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Businesses, governments, and researchers continue to struggle with extracting usable data from PDF files, despite AI advances. These digital documents contain valuable information for everything from scientific research to government records, but their rigid formats make extraction difficult. "PDFs are a creature of a time when print layout was a big influence on publishing software," Derek Willis, a lecturer in Data and Computational Journalism at the University of Maryland, told ArsTechnica. This print-oriented design means many PDFs are essentially "pictures of information" requiring optical character recognition (OCR) technology. Traditional OCR systems have existed since the 1970s but struggle with complex layouts and poor-quality scans. New AI language models from companies like Google and Mistral now attempt to process documents more holistically, with varying success. "Right now, the clear leader is Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash Pro Experimental," Willis notes, while Mistral's recent OCR solution "performed poorly" in tests.

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Non-password-protected, unencrypted 108GB database…what could possibly go wrong

Exclusive More than 86,000 records containing nurses' medical records, facial images, ID documents and more sensitive info linked to health tech company ESHYFT was left sitting in a wide-open S3 bucket for months — or possibly even longer — before it was closed it last week.…

Nearly every country on Earth has dirtier air than doctors recommend breathing, a report has found. From a report: Only seven countries met the World Health Organization's guidelines for tiny toxic particles known as PM2.5 last year, according to analysis from the Swiss air quality technology company IQAir. Australia, New Zealand and Estonia were among the handful of countries with a yearly average of no more than 5ug of PM2.5 per cubic metre, along with Iceland and some small island states. The most polluted countries were Chad, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and India. PM2.5 levels in all five countries were at least 10 times higher than guideline limits in 2024, the report found, stretching as much as 18 times higher than recommended levels in Chad. Doctors say there are no safe levels of PM2.5, which is small enough to slip into the bloodstream and damage organs throughout the body, but have estimated millions of lives could be saved each year by following their guidelines. Dirty air is the second-biggest risk factor for dying after high blood pressure.

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Oh wow, just looks at all the scary stuff in your Windows Event Viewer

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is distributing over $25.5 million in refunds to consumers deceived by tech support scammers, averaging about $34 per person.…

An anonymous reader shares a report: The average American workday now concludes at 4:39 p.m., a notable 36 minutes earlier than it did just two years ago when the clock-out time hovered around 5:21 p.m, according to the latest data from the workforce analytics and productivity software company ActivTrak. The new report tracked the workplace behaviors of over 200,000 employees across 777 companies. Despite the shorter workday, the data suggests that overall productivity has increased by about 2%. Per ActivTrak, employees now engage in focused, 24-minute spurts of productivity. "I hope to see these numbers remain consistent year-over-year when it comes to workday span and productivity," said Gabriela Mauch, the head of ActivTrak's Productivity Lab. "These are healthy numbers. We've adapted to a traditional workday on average, while offering flexibility and fluidity in a way that meets employees where they are." Seasonal fluctuations are another notable factor, the report found. Workers tend to put in longer hours during August and December. The August increase aligns with employees returning from vacation and starting to scramble to meet end-of-year goals, Mauch said. It may be that organizations also see the month of December as another chance to catch up, she added.

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Researchers claim efficiency boost plus reduction in environmental harm

Scientists claim to have made a breakthrough in the search for more powerful and lower-cost lithium-metal batteries by including common polymer nylon in the design.…

A critical root certificate expiring on March 14, 2025 will disable extensions and potentially break DRM-dependent streaming services for Firefox users running outdated browsers. Users must update to at least Firefox 128 or ESR 115.13+ to maintain functionality across Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android platforms. The expiration additionally compromises security infrastructure, including blocklists for malicious add-ons, SSL certificate revocation lists, and password breach notifications. Even those on legacy operating systems (Windows 7/8/8.1, macOS 10.12â"10.14) must update to minimum ESR 115.13+.

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The US's largest pension fund has classified more than $3 billion of holdings in oil drillers, coal miners, and other major greenhouse gas producers as climate-friendly investments, according to a new analysis of public records. From a report: Stakes in Saudi Aramco, Chevron Corp. and Chinese coal company Inner Mongolia Dian Tou Energy are among the holdings that California Public Employees' Retirement System labeled as "climate solutions." The findings are part of a report from California Common Good, a coalition of environmental advocates and public sector unions. The group, which has called for Calpers to divest from major oil and gas companies, is staging protests Tuesday at Chevron's San Francisco Bay Area refinery and in the burn zone of the Eaton fire near Los Angeles.

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Folks with LaserJets complain of error code even when using approved supplies

Owners of HP laser printers are complaining about a firmware update that stops the hardware from printing, where the toner cartridge is not recognized even when they've got the expensive HP version installed.…

SpaceX's Starlink has secured its first agreement in India, partnering with telecommunications leader Bharti Airtel to bring high-speed satellite internet to the world's most populous country, the companies announced Tuesday [PDF]. The landmark deal will enable Starlink to tap into Airtel's extensive retail network and ground infrastructure while expanding its global reach into previously underserved regions across India, pending regulatory authorizations. "We are excited to work with Airtel and unlock the transformative impact Starlink can bring to the people of India," said Gwynne Shotwell, President and Chief Operating Officer of SpaceX. "The team at Airtel has played a pivotal role in India's telecom story, so working with them to complement our direct offering makes great sense for our business." The collaboration will explore selling Starlink equipment through Airtel's retail stores and offering services to business customers while connecting communities in rural areas with limited connectivity.

