deaths reported among screwworm cases, one directly attributed to the flies.
Judge rules Meta caused "public nuisance" and must fund mental health treatment
New Mexico judge orders $567M fund to help address youth mental health crisis.
The ultimate eclipse chase: A Concorde raced against the Moon's shadow
Fitted with telescopes, the plane did our longest imaging of the Sun's corona.
New official 30th anniversary Quake mission pack adds new maps and mechanics
19 new maps continue the story from MachineGames' other campaign additions.
DOGE's wild, unverifiable savings claims discredited in US government report
DOGE's inflated "Wall of Receipts": 96% of grant savings unverifiable, GAO says.
OpenAI’s expensive smart speaker will use moving parts to seem “more alive”
Gurman report claims OpenAI confirmed the speaker is not an Apple ripoff.
How snails engineer their slime
Collagen and calcium work in tandem to achieve varying mechanical properties of different kinds of mucus.
Volkswagen plans to win America back with a pickup, report says
There's no evidence the truck will be a cheap EV truck, but what if it were?
Behind the Blog: Rare Books and Baseball Brain
This week, we discuss Flock blogging, "rare" books, and Jesus Christ.
This man was secretly snapped by someone with smartglasses. He’s not alone in calling that a violation of privacy
The backlash to what some dub ‘pervert glasses’ is growing – but people living with disabilities point out the new tech can also be life-changing Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast One summer day earlier this year, Rhys left a cafe in Melbourne where he had been working remotely, when his phone pinged with a message on the dating app Grindr. The message was a photo of him sitting at a table outside the cafe on his laptop, with his dog seated on the ground next to him. In the foreground, in a man’s hand was an iPhone unlocked. Continue reading...
City That Arrested Person for Clapping at Data Center Meeting Moves to Virtual Townhalls for 'Public Safety'
A small town in Kansas took its city meetings virtual and ended public comment after city leaders received a wave of death threats.
Report: White House drafting executive order linking vaccines and autism
Trump determined to link life-saving shots to autism, despite science and political risk.
AI chatbots have failed people in crisis. Can that be fixed?
Clinicians and researchers say AI companies need to open up their safety data.
ByteDance trains massive AI model in bid to rival Anthropic
TikTok owner training a model with 10 trillion parameters.
The world's biggest solar telescope caught vortexes on the Sun's surface
We expected them to be there, but they had previously been too small to see.
The White House’s plan to vet potentially dangerous AI is cloaked in secrecy
A Trump administration framework on AI testing leaves a lack of transparency – and plenty of open questions After months of talking with tech industry leaders, the Trump administration finalized a framework this week for how it will test new artificial intelligence models for safety and cybersecurity risks. So far, the White House is keeping details of the framework private, in a blow to transparency and potential boon for secretive AI companies. On Tuesday, staff from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, Nvidia and Microsoft attended a private meeting with White House officials to review the AI framework. Multiple outlets have since reported that although the volunteer vetting process for new AI models has been settled, the White House does not plan to release its policy publicly and will only share testing criteria with a select few tech companies. Continue reading...