"Inside the Titan submersible disaster."

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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencejournal.blogspot.com).

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Inside the Titan submersible disaster

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Enlarge / A logo on equipment stored near the OceanGate Inc. offices in Everett, Washington, US, on Thursday, June 22, 2023. (credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images) The Ocean Sciences Building at the University of Washington in Seattle is a brightly modern, four-story structure, with large glass windows reflecting the bay across the street. On the afternoon of July 7, 2016, it was being slowly locke

Apple’s AI promise: “Your data is never stored or made accessible to Apple”

Apple's AI-driven growth cycle

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Enlarge / Apple Senior VP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi announces "Private Cloud Compute" at WWDC 2024. (credit: Apple) With most large language models being run on remote, cloud-based server farms, some users have been reluctant to share personally identifiable and/or private data with AI companies. In its WWDC keynote today, Apple stressed that the new "Apple Intelligence" system it's

The Google Pay app is dead

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Enlarge / Google Pay is dead! (credit: Aurich Lawson / Ars Technica ) Google has killed off the Google Pay app. 9to5Google reports Google's old payments app stopped working recently, following shutdown plans that were announced in February. Google is shutting down the Google Pay app in the US, while in-store NFC payments seem to still be branded "Google Pay." Remember, this is Google's dysfunctio

YESTERDAY

More seizures, intubation from microdose candies: 12 sickened, 10 hospitalized

Diamond Shruumz chocolate bars linked to illnesses

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Enlarge / Diamond Shruumz's "extremely potent" infused cones in "sprinkles" flavor. (credit: Diamond Shruumz ) More people have reported severe poisonings in an ongoing outbreak marked by people seizing and needing to be intubated after consuming microdose candies made by Diamond Shruumz, the Food and Drug Administration reported Tuesday . There are now at least 12 reported cases across eight sta

China state hackers infected 20,000 Fortinet VPNs, Dutch spy service says

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Enlarge Hackers working for the Chinese government gained access to more than 20,000 VPN appliances sold by Fortinet using a critical vulnerability that the company failed to disclose for two weeks after fixing it, Netherlands government officials said. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-42475, is a heap-based buffer overflow that allows hackers to remotely execute malicious code. It carries

Let’s unpack some questions about Russia’s role in North Korea’s rocket program

Russia's role in North Korea's rocket program and

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Enlarge / In this pool photo distributed by Sputnik agency, Russia's President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un visit the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur region in 2023. An RD-191 engine is visible in the background. (credit: Vladimir Smirnov/Pool/AFP/Getty Images) Russian President Vladimir Putin will reportedly visit North Korea later this month, and you can bet collaboration on

T-Mobile users thought they had a lifetime price lock—guess what happened next

T-Mobile raises prices

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Enlarge / T-Mobile logo above the Deutsche Telekom pavilion at Mobile World Congress 2024 in Barcelona, Spain, on February 28, 2024. (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto ) When T-Mobile announced price hikes of up to $5 per line on older smartphone plans last month, many customers were shocked because of T-Mobile's years-old promise that their price would never rise as long as they stuck with the sam

Elon Musk drops claims that OpenAI abandoned mission

Elon Musk drops OpenAI lawsuit

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Enlarge (credit: JC Olivera / Stringer | WireImage ) While Musk has spent much of today loudly criticizing the Apple/OpenAI deal , he also sought to drop his lawsuit against OpenAI, a court filing today showed. In the filing, Musk's lawyer Morgan Chu notified the Superior Court of California in San Francisco of Musk's request for dismissal of his entire complaint without prejudice. There are curr

Elon Musk is livid about new OpenAI/Apple deal

Elon Musk threatens to ban Apple devices over

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Enlarge (credit: Anadolu / Contributor | Anadolu ) Elon Musk is so opposed to Apple's plan to integrate OpenAI's ChatGPT with device operating systems that he's seemingly spreading misconceptions while heavily criticizing the partnership. On X (formerly Twitter), Musk has been criticizing alleged privacy and security risks since the plan was announced Monday at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers

Elephants may refer to each other by name

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Enlarge (credit: Buena Vista Images ) Lots of animals communicate with each other, from tiny mice to enormous whales . But none of those forms of communication share all but a small fraction of the richness of human language. Still, finding new examples of complex communications can tell us things about the evolution of language and what cognitive capabilities are needed for it. On Monday, resear

Apple quietly improves Mac virtualization in macOS 15 Sequoia

Apple announces macOS 15 Sequoia

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Enlarge / Macs running a preview build of macOS 15 Sequoia. (credit: Apple) We’ve written before about Apple’s handy virtualization framework in recent versions of macOS, which allows users of Apple Silicon Macs with sufficient RAM to easily set up macOS and Linux virtual machines using a number of lightweight third-party apps. This is useful for anyone who needs to test software in multiple macO

Google’s Pixel 8 series gets USB-C to DisplayPort; desktop mode rumors heat up

Google's Pixel devices receive upgrades

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Enlarge / The Pixel 8. (credit: Google) Google's June Android update is out, and it's bringing a few notable changes for Pixel phones. The most interesting is that the Pixel 8a, Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro are all getting DisplayPort Alt Mode capabilities via their USB-C ports. This means you can go from USB-C to DisplayPort and plug right into a TV or monitor. This has been rumored forever and lande

Apple and OpenAI currently have the most misunderstood partnership in tech

Apple integrates ChatGPT into devices

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Enlarge / He isn't using an iPhone, but some people talk to Siri like this. On Monday, Apple premiered " Apple Intelligence " during a wide-ranging presentation at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in Cupertino, California. However, the heart of its new tech, an array of Apple-developed AI models , was overshadowed by the announcement of ChatGPT integration into its device operating syst

Adobe to update vague AI terms after users threaten to cancel subscriptions

Adobe faces backlash over data access

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Enlarge (credit: bennymarty | iStock Editorial / Getty Images Plus ) Adobe has promised to update its terms of service to make it "abundantly clear" that the company will "never" train generative AI on creators' content after days of customer backlash, with some saying they would cancel Adobe subscriptions over its vague terms. Users got upset last week when an Adobe pop-up informed them of updat

Polarized light yields fresh insight into mysterious fast radio bursts

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Enlarge / Artist’s rendition of how the angle of polarized light from a fast radio burst changes as it journeys through space. (credit: CHIME/Dunlap Institute) Astronomers have been puzzling over the origins of mysterious fast radio bursts (FRBs) since the first one was spotted in 2007. Researchers now have their first look at non-repeating FRBs, i.e., those that have only produced a single burst

As NASA watches Starship closely, here’s what the agency wants to see next

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Enlarge / The rocket for SpaceX's fourth full-scale Starship test flight awaits liftoff from Starbase, the company's private launch base in South Texas. (credit: SpaceX) Few people were happier with the successful outcome of last week's test flight of SpaceX's Starship launch system than a NASA engineer named Catherine Koerner. In remarks after the spaceflight, Koerner praised the "incredible" vi

Stoke Space ignites its ambitious main engine for the first time

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Enlarge / A drone camera captures the hotfire test of Stoke Space's full-flow staged combustion engine at the company's testing facility in early June. (credit: Stoke Space) On Tuesday, Stoke Space announced the firing of its first stage rocket engine for the first time earlier this month, briefly igniting it for about two seconds. The company declared the June 5 test a success because the engine

Ransomware gangs are adopting “more brutal” tactics amid crackdowns

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Enlarge (credit: Just_Super via Getty) Today, people around the world will head to school, doctor’s appointments, and pharmacies, only to be told, “Sorry, our computer systems are down.” The frequent culprit is a cybercrime gang operating on the other side of the world, demanding payment for system access or the safe return of stolen data. The ransomware epidemic shows no signs of slowing down in

Neutrinos: The inscrutable “ghost particles” driving scientists crazy

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Enlarge / The Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector at the Kamioka Observatory in Japan. (credit: Kamioka Observatory, ICRR (Institute for Cosmic Ray Research), the University of Tokyo ) Somehow, neutrinos went from just another random particle to becoming tiny monsters that require multi-billion-dollar facilities to understand. And there’s just enough mystery surrounding them that we feel compelled

