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Munge that corporate data using the LLM of your choice

The data platform Snowflake is putting Google's Gemini to work inside its Cortex AI, aiming to give customers access to a foundational model within the boundaries of their data environment across supported clouds, the company told The Register.…

Google will begin releasing Android Open Source Project (AOSP) source code only twice a year starting in 2026. "In the past, Google would release the source code for every quarterly Android release, of which there are four each year," notes Android Authority. From the report: Google told Android Authority that, effective 2026, Google will publish new source code to AOSP in Q2 and Q4. The reason is to ensure platform stability for the Android ecosystem and better align with Android's trunk-stable development model. Developers navigating to source.android.com today will see a banner confirming the change that reads as follows: "Effective in 2026, to align with our trunk-stable development model and ensure platform stability for the ecosystem, we will publish source code to AOSP in Q2 and Q4. For building and contributing to AOSP, we recommend utilizing android-latest-release instead of aosp-main. The aosp-latest-release manifest branch will always reference the most recent release pushed to AOSP. For more information, see Changes to AOSP." A spokesperson for Google offered some additional context on this decision, stating that it helps simplify development, eliminates the complexity of managing multiple code branches, and allows them to deliver more stable and secure code to Android platform developers. The spokesperson also reiterated that Google's commitment to AOSP is unchanged and that this new release schedule helps the company build a more robust and secure foundation for the Android ecosystem. Finally, Google told us that its process for security patch releases will not change and that the company will keep publishing security patches each month on a dedicated security-only branch for relevant OS releases just as it does today.

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Vietnam will begin enforcing new online advertising rules in February 2026 that ban forced video ads longer than five seconds and must allow users to close ads with just one tap. "Furthermore, platforms must provide clear icons and instructions for users to report advertisements that violate the law, and allow them to opt out, turn off, or stop viewing inappropriate ads," reports a local news outlet (translated to English). "These reports must be received and processed promptly, and the results communicated to users as required." From the report: In cases where the entity posting the infringing advertisement cannot be identified or where specialized laws do not have specific regulations, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is the focal agency to receive notifications and send requests to block or remove the advertisement to organizations and businesses providing online advertising services in Vietnam. Advertisers, advertising service providers, and advertising transmission and distribution units are responsible for blocking and removing infringing advertisements within 24 hours of receiving a request from the competent authority. For advertisements that infringe on national security, the blocking and removal must be carried out immediately, no later than 24 hours. In case of non-compliance, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, in coordination with the Ministry of Public Security, will apply technical measures to block infringing advertisements and services and handle the matter according to the law. Telecommunications companies and Internet service providers must also implement technical measures to block access to infringing advertisements within 24 hours of receiving a request.

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Have your privacy cake and consume the web too

Brave Software has reworked its browser's Rust-based adblock engine to make it significantly more memory efficient and perhaps more secure. So you get fewer ads now with fewer MB of RAM.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IGN: Last year, Intel had the best iGPU on the market. This year, it's broken that record by over 70% with Panther Lake and it's a huge win for handhelds. "We've overdelivered" is how Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan categorized the Panther Lake launch during the company's CES 2026 Keynote address, and that really does seem to be the case. But the real highlight of the keynote speech wasn't the engineering behind Panther Lake, but rather the iGPU and the "handheld ecosystem" Intel is building to capitalize on the iGPU's performance gains. Formerly known as the 12 Xe-core variant, the new Intel Arc B390 iGPU offers up to 77% faster gaming performance over Lunar Lake's Arc 140V graphics chip. Intel's VP and General Manager of PC Products, Dan Rogers detailed the Arc B390's performance gains and announced a "whole ecosystem" of gaming handhelds. That ecosystem includes partnerships with MSI, Acer, Microsoft, CPD, Foxconn, and Pegatron. So we'll finally see more Intel handhelds hit the market. [...] Since Intel's Core Ultra 300 Panther Lake chip is built on Intel's proprietary 18A Foundry process node, it can be cut in a variety of different die slices. According to sources at Intel close to the matter, the company is planning a hardware-specific variant or variants of the Panther Lake CPU die. Currently branded as "Intel Core G3" these processors will be custom-built for handhelds. That means Intel can spec the chips to offer better performance on the GPU where you want it, with potential for even better performance than the current Arc B390 expectations.

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Atlas will be deployed to Hyundai and Google facilities this year

CES 2026 Remember when Elon Musk predicted that there would be thousands of Optimus robots at Tesla factories by the end of 2025? Well, that didn't happen, but competitor Boston Dynamics has just announced that its humanoid robot, Atlas, is going to the big time.…

Jupiter's moon Europa is on the short list of places in our solar system seen as promising in the search for life beyond Earth, with a large subsurface ocean thought to be hidden under an outer shell of ice. But new research is raising questions about whether Europa in fact has what it takes for habitability. Reuters: The study assessed the potential on Europa's ocean bottom for tectonic and volcanic activity, which on Earth facilitate interactions between rock and seawater that generate essential nutrients and chemical energy for life. After modeling Europa's conditions, the researchers concluded that its rocky seafloor is likely mechanically too strong to allow such activity. The researchers considered factors including Europa's size, the makeup of its rocky core and the gravitational forces exerted by Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet. Their evaluation that there probably is little to no active faulting at Europa's seafloor suggests this moon is barren of life. "On Earth, tectonic activity such as fracturing and faulting exposes fresh rock to the environment where chemical reactions, principally involving water, generate chemicals such as methane that microbial life can use," said planetary scientist Paul Byrne of Washington University in St. Louis, lead author of the study published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. "Without such activity, those reactions are harder to establish and sustain, making Europa's seafloor a challenging environment for life," Byrne added.

