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We investigated Amsterdam's attempt to build a 'fair' fraud detection model

METHODOLOGY How we investigated Amsterdam’s attempt to build a ‘fair’ fraud detection model For the past four years, Lighthouse has investigated welfare fraud detection algorithms deployed in five European countries. Our investigations have found evidence that these systems discriminated against vulnerable groups with oftentimes steep consequences for people’s lives. Governments and companies deploying these systems often show little regard for the biases they perpetrate against vulnerable gro

Seven replies to the viral Apple reasoning paper and why they fall short

The Apple paper on limitations in the “reasoning” of Large Reasoning Models, which raised challenges for the latest scaling hypothesis, has clearly touched a nerve. Tons of media outlets covered it; huge numbers of people on social media are discussing. My own post here laying out the Apple paper in historical and scientific context was so popular that well over 150,000 people read it, biggest in this newsletter’s history. The Guardian published an adaptation of my post (“When billion-dollar AI

I'm a Fiend for Horror and Westerns. Netflix Has One of the Best Genre Mashups Ever Made

Father's Day is coming up and, if you're like me, you're searching for the perfect movie to watch on the big day. Well, as a dad myself, I can easily find comfort in the tried and true classics like National Lampoon's Vacation, Once Upon a Time in America or even The Shawshank Redemption. There's no arguing that those titles are stereotypical "dad" movies. But I'm not a stereotypical dad. My cinematic tastes usually lead me down an alternate path. Yes, I love me a good western but I'm also a d

Anker recalls over a million power banks after reports of fires

PSA A popular portable charger is being pulled from shelves and homes across the United States after reports surfaced of the device overheating and causing fires. Anker, a well-known electronics manufacturer, has announced a voluntary recall of its PowerCore 10000 power banks, specifically those marked with model number A1263, due to a potential safety issue with the battery. The recall, which began on June 12, affects approximately 1.16 million units sold nationwide between June 2016 and Decem

Scientists Intrigued by Conical Skull Found in Ancient Burial Ground

Secrets of the skeletons. Head Game Archaeologists in Iran have discovered an ancient cone-shaped skull that is believed to have belonged to a teen girl — and there are signs of tragedy in her bones. As Live Science reports, the skull, which was found in a prehistoric burial ground known as Chega Sofla without its corresponding skeleton, shows signs not only of intentional modification, but also possibly fatal blunt force trauma. Dated to roughly 6,200 years old, the strange cone shape of th

These are the niche features I wish Samsung Good Lock also let me customize

Ryan Haines / Android Authority I think it’s safe to say that Samsung’s Good Lock is the most powerful customization toolkit in the Android ecosystem for those who want even more control over their One UI devices. Good Lock modules unlock the lock screen, tweak themes, and extend Routines far beyond their initial capabilities. It’s grown so much since its early days that I couldn’t imagine using a Samsung phone without it. However, there are still several areas where Good Lock falls short. Exi

T-Mobile will give you the Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus for free - how the deal works

Kerry Wan/ZDNET Newer phones may be getting more compact, but that doesn't mean there aren't bigger options for your personal needs. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus would be a perfect contender if you need a bigger screen, a great camera system, and AI options. Also: You can use T-Mobile's satellite service for free on any carrier now - here's how T-Mobile is now running an offer where you can get your ludicrously capacious Galaxy S25 Plus for free. All you have to do is trade in a phone in any c

One of the most versatile action cameras I've tested isn't from GoPro - and it's on sale

DJI Osmo Action 4. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET Multiple DJI Osmo Action 4 packages are on sale at Amazon. Both the Essential and Standard Combos have been discounted to $249, while the Adventure Combo has dropped to $349. DJI might not be the first name on people's lips when it comes to action cameras, but the company that's better known for its drones also has a really solid line of action cameras. And its latest device, the Osmo Action 4 camera, has some very impressive tricks up its sleeve

Model Once, Represent Everywhere: UDA (Unified Data Architecture) at Netflix

Model Once, Represent Everywhere: UDA (Unified Data Architecture) at Netflix Netflix Technology Blog Follow 15 min read · 2 days ago 2 days ago -- 8 Listen Share By Alex Hutter, Alexandre Bertails, Claire Wang, Haoyuan He, Kishore Banala, Peter Royal, Shervin Afshar As Netflix’s offerings grow — across films, series, games, live events, and ads — so does the complexity of the systems that support it. Core business concepts like ‘actor’ or ‘movie’ are modeled in many places: in our Enterprise G

Texting myself the weather every day

Texting myself the weather every day Opening the Weather app every morning is too much effort, but you know what isn’t? Writing a recurring job to query an API every morning and send you the results in an SMS, delivered right to your doorstep phone! Come with me as we embark on my short, little journey through this very process. Version 1: A Zapier “Zap” Version 1 of this service was simply just a “zap” on Zapier. Very easy to connect together a trigger and an action, and start receiving a te

I have reimplemented Stable Diffusion 3.5 from scratch in pure PyTorch

miniDiffusion miniDiffusion is a reimplementation of the Stable Diffusion 3.5 model in pure PyTorch with minimal dependencies. It's designed for educational, experimenting, and hacking purposes. It's made with the mindset of having the least amount of code necessary to recreate Stable Diffusion 3.5 from scratch, with only ~2800 spanning from VAE to DiT to the Train and Dataset scripts. -Files: The main Stable Diffusion model code is located in dit.py, dit_components.py, and attention.py. The d

This Roborock Q7 Max Robot Vacuum and Mop Drops to Near-Free Price Thanks to Almost 50% Off on Amazon

Tired of vacuuming your house? You and us both. It’s just not a fun task, no matter how you slice it. And it’s a thankless one. The end result is fine, sure, because you get floors that are clean. But who wants to keep taking time out of their day to clean? Couldn’t be us. If your floors are constantly covered in pet hair, crumbs, or tracked-in dirt, the idea of a robot vacuum doing the heavy lifting while you kick back (or, let’s be real, tackle a million other things) is pretty appealing. That

Laika’s ‘ParaNorman’ Is Coming Back to Theaters

If you liked ParaNorman back in the day and wished to see it on the big screen again, you’re in luck. Laika’s stop-motion horror movie is getting a one-week theatrical re-release in 2D and remastered RealD3D on October 23 internationally and October 25 in the U.S. The film’s return marks Laika’s second movie to come to back to theatres following Coraline in 2024 for its 15th birthday, and this will be part of the studio’s 20th anniversary celebration. Screenings will also come with The Thriftin

Best Internet Providers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida

What is the best internet provider in Fort Lauderdale? CNET's top pick is Xfinity as the best internet provider in Fort Lauderdale, thanks to its wide availability, reliable performance and affordable pricing tiers. With coverage extending across nearly the entire city and download speeds that can easily handle streaming, gaming, and remote work, it’s a top choice for both new residents and longtime locals. Xfinity isn’t the only name worth knowing. AT&T Fiber is ideal for those chasing top-ti

Does Next Week's Fed Meeting Matter for Mortgage Rates? Yes and No

When interest rate cuts do come, it won't be a cure-all for today's unaffordable housing market. Saifulasmee Chede/Getty Images/CNET If you followed the Federal Reserve's monetary policy decisions last year, you might have been puzzled: The Fed's three interest rate cuts didn't translate into cheaper mortgages. In fact, the average rate for a 30-year fixed home loan has hovered around 6.8% since late fall. On Wednesday, the central bank is expected to extend a pause on interest rate cuts for a

ChatGPT Glossary: 52 AI Terms Everyone Should Know

AI is now a part of our everyday lives. From the massive popularity of ChatGPT to Google cramming AI summaries at the top of its search results, AI is completely taking over the internet. With AI, you can get instant answers to pretty much any question. It can feel like talking to someone who has a Ph.D. in everything. But that aspect of AI chatbots is only one part of the AI landscape. Sure, having ChatGPT help do your homework or having Midjourney create fascinating images of mechs based on c

My T-Mobile 5G Home Internet Experience: 5 Things I Love and a Few I Don't

Albuquerque, New Mexico: home of green chiles, 300 days of sunshine, the International Balloon Fiesta... and achingly slow internet. Of the top 100 cities in the US, Albuquerque ranks 85th, according to data from Ookla. (Disclaimer: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, the same company that owns CNET.) Home internet was a two-horse race in Albuquerque for years: CenturyLink DSL and Xfinity cable. I spent decades on DSL, watching my internet speed tests march slowly up to a maximum of 20 megabits per se

A Study of the Winston Red: The Smithsonian's New Fancy Red Diamond

ABSTRACT Red diamonds are among the rarest gems on Earth, especially Fancy red diamonds that are pure red and unmodified by brown, orange, or purple. At 2.33 ct, the Winston Red diamond is the fifth-largest Fancy red diamond known to exist and the only Fancy red diamond on public exhibit. On April 1, 2025, it was unveiled in a new exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. This is the first scientific and historical study conducted on this noteworthy stone.

Ahead of Protests, Waymo Scales Back Robotaxi Service Nationwide

Waymo will temporarily limit robotaxi service in all of its nationwide markets, the company said Friday, as US cities prepare for a wave of protests of federal immigration policies and law enforcement and military crackdowns on demonstrators. The Alphabet subsidiary will stop service in Los Angeles altogether. Waymo spokesperson Sandy Karp confirmed the service pause and adjustments but declined to comment further. There is no indication how long the service changes will last. The adjustments

Beyond GPT architecture: Why Google’s Diffusion approach could reshape LLM deployment

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more Last month, along with a comprehensive suite of new AI tools and innovations, Google DeepMind unveiled Gemini Diffusion. This experimental research model uses a diffusion-based approach to generate text. Traditionally, large language models (LLMs) like GPT and Gemini itself have relied on autoregression, a step-by-step approach where each

Do reasoning models really “think” or not? Apple research sparks lively debate, response

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more Apple’s machine-learning group set off a rhetorical firestorm earlier this month with its release of “The Illusion of Thinking,” a 53-page research paper arguing that so-called large reasoning models (LRMs) or reasoning large language models (reasoning LLMs) such as OpenAI’s “o” series and Google’s Gemini-2.5 Pro and Flash Thinking don’t a

New paper pushes back on Apple’s LLM ‘reasoning collapse’ study

Apple’s recent AI research paper, “The Illusion of Thinking”, has been making waves for its blunt conclusion: even the most advanced Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) collapse on complex tasks. But not everyone agrees with that framing. Today, Alex Lawsen, a researcher at Open Philanthropy, published a detailed rebuttal arguing that many of Apple’s most headline-grabbing findings boil down to experimental design flaws, not fundamental reasoning limits. The paper also credits Anthropic’s Claude Opus

Google Meet’s Companion mode is finally ready for Android’s biggest screens

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR Google created Companion mode for Meet to offer a second screen for people in hybrid calls. Originally available for computers, last year Google expanded access to Android and iOS. Today Companion mode is getting an update to optimize it for tablets and foldables. Finding yourself stuck in a meeting can be a real slog, and it’s a situation that’s made all the worse when you feel like you’re not particularly seen, or able to interact with other partic

All the Kookiest Things to Remember About ‘Wednesday’ Before Season 2

Happy Friday the 13th, you Wednesday fandom kooks. The Jenna Ortega-starring Addams Family spin-off series from Tim Burton follows the Addams’ eldest as she attends a boarding school filled with other supernaturally inclined youths in a sprawling mystery that has only begun. Wednesday returns to Netflix in less than two months, so we’re taking this spooky occasion to pull out our Nevermore notes before school gets back in session. Here’s what you need to remember—besides Wednesday having a Frid

Student discovers fungus predicted by Albert Hoffman

Corinne Hazel, a WVU environmental microbiology major from Delaware, Ohio, has discovered a new species of fungus that may treat a variety of medical conditions. (WVU Photo/Brian Persinger) Making a discovery with the potential for innovative applications in pharmaceutical development, a West Virginia University microbiology student has found a long sought-after fungus that produces effects similar to the semisynthetic drug LSD, which is used to treat conditions like depression, post-traumatic

Pixar Is Channeling the Kitty Hit ‘Flow’ for Its 2027 Release

Pixar just announced the next movie on its always exciting upcoming slate and, for the first time in a long time, it feels a little like the studio is chasing trends instead of setting them. Which probably isn’t the case, but the timing does make it hard to ignore. Just announced at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Pixar’s 2027 film is called Gatto. Directed by Luca helmer Enrico Casarosa, the film is set in Venice, Italy and follows a black cat named Nero who, “after years of

Get a free Amazon gift card when you sign up for a discounted NordVPN plan

Engadget has been testing and reviewing consumer tech since 2004. Our stories may include affiliate links; if you buy something through a link, we may earn a commission. Read more about how we evaluate products . While it didn’t quite make the cut in our guide to the best virtual private networks (VPNs), NordVPN remains one of the more popular providers out there for a reason, and right now you can save up to 76 percent on its two-year plans, with an Amazon gift card thrown in as a sweetener. W

When to Stream 'A Minecraft Movie' on Max

If you caught some morsels from A Minecraft Movie on social media -- videos of theater audiences going wild over a chicken jockey or Jack Black passionately singing about cooking chicken with lava -- next week you can stream the flick that started it all. The Max streaming service, which will soon take on the title of HBO Max again, previously announced that the video game movie would premiere in June. Now it's shared the exact release date for the PG-rated comedy. A Minecraft Movie stars Black

AT&T's Cheaper Mobile Plan Creates a New Deal for Seniors. (Yes, That's Anyone 55 or Older)

Senior mobile customers have another quality choice for discount cellphone service, as AT&T's new 55 Plus plan is now available to almost anyone in the US who's older than 55. The new plan focuses on the essentials -- unlimited voice calls, texting and data in the US, Canada and Mexico -- while dropping more advanced features, but it's also cheaper. Carriers typically offer several plans to satisfy a range of customers, from the frugal to those that are willing to pay for every perk and bundled

A Minecraft Movie is coming exclusively to HBO Max on June 20

Don’t throw all your popcorn at the screen, but A Minecraft Movie begins streaming exclusively on HBO Max (which used to be Max, which used to be HBO Max) on June 20. The big studio adaptation of the best-selling video game of all time was something of a surprise hit for those unfamiliar with the game’s mammoth audience. Movie adaptations of video games can be really hit or miss. The Super Mario Bros. Movie set the box office record for the highest-grossing video game movie of all time and was