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YouTube has confirmed that it is blocking background playback -- the ability to keep a video's audio running after minimizing the browser or locking the screen -- for non-Premium users across third-party mobile browsers including Samsung Internet, Brave, Vivaldi and Microsoft Edge. Users began reporting the issue last week, noting that audio would cut out the moment they left the browser, sometimes after a brief "MediaOngoingActivity" notification flashed before media controls disappeared. A Google spokesperson told Android Authority that the platform "updated the experience to ensure consistency," calling background play a Premium-exclusive feature.

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Managed Identity and virtual machine failures triggered knock-on problems throughout cloud platform

Microsoft has reported two Azure service wobbles in as many days, including a disruption affecting Virtual Machine management ops yesterday and a Managed Identity for Azure resources outage in East US and West US regions today.…

Robotics is forcing a fundamental rethink of AI compute, data, and systems design

Partner Content Physical AI and robotics are moving from the lab to the real world— and the cost of getting it wrong is no longer theoretical. With robots deployed in factories, warehouses, and public settings, large-scale simulation has become tightly coupled with real-world operations.…

An anonymous reader shares a report: PayPal said on Tuesday it was booting its CEO and replacing him with its board chair Enrique Lores, sparing no ambiguity as to why: "The pace of change and execution was not in line with the Board's expectations," it said in a statement. One group that was blindsided was HP, where Lores was until Tuesday serving as CEO, according to people familiar with the matter. Lores' switchup sent them rushing to launch a search process, those people said. HP's board does have internal candidates which it's considering for the top job, according to a person familiar with the board's thinking. As chair of PayPal's board, Lores played a role in a process evaluating internal and external candidates. It was unclear when or if he recused himself from the final decision to name him as CEO. But HP's board was only made aware that Lores was taking the CEO role at PayPal in recent weeks, the people said.

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Governments and businesses respond to Trump pressures by upping spending in domestically controlled infrastructure

US tariffs may be squeezing Europe's trade balance, but they are also pushing governments and businesses to spend big on keeping tech closer to home.…

Adobe has emailed users of Adobe Animate to let them know the popular animation and game development program will be discontinued on March 1, an abrupt decision that has angered animators and game developers who say the tool remains an industry standard in television and game production. Animate, the successor to the once-popular Flash, is widely used for graphic creation, animation and building games in HTML5. The company has not offered a reason for the shutdown. On BlueSky, artist and animator Julia Glassman wrote that many television productions, games, and animated media still rely on Animate and Flash pipelines and cannot simply pivot to entirely new software.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: By now, the Forbes 30 Under 30 list has become more than a little notorious for the amount of entrants who go on to be charged with fraud.[...] Gokce Guven, a 26-year-old Turkish national and the founder and CEO of fintech startup Kalder, was charged last week with alleged securities fraud, wire fraud, visa fraud, and aggravated identity theft. The New York-based fintech startup -- which uses the "Turn Your Rewards into [a] Revenue Engine" tagline -- says it can help companies create and monetize individual rewards programs. The company was founded in 2022, and offers participating firms the opportunity to earn ongoing revenue streams via partner affiliate sales, Axios previously reported. Guven was featured in last year's Forbes 30 Under 30 list. The magazine notes in the writeup that Guven's clients included major chocolatier Godiva and the International Air Transport Association, the trade organization that represents a majority of the world's airlines. Kalder also claims to have enjoyed the backing of a number of prominent VC firms. The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that, during Kalder's seed round in April of 2024, Guven managed to raise $7 million from more than a dozen investors after presenting a pitch deck that was rife with false information. According to the government, Kalder's pitch deck claimed that there were 26 brands "using Kalder" and another 53 brands in "live freemium." However, officials say that, in reality, Kalder had, in many cases, only been offering heavily discounted pilot programs to many of those companies. Other brands "had no agreement with Kalder whatsoever -- not even for free services," officials said in a press release announcing the indictment. The pitch deck also "falsely reported that Kalder's recurring revenue had steadily grown month over month since February 2023 and that by March 2024, Kalder had reached $1.2 million in annual recurring revenue." The government also accuses Guven of having kept two separate sets of financial books.

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Multimillion-dollar tenure could have bought a couple of crates of toner

Longtime HP CEO Enrique Lores is decamping for a top job at PayPal, handing the reins to an interim chief while the business hunts for a permanent successor.…

Algorithmic bias probe continues, CEO and former boss summoned to defend the platform's corner

French police raided Elon Musk's X offices in Paris this morning as part of a criminal investigation into alleged algorithmic manipulation by foreign powers.…

Azure Storage now requires version 1.2 or newer for encrypted connections

Today is the day Azure Storage stops supporting versions 1.0 and 1.1 of Transport Layer Security (TLS). TLS 1.2 is the new minimum.…

DDoSer of 'strategically important' websites admitted to most charges

Polish authorities have cuffed a 20-year-old man on suspicion of carrying out DDoS attacks.…

South Yorkshire becomes ground zero for nationwide experiment with £500K seed funding

AI-pocalypse Barnsley, a town in South Yorkshire, England, best known for coal mining and glassmaking, is being thrust into the limelight as the country's first "Tech Town" – shoehorning AI into everything from local businesses to public services.…

The original Switch is officially Nintendo's best-selling console of all time after surpassing the DS handheld in lifetime sales. From a report: In its latest earnings release, Nintendo reports that the Nintendo Switch has, as of December 31, 2025, sold 155.37 million units since its launch in 2017, compared to 154.02 million units for the 2004 Nintendo DS. In November, Nintendo reported that the Switch and DS were neck and neck. We expected the holiday sales period would see the Switch surpass the DS, even with Nintendo announcing that primary development would focus on the Switch 2. Nintendo previously said that it would continue to sell the original Switch "while taking consumer demand and the business environment into consideration." Nintendo has to keep selling the Switch if it wants to dethrone Sony's PlayStation 2 as the best-selling video game console of all time. The PlayStation 2, discontinued in January 2013, sold more than 160 million units over its 13-year lifespan.

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Users can disable every generative feature in one click – not everyone wants a chatbot bolted to their tabs

Mozilla has decided that if AI is going to live in your browser, you should at least be able to kill it when it gets annoying.…

This is starting to sound oddly familiar

NASA has concluded a Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) for Artemis II, but recurring liquid hydrogen leaks forced the test to be halted short of completion, prompting the agency to delay the mission's launch to at least March 2026.…

Your own personal Jarvis. A bot to hear your prayers. A bot that cares. Just not about keeping you safe

OpenClaw, the AI-powered personal assistant users interact with via messaging apps and sometimes entrust with their credentials to various online services, has prompted a wave of malware and is delivering some shocking bills.…

Armed Forces Bill would let troops take action against unmanned threats around defense sites

Britain's defense personnel will be given the authority to neutralize drones threatening military bases under measures being introduced in the Armed Forces Bill, currently making its way through Parliament.…

sinij writes: Automakers have increasingly implemented door handles that retract into the bodywork for aerodynamic reasons, but they are now off limits in China. My issue is with electronic-only door latch mechanism. It should be possible to open the door from both inside and outside the car in case of complete power loss.

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Blames ‘unintended or nonstandard usage’ and the cost of keeping them alive

Microsoft has slipped out news that it’s killing some standalone SharePoint and OneDrive plans.…

Main stock exchange targets shares, government agency looks for crypto crooks

South Korea’s government and main stock exchange have developed and deployed AI-powered tools to detect schemes that aim to send the price of cryptocurrencies and shares soaring so that unscrupulous investors can cash in.…