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Thermal shield damage is screwing with daytime observations of X-ray bursts

NASA is sending astronauts out to fix an X-ray telescope on the International Space Station (ISS) after the instrument developed a "light leak."…

The US Air Force is putting AI in the pilot's seat. In an update on Thursday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) revealed that an AI-controlled jet successfully faced a human pilot during an in-air dogfight test carried out last year. From a report: DARPA began experimenting with AI applications in December 2022 as part of its Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program. It worked to develop an AI system capable of autonomously flying a fighter jet, while also adhering to the Air Force's safety protocols. After carrying out dogfighting simulations using the AI pilot, DARPA put its work to the test by installing the AI system inside its experimental X-62A aircraft. That allowed it to get the AI-controlled craft into the air at the Edwards Air Force Base in California, where it says it carried out its first successful dogfight test against a human in September 2023.

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Extent of information seized will be a concern for those affected

Ransomware strikes at yet another US healthcare organization led to the theft of sensitive data belonging to just shy of 185,000 people.…

AI assistant turned up via an Edge update. It was an accident. This time...

Microsoft's Copilot obsession has continued with the AI assistant unexpectedly arriving on Windows Server 2022 this week, in a situation the software giant is calling an "incorrect install."…

Google said on Thursday it had terminated 28 employees after some staff participated in protests against the company's cloud contract with the Israeli government. From a report: The Alphabet unit said a small number of protesting employees entered and disrupted work at a few unspecified office locations. "Physically impeding other employees' work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior," the company said in a statement. Google said it had concluded individual investigations, resulting in the termination of 28 employees, and would continue to investigate and take action as needed. In a statement on Medium, Google workers affiliated with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign called it a "flagrant act of retaliation" and said that some employees who did not directly participate in Tuesday's protests were also among those Google fired.

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Memorymaker to park mega plant in Syracuse, says senator

Memory chipmaker Micron looks set to be the next recipient of US government subsidy cash with $6.1 billion heading its way to help fund new-build semiconductor plants.…

Restructure of finance teams will see some leave, and other roles created in Mexico City, Bangalore, and US cities

Google is again firing the redundancy cannon for the second time this year, with a restructure being pushed through and teams in the finance and real estate units of the business understood to be impacted.…

Platforms should not confront users with 'binary choice' over personal data use

The EU's Data Protection Board (EDPB) has told large online platforms they should not offer users a binary choice between paying for a service and consenting to their personal data being used to provide targeted advertising.…

Amazon staff went undercover on Walmart, eBay and other marketplaces as a third-party seller called "Big River," WSJ reports. The mission: to scoop up information on pricing, logistics and other business practices. From the report: For nearly a decade, workers in a warehouse in Seattle's Denny Triangle neighborhood have shipped boxes of shoes, beach chairs, Marvel T-shirts and other items to online retail customers across the U.S. The operation, called Big River Services International, sells around $1 million a year of goods through e-commerce marketplaces including eBay, Shopify, Walmart and Amazon under brand names such as Rapid Cascade and Svea Bliss. "We are entrepreneurs, thinkers, marketers and creators," Big River says on its website. "We have a passion for customers and aren't afraid to experiment." What the website doesn't say is that Big River is an arm of Amazon that surreptitiously gathers intelligence on the tech giant's competitors. Born out of a 2015 plan code named "Project Curiosity," Big River uses its sales across multiple countries to obtain pricing data, logistics information and other details about rival e-commerce marketplaces, logistics operations and payments services, according to people familiar with Big River and corporate documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The team then shared that information with Amazon to incorporate into decisions about its own business. [...] The story of Big River offers new insight into Amazon's elaborate efforts to stay ahead of rivals. Team members attended their rivals' seller conferences and met with competitors identifying themselves only as employees of Big River Services, instead of disclosing that they worked for Amazon. They were given non-Amazon email addresses to use externally -- in emails with people at Amazon, they used Amazon email addresses -- and took other extraordinary measures to keep the project secret. They disseminated their reports to Amazon executives using printed, numbered copies rather than email. Those who worked on the project weren't even supposed to discuss the relationship internally with most teams at Amazon.

