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Meta approves massive bonuses for executives after broad layoffs

Meta has offered up a lucrative new executive bonus plan, according to a company filing released Thursday . Under the new plan, executives could earn a yearly bonus of 200 percent of their base salary, which is up from 75 percent. This comes just after Meta announced sweeping layoffs impacting five percent of its workforce . A committee for Meta’s board of directors approved the change on February 13, on the grounds that the “target total cash compensation” for its executives “was at or below t

Can somebody let this robot down?

It's not clear that anyone was asking for a company to build a muscular, sinewy robot or to see a video of it dangling, helpless from a hook, but life is full of surprises and this YouTube video of Clone Robotics' "Protoclone" is here all the same. The Protoclone appears to be a prototype version of the "Clone" robot the aptly named Clone Robotics is working to build. The video shows the Protoclone flexing its arms and legs, with visible artificial muscle fibers moving underneath its white "ski

Show HN: Slime OS – An open-source app launcher for RP2040 based devices

Slime OS is an app launcher for the PicoVision (and soon other RP2040 and RP2350 devices). It was originally designed for the Slimedeck Zero, a mini cyberdeck project. However I hope to expand it to other devices and form factors. This README contains affiliate links which help support this project! Software Slime OS runs in a limited 32-color mode with a 400x240 internal resolution which is interlaced up to 800x480. This resolution should scale well on most HDMI displays. Setup Flash the w

Ready for a New James Bond? This Is Your Ultimate 007 Guide to How We Got Here

The most recent James Bond movie, No Time to Die, had an ending unlike any its predecessors and opened the way to a whole new approach to the cinematic powerhouse — including, at some point soon, a new James Bond. The film wrapped up Daniel Craig's days as 007, and speculation is running hot about what lies ahead for Ian Fleming's superspy. The latest twist in the spy saga is this: Amazon MGM Studios is gaining creative control of the Bond franchise in a new arrangement with longtime Bond legac

James Bond's Move to Amazon Could Be a Good Thing

By now, you've probably heard that Amazon gained creative control of the James Bond franchise in a new joint venture with longtime rights holders Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, who've decided to step back. As soon as the news hit, reactions that ranged from shock to curiosity to all-out fury cropped up on the internet. In short, all of the fandom ain't happy. Look, I get it. James Bond has surpassed the constraints of a straightforward spy narrative. He's the one who charted the course

Who Should Play the Next James Bond? Jeff Bezos Wants You to Chime In

Bezos. Jeff Bezos. The billionaire Amazon founder may have a big say in who gets cast in one of the film world's most iconic roles: Bond. James Bond. And fans have the opportunity to champion their favorite actors and try to capture Bezos' attention. Bezos kicked off a flurry of activity among Bond aficionados by posting a simple question to social media on Thursday: "Who'd you pick as the next Bond?" Bezos included a screenshot of a Reuters article highlighting the news that the Bond franchise

Robot with 1,000 muscles twitches like human while dangling from ceiling

On Wednesday, Clone Robotics released video footage of its Protoclone humanoid robot, a full-body machine that uses synthetic muscles to create unsettlingly human-like movements. In the video, the robot hangs suspended from the ceiling as its limbs twitch and kick, marking what the company claims is a step toward its goal of creating household-helper robots. Atherton, California-based Clone Robotics designed the Protoclone with a polymer skeleton that replicates 206 human bones. The company bui

The World Is in a Polyester Crisis. One Company Is Trying to Recycle a Way Out

I’m on an overnight flight from New York to Frankfurt, Germany, and the accoutrements given to me in business class have a sustainable sheen. Both the polyester blanket and polyester flight kit proudly claim they are made of fabric spun from recycled plastic bottles. But doesn’t United Airlines know that recycled bottles are so yesterday’s green material? No, the new hot and hyped technology is recycling polyester into polyester. And I’m on my way to observe the most well-capitalized innovation

Norway’s 1X is building a humanoid robot for the home

Norwegian robotics firm 1X unveiled its latest home robot, Neo Gamma, on Friday. The humanoid system will succeed Neo Beta, which debuted in August. Like its predecessors, the Neo Gamma is a prototype designed for testing in the home environment. Images of the robot show it performing a number of household tasks like making coffee, doing the laundry, and vacuuming. 1X says the bipedal robot is set to step outside the lab, with limited in-home testing, though the company is quick to add that the

Topics: 1x gamma home neo robot

Meta raises executive bonuses by up to 200% after cutting 5% of its workforce

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years.TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust A hot potato: Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has described 2025 as "an intense year" as the company looks to streamline its business. Part of that involves laying off 5% of its workforce, close to 4,000 people. The company is also giving its executives more money, having just approved a plan giving them bigger bonuses – up to 200% of their base salary. According to an SEC filing submitted yesterday, Met

