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Fourth time’s the harm?

Gravy Analytics has been sued yet again for allegedly failing to safeguard its vast stores of personal data, which are now feared stolen. And by personal data we mean information including the locations of tens of millions of smartphones, coordinates of which were ultimately harvested from installed apps.…

The Entertainment Software Association is launching a new gaming event to replace E3, which was permanently canceled in 2023. According to Engadget, the new event is called iicon (short for "interactive innovation conference") and will feature many of the same major gaming companies that once participated in E3. "Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Disney, EA, Epic Games, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Take Two Interactive, Amazon Games and Warner Bros. Games are all named as participants." From the report: [T]he announcements on social media promote iicon as being for "visionaries," "changemakers" and "innovators," so our best guess is that this event will swing more toward the corporate side of gaming where people might use that language unironically. If that's the case, this won't really be a replacement for the heyday of E3, when studios big and small would showcase their upcoming projects and drop internet-breaking surprises. Instead, the inaugural event in April 2026 sounds like it will focus more on moving the needle, brand alignments and synergy.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Tuesday, Hugging Face researchers released an open source AI research agent called "Open Deep Research," created by an in-house team as a challenge 24 hours after the launch of OpenAI's Deep Research feature, which can autonomously browse the web and create research reports. The project seeks to match Deep Research's performance while making the technology freely available to developers. "While powerful LLMs are now freely available in open-source, OpenAI didn't disclose much about the agentic framework underlying Deep Research," writes Hugging Face on its announcement page. "So we decided to embark on a 24-hour mission to reproduce their results and open-source the needed framework along the way!" Similar to both OpenAI's Deep Research and Google's implementation of its own "Deep Research" using Gemini (first introduced in December -- before OpenAI), Hugging Face's solution adds an "agent" framework to an existing AI model to allow it to perform multi-step tasks, such as collecting information and building the report as it goes along that it presents to the user at the end. The open source clone is already racking up comparable benchmark results. After only a day's work, Hugging Face's Open Deep Research has reached 55.15 percent accuracy on the General AI Assistants (GAIA) benchmark, which tests an AI model's ability to gather and synthesize information from multiple sources. OpenAI's Deep Research scored 67.36 percent accuracy on the same benchmark with a single-pass response (OpenAI's score went up to 72.57 percent when 64 responses were combined using a consensus mechanism). As Hugging Face points out in its post, GAIA includes complex multi-step questions such as this one: "Which of the fruits shown in the 2008 painting 'Embroidery from Uzbekistan' were served as part of the October 1949 breakfast menu for the ocean liner that was later used as a floating prop for the film 'The Last Voyage'? Give the items as a comma-separated list, ordering them in clockwise order based on their arrangement in the painting starting from the 12 o'clock position. Use the plural form of each fruit." To correctly answer that type of question, the AI agent must seek out multiple disparate sources and assemble them into a coherent answer. Many of the questions in GAIA represent no easy task, even for a human, so they test agentic AI's mettle quite well. Open Deep Research "builds on OpenAI's large language models (such as GPT-4o) or simulated reasoning models (such as o1 and o3-mini) through an API," notes Ars. "But it can also be adapted to open-weights AI models. The novel part here is the agentic structure that holds it all together and allows an AI language model to autonomously complete a research task." The code has been made public on GitHub.

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Lawsuit: 'Scale of intrusion into individuals' privacy is massive and unprecedented'

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has had its access to US Treasury payment systems restricted - at least temporarily - following a lawsuit from advocacy groups and unions.…

A heated dispute has erupted in the Linux kernel community over the integration of Rust code, with kernel maintainer Christoph Hellwig likening multiple programming languages to "cancer" for the project's maintainability. The conflict centers on a proposed patch enabling Rust-written device drivers to access the kernel's DMA API, which Hellwig strongly opposed. While the dispute isn't about Rust itself, Hellwig argues that maintaining cross-language codebases severely compromises Linux's integrated nature. From a report: "Don't force me to deal with your shiny language of the day," he [Hellwig] wrote. "Maintaining multi-language projects is a pain I have no interest in dealing with. If you want to use something that's not C, be that assembly or Rust, you write to C interfaces and deal with the impedance mismatch yourself as far as I'm concerned." This resistance follows the September departure of Microsoft engineer Wedson Almeida Filho from the Rust for Linux project, citing "nontechnical nonsense."