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Crimson Collective claims 'sophisticated attack' that allows them to 'disconnect every user from their mobile service'

Internet service provider Brightspeed confirmed that it's investigating criminals' claims that they stole more than a million customers' records and have listed them for sale for three bitcoin, or about $276,370. …

Nvidia's G-Sync Pulsar technology, first announced nearly two years ago as a solution to display motion blur caused by old images persisting on the viewer's retina, is finally arriving in consumer monitors this week. The first four Pulsar-equipped displays -- from Acer, AOC, Asus and MSI -- hit select retailers on Wednesday, all sharing the same core specs: 27-inch IPS panels running at 1440p resolution and up to 360 Hz refresh rates. Nvidia claims the technology delivers the "effective motion clarity of a theoretical 1,000 Hz monitor." The system uses a rolling scan scheme that pulses the backlight for one-quarter of a frame just before pixels are overwritten, giving them time to fully transition between colors before illumination. The approach also reduces how long old pixels persist on the viewer's retina. Previous "Ultra Low Motion Blur" features on other monitors worked only at fixed refresh rates, but Pulsar syncs its pulses to G-Sync's variable refresh rate. Early reviews are mixed. The Monitors Unboxed YouTube channel called it "clearly the best solution currently available" for limiting motion blur, while PC Magazine described the improvements as "minor in the grand scheme of things" and potentially hard for casual viewers to notice.

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The Lego Group today unveiled Smart Bricks, a tiny computer that fits entirely inside a classic 2x4 brick and which the company is calling the most significant evolution in its building system since the introduction of the minifigure in 1978. The Smart Brick contains a custom ASIC smaller than a single Lego stud and includes light and sound output, light sensors, inertial sensors for detecting movement and tilt, and a microphone that functions as a virtual button rather than a recording device. The bricks detect NFC-equipped smart tags embedded in new tiles and minifigures, and they form a Bluetooth mesh network to sense each other's position and orientation. They charge wirelessly on a pad that can handle multiple bricks simultaneously. The first Smart Brick sets ship March 1 and are all Star Wars themed, ranging from a $70 Darth Vader's TIE Fighter at 473 pieces to a $160 Darth Vader's Throne Room Duel at 962 pieces. Lego confirmed there is no AI or camera in the product. The company quietly piloted the technology in a 2024 Lego City set and says Smart Play will continue to expand through new updates and launches.

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The "talent is everywhere" approach that U.S. employers adopted during the white-hot pandemic job market is quietly giving way to something much older and more familiar: recruiting almost exclusively from a small set of elite and nearby universities. A 2025 survey of more than 150 companies by Veris Insights found that 26% were exclusively recruiting from a shortlist of schools, up from 17% in 2022. Diversity as a priority for school recruiting selection dropped to 31% of employers surveyed in 2025, down from nearly 60% in 2022. GE Appliances once sent recruiters on one or two passes through 45 to 50 schools each year; now the company attends four or five events per semester at just 15 universities, including Purdue and Auburn. McKinsey, the consulting firm that expanded recruitment well beyond the Ivy League after George Floyd's murder, recently removed language from its career page that said "We hire people, not degrees." The firm now hosts in-person events at a shortlist of about 20 core schools, including Vanderbilt and Notre Dame. Most companies now recruit at up to 30 American colleges out of about 4,000, said William Chichester III, who has directed entry-level recruiting at Target and Peloton. For students outside elite schools or those located near company headquarters? "God help you," he said.

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Book publisher HarperCollins said it will start translating romance novels under its famous Harlequin label in France using AI, reducing or eliminating the pay for the team of human contract translators who previously did this work. 404Media: Publisher's Weekly broke the news in English after French outlets reported on the story in December. According to a joint statement from French Association of Literary Translators (ATFL) and En Chair et en Os (In Flesh and Bone) -- an anti-AI activist group of French translators -- HarperCollins France has been contacting its translators to tell them they're being replaced with machines in 2026. The ATFL/ En Chair et en Os statement explained that HarperCollins France would use a third party company called Fluent Planet to run Harlequin romance novels through a machine translation system. The books would then be checked for errors and finalized by a team of freelancers. The ATFL and En Chair et en Os called on writers, book workers, and readers to refuse this machine translated future. They begged people to "reaffirm our unconditional commitment to human texts, created by human beings, in dignified working conditions."

