Latest Tech News

Stay updated with the latest in technology, AI, cybersecurity, and more

Filtered by: tion Clear Filter

How to disable ACR on your TV (and why doing so makes such a big difference)

Kerry Wan/ZDNET Did you know that whenever you turn on your smart TV, you invite an unseen guest to watch it with you? These days, most popular TV models utilize automatic content recognition (ACR), a form of ad surveillance technology that gathers information about everything you watch and transmits it to a centralized database. Manufacturers then use your data to identify your viewing preferences, enabling them to deliver highly targeted ads. Also: Don't cancel Netflix yet: I used these sec

Why I like the base iPad more than the Pro and Air - especially at this price

ZDNET's key takeaways The 11th-generation iPad 11th Generation normally retails for $349 The upgraded iPad has double the base storage as the previous generation, more RAM, and an upgraded processor in the A16 Bionic chip. However, it still isn't compatible with Apple Intelligence and doesn't support the Apple Pencil Pro. $299 at Amazon $349 at Apple $329 at B&H Photo-Video more buying choices Multiple 11th-Gen iPad configurations are on sale at Amazon. One of the biggest discounts belongs to

Identity Assertion Authorization Grant

This specification provides a mechanism for an application to use an identity assertion to obtain an access token for a third-party API using Token Exchange [ RFC8693 ] and JWT Profile for OAuth 2.0 Authorization Grants [ RFC7523 ]. ¶ This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.¶ The latest revision of this draft can be found at https://drafts.aaronpk.com/draft-parecki-oauth-identity-assertion-authz-grant/draft-parecki-oauth-identity-assertion-authz-grant.html. Status information fo

What I talk about when I talk about IRs

I have a lot of thoughts about the design of compiler intermediate representations (IRs). In this post I’m going to try and communicate some of those ideas and why I think they are important. The overarching idea is being able to make decisions with only local information. That comes in a couple of different flavors. We’ll assume that we’re compiling a method at a time, instead of a something more trace-like (tracing, tracelets, basic block versioning, etc). Control-flow graphs A function wi

OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the Snowflake Summit in San Francisco on June 2, 2025. OpenAI has been awarded a $200 million contract to provide the U.S. Defense Department with artificial intelligence tools. The department announced the one-year contract on Monday, months after OpenAI said it would collaborate with defense technology startup Anduril to deploy advanced AI systems for "national security missions." "Under this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabil

OpenAI wins $200 million U.S. defense contract

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the Snowflake Summit in San Francisco on June 2, 2025. OpenAI has been awarded a $200 million contract to provide the U.S. Defense Department with artificial intelligence tools. The department announced the one-year contract on Monday, months after OpenAI said it would collaborate with defense technology startup Anduril to deploy advanced AI systems for "national security missions." "Under this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabil

Android 16 QPR1 Beta 2 adds new animation for the power button long-press gesture

Joe Maring / Android Authority TL;DR Android is getting several new animations as part of its Material 3 Expressive revamp. Google has started testing one of the upcoming animations in the latest Android 16 QPR1 beta release. It appears as a black overlay that expands from the screen borders when you long-press the power button. In addition to refreshed UI elements, Android’s new Material 3 Expressive design language is set to introduce some slick new animations. We gave you an early look at

Hackers switch to targeting U.S. insurance companies

Threat intelligence researchers are warning of hackers breaching multiple U.S. companies in the insurance industry using all the tactics observed with Scattered Spider activity. Typically, the threat group has a sector-by-sector focus. Previously, they targeted retail organizations in the United Kingdom and then switched to targets in the same sector in the United States. “Google Threat Intelligence Group is now aware of multiple intrusions in the US which bear all the hallmarks of Scattered S

New Anubis ransomware can encrypt and destroy data, making file recovery impossible

WTF?! Being affected by a dangerous ransomware operation is bad enough, but at least you might have a chance to recover your files somehow. A recently discovered ransomware strain is making things even trickier by offering a new wiping option that allows affiliate criminals to completely destroy data after encryption. Security researchers have discovered a new Ransomware-as-a-Service campaign with highly destructive potential. Anubis has only been around for a few months and fortunately, hasn't

Google Adds Button to Generate Error-Laden AI Podcast About Your Search Results Instead of Just Reading Them Like a Functioning Member of Society

