~hackernews | Bookmarks (73)

The U.S. ranks as the 23rd happiest country in the world, according to a new report from the United Nations published on Wednesday. And while that may not sound too bad, given the fact that there are 143 countries on the list, it’s a significant drop from last year when the U.S. ranked 15th. Sadly, it looks like Ame...

Michael Dell, the CEO of the technology company that bears his surname, has long been an advocate of remote work and not so long ago called it “the future of work.” But it seems that even Dell (the company), can’t help but follow the trend among technology companies suddenly convinced that in-office work is the best...

Uber and Lyft have vowed to stop offering service in Minneapolis starting May 1 after the city council voted 10-3 on Thursday to override the mayor’s veto on a minimum wage for drivers. Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, vetoed a similar pay floor for rideshare drivers statewide last year.Uber said it would ...

Federal regulators want to fix McDonald’s broken ice cream machines, and they’re asking to expand right-to-repair laws to address the issue. In a letter to the US Copyright Office on Thursday, regulators asked for commercial soft-serve machines to be exempt from current laws making them difficult to repair. The laws...

Tesla, the company helmed by one of the richest men on the planet, is a cheapskate when it comes to paying taxes, according to a new report released on Wednesday. In fact, the company paid exactly $0 in federal income taxes over a five-year period and even managed to get a nice refund.The data on Tesla’s tax bills c...

The Cybertruck was such a misfire for Tesla that Elon Musk, close to tears, told investors “we dug our own grave” in the effort to launch the vehicle. But after years of delays, failed promises, and on-stage gaffes, the truck finally made it onto the streets and into the hands of drivers. For better or worse, the Cy...

Security researchers report they uncovered a design flaw that let them hijack a Tesla using a Flipper Zero, a controversial $169 hacking tool. Partners Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry of Mysk Inc. said the attack is as simple as swiping a Tesla owner’s login information, opening the Tesla app, and driving away. The v...

If you’ve ever wondered what quantum computers actually do, you’re not alone. The truth is, no one knows what modern problems this technology can solve. Google launched a multi-year, global competition on Monday to find real-world use cases for quantum computing, and the finalists will split $5 million.“While there ...

Google says it will begin cracking down on AI-generated content created solely for the purpose of gaming its systems and ranking high in Google Search—a change that could potentially have a ripple effect on the quality of what we see online.The God of Search made the announcement in a blog post on Tuesday. According...

The Flipper Zero may be one of the most versatile, and most controversial keychain-sized devices ever put to market. The device can scan, receive, send, and mimic several types of signals. It can scan NFC and RFID signals used by many common products. It can replicate the frequency used for your workplace’s ID card....

For 20 years, a loosely organized group of Wikipedia editors toiled away curating a collection of 15,000 articles on a single subject: the roads and highways of the United States. Despite minor disagreements, the US Roads Project mostly worked in harmony, but recently, a long-simmering debate over the website’s rule...

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is not happy about what’s been going on with the company’s Gemini AI chatbot, calling viral and historically inaccurate errors from its image generator “unacceptable” in an internal memo to employees on Tuesday.“I want to address the recent issues with problematic text and image responses in...

Journalist Kara Swisher’s long-anticipated memoir Burn Book hit the shelves today. Apparently, a long list of other writers have also been hard at work writing about her experience as well. On the day after her book launch, Amazon is flooded with AI-generated Swisher biographies, complete with cover art from beyond ...

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski bragged on Tuesday that his company’s new OpenAI-powered customer service chatbot was doing the work of 700 people—nearly two years after Klarna laid off about 700 people.In a post on X, Siemiatkowski called the work of Klarna’s AI assistant a “breakthrough in the practical applica...

Wendy’s will start experimenting with surge pricing, much like Uber and Lyft, as the company rolls out digital menus to all its United States restaurants by 2025, according to the company’s February earnings call. Under the test, burgers, Frosties, and other menu items will have “dynamic prices,” costing more during...

AI chatbots made headlines this week with a range of glaring flubs that were hard to look past. Tech companies are rushing to show off their non-offensive, error-free AI chatbots. They’re hoping to show investors that the billions of dollars spent on this technology was a good investment. This week, AI chatbots show...

Saving a wet iPhone by putting it in a bowl or bag of uncooked rice has been a popular go-to rescue method for years, with the logic being that the rice absorbs the excess water from the phone. However, the God of iPhones has recently warned poor mortals against resorting to rice in these situations, saying it could...

Match Group, the international conglomerate that owns Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, and almost every other popular dating app, just inked a major partnership with OpenAI. The company shared only a few hazy details, saying AI will help employees with “work-related tasks.” The dating giant says it plans to squeeze artificia...

ChatGPT started throwing out “unexpected responses” on Tuesday night according to OpenAI’s status page. Users posted screenshots of their ChatGPT conversations full of wild, nonsensical answers from the AI chatbot. The issue appears to be continuing into Wednesday morning.“We are investigating reports of unexpected ...

As AI becomes a bigger and bigger part of our lives, the threat of job automation becomes an increasing possibility for many people. Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about universal basic income, the experimental form of welfare distribution that gives unconditional cash payments to people so that they can meet th...

This week, the scientific journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology published research featuring bogus imagery made with Midjourney, one of the most popular AI image generators.The open-access paper explores the relationship between stem cells in mammalian testes and a signaling pathway responsible for med...

Everybody knows that online disinformation is a huge problem—one that has arguably torn communities apart, manipulated elections, and caused certain segments of the global population to lose their minds. Of course, nobody seems particularly concerned about actually fixing this problem. In fact, the institutions most...

Lonely on Valentine’s Day? AI can help. At least, that’s what a number of companies hawking “romantic” chatbots will tell you. But as your robot love story unfolds, there’s a tradeoff you may not realize you’re making. According to a new study from Mozilla’s *Privacy Not Included project, AI girlfriends and boyfrien...

An unspecified defect in early model Starlink satellites has prompted SpaceX to preemptively deorbit the units before they potentially fail and become hazards in low Earth orbit. While the company remains confident that the deorbiting of these problematic units will prevent any issues, this incident underscores the ...