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Framework has announced yet another price increase for memory modules, the second in roughly a month, and the company is now actively encouraging customers to source their own RAM elsewhere if they can find better deals. The laptop maker cited "extreme memory shortages and price volatility" as the reason for the hike, noting that 32GB modules and smaller currently cost around $10 per gigabyte while 48GB modules run approximately $13 per gigabyte. Framework said it expects to raise prices again by January as its suppliers continue increasing costs, a trend analysts predict will persist through 2026. Framework plans to add a direct link to PCPartPicker in its configurators so DIY Edition buyers can compare prices and find cheaper alternatives. The company said its pricing still compares favorably to Apple's roughly $25 per gigabyte and pledged to stay as close as possible to acquisition costs. Storage price increases are also on the horizon, Framework warned.

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Waymo's fleet of autonomous robotaxis can navigate city streets and compete with human taxi drivers, but they become stranded when a passenger leaves a door ajar -- prompting the company to pay tow truck operators around $20 to $24 through an app called Honk just to push a door shut. The owner of a towing company in Inglewood, California, completes up to three such jobs a week for Waymo, sometimes freeing vehicles by removing seat belts caught in doors. Another Los Angeles tow operator said locating stuck robotaxis can take 10 minutes to an hour because the precise location isn't always provided, forcing workers to search on foot through narrow streets too narrow for flatbed rigs. Tow operators also retrieve Waymos that run out of battery before reaching charging stations, earning $60 to $80 per tow -- rates that aren't always profitable after factoring in fuel and labor. During a San Francisco power outage last weekend, multiple operators received a flurry of retrieval requests as robotaxis blocked intersections across the city. One San Francisco tow company manager declined because Waymo's offered rate fell below his standard $250 flatbed fee. Waymo said in a blog post that the outage caused a "backlog" in requests to remote human workers who help vehicles navigate defunct traffic signals. San Francisco Supervisor Bilal Mahmood called for a hearing into Waymo's operations, saying the traffic disruptions were "dangerous and unacceptable." A retired Carnegie Mellon engineering professor who studied autonomous vehicles for nearly 30 years said paying humans to close doors and retrieve stalled cars is expensive and will need to be minimized as Waymo scales up. The company is testing next-generation Zeekr vehicles in San Francisco that feature automatic sliding doors.

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Nvidia has agreed to buy assets from Groq, a designer of high-performance artificial intelligence accelerator chips, for $20 billion in cash, according to Alex Davis, CEO of Disruptive, which led the startup's latest financing round in September. From a report: Davis, whose firm has invested more than half a billion dollars in Groq since the company was founded in 2016, said the deal came together quickly. Groq raised $750 million at a valuation of about $6.9 billion three months ago. Investors in the round included Blackrock and Neuberger Berman, as well as Samsung, Cisco, Altimeter and 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner. Groq said in a blog post on Wednesday that it's "entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Nvidia for Groq's inference technology," without disclosing a price. With the deal, Groq founder and CEO Jonathan Ross along with Sunny Madra, the company's president, and other senior leaders "will join Nvidia to help advance and scale the licensed technology," the post said.

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The Trump administration has announced it would replace the lottery programme used to grant H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers with a system that prioritises higher-paid individuals. From a report: The Department of Homeland Security said it would begin to implement a "weighted" selection process to give an advantage to higher-skilled and higher-paid applicants from February, according to a statement posted on its website. Matthew Tragesser, Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson, said: "The existing random selection process of H-1B registrations was exploited and abused by US employers who were primarily seeking to import foreign workers at lower wages than they would pay American workers." The move is the latest in a broad crackdown on US immigration by President Donald Trump, who has dramatically stepped up deportations of immigrants and sent enforcement agents into cities across the country to carry out arrests. The change also follows moves earlier this year to curb the number of applicants for the H-1B visa, which is popular among technology and professional services companies, including charging an additional $100,000 fee. Beryl Howell, a federal judge on the US District Court for the District of Columbia, late on Tuesday ruled the White House could move forward with the application charge after the US Chamber of Commerce had sued in October to block the six-figure fee.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: It's harder than ever to mine bitcoin. And less profitable, too. But mining-company stocks are still flying, even with cryptocurrency prices in retreat. That's because these firms have something in common with the hottest investment theme on the planet: the massive, electricity-hungry data centers expected to power the artificial-intelligence boom. Some companies are figuring out how to remake themselves as vital suppliers to Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and other "hyperscalers" bent on AI dominance. Bitcoin-mining -- using vast computer power to solve equations to unlock the digital currency -- has been a lucrative and cutting-edge pursuit in its own right. Lately, however, increased competition and other challenges have eroded profit margins. But just as the bitcoin-mining business began to cool, the AI build-out turned white hot. The AI arms race has created an insatiable demand for some assets the miners already have: data centers, cooling systems, land and hard-to-obtain contracts for electrical power -- all of which can be repurposed to train and power AI models. It's not a seamless process. Miners often have to build new, specialized facilities, because running AI requires more-advanced cooling and network systems, as well as replacing bitcoin-mining computers with AI-focused graphics processing units. But signing deals with miners allows AI giants to expand faster and cheaper than starting new facilities from scratch. These companies still mine some bitcoin, but the transition gives miners a new source of deep-pocketed customers willing to commit to longer-term leases for their data centers. "The opportunity for miners to convert to AI is one of the greatest opportunities I could possibly imagine," said Adam Sullivan, chief executive of Core Scientific, which has pivoted to AI data centers. The shift has boosted miners' stocks. The CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF has surged about 90% this year, a rally that has accelerated even as bitcoin erased its gains for 2025. The ETF holds shares of miners including Cipher Mining and IREN, both of which have surged following long-term deals with companies such as Amazon and Microsoft. Shares of Core Scientific quadrupled in 2024 after the company signed its first AI contract that February. The stock has gained 10% this year. The company now expects to exit bitcoin mining entirely by 2028.