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Only good for calls and texts pretty much, and that's no mistake

Those who find modern smartphones too distracting from real life might be interested in the Boring Phone (no relation to the smartphone of the same name), a novelty flip phone based on HMD's Nokia 2660 Flip.…

Police mimic Spotify Wrapped videos to let crims know they're being hunted

Feature Cops have brought down a dark-web souk that provided cyber criminals with convincing copies of trusted brands' websites for use in phishing campaigns.…

Apple is doubling down on 8GB of RAM for many of its entry-level Macs, claiming that it's "suitable for many tasks," including browsing, video streaming and even "light" video and image editing. As of this writing, all MacBook Air laptops, the Mac Mini, and the MacBook Pro 14 all start with a base configuration of 8GB RAM -- which can't be upgraded at a later date since the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard. "That might have been OK were it not for the fact that Apple charges a ridiculous $200 to upgrade any of those machines from 8GB to 16GB," notes PC Gamer's Jeremy Laird. Even if an 8GB Mac does some of the previously stated tasks tolerably well, Laird argues that "8GB still isn't acceptable." From the report: That's because a Mac with 8GB can easily run out of memory just browsing the web. That's particularly true with Chrome, which just so happens to be the most popular browser around. Regular Chrome users will know what a memory hog Chrome can be. Right now, I have about 15 tabs open, which is actually pretty low for me. Often, my tab count can blow well past 50 in multiple windows. Handily, Chrome shows you memory usage if you mouse-over a given tab. And three of my current tabs are chewing up over 500MB each. So, that's 1.5GB for just three Chrome tabs. Add a couple more, plus MacOS's underlying memory footprint for just being up and running and you're bang out of RAM. Overall, I'm using 12.5GB of memory and the only application I have open is Chrome. Oh, and did I mention I'm typing this on a 16GB MacBook Air? I used to have an 8GB Apple silicon Air and to be frank it was a nightmare, constantly running out of memory just browsing the web. That's the point most observers miss. The usual narrative is that 8GB isn't good enough for serious workflows. It isn't but that completely misses the more important point. 8GB isn't even enough for browsing the web.

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2.9 gives a taste of what's to come

Major updates to Debian's Advanced Packaging Tool don't come along very often, but APT 2.9 is here with a significant facelift.…

Resist the pressure to jump on the bandwagon just yet warns, warns Forrester

Forrester Research says that although 50 models of AI PCs are already on sale today there remains "no killer app" that would make any of them an essential tool for business users.…

Open source Redis alternative gathers momentum

Valkey, the value-key database pitched as an open source alternative to Redis, has acquired new backers and announced its first release candidate.…

Hypershield detects bad behavior and automagically reconfigures networks to snuff out threats

Cisco has developed a product called Hypershield that it thinks represents a new way to do network security.…

Sweden is the newest nation to sign onto NASA's Artemis Accords -- a series of non-binding bilateral arrangements for peaceful and responsible exploration. Space.com reports: During a signing event in Stockholm on Tuesday (April 16), Swedish Minister for Education Mats Persson penned the agreement alongside U.S. Ambassador Erik D. Ramanathan. "By joining the Artemis Accords, Sweden strengthens its strategic space partnership with the U.S. on space covering areas such as Swedish space research and the space industry, which in turn also strengthens Sweden's total defense capability," Persson said in a NASA statement. The event in Stockholm comes just on the heels of Switzerland's signing of the Artemis Accords the day before. Greece and Uruguay were also included in February. Sweden is now the 38th nation to join the accords, which were established in 2020, as the first Artemis moon launch inched closer to reality. The Accords mirror principles set out in 1967, as part of the Outer Space Treaty to help govern international cooperation space. NASA is using the refreshed agreement as a guideline for the Artemis program, which aims to send astronauts back to the moon for the first time since Apollo 17, in 1972. In the agency's statement, NASA administrator Bill Nelson welcomed Sweden to the expanding space club. "Our nations have worked together to discover new secrets in our solar system, and now, we welcome you to a global coalition that is committed to exploring the heavens openly, transparently, responsibly, and in peace," Nelson said, adding, "the United States and Sweden share the same bedrock principles, and we're excited to expand these principles to the cosmos."

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Commissioner Thierry Breton likens click-to-earn version to cigarettes

The European Commission on Wednesday gave TikTok 24 hours to explain the risk assessment procedures it used before launching a version of the made-in-China app that rewards users for using it in certain ways.…

When you decide not to trust a big chunk of the supply chain, tech (and trade) get harder

One of the biggest challenges Singapore faces is the potential for a split between tech stacks developed and used by China and the West, according to the island nation's Cyber Security Administration (CSA) chief executive David Koh.…

One last software update installed safely, reconfigured it as 'stationary testbed'

NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter concluded its mission on Tuesday, sending a final signal in its role as a companion to the Perseverance Rover.…