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A person's ability to focus on everyday tasks is affected by short-term exposure to air pollution, a study has found. The Guardian: Researchers analysed data from cognitive tests completed by 26 participants before and after they were exposed either to high levels of particulate matter (PM) using smoke from a candle, or clean air for an hour. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that even brief exposure to high concentrations of PM affected participants' selective attention and emotion recognition -- regardless of whether they breathed normally or just through their mouth. This can affect an individual's ability to concentrate on tasks, avoid distractions and behave in a socially appropriate way. "Participants exposed to air pollution were not as good at avoiding the distracting information," said Dr Thomas Faherty of the University of Birmingham, a co-author of the study. "So that means in daily life, you could get more distracted by things. Supermarket shopping is a good example ... it might mean that you get more distracted by impulse buys when you're walking along supermarket aisles because you're not able to focus on your task goals." The study also found that participants performed worse on cognitive tests evaluating emotional recognition after being exposed to PM air pollution.

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Are cybersecurity roles included? Are Elon's enforcers vetted? Inquiring minds want to know

Elected officials are demanding answers as to whether the Trump administration and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are hamstringing US national security.…

Warner Bros. Discovery has quietly begun releasing dozens of its older films for free on YouTube, marking an unexpected shift in how the major studio handles its back catalog. Over the past month, the company has uploaded more than 30 full-length movies across five YouTube channels, without digital rights management or regional restrictions. The collection includes both critically acclaimed films like "Waiting for Guffman" and "Michael Collins," as well as commercial disappointments like the 2002 Eddie Murphy film "The Adventures of Pluto Nash." Some releases have significant historical value, such as "Oh, God!" - a 1977 George Burns comedy that earned $51 million at release (equivalent to $265 million in 2024). This move represents a departure from traditional studio practices of protecting content through strict digital rights management and paid streaming services. Warner Bros. owns multiple distribution channels, including the Max streaming service and Turner Classic Movies, which makes the decision to release these films freely on YouTube particularly notable.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The keyboard company Qwertykeys has temporarily halted all shipments to the United States in response to President Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods going into effect. The company says it's working on ways to mitigate shipping costs and that the tariffs have made it so that "all keyboards from China to the U.S. are now subject to 45% tariffs at full value." "We are closely watching the progress of the situation and really hope that there is something else we can do other than bumping the price up," the company wrote in a comment on Reddit. Qwertykeys says that its delivery partner, DHL, "now requires prepayment of 50% of the declared product value as a tariff deposit, plus a $21 processing fee per package." That would drastically raise prices for customers in the US, something Qwertykeys says is "unsustainable for both our business and customers."

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Proof of concept projects stuck in pilot phase as investors get itchy feet

Many business leaders remain unconvinced that AI is worth the expense despite continued hype from an industry that has bet billions on developing the tech and desperately needs to recoup that spending.…

Scientists have grown tooth-like structures using a combination of pig and human cells, marking a step toward potential alternatives to dental implants, researchers at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine reported. The team, led by Pamela Yelick and Weibo Zhang, cultivated the structures by seeding cells into pig tooth scaffolds and implanting them in mini pigs' jaws. After two months, the bioengineered teeth developed hard tissue layers similar to natural teeth, including dentin and cementum. While not yet fully formed teeth, the structures could eventually lead to living replacements for lost teeth, addressing limitations of current titanium implants.

