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Harry McCracken, writing for FastCompany: Recently, Microsoft built a clock. Well, "built" may be overstating things. Members of the company's quantum computing team found a small digital clock in a wood case on Amazon -- the kind you might mistake for a nicer-than-usual trade show tchotchke. They hacked it to run off two experimental batteries they'd created in collaboration with staffers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Then they dressed up its enclosure by adding the logo of Azure Quantum Elements, the Microsoft platform for AI-enhanced scientific discovery that had been instrumental in developing the new battery technology. The point of this little DIY project was to prove the batteries worked in a visceral way: "You want to have a wow moment," explains Brian Bilodeau, the head of partnerships, strategy, and operations for Azure Quantum. And the person the quantum team hoped to wow was Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Not that getting Nadella's attention was such a daunting prospect. Throwing vast amounts of Azure high-performance computing (HPC) resources at a big, hairy technical challenge such as materials research is the sort of challenge he's predisposed to take a personal interest in. Still, the tangible evidence of success made for a memorable moment: "I was very, very excited to see it come through," Nadella remembers. The coin-sized CR2032 batteries powering the clock looked like the ones you might find in a pocket calculator or garage door opener. But on the inside, they used a solid-state electrolyte that replaces 70% of the lithium in garden-variety batteries with sodium. That holds the potential to address multiple issues with lithium batteries as we know them: their limited life on a charge, shrinking capacity over time, subpar performance in extreme temperatures, and risk of catching fire or even exploding. In addition, reducing lithium use in favor of cheap, plentiful sodium could be a boon to the fraught battery supply chain. With further development, the new material could benefit the myriad aspects of modern life that depend on batteries, from smartphones to EVs to the power grid. But Microsoft, being Microsoft, regards all this promise first and foremost as proof of Azure Quantum Elements' usefulness to the customers it's designed to serve. Unveiled last June, the cloud service is currently a "private preview" being tested by organizations such as Britain's Johnson Matthey, which is using it to help design catalytic converters and hydrogen fuel cells.

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Petty officer Wenheng Zhao admitted to taking as many as 14 payoffs in return for non-public military information

A US Naval sailor will face more than two years behind bars after pleading guilty to taking bribes from Chinese spies in exchange for sensitive military information.…

C-suite exec gets 223 staffers' worth of pay after cyclical headwinds dampen consumer demand for kit

Qualcomm might have had a relatively rough ride in 2023 given the continued decline in smartphone chip shipments across the industry but its execs didn't, at least not in terms of their pay awards.…

The global economy is on course to record its worst half decade of growth in 30 years, according to the World Bank. From a report: Global growth is forecast to slow for the third year in a row in 2024, dipping to 2.4% from 2.6% in 2023, the organization said in its latest "Global Economic Prospects" report released Tuesday. Growth is then expected to rise marginally to 2.7% in 2025, though acceleration over the five-year period will remain almost three-quarters of a percentage point below the average rate of the 2010s. And despite the global economy proving resilient in the face of recessionary risks in 2023, increased geopolitical tensions will present fresh near-term challenges, the organization said, leaving most economies set to grow more slowly in 2024 and 2025 than they did in the previous decade. "You have a war in Eastern Europe, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You have a serious conflict in the Middle East. Escalation of these conflicts could have significant implications for energy prices that could have impacts on inflation as well as on economic growth," Ayhan Kose, the World Bank's deputy chief economist and director of the Prospects Group, told CNBC's Silvia Amaro. The bank warned that without a "major course correction," the 2020s will go down as "a decade of wasted opportunity."

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Someone please remind Boeing how to build airplanes ... again

Both US operators of Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft are finding loose parts in the aircraft during the latest inspections that were prompted by an emergency exit door plug blowout during flight over the weekend.…

Alphabet's Google is set to go before a federal jury in Boston on Tuesday in a trial over accusations that processors it uses to power AI technology in key products infringe a computer scientist's patents. From a report: Singular Computing, founded by Massachusetts-based computer scientist Joseph Bates, claims Google copied his technology and used it to support AI features in Google Search, Gmail, Google Translate and other Google services. A Google court filing said that Singular has requested up to $7 billion in monetary damages, which would be more than double the largest-ever patent infringement award in U.S. history. Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda called Singular's patents "dubious" and said that Google developed its processors "independently over many years." "We look forward to setting the record straight in court," Castaneda said.

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Fancy a Windows laptop that's also an Android tablet or a mouse and keyboard powered by kinetic energy and solar

CES Where can you find a voice-controlled luxury toilet seat and a transparent television set? The annual CES show, of course, where the world's tech companies and others gather to show off the products they hope will catch the interest of buyers.…

Amazon introduced a new feature that mimics Apple's AirPlay while working across different platforms, setting the stage for iPhone and Android users to wirelessly stream video to its TV hardware. From a report: The feature, called Matter Casting, is part of a push by Amazon to create interoperable services -- an alternative to the propriety technology developed by Apple and Google. It will make it easier for iOS and Android phones to send video to Amazon devices, such as its Fire TV boxes and sticks, as well as the Echo Show 15 smart display. [...] The feature will work with a range of other video services, including Plex, Pluto TV, Sling TV, Starz and ZDF, Amazon said.