JUN 10, 2024

AI trained on photos from kids’ entire childhood without their consent

Brazilian children's photos misused for AI

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Enlarge (credit: RicardoImagen | E+ ) Photos of Brazilian kids—sometimes spanning their entire childhood—have been used without their consent to power AI tools, including popular image generators like Stable Diffusion, Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned on Monday . This act poses urgent privacy risks to kids and seems to increase risks of non-consensual AI-generated images bearing their likenesses,

Hackers steal “significant volume” of data from hundreds of Snowflake customers

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) As many as 165 customers of cloud storage provider Snowflake have been compromised by a group that obtained login credentials through information-stealing malware, researchers said Monday. On Friday, Lending Tree subsidiary QuoteWizard confirmed it was among the customers notified by Snowflake that it was affected in the incident. Lending Tree spokesperson Megan Gre

Study: Three skulls of medieval Viking women were deliberately elongated

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Enlarge / Artificially modified skull from a female Viking individual in Havor, Hablingbo parish, Gotland. (credit: © SHM/Johnny Karlsson 2008-11-05/CC BY 2.5 SE ) German archaeologists discovered that the skulls of three medieval Viking women found on the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea showed evidence of an unusual procedure to elongate their skulls. The process gave them an unusual

These are all the devices compatible with iOS 18 and iPadOS 18

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Enlarge (credit: Apple) Apple's new iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 updates are mostly good news for users of older Apple devices—with the exception of a handful of iPads, the new updates will run on most of the same hardware that can run iOS 17 and iPadOS 17. For iPhones, that will cover everything from the iPhone XR/XS and newer, including the 2nd-gen iPhone SE; the 7th-gen iPad and newer; the 3rd-gen iPa

Apple integrates ChatGPT into Siri, iOS, and macOS

Apple introduces iOS 18 update

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The AIs are learning to cooperate! Siri talks to ChatGPT. [credit: Apple ] Reports of Apple signing a deal with OpenAI are true: ChatGPT is coming to your Apple gear. First up is Siri, which can tap into ChatGPT to answer voice questions. If Siri thinks ChatGPT can help answer your question, you'll get a pop-up permission box asking if you want to send your question to the chatbot. The response w

Apple unveils “Apple Intelligence” AI features for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS

Apple's AI-driven growth cycle

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Enlarge (credit: Apple) On Monday, Apple debuted " Apple Intelligence ," a new suite of free AI-powered features for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia that includes creating email summaries, generating images and emoji, and allowing Siri to take actions on your behalf. These features are achieved through a combination of on-device and cloud processing, with a strong emphasis on privacy. Apple says

Here are all the Intel and Apple Silicon Macs that will run macOS 15 Sequoia

macOS 15 rumored to support same Mac models

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Enlarge / A grab bag of new features in macOS 15 Sequoia. (credit: Apple) Most owners of aging Intel Macs got a bit of a reprieve today when Apple announced macOS 15 Sequoia —this new macOS release will run on the vast majority of the hardware that can currently run macOS 14 Sonoma. Intel Macs released between December of 2017 and 2020 are mostly eligible for the new update, though newer models w

DARPA’s planned nuclear rocket would use enough fuel to build a bomb

HALEU poses nuclear weapons threat

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Enlarge (credit: OLE-CNX ) High-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) has been touted as the go-to fuel for powering next-gen nuclear reactors, which include the sodium-cooled TerraPower or the space-borne system powering Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations ( DRACO ). That’s because it was supposed to offer higher efficiency while keeping uranium enrichment “well below the threshold n

ISPs ask FCC for tax on Big Tech to fund broadband networks and discounts

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Aurich Lawson ) Internet service providers are again urging the Federal Communications Commission to impose new fees on Big Tech firms and use the money to subsidize broadband network deployment and affordability programs. If approved, the request would force Big Tech firms to pay into the FCC's Universal Service Fund (USF), which in turn distributes money to broad

iPadOS 18 adds machine-learning wizardry with handwriting, math features

iPadOS 18 announced at WWDC 2024 with new features

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The Calculator app is finally coming to iPad. [credit: Samuel Axon ] CUPERTINO, Calif.—After going into detail