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Dare mighty things ... as long as we can afford it

COMMENT NASA could be in line for severe cuts to its science budget, with a 50 percent reduction floated by folk in the space industry. The consequences would, according to observers, be nothing less than catastrophic.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A former senior Facebook executive has told the BBC how the social media giant worked "hand in glove" with the Chinese government on potential ways of allowing Beijing to censor and control content in China. Sarah Wynn-Williams -- a former global public policy director -- says in return for gaining access to the Chinese market of hundreds of millions of users, Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, considered agreeing to hiding posts that were going viral, until they could be checked by the Chinese authorities. Ms Williams -- who makes the claims in a new book -- has also filed a whistleblower complaint with the US markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), alleging Meta misled investors. The BBC has reviewed the complaint. Facebook's parent company Meta, says Ms Wynn-Williams had her employment terminated in 2017 "for poor performance." It is "no secret we were once interested" in operating services in China, it adds. "We ultimately opted not to go through with the ideas we'd explored." Meta referred us to Mark Zuckerberg's comments from 2019, when he said: "We could never come to agreement on what it would take for us to operate there, and they [China] never let us in." Facebook also used algorithms to spot when young teenagers were feeling vulnerable as part of research aimed at advertisers, Ms Wynn-Williams alleges. A former New Zealand diplomat, she joined Facebook in 2011, and says she watched the company grow from "a front row seat." Now she wants to show some of the "decision-making and moral compromises" that she says went on when she was there. It is a critical moment, she adds, as "many of the people I worked with... are going to be central" to the introduction of AI. In her memoir, Careless People, Ms Wynn-Williams paints a picture of what she alleges working on Facebook's senior team was like.

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Plus, startup's inference service makes debut on Hugging Face

Cerebras has begun deploying more than a thousand of its dinner-plate sized-accelerators across North America and parts of France as the startup looks to establish itself as one of the largest and fastest suppliers of AI inference services.…

First new version in about five years, but it's who did it that matters more

The WINE project has put out its first release of Mono, the original FOSS .NET runtime, since it took the project over from Microsoft six months ago.…

SpaceX's Starlink has secured its first agreement in India, partnering with telecommunications leader Bharti Airtel to bring high-speed satellite internet to the world's most populous country, the companies announced Tuesday [PDF]. The landmark deal will enable Starlink to tap into Airtel's extensive retail network and ground infrastructure while expanding its global reach into previously underserved regions across India, pending regulatory authorizations. "We are excited to work with Airtel and unlock the transformative impact Starlink can bring to the people of India," said Gwynne Shotwell, President and Chief Operating Officer of SpaceX. "The team at Airtel has played a pivotal role in India's telecom story, so working with them to complement our direct offering makes great sense for our business." The collaboration will explore selling Starlink equipment through Airtel's retail stores and offering services to business customers while connecting communities in rural areas with limited connectivity.

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Email client rises like a zombie, though its digital grave still marked by big red cross

The native Outlook email app for iOS users remains missing in action for some more than a week after users first reported service disruption, and Microsoft still hasn't confirmed the root cause.…

It took a whistleblower to expose disastrous ERP go-live

Birmingham City Council did not tell its official auditors about the disastrous Oracle implementation for ten months after the suite of applications went live, and appeared to obstruct access to the new system needed to complete their work.…

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has taken control of rocket startup Relativity Space, replacing co-founder Tim Ellis as CEO and significantly funding the company's development of its medium-lift rocket, Terran R. The New York Times first reported (paywalled) the news. Ars Technica reports: Schmidt's involvement with Relativity has been quietly discussed among space industry insiders for a few months. Multiple sources told Ars that he has largely been bankrolling the company since the end of October, when the company's previous fundraising dried up. It is not immediately clear why Schmidt is taking a hands-on approach at Relativity. However, it is one of the few US-based companies with a credible path toward developing a medium-lift rocket that could potentially challenge the dominance of SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket. If the Terran R booster becomes commercially successful, it could play a big role in launching megaconstellations. Schmidt's ascension also means that Tim Ellis, the company's co-founder, chief executive, and almost sole public persona for nearly a decade, is now out of a leadership position. "Today marks a powerful new chapter as Eric Schmidt becomes Relativity's CEO, while also providing substantial financial backing," Ellis wrote on the social media site X. "I know there's no one more tenacious or passionate to propel this dream forward. We have been working together to ensure a smooth transition, and I'll proudly continue to support the team as Co-founder and Board member." Relativity also on Monday released a video outlining the development of the Terran R rocket and the work required to reach the launch pad. According to the video, the first "flight" version of the Terran R rocket will be built this year, with tentative plans to launch from a pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 2026. "The company aims to soft land the first stage of the first launch in the Atlantic Ocean," adds Ars. "However, the 'Block 1' version of the rocket will not fly again." "Full reuse of the first stage will be delayed to future upgrades. Eventually, the Relativity officials said, they intend to reach a flight rate of 50 to 100 rockets a year with the Terran R when the vehicle is fully developed."

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1900 MHz band dormant since Y2K, but not available until 2029

Britain's telecoms regulator wants to repurpose unused mobile spectrum for the upcoming Emergency Services Network (ESN) and to overhaul communications in the railway sector.…

Nothing like an OpenAI-powered agent leaking data or getting confused over what someone else whispered to it

AI models with memory aim to enhance user interactions by recalling past engagements. However, this feature opens the door to manipulation.…