~hackernews | Bookmarks (495)

Roku CEO Anthony Wood disclosed plans to introduce video ads to the Roku OS home screen. The news highlights Roku’s growing focus on advertising and an alarming trend in the streaming industry that sees ads increasingly forced on viewers. As spotted by The Streamable, during Roku's Q1 2024 earnings call last week, W...

Starting in March with the release of iOS 17.4, iPhones in the European Union have been subject to the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), a batch of regulations that (among other things) forced Apple to support alternate app stores, app sideloading, and third-party browser engines in iOS for the first time. Today, EU r...

If you build a gadget that connects to the Internet and sell it in the United Kingdom, you can no longer make the default password "password." In fact, you're not supposed to have default passwords at all. A new version of the 2022 Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act (PTSI) is now in effect, c...

Authentication service Okta is warning about the “unprecedented scale” of an ongoing campaign that routes fraudulent login requests through the mobile devices and browsers of everyday users in an attempt to conceal the malicious behavior. The attack, Okta said, uses other means to camouflage the login attempts as we...

The Federal Communications Commission today said it fined T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon $196 million "for illegally sharing access to customers' location information without consent and without taking reasonable measures to protect that information against unauthorized disclosure." The fines relate to sharing of real-...

Enlarge / The Marina Palms condo development in Miami recently added an ADS-TEC ChargeBox DC fast charger for its residents. Right now, the electric vehicle ownership experience is optimized for the owner who lives in a single-family home. A level 2 home AC charger costs a few hundred dollars, and with a garage or c...

Enlarge / Intel's top-end i9-14900KS. Earlier this month, we wrote that some of Intel's recent high-end Core i9 and Core i7 processors had been crashing and exhibiting other weird issues in some games and that Intel was investigating the cause. An Intel statement obtained by Igor's Lab suggests that Intel's investig...

Enlarge / Elon Musk speaks at the Satellite Conference and Exhibition on March 9, 2020 in Washington, DC. The US Supreme Court today rejected Elon Musk's attempt to terminate his settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk appealed to the Supreme Court in December 2023, claiming the settlement he ag...

Brussels is set to open a probe into Meta’s Facebook and Instagram as soon as Monday over concerns the social media giant is failing to do enough to counter disinformation from Russia and other countries. Regulators suspect that Meta’s moderation does not go far enough to stop the widespread dissemination of politic...

People have been leaving public messages since the first artists painted hunting scenes on cave walls. But it was the invention of electricity that forever changed the way we talked to each other. In 1844, the first message was sent via telegraph. Samuel Morse, who created the binary Morse Code decades before electr...

Google says it has patched a nasty loophole in the Android TV account security system, which would grant attackers with physical access to your device access to your entire Google account just by sideloading some apps. As 404 Media reports, the issue was originally brought to Google's attention by US Sen. Ron Wyden ...

A federal appeals court today reversed a ruling that prevented New York from enforcing a law requiring Internet service providers to sell $15 broadband plans to low-income consumers. The ruling is a loss for six trade groups that represent ISPs, although it isn't clear right now whether the law will be enforced. New...

TikTok’s Beijing-based owner ByteDance tightened its grip over its US operations over the past two years, according to company insiders, even as momentum to ban the short-video app grew in Washington. The US government passed legislation this week aimed at forcing TikTok to divest from its parent or face a countrywi...

TikTok owner ByteDance is preparing to sue the US government now that President Biden has signed into law a bill that will ban TikTok in the US if its Chinese owner doesn't sell the company within 270 days. While it's impossible to predict the outcome with certainty, law professors speaking to Ars believe that ByteD...

Enlarge / A newly revealed research proposal from 1971 shows that Richard Nixon’s science advisors embarked on an extensive analysis of the potential risks of climate change. In 1971, President Richard Nixon’s science advisers proposed a multimillion dollar climate change research project with benefits they said wer...

Enlarge / At critical pressures, the fluid's spheres become a mixture of different states. Building a robot that could pick up delicate objects like eggs or blueberries without crushing them took lots of control algorithms that process feeds from advanced vision systems or sensors that emulate the human sense of tou...

Enlarge / A 2014 Tesla Model S driving on Autopilot rear-ended a Culver City fire truck that was parked in the high-occupancy vehicle lane on Interstate 405. Tesla's lousy week continues. On Tuesday, the electric car maker posted its quarterly results showing precipitous falls in sales and profitability. Today, we'v...

Enlarge / Drops of the blood going onto an HIV quick test. Trendy, unproven "vampire facials" performed at an unlicensed spa in New Mexico left at least three women with HIV infections. This marks the first time that cosmetic procedures have been associated with an HIV outbreak, according to a detailed report of the...

In the world of AI, what might be called "small language models" have been growing in popularity recently because they can be run on a local device instead of requiring data center-grade computers in the cloud. On Wednesday, Apple introduced a set of tiny source-available AI language models called OpenELM that are s...

Enlarge / Honda is investing CAD$15 billion (US $11 billion) to expand EV manufacturing in North America with four sites in Ontario, Canada. Honda announced today that it will spend $11 billion to expand its electric vehicle manufacturing presence in North America. The Japanese automaker already has a number of fact...

Enlarge / Imaging setup for a charred ancient papyrus recovered from the ruins of Herculaneum; 30 percent of the text has now been deciphered. Historical accounts vary about how the Greek philosopher Plato died: in bed while listening to a young woman playing the flute; at a wedding feast; or peacefully in his sleep...

Enlarge / Federal Communication Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, then a commissioner, rallies against repeal of net neutrality rules in December 2017. The Federal Communications Commission voted 3–2 to impose net neutrality rules today, restoring the common-carrier regulatory framework enforced during the ...

California's electric grid, with its massive solar production and booming battery installations, is already on the cutting edge of the US's energy transition. And it's likely to stay there, as the state will require that all passenger vehicles be electric by 2035. Obviously, that will require a grid that's able to s...

“Gadgets aren’t fun anymore,” sighed my wife, watching me tap away on my Palm Zire 72 as she sat on the couch with her MacBook Air, an iPhone, and an Apple Watch. And it’s true: The smartphone has all but eliminated entire classes of gadgets, from point-and-shoot cameras to MP3 players, GPS maps, and even flashlight...