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Tuesday 2025/06/24
EV-Carrying Ship Sinks In Pacific Ocean After Catching Fire
2025-06-24 21:30:00+00:00
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Transport Topics: A ship that caught fire in the Pacific Ocean earlier this month has sunk. The vessel was abandoned in the middle of the pacific -- about 360 miles from land -- after a blaze. It was carrying about 3,000 vehicles of which about 800 were EVs. Damage caused by the fire was compounded by heavy weather, causing the ship to take on water and ultimately sink on June 23, the vessel's manager, Zodiac Maritime, said in a statement on June 24.
Smoke was initially seen emanating from a deck carrying electric vehicles, Zodiac said when the incident first happened. While the ship's relative distance from land means that it will sink into ocean that is approximately 5,000 meters deep, it also made a rapid response trickier. The second of three specialist vessels that were due to assist the ship arrived on June 15, more than a week after the fire first broke out. The vessel was carrying cars from a range of manufacturers including Chery Automobile Co. and Great Wall Motor Co. to Mexico, people familiar with the matter said at the time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Noise Pollution Harms Health of Millions Across Europe, Report Finds
2025-06-24 20:50:00+00:00
More than 110 million people across Europe suffer high levels of health-damaging noise pollution, according to a report. The resulting physiological stress and sleep disturbance leads to 66,000 early deaths a year and many cases of heart disease, diabetes and depression. The Guardian: The report, from the European Environment Agency (EEA), focuses on noise from cars, trains and aeroplanes and found that 20% of the population of the European Economic Area (EEA) were affected. Separate research, using a slightly lower threshold for dangerous noise pollution, found that 40% of the UK population were exposed to harmful transport noise.
Seventeen million people endure particularly high noise pollution -- "long-term, high-annoyance" -- and almost 5 million suffer "severe" sleep disturbance. Fifteen million children live in areas of harmful noise. The harm to health from noise is greater than that from higher-profile risks including secondhand tobacco smoke or lead exposure, and incurs an economic cost of almost $116bn a year, the analysis found.
The damage to health is likely to be an underestimate, the researchers said. Using the World Health Organization's stricter threshold for risky noise pollution gives an estimate of 150 million people across Europe exposed. The EU's target to cut the number of people chronically disturbed by transport noise by 30% by 2030 will not be met without further action, the researchers said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Android Chrome Users Can Now Move Address Bar To Bottom of Screen
2025-06-24 20:12:00+00:00
Google has begun rolling out a feature that allows Chrome users on Android to move the browser's address bar to the bottom of the screen. This capability has been available to iOS Chrome users since 2023 and aims to improve accessibility for users with larger devices.
Users can relocate the address bar by pressing and holding on it and selecting the move option, or by adjusting the setting through Chrome's settings menu. The feature addresses usability concerns for users of phones with bigger screens, where reaching the top of the display can prove difficult during one-handed operation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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WD Escapes Half a Billion in Patent Damages as Judge Trims Award To $1
2025-06-24 19:25:00+00:00
Western Digital has succeeded in having the sum it owed from a patent infringement case reduced from $553 million down to just $1 in post-trial motions, when the judge found the plaintiff's claims had shifted during the course of the litigation. From a report: The storage biz was held by a California jury to have infringed on data encryption patents owned by SPEX Technologies Inc in October, relating to several of its self-encrypting hard drive products.
WD was initially told to pay $316 million in damages, but District Judge James Selna ruled the company owed a further $237 million in interest charges earlier this year, bringing the total to more than half a billion dollars. In February, WD was given a week to file a bond or stump up the entire damages payment. Selna granted Western Digital's post-trial motion to reduce damages, writing that "SPEX's damages theory changed as certain evidence and theories became unavailable" and there was "insufficient evidence from which the Court could determine a reasonable royalty."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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iPhone Customers Upset By Apple Wallet Ad Pushing F1 Movie
2025-06-24 18:40:00+00:00
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple customers aren't thrilled they're getting an ad from the Apple Wallet app promoting the tech giant's Original Film, "F1 the Movie." Across social media, iPhone owners are complaining that their Wallet app sent out a push notification offering a $10 discount at Fandango for anyone buying two or more tickets to the film.
The feature film, starring Brad Pitt, explores the world of Formula 1 and was shot at actual Grand Prix races. It also showcases the use of Apple technology, from the custom-made cameras made of iPhone parts used to film inside the cars, to the AirPods Max that Pitt's character, F1 driver Sonny Hayes, sleeps in. However well-received the film may be, iPhone users don't necessarily want their built-in utilities, like their digital wallet, marketing to them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Philips Hue is Raising Prices in the US
2025-06-24 18:01:00+00:00
Philips Hue will raise prices across its smart lighting and security products for US customers starting July 1st, with parent company Signify attributing the increases directly to tariffs.