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alternative_right shares a report from Euronews: France's President Emmanuel Macron discovered news of his own supposed overthrow, after he received a message of concern, along with a link to a Facebook video. "On Sunday (14 December) one of my African counterparts got in touch, writing 'Dear president, what's happening to you? I'm very worried,'" Macron told readers of French local newspaper La Provence on December 16. Alongside the message, a compelling video showcasing a swirling helicopter, military personnel, crowds and -- what appears to be -- a news anchor delivering a piece to camera. "Unofficial reports suggest that there has been a coup in France, led by a colonel whose identity has not been revealed, along with the possible fall of Emmanuel Macron. However, the authorities have not issued a clear statement," she says. Except, nothing about this video is authentic: it was created with AI. After discovering the video, Macron asked Pharos -- France's official portal for signaling online illicit content -- to call Facebook's parent company Meta, to get the fake video removed. But that request was turned down, as the platform claimed it did not violate its "rules of use." [...] The original video ... racked up more than 12 million views [...].The teenager running the account is based in Burkina Faso and makes money running courses focusing on how to monetize AI. He eventually took the video down more than a week after its initial publication, due to political -- and public -- controversy. "I tend to think that I have more power to apply pressure than other people," Macron said. "Or rather, that it's easier to say something is serious if I am the one calling, but it doesn't work." "These people are mocking us," he added. "They don't care about the serenity of public debates, they don't care about democracy, and therefore they are putting us in danger."

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With NASA's Mars Sample Return mission delayed into the 2030s, engineers are certifying the Perseverance rover to keep operating for many more years while it continues collecting and safeguarding Martian rock samples. Ars Technica reports: The good news is that the robot, about the size of a small SUV, is in excellent health, according to Steve Lee, Perseverance's deputy project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). "Perseverance is approaching five years of exploration on Mars," Lee said in a press briefing Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union's annual fall meeting. "Perseverance is really in excellent shape. All the systems onboard are operational and performing very, very well. All the redundant systems onboard are available still, and the rover is capable of supporting this mission for many, many years to come." The rover's operators at JPL are counting on sustaining Perseverance's good health. The rover's six wheels have carried it a distance of about 25 miles, or 40 kilometers, since landing inside the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer) Jezero Crater in February 2021. That is double the original certification for the rover's mobility system and farther than any vehicle has traveled on the surface of another world. Now, engineers are asking Perseverance to perform well beyond expectations. An evaluation of the rover's health concluded it can operate until at least 2031. The rover uses a radioactive plutonium power source, so it's not in danger of running out of electricity or fuel any time soon. The Curiosity rover, which uses a similar design, has surpassed 13 years of operations on Mars. There are two systems that are most likely to limit the rover's useful lifetime. One is the robotic arm, which is necessary to collect samples, and the other is the rover's six wheels and the drive train that powers them. "To make sure we can continue operations and continue driving for a long, long way, up to 100 kilometers (62 miles), we are doing some additional testing," Lee said. "We've successfully completed a rotary actuator life test that has now certified the rotary system to 100 kilometers for driving, and we have similar testing going on for the brakes. That is going well, and we should finish those early part of next year."

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