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Tech News
Security firm Socket Inc. identified 19 malicious browser extensions for Chrome and Edge that operated for years before being caught. The most popular, a right-click/OCR utility, was installed by 80,000 combined users and secretly harvested cryptocurrency wallet data after receiving malicious updates roughly six months ago.
A developer created a browser-based animation, hosted on his 'random tools' PWA collection, that lets users rev virtual engines up to 9000 RPM by holding the spacebar or gas pedal. The tool models four engine layouts—an inline-4, 60-degree V6, boxer-6, and flat-plane V8—each with accurate crankshaft geometry and firing order, and includes a slow-motion control to observe piston movement at 1/50th speed.
A blog post highlights a handy jq trick from Sequoia McDowell that pretty-prints JSON copied to the clipboard and pastes it back automatically, using pbpaste and pbcopy on macOS. The author adapts this for Linux using xclip, then identifies a flaw: if the clipboard doesn't contain valid JSON, jq fails silently and wipes the clipboard content. The fix adds a fallback so the original clipboard text is preserved when jq errors out.
Panera Bread has introduced its autumn lineup, featuring returning seasonal favorites alongside three entirely new menu items. The refreshed offerings lean heavily into soups and sweet treats to match the cooler weather.
A technical blog post walks through building a custom attention kernel for Nvidia's Blackwell B200 GPU entirely from scratch, using CUDA and some PTX code. Through a 14-step progression of optimizations illustrated with 60 diagrams, the kernel reaches 94.4% of FlashAttention-4's performance on 4K, 8K, and 16K sequence shapes, and is demonstrated by plugging it into a video-generation model.
Android Authority found a new Customize option in Google Photos version 7.90.0 that lets users drag and rearrange folders like On This Device, Places, and People & Pets within the Collections tab. The tool also allows hiding certain albums entirely, though the recently added pinned section can only be hidden, not reordered.
Greenpeace says the rollout of Apple's AI features, including the upcoming Siri overhaul, will strain the company's renewable energy commitments due to the heavy electricity and water demands of large-scale data centers. The environmental group, which has praised Apple's clean energy record for over a decade, says Apple must now prove it can scale AI without abandoning those climate goals.
Anthropic has released a checker that indicates whether a piece of content carries a signal showing it was processed by Claude. The tool only confirms the presence of such a signal and says nothing about the accuracy or quality of the content itself.
The Trump administration filed a statement of interest in The New York Times' copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, siding with OpenAI's claim that training AI models on copyrighted text qualifies as fair use. Government attorneys warned that narrowing fair-use doctrine could hinder scientific and economic progress tied to large language models.
A nonprofit called the Fermi Explorer Mission plans to launch a spacecraft toward the Alpha Centauri star system by the end of 2029, using a novel flight path calculated by an AI system built by physics lab PSI. The mission, though launched this decade, could take the probe as long as 80,000 years to reach its destination 4.4 light-years away. Separately, MIT Technology Review highlighted how AI models have rapidly improved at solving New York Times Connections puzzles, jumping from 18% accuracy in late 2024 to near-perfect scores by early 2025.
Law firm Edelson PC is submitting 30 additional lawsuits in a California court against OpenAI, expanding on seven earlier complaints tied to the February school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. The new plaintiffs include teachers, a principal, and students present during the attack, and for the first time the filings allege OpenAI aided and abetted the shooting rather than merely failing to prevent it.
GoPro has agreed to a $285 million cash merger with Starman Optical, a privately held maker of high-speed optical transceivers for AI data centers. Shareholders will receive $1.14 per share plus a roughly 10% stake in the combined, still Nasdaq-listed company, and Starman will also pay off GoPro's $92 million debt. The deal, expected to close by year-end pending regulatory approval, comes as GoPro's stock had crashed toward delisting territory amid weak sales and auditor doubts about its survival.