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US, the Netherlands, and Germany all show spikes, while the UK no longer collects the data

US President Joe Biden declared the pandemic over in September 2022. Weeks into 2024, however, global data points to a surge in infections.…

Then the company cranked up the price of cartridges, complaint alleges

HP is facing a potential class action complaint regarding a firmware update that rendered its printers unable to use ink from any other supplier.…

With Apple's Vision Pro VR/AR headset set to go on sale on February 2, we're starting to see more details about the app requirements. From a report: The company has released guidelines for visionOS developers planning to release apps and there's one strange caveat. It would rather developers don't use the terms AR and VR when referring to Vision Pro apps, but rather call them "spatial computing apps," according to the developer page. "Spatial computing: Refer to your app as a spatial computing app. Don't describe your app experience as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), extended reality (XR), or mixed reality (MR)," the company states. The headset itself should be called "Apple Vision Pro" with three uppercase words, while "visionOS begins with a lowercase v, even when it's the first word in a sentence." The terms should never be translated or transliterated, Apple added.

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Experts' job made 'straightforward' by crooks failing to update encryption schema after three years

Security researchers have put out an updated decryptor for the Babuk ransomware family, providing a free solution for victims of the Tortilla variant.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCMag: Duolingo tells Bloomberg that it's cutting 10% of its contractors, months after its CEO said Duolingo is relying more on generative AI to develop its content. "We just no longer need as many people to do the type of work some of these contractors were doing. Part of that could be attributed to AI," a Duolingo spokesperson tells Bloomberg. This comes after an unnamed Duolingo contractor claimed on Reddit that Duolingo had axed a large number of jobs. "In December 2023, Duolingo 'off boarded' a huge percentage of their contractors who did translations," the contractor wrote. "Of course this is because they figured out that AI can do these translations in a fraction of the time. Plus it saves them money." The contractor claims to have worked at Duolingo for five years in a four-member team. But now the team has been cut in half as AI has taken over the duties of generating content and translation for courses on Duolingo. "The two who remained will just review AI content to make sure it's acceptable," the contractor added. A Duolingo spokesperson tells PCMag, "these are not layoffs," since the contractors were "offboarded as their projects wrapped up at the end of 2023." "While we do use AI for many different purposes at Duolingo, including the generation of some course content, human experts are still very involved in the creation of Duolingo's content. I also want to note that we attempted to find alternate roles for each contractor before off-boarding as a last resort."

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'Tech visionary and pioneer' replaced by former comms president, as company faces pressure from activist investors

Jeff Lawson has stepped down as CEO of Twilio with Khozema Shipchandler filling that less-than-comfy executive chair with immediate effect.…

Move comes months after software licensing scandal

Video game software company Unity is laying off a quarter of its workforce, it confirmed in a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.…

This one time at band gap... we managed to use wonder stuff as an electronic material for semiconducting

Researchers say they have discovered a way to produce semiconductors using graphene that could - at some stage further down the road - deliver high performance devices able to outmatch those made from silicon.…

Tribunal nixes appeal from provider of network that cops and firefighters can't seem to migrate from...

Motorola's appeal against price controls on the longstanding mission-critical Airwave network used by the UK emergency services was dismissed by a tribunal, meaning the cap imposed by the regulator must stand.…

home-electro.com shares a report from Engadget: On Sunday night Samsung held its annual First Look event at CES 2024, where the company teased the world's first transparent MicroLED display. While there's still no word on how much it costs or when this tech will find its way into retail devices, Samsung showcased its transparent MicroLED display side-by-side next to transparent OLED and transparent LCD models to really highlight the differences between the tech. Compared to the others, not only was the MicroLED panel significantly brighter, it also featured a completely frameless design and a more transparent glass panel that made it easier to see objects behind it. LG also unveiled a similar piece of tech: the company's "first wireless transparent OLED TV." It's called the OLED T and supports 4K resolution and LG's wireless transmission tech for audio and video. You can watch a demo of Samsung's transparent microLED screen on YouTube.

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Networking kit maker would be biggest potential acquisition since Autonomy – but hopefully goes better than that

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is in the late stages of talks to buy California networking hardware maker Juniper Networks for $13 billion, according to reports.…

A little more speed and less latency

CES Just in time for CES this year, the Wi-Fi Alliance has begun certifying hardware for Wi-Fi 7, the latest update to the global wireless networking specification.…