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DeepSeek's AI app will highly likely face a US consumer ban after topping download charts on Apple's App Store and Google Play, according to analysts at US investment bank Jefferies. The US federal government, Navy and Texas have already banned the app, and analysts expect broader restrictions using legislation similar to that targeting TikTok. While consumer access may be blocked, US developers could still be allowed to self-host DeepSeek's model to eliminate security risks, the analysts added. Even if completely banned, DeepSeek's impact on pushing down AI costs will persist as US companies work to replicate its technology, Jefferies said in a report this week reviewed by Slashdot. The app's pricing advantage remains significant, with OpenAI's latest o3-mini model still costing 100% more than DeepSeek's R1 despite being 63% cheaper than o1-mini. The potential ban comes amid broader US-China tech tensions. While restrictions on H20 chips appear unlikely given their limited training capabilities, analysts expect the Biden administration's AI diffusion policies to remain largely intact under Trump, with some quota increases possible for overseas markets based on their AI activity levels.

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For those for whom a runny white or a hard yolk is just not good un œuf

Researchers have put computational fluid dynamics software to good use in devising a solution to the age-old problem of the perfect soft-boiled egg.…

AMD will launch its new Radeon RX 9070-series graphics cards in March 2025, promising "high-quality gaming to mainstream players" amid struggling sales. The company's gaming division reported $563 million in Q4 2024 revenue, down 59% year-over-year. The new cards will target the same market segment as Nvidia's RTX 4070 Ti ($799) and 4070 Super ($599), featuring a 4nm TSMC manufacturing process, ML-enhanced FSR 4 upscaling, and next-generation ray-tracing accelerators. Steam Hardware Survey shows AMD's current RX 7000-series cards have minimal market presence, with only the 7900 XTX and 7700 XT registering on the list. Industry research indicates AMD sells approximately one GPU for every seven or eight sold by Nvidia. The launch timing could be opportune, as Nvidia's upcoming RTX 5070 features fewer CUDA cores than the RTX 4070 Super it replaces.

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20 years? More like five for real-world workloads says company's Quantum AI lead

Despite ongoing breakthroughs, quantum computing has struggled to shake the perception that it's always another ten years away from being practical. However, researchers at Google now argue the tech is actually much closer to commercial viability than some would have you believe.…

AI researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington were able to train an AI "reasoning" model for under $50 in cloud compute credits, according to a research paper. From a report: The model, known as s1, performs similarly to cutting-edge reasoning models, such as OpenAI's o1 and DeepSeek's R1, on tests measuring math and coding abilities. The s1 model is available on GitHub, along with the data and code used to train it. The team behind s1 said they started with an off-the-shelf base model, then fine-tuned it through distillation, a process to extract the "reasoning" capabilities from another AI model by training on its answers. The researchers said s1 is distilled from one of Google's reasoning models, Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental. Distillation is the same approach Berkeley researchers used to create an AI reasoning model for around $450 last month.

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Concerns around unfixed problems remain after system resulted in harm to some 150 patients

The US Department of Veterans Affairs has restarted a project to implement Oracle electronic health records in its hospitals after the project was suspended in 2023.…

Joseph Firmage, a former Silicon Valley prodigy who built a $2.5 billion web services company in the 1990s, is now being sued by investors who claim he defrauded them through an alleged antigravity machine scheme. In 1998, at the height of his success as CEO of USWeb, Firmage claimed an alien appeared in his bedroom, derailing his corporate career. He then spent decades pursuing UFO research and attempting to develop antigravity propulsion technology, raising millions from investors. Court documents allege Firmage and associates are responsible for roughly $25 million in losses through various companies and schemes. Some investors say he used elaborate ruses, including people impersonating government officials, to solicit funds. Firmage, currently in jail on elder abuse charges, maintains he was actually the victim of international scammers who exploited his access to investors.