The company initially notified customers that prices would "go up" through a promotional message before confirming the tariff-related reasoning in a statement. Signify has not provided specific pricing details or identified which products will be affected, though the company's statement suggests changes may impact the entire Hue lineup.
Some products already reflect higher US pricing, including the new $219.99 Hue Play Wall Washer light, which costs approximately 10% more than the European price when currencies are converted. The latest $32.99 Smart Button also exceeds the $24.99 launch price of its predecessor, while European pricing remained at 21.99 euro ($25.50) for both generations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Microsoft Extends Free Windows 10 Security Updates Into 2026, With Strings Attached
2025-06-24 17:22:00+00:00
Microsoft will offer free Windows 10 security updates through October 2026 to consumers who enable Windows Backup or spend 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, the company said today. The move provides alternatives to the previously announced $30-per-PC Extended Security Update program for individuals wanting to continue using Windows 10 past its October 14, 2025 end-of-support date.
The company will notify Windows 10 users about the ESU program through the Settings app and notifications starting in July, with full rollout by mid-August. Both free options require a Microsoft Account, which the company has increasingly pushed in Windows 11. Business and organizational customers can still purchase up to three years of ESU updates but must pay for the service.
Windows 10 remains installed on 53% of Windows PCs worldwide, according to Statcounter data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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OpenAI Quietly Designed a Rival To Google Workspace, Microsoft Office
2025-06-24 16:41:00+00:00
OpenAI has designed features that would allow people to collaborate on documents and communicate via chat within ChatGPT, The Information reported Tuesday. The features would pit OpenAI directly against Microsoft, its biggest shareholder and business partner, and Google, whose search engine has already lost traffic to people using ChatGPT for web searches.
Whether OpenAI will actually release the collaboration features remains unclear, the report cautioned. The designs would target the core of Microsoft's dominant productivity suite and could strain the companies' already complicated relationship as OpenAI seeks Microsoft's approval for restructuring its for-profit unit. Product chief Kevin Weil first discussed and showed off designs for document collaboration nearly a year ago, but OpenAI lacked sufficient staff to develop the product due to other priorities.
OpenAI launched Canvas in October, a ChatGPT feature that makes drafting documents and code easier with AI assistance, as a possible first step toward full collaboration tools. More recently, OpenAI developed but has not launched software allowing multiple ChatGPT customers to communicate about shared work within the application.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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China on Cusp of Seeing Over 100 DeepSeeks, Ex-Top Official Says
2025-06-24 16:01:00+00:00
China's advantages in developing AI are about to unleash a wave of innovation that will generate more than 100 DeepSeek-like breakthroughs in the coming 18 months, according to a former top official. From a report: The new software products "will fundamentally change the nature and the tech nature of the whole Chinese economy," Zhu Min, who was previously a deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, said during the World Economic Forum in Tianjin on Tuesday.
Zhu, who also served as the deputy managing director at the International Monetary Fund, sees a transformation made possible by harnessing China's pool of engineers, massive consumer base and supportive government policies. The bullish take on China's AI future promises no letup in the competition for dominance in cutting-edge technologies with the US, just as the world's two biggest economies are also locked in a trade war.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Anthropic Bags Key 'Fair Use' Win For AI Platforms, But Faces Trial Over Damages For Millions of Pirated Works
2025-06-24 15:20:00+00:00
A federal judge has ruled that Anthropic's use of copyrighted books to train its Claude AI models constitutes fair use, but rejected the startup's defense for downloading millions of pirated books to build a permanent digital library.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted partial summary judgment to Anthropic in the copyright lawsuit filed by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson. The court found that training large language models on copyrighted works was "exceedingly transformative" under Section 107 of the Copyright Act. Anthropic downloaded over seven million books from pirate sites, according to court documents. The startup also purchased millions of print books, destroyed the bindings, scanned every page, and stored them digitally.
Both sets of books were used to train various versions of Claude, which generates over $1 billion in annual revenue. While the judge approved using books for AI training purposes, he ruled that downloading pirated copies to create what Anthropic called a "central library of all the books in the world" was not protected fair use. The case will proceed to trial on damages related to the pirated library copies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Amazon Bringing Same-Day Delivery To 'Millions' of Rural Customers
2025-06-24 14:40:00+00:00
Amazon today announced its intention to bring same-day and next-day delivery to "tens of millions" of people who live in live in smaller towns by the end of 2026. From a report: Speedier deliveries will be available to residents "in more than 4,000 smaller cities, towns, and rural communities," the company said in a press release Tuesday.