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A survey of 2,000 teachers, students and parents conducted by the New York Times found that many high schools have stopped assigning full novels to students, opting instead for excerpts that are often read on school-issued laptops rather than in print. The shift stems from multiple factors: a belief that students have shorter attention spans, pressure to prepare students for standardized tests, and the influence of Common Core standards adopted by many U.S. states more than a decade ago. Schools increasingly rely on curriculum products like StudySync, which takes an anthology approach to literature rather than requiring complete books. Teachers acknowledge that teens now read far fewer full novels than previous generations, though some educators push back against the trend. "Many teachers are secret revolutionaries and still assign whole books," said Heather McGuire, a New Mexico English teacher who responded to the survey.

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Neat idea, but with no mention of a dev kit it's another sign of Lego's descent into designing nothing but fun on rails

Not even Legos are safe from the inexorable march of smart technology, as the Danish construction toy stalwart introduced a new tech-in-a-brick Smart Play system at CES this week. …

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Open Rights Group is warning politicians that the UK is leaning far too heavily on US tech companies to run critical systems, and wants the Cybersecurity and Resilience Bill to force a rethink. The digital rights outfit says the bill, which is due to receive its second reading in the House of Commons today, represents a rare opportunity to force the government to confront what it sees as a strategic blind spot: the UK's reliance on companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and data analytics biz Palantir for everything from cloud hosting to sensitive public sector systems. "Just as relying on one country for the UK's energy needs would be risky and irresponsible, so is overreliance on US companies to supply the bulk of our digital infrastructure," said James Baker, platform power programme manager at Open Rights Group. He argued that digital infrastructure has become an extension of geopolitical power, and the UK is increasingly vulnerable to decisions taken far beyond Westminster's control.

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It's crazy, a million-to-one shot, but it might just work

What if, rather than make a Linux distro that can run Windows apps, you built the whole distro around Windows binaries instead?…

HP this week announced the EliteBoard G1a at CES 2026, a Windows computer built into a full-size 93-key desktop keyboard that the company is marketing to businesses where employees use hot desks and need a portable computing environment they can carry between workstations. The device connects to a USB-C monitor for both video output and power delivery over a single cable, and HP includes a USB-to-HDMI adapter for displays that lack USB-C input. Inside runs an AMD Ryzen AI 5 or 7 processor paired with AMD Radeon 800 integrated graphics and an NPU capable of up to 50 TOPS, qualifying it as a Copilot+ PC by Microsoft's standards. The device can be configured with up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM and 2TB of SSD storage. The keyboard weighs between 1.49 and 1.69 pounds depending on configuration and measures 14.1 by 4.7 by 0.7 inches, lighter than most laptops but longer and thicker than some. An optional 32Wh battery offers up to 3.5 hours of unplugged use. The EliteBoard G1a ships in March.

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New York Governor Kathy Hochul has signed S4505, a law that requires websites to display warnings claiming that features like algorithmic feeds, push notifications, infinite scroll, like counts, and autoplay cause addiction -- despite, as TechDirt argues, the absence of scientific consensus supporting such claims. State Senator Andrew Gounardes sponsored the legislation. The law's constitutional footing appears precarious. Courts have already rejected nearly identical compelled-speech schemes, most notably in the Texas pornography age-verification case that reached the Supreme Court. The Fifth Circuit, in that case, refused to uphold mandatory health warnings about pornography, ruling that such public health claims were "too contentious and controversial to receive Zauderer scrutiny" -- the legal standard that sometimes permits government-mandated disclosures. The science around social media's purported addictiveness is even more disputed than the pornography research the Fifth Circuit rejected. Hochul's signing statement asserts that studies link increased social media use to anxiety and depression, but researchers in the field note these studies demonstrate correlation rather than causation. Some experts have suggested the causal relationship may run in the opposite direction: teenagers struggling with mental health issues turn to social media for community and coping mechanisms. The law's broad definitions could sweep in far more than major platforms like Facebook and TikTok. News sites, recipe apps, fitness trackers, and email clients could theoretically face enforcement if they employ the targeted features. New York's Attorney General holds sole authority to grant exemptions.

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Razer today unveiled Project Motoko, a concept pair of over-ear headphones equipped with dual cameras that the gaming peripherals company believes could serve as an alternative to the smart glasses that have proliferated across the wearable AI market. The headphones feature two 4K cameras positioned on the earcups along with near and far field microphones, all powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. Users can point the cameras at objects and ask questions to AI assistants including those from OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and Microsoft. Basic queries run locally on the device while more complex requests require a phone or PC connection. Razer's pitch centers on battery life: the wireless headset has achieved up to 36 hours on a charge during testing, according to the company, compared to the eight hours rated for Meta's second-generation Ray-Ban AI glasses. The company also argues that over-ear headphones offer more privacy since audio responses aren't audible to bystanders. The concept remains unfinished, Bloomberg News cautioned. During a product demonstration, the headset's dual cameras failed occasionally to recognize objects even in a moderately lit room. Razer has not committed to final pricing but indicated the headphones would command a "slight premium" over other high-end headphones and would be available later this year. The company's most expensive current headset costs $400.

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New Year glitch leaves users staring at connection errors instead of market data

For many, the start of a new year is a time to take stock. For Microsoft, it was a time to stop giving it as the company kicked off 2026 with a bug that broke Excel's StockHistory function.…