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Preview arrives in Canary Channel, release planned for Windows 10 and 11

Microsoft has released its first in-box public preview of Windows MIDI Services with full support for the MIDI 2.0 standard.…

In 2022, writer and activist Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" to describe the gradual deterioration of a service or product. The term's prevalence has increased to the point that it was the National Dictionary of Australia's word of the year last year. The editors at Ars Technica, having "covered a lot of things that have been enshittified," decided to highlight some of the worst examples the've come across. Here's a summary of each thing mentioned in their report: Smart TVs: Evolved into data-collecting billboards, prioritizing advertising and user tracking over user experience and privacy. Features like convenient input buttons are sacrificed for pushing ads and webOS apps. "This is all likely to get worse as TV companies target software, tracking, and ad sales as ways to monetize customers after their TV purchases -- even at the cost of customer convenience and privacy," writes Scharon Harding. "When budget brands like Roku are selling TV sets at a loss, you know something's up." Google's Voice Assistant (e.g., Nest Hubs): Functionality has degraded over time, with previously working features becoming unreliable. Users report frequent misunderstandings and unresponsiveness. "I'm fine just saying it now: Google Assistant is worse now than it was soon after it started," writes Kevin Purdy. "Even if Google is turning its entire supertanker toward AI now, it's not clear why 'Start my morning routine,' 'Turn on the garage lights,' and 'Set an alarm for 8 pm' had to suffer." Portable Document Format (PDF): While initially useful for cross-platform document sharing and preserving formatting, PDFs have become bloated and problematic. Copying text, especially from academic journals, is often garbled or impossible. "Apple, which had given the PDF a reprieve, has now killed its main selling point," writes John Timmer. "Because Apple has added OCR to the MacOS image display system, I can get more reliable results by screenshotting the PDF and then copying the text out of that. This is the true mark of its enshittification: I now wish the journals would just give me a giant PNG." Televised Sports (specifically cycling and Formula 1): Streaming services have consolidated, leading to significantly increased costs for viewers. Previously affordable and comprehensive options have been replaced by expensive bundles across multiple platforms. "Formula 1 racing has largely gone behind paywalls, and viewership is down significantly over the last 15 years," writes Eric Berger. "Major US sports such as professional and college football had largely been exempt, but even that is now changing, with NFL games being shown on Peacock, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. None of this helps viewers. It enshittifies the experience for us in the name of corporate greed." Google Search: AI overviews often bury relevant search results under lengthy, sometimes inaccurate AI-generated content. This makes finding specific information, especially primary source documents, more difficult. "Google, like many big tech companies, expects AI to revolutionize search and is seemingly intent on ignoring any criticism of that idea," writes Ashley Belanger. Email AI Tools (e.g., Gemini in Gmail): Intrusive and difficult to disable, these tools offer questionable value due to their potential for factual inaccuracies. Users report being unable to fully opt-out. "Gmail won't take no for an answer," writes Dan Goodin. "It keeps asking me if I want to use Google's Gemini AI tool to summarize emails or draft responses. As the disclaimer at the bottom of the Gemini tool indicates, I can't count on the output being factual, so no, I definitely don't want it." Windows: While many complaints about Windows 11 originated with Windows 10, the newer version continues the trend of unwanted features, forced updates, and telemetry data collection. Bugs and performance issues also plague the operating system. "... it sure is easy to resent Windows 11 these days, between the well-documented annoyances, the constant drumbeat of AI stuff (some of it gated to pricey new PCs), and a batch of weird bugs that mostly seem to be related to the under-the-hood overhauls in October's Windows 11 24H2 update," writes Andrew Cunningham. "That list includes broken updates for some users, inoperable scanners, and a few unplayable games. With every release, the list of things you need to do to get rid of and turn off the most annoying stuff gets a little longer." Web Discourse: The rapid spread of memes, trends, and corporate jargon on social media has led to a homogenization of online communication, making it difficult to distinguish original content and creating a sense of constant noise. "[T]he enshittifcation of social media, particularly due to its speed and virality, has led to millions vying for their moment in the sun, and all I see is a constant glare that makes everything look indistinguishable," writes Jacob May. "No wonder some companies think AI is the future."

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