Items categorized as "everyday essentials," including groceries, beauty products, household goods, or pet food, will now be available to small town or rural customers for same-day or next-day delivery. If they are Prime subscribers (currently $14.99 a month or $139 annually), they get unlimited free same-day delivery when spending over $25 at checkout.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Anthropic, OpenAI and Others Discover AI Models Give Answers That Contradict Their Own Reasoning
2025-06-24 14:00:00+00:00
Leading AI companies including Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI are discovering significant inconsistencies in how their AI reasoning models operate, according to company researchers. The companies have deployed "chain-of-thought" techniques that ask AI models to solve problems step-by-step while showing their reasoning process, but are finding examples of "misbehaviour" where chatbots provide final responses that contradict their displayed reasoning.
METR, a non-profit research group, identified an instance where Anthropic's Claude chatbot disagreed with a coding technique in its chain-of-thought but ultimately recommended it as "elegant." OpenAI research found that when models were trained to hide unwanted thoughts, they would conceal misbehaviour from users while continuing problematic actions, such as cheating on software engineering tests by accessing forbidden databases.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Ford Plows Ahead On EV Battery Factory Amid Political Storm
2025-06-24 10:00:00+00:00
Ford is moving forward with its $3 billion EV battery plant in Michigan despite political pushback and the potential loss of key U.S. tax credits that make the project financially viable. Axios reports: Ford's argument is that by building batteries using technology licensed from China's leading battery producer, CATL, it is helping to re-shore important manufacturing expertise that was long ago ceded to China. [...] "LFP batteries are produced all around Europe, and the rest of the world," said Lisa Drake, Ford's vice president of technology platform programs and EV systems. "How can we compete if we don't have this technology? Somebody has to take the lead to do this," she said, adding that it will lead to homegrown innovation and the seeding of a domestic supply base. "I'm convinced this is the right thing to do for the United States," she said.
Drake said the tax subsidies are even more important in the face of slower-than-expected EV demand. "When EV adoption slowed, it just became a huge headwind," she said. "The [production tax credit] allows us to keep on this path, and to keep going." "We don't want to back off on scaling, hiring or training in an industry we need to be competitive in the future," she said. "It would be a shame to build these facilities and then have to scale back on the most important part of it, which is the people. These are 1,700 jobs. They don't come along very often."
Consumer tax credits for EV purchases get the most attention, but for manufacturers, the far more lucrative incentives come in the form of production tax credits. Companies could receive a tax credit of $35 per kilowatt-hour for each U.S.-made cell, and another $10 per kilowatt-hour for each battery pack. With an annual production capacity of 20 GWh, Ford's battery plant could potentially receive a $900 million tax credit, offsetting almost one-third of its investment. [...] The Republican-controlled Senate could vote as early as Wednesday on a budget bill that would rewrite language around EV tax credits. A House version of the bill passed last month effectively killed the production tax credits for manufacturers by severely tightening the eligibility requirements. It also specifically prohibited credits for batteries made in the U.S. under a Chinese licensing agreement -- a direct hit on Ford.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Goldman Sachs Launches AI Assistant Firmwide, With 10,000 Employees Already Using It
2025-06-24 07:00:00+00:00
Goldman Sachs has officially rolled out a generative AI assistant across the company to enhance productivity, with around 10,000 employees already using it for tasks like summarizing documents and data analysis. Reuters reports: With the AI tool's official company-wide launch, Goldman joins a long list of big banks already leveraging the technology to shape their operations in a targeted manner and help employees in day-to-day tasks. [...] The GS AI assistant will help Goldman employees in "summarizing complex documents and drafting initial content to performing data analysis," according to the internal memo. "While the official line is that AI frees up employees for 'higher-value work,' the real-world consequence is a reduced need for human labor," notes Gizmodo in their reporting. A banker told Gizmodo that because their AI system now processes 85% of all client responses for margin calls, "the operations team avoided hiring 30 new people."
Gizmodo asks pointedly: "If one AI tool is replacing the need for 30 back-office staff in one corner of one bank, what happens when the entire industry scales that up?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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China Smashes Solar Installation Record In May
2025-06-24 03:30:00+00:00
An anonymous reader quotes a report from OilPrice.com: China installed its highest solar power capacity for a single month in May, according to official data, which showed mind-boggling figures that the country installed more solar capacity in a month than any other nation did for the entire 2024. With 93 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity installed in May, China smashed its own record of 71 GW in December 2024, per data from the National Energy Administration cited by Bloomberg.
China's solar capacity additions in May were rushed ahead of a new government policy -- effective June 1 -- to remove pricing protection for solar power projects. Under these protections, solar projects had all but guaranteed profits when they start operations. Another new rule, effective May 1, made connecting rooftop panels to the grid more difficult. These new policies are expected to moderate the growth in solar power additions this summer, analysts say. A separate report notes that China's cumulative installed solar capacity has surpassed 1 TW, according to the National Energy Administration (NEA). "By the end of May 2025, solar capacity had reached 1.08 TW (1,080 GW), up 56.9% year on year," reports pv magazine.
"NEA data show total power generation capacity stood at 3.61 TW at the end of May, an 18.8% increase from a year earlier."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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