Amazon MGM gains creative control over James Bond movie franchise

What just happened? Amazon MGM Studios has secured creative control over the iconic James Bond franchise as part of a new joint venture formed with Amazon MGM Studios, Michael G. Wilson, and Barbara Broccoli, the long-standing producers of the 007 series. As the dust settles on this landmark deal, all eyes will be on Amazon MGM Studios to see how it will shape the future of one of cinema's most enduring and beloved characters. The newly established partnership will house the James Bond intellec

Download your Kindle books right now - Amazon is killing this option in a few days

ZDNET Another day. Another cloud service changing the rules on stuff we already bought and paid for. This time, Amazon is removing a feature that's been part of the Kindle experience for more than a decade: downloading files to your computer. Also: The best Kindles of 2025: Expert tested and reviewed I'm not going to bury the lede: You have until Feb. 26, 2025, to download copies of your Kindle books to your computer. After that, Amazon will remove the ability to download books to files you

If COBOL is so problematic, why does the US government still use it?

Matthew Busch for The Washington Post via Getty Images Some people think tens of millions of dead people are collecting Social Security checks. That's not true. What's really going on is people don't understand its old, underlying technology. The saga of 150-year-old Social Security recipients is a tale that intertwines aging technology, government systems, and modern misunderstandings by the youthful Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) IT people. At the heart of this story lies COBOL,

Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life

A system to organise your life Johnny.Decimal is designed to help you find things quickly, with more confidence, and less stress. You assign a unique ID to everything in your life. These IDs help you stay organised. They impose constraints that make it harder to get lost. And you create your own index to link everything in your life together. The system is free to use and the concepts are the same at home, work, or that club you manage. The problem In real life, if you stored your stuff in

Marvel Just Stopped Developing a Bunch of TV Shows You Forgot It Was Developing

Osgood Perkins prepares you for The Monkey, and teases what’s next in his plans. Get a look at Kevin Bacon as a demon-fighting bounty hunter in The Bondsman. Plus, what’s coming on Ghosts and Yellowjackets. Spoilers now! Avengers: Doomsday/Daredevil: Born Again During a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Charlie Cox clarified his recent statement he’s set to reprise his role as Matt Murdock/Daredevil in a second season of Daredevil: Born Again, not Avengers: Doomsday. I was there for

The $230 MacBook Air Is Real, It’s a Steal, and It’s Flying Off the Shelves

MacBooks are many things — beautifully designed, reliable, sturdy, fast, and powerful among them. Inexpensive, however, is not a word you hear applied to MacBooks often, if ever. Apple is very much a get-what-you-pay-for company, and you pay for quality. Thankfully, there are shortcuts to be found, like the deals StackSocial frequently runs on Grade-A refurbished MacBooks for a fraction of their usual cost. See at StackSocial Here’s one that’s on the extreme side even for StackSocial: A 13.3-i

An episode of The Simpsons? Fake speakers found in Chinese Volvos.

Do you remember The Simpsons episode "Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield"? It first aired in February 1996, and it's the one where Homer and Bart go to Appliance Zone and are confronted with "genuine" Panaphonics, Sorny, and Magnetbox TVs. Well, it seems a similar brand name game has been going on at a Volvo dealership in China. News started filtering out of China last week about an owner of a Volvo S60 sedan who realized the speakers in his car were not from Bowers and Wilkins, as t

The Best Meat Subscription Boxes, Tested and Reviewed (2025)

The first reason ButcherBox earned our top spot is the packaging, which was much sturdier than several other boxes we tried. The last thing anyone wants is to come home to a box of spoiled meat. The second is sourcing transparency. While humane-washing is a real thing and ButcherBox does not disclose the names of specific farms it works with, it offers third-party oversight, like Certified Humane and USDA Organic certification. It’s not perfect, but it’s something. You can select from two subsc

The real reason why oil and gas companies are bullish on carbon capture

Two years ago, oil and gas company Occidental bought carbon capture startup Carbon Engineering. The transaction was hailed as a win-win: A climate tech company scored a significant exit, and a fossil fuel company gained a foothold in a sector that could be worth up to $150 billion by 2050. Now we have a better idea why Occidental was keen to pick up the pricey technology: They want to use it to pump more oil. Previously, the company had said it would use the technology to zero out its climate

Meta approves plan for bigger executive bonuses following 5% layoffs

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024. Executives at Meta stand to get bigger bonuses this year. The company said in a corporate filing Thursday that it had approved "an increase in the target bonus percentage" for its annual bonus plan for executives. Meta's named executive officers could earn a bonus of 200% of their base salary under the new plan, up from the 75% they earned previously, according to the filing. The updated b

Helix: A vision-language-action model for generalist humanoid control

Introducing Helix We're introducing Helix, a generalist Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model that unifies perception, language understanding, and learned control to overcome multiple longstanding challenges in robotics. Helix is a series of firsts: Full-upper-body control : Helix is the first VLA to output high-rate continuous control of the entire humanoid upper body, including wrists, torso, head, and individual fingers. Multi-robot collaboration : Helix is the first VLA to operate simultaneo

Topics: control helix robot s1 s2

Who Should Be the Next James Bond? Jeff Bezos Wants You to Chime In

Bezos. Jeff Bezos. The billionaire Amazon founder may have a big say in who gets cast in one of the film world's most iconic roles: Bond. James Bond. And fans have the opportunity to champion their favorite actors and try to capture Bezos' attention. Bezos kicked off a flurry of activity among Bond aficionados by posting a simple question to social media on Thursday: "Who'd you pick as the next Bond?" Bezos included a screenshot of a Reuters article highlighting the news that the Bond franchise

Apple TV+ announces release date for Murderbot, its next big sci-fi show

Apple TV+ has gained a strong reputation for its lineup of sci-fi shows, including its new most popular series ever: Severance. Now, the company has just announced the release date for its next big sci-fi show. It’s called Murderbot, and it hits Apple TV+ this spring. Murderbot premieres in May with first season Murderbot is a new Apple TV+ sci-fi comedic thriller based on the hit book series The Murderbot Diaries. It stars Alexander Skarsgård. Apple TV+ just announced that Murderbot’s 10-epi

Amazon will take full creative control of the James Bond franchise

Time (and perhaps a large check or two) heals all wounds. Amazon and the longtime producers and custodians of the James Bond movies have finally agreed on a way forward for the series. Amazon MGM Studios will form a joint venture with Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli that will hold the intellectual property rights and ensure they remain co-owners of the franchise. However, Wilson and Broccoli will be stepping back to focus on other projects, with Amazon gaining full creative control. The

The Lenovo ThinkPad I recommend to hybrid workers isn't the newest model - but it's 50% off

Cesar Cadenas/ZDNET What's the deal? Lenovo has slashed the price of its 12th-Gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon by nearly 50%. The model housing an Intel Core Ultra 5 135U processor is on sale at a discounted $1,377, while the Intel Core Ultra 7 165U configuration sits at almost $1,920. ZDNET's key takeaways After making calculated adjustments to last year's model, Lenovo's 12th-Gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon It sports an 8MP webcam that allows for 4K video, a stunning 2.8K display, and a slightly redesigned

An Android Auto glitch is causing phones to reboot - here's how to fix it

Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Is Android Auto causing your phone to reboot? You're not alone. Over the past few weeks, posts on support forums like Reddit have reported a strange glitch. Any time you try to use Android Auto, the reports say, your phone reboots. In some cases, like those reported on Google's official page, Android Auto has stopped working entirely. Also: 5 reasons your Android Auto keeps disconnecting - and how to fix it today Google hasn't acknowledg

Jeff Bezos Is Already Soliciting Ideas for the Next James Bond

One of the world’s richest people is already playing with his latest toy. Thursday morning, news broke that the James Bond franchise, which was already owned by Amazon due to its 2022 purchase of MGM, was changing creative leadership. Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, whose families had been controlling the franchise for 60 years, retained ownership but are passing creative control to Amazon. The move instantly sparked all sorts of speculation and debate about the massive corporation owni

Best Headsets for Working From Home in 2025

A few years ago Shokz turned its OpenRun (formerly Aeropex) bone-conduction headphones into a more communications-friendly headset with an integrated boom microphone called the OpenComm ($140), which remains available. The second-generation OpenComm 2 UC costs more than the original, but it has an upgraded Bluetooth 5.1 chipset that improves performance a bit and now allows for the firmware upgrades that are required for Zoom certification. Additionally, the microphone has moved from the left ea

Carbon removal is the next big fossil fuel boom, oil company says

is a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home , a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals. Occidental, the oil giant that has tried to fashion itself as a climate tech leader, is being real clear now about capturing carbon dioxide emissions, which it sees as the next big thing for fossil fuel production. That shouldn’t be surprising coming from a petroleum company.

Amazon to gain creative control of James Bond franchise from Broccoli family

Amazon is set to take creative control over the lucrative James Bond movie franchise from the Broccoli family, the company announced Thursday. The James Bond films have long been produced by Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, who inherited the control from their father Albert "Cubby" Broccoli. Wilson and Broccoli will now give creative control to MGM Studios, which Amazon acquired for $8.45 billion in 2021. Amazon gained distribution rights to the Bond franchise after the MGM acquisition, bu