Google has released a baffling new AI feature that turns your web search into a podcast. Why anybody would want to enable the feature is unclear. Why be plagued by misleading and hallucinated AI Overviews search results when you can have a robotic voice read them out loud instead? Have we really lost the ability as a species to parse written information, nevermind original sources? The opt-in feature — which currently lives inside Google's experimental "Labs" section and has to be manually tur

Show HN: Chawan TUI web browser

Version 0.2.0 of the Chawan TUI browser has been released. A tarball of the source tree is available here. Please refer to the README file for compilation instructions. A static binary distribution for amd64 Linux also exists. To install it, extract the archive somewhere and run make install as root. (To uninstall, run make uninstall .) The same distribution is also available as a .deb package. ## Information for package maintainers The current list of mandatory runtime dependencies is: li

Today's NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for June 17, #737

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today's Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles. Today's NYT Connections puzzle is a fun mix today. Disney fans, you'll ace a certain category. Read on for clues and today's Connections answers. The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have t

Today's NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for June 17, #267

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today's Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles. Today's Connections: Sports Edition isn't too tough, but I found the purple category much easier than the blue one today. If you pay close attention to a certain winter Olympic sport, you might find the blue group simple. Need help? Read on for hints and the answers. Connections: Sports Editi

Companies Warn SEC That Mass Deportations Pose Serious Business Risk

As the Trump administration executes an aggressive deportation campaign across the United States, a growing number of US companies warn that the crackdown could threaten their operations. Since January, more than 40 companies have mentioned the impact of deportations in filings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, with many saying it could hurt the labor force, increase the risk of a recession, or create more economic uncertainty, according to 74 filings reviewed by WIRED. The impacted

PlayStation doubles down on slow, "thoughtful" PC porting strategy

In a nutshell: Sony's PC porting strategy has been clear from the start. It is in no rush to follow Xbox's multiplatform strategy. It wants to preserve the value of the PlayStation 5 by making sure high-end exclusives like Spider-Man and God of War remain showcases for the console first – and only reach PC when the timing feels right. Sony Interactive Entertainment's Studio Business Group CEO Hermen Hulst says the company is continuing to take a "measured" approach to porting major first-party

Noted ‘Matrix’ Non-Cast Member Will Smith Admits He Also Turned Down ‘Inception’

Will Smith’s many arenas of success have included sci-fi hits like Independence Day and the Men in Black films. But one of the most famous bits of Smith trivia is that he turned down the role of Neo in The Matrix. He admits it (and admits he regrets it), and he even made a music video just this year in the style of the Wachowskis’ classic, giving fans a glimpse at what might have been. And now he’s copping to another big sci-fi movie he passed on starring in: Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Smit

'How to Train Your Dragon' Has Tempered My Disdain for Live-Action Remakes

I go into live-action remakes with an air of spite and the lowest expectations, and I typically walk out feeling like those emotions are justified. Cue the unimaginative plot, vapid characters and uninspired cinematography, and that is the bulk of these money-making ploys. But the How to Train Your Dragon remake from DreamWorks, in theaters now, admittedly left me awestruck. I went to see the live-action remake of this beloved 2010 film over the weekend and was anxious about whether it would ma

Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

Object personification is the attribution of human characteristics to non-human agents. In online forums, autistic individuals commonly report experiencing this phenomenon. Given that approximately half of all autistic individuals experience difficulties identifying their own emotions, the suggestion that object personification may be a feature of autism seems almost paradoxical. Why would a person experience sympathy for objects, when they struggle to understand and verbalise the emotions of ot

Trump Mobile launches, hyping $499 US-made phone amid Apple threats

Donald Trump's image will soon be used to sell smartphones, the Trump Organization confirmed after unveiling a new wireless service, Trump Mobile, on Monday. According to the press release, Trump Mobile's "flagship" wireless plan will be "The 47 Plan," which references Trump's current term as the United States' 47th president. The Trump Organization says the plan offers an "unbeatable value"—costing $47.45 per month—and "transformational" cellular service. But the price seems to be on par with

How the first electric grid was built

The Linear No Threshold model says that there is no safe level of radiation exposure. There is overwhelming evidence it is false, yet it inspires the ALARA principle, which makes nuclear power unaffordable worldwide. Read the lead article from Issue 19 of Works in Progress. We’re hosting a Stripe Press pop-up coffee shop and bookstore on Saturday, June 28, in Washington, DC. RSVP here if you can make it. In 1883, Sir Coutts Lindsay, owner of the Grosvenor Art Gallery in Bond Street, decided th

Founder of 23andMe buys back company out of bankruptcy auction

Anne Wojcicki has been declared the winner of a bankruptcy auction for 23andMe, the genetics testing start-up she founded, prevailing over a rival bid from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. TTAM Research Institute, a non-profit public benefit company also founded by Wojcicki, won the auction with a $305 million bid for the 23andMe assets, which will not come with any company liabilities attached. 23andMe filed for bankruptcy in March after rejecting several go-private offers from Wojcicki in recent y

How to download your information from Facebook

Once upon a time Facebook was filled with posts about the minutiae of your day and album after album of photos of just about every experience you had. By now, a lot of this media is likely hidden with the "only me" setting. But, regardless of how much you use Facebook these days, it's probably home to a lot of memories you want to hold on to — or at least have the opportunity to laugh at later. The good news is that you can download your Facebook information. You can access things such as your

LLM Chat via SSH

# Server name, optional, can be changed to your own domain SERVER_NAME = chat.aigc.ing # Whether it's a public server, required. If not configured, it defaults to private server and requires whitelist configuration PUBLIC_SERVER = false # Rate limiting settings, optional. TTL suffix is for time, LIMIT is for count. Strongly recommended for public servers RATE_LIMIT_TTL = 3600 RATE_LIMIT_LIMIT = 300 LOGIN_FAILED_TTL = 600 LOGIN_FAILED_LIMIT = 10 # Blacklist and whitelist, opt

No Fed Cut, No Rate Break: June Mortgage Forecast Stays Flat

As the Federal Reserve likely holds interest rates steady, mortgage rates are expected to stay in a narrow range. Tharon Green/CNET With each passing day, it seems like average 30-year mortgage rates could remain stuck near 6.8% for the rest of the year. Yet conflicting economic forces could push mortgage rates up or down in the coming months. Housing market experts say the same thing: The direction of mortgage rates depends on the economic impact of policies by the Trump administration and th

7 trends shaping digital transformation in 2025 - and AI looms large

shomos uddin/Getty Images Welcome to the age of hybrid work, where businesses will augment the human workforce with AI agents -- the birth of the autonomous enterprise, according to research from technology specialist MuleSoft. Here are the top seven trends that Mulesoft suggests are shaping digital transformation in 2025: House of AI agents: The autonomous enterprise built on a "house of agents" will take hold, as organizations augment the human workforce with AI, freeing them to focus on mor

If You Have a PS5, the PlayStation DualSense Controller Costs Peanuts on Amazon

If you own a PS5, having multiple controllers is almost a necessity as there’s nothing better than sharing your favorite PlayStation games with friends or family in the same room. While it’s always wise to have a spare controller ready for multi-player sessions or simply as a backup for you, genuine discounts on the PlayStation DualSense wireless controller are rare. Even during Black Friday, major promotions were hard to find which makes this moment the perfect opportunity to add another contr

Social Media Replaced Zines. Now Zines Are Taking the Power Back

One sunny afternoon in May, a century-old power plant in Brooklyn was buzzing—not with electricity, but with hundreds of creatives congregating at the Black Zine Fair. Handmade booklets piled up on table after table, forming vast paper topographies of politics and activism and culture. Marginalized groups in skating! Fictional characters “that probably made me queer”! Someone else presented zines dedicated to all the TV shows they had recorded onto VHS. Still more tables hosted zine assembly. Ev

Solving LinkedIn Queens with APL

Solving LinkedIn Queens with APL 14 Jun 2025 on Peter Vernigorov’s blog A couple months ago I noticed that LinkedIn now has a few simple games. They’re not much to write home about, but I really enjoy playing Queens. This week I saw two posts about solving the Queens game programmatically. Both were quite interesting to me, so I thought this was a good opportunity to also solve the game in my favourite language - APL - and share my experience. Having been using APL for Advent of Code, I wante

Chemical knowledge and reasoning of large language models vs. chemist expertise

Benchmark corpus To compile our benchmark corpus, we utilized a broad list of sources (Methods), ranging from completely novel, manually crafted questions over university exams to semi-automatically generated questions based on curated subsets of data in chemical databases. For quality assurance, all questions have been reviewed by at least two scientists in addition to the original curator and automated checks. Importantly, our large pool of questions encompasses a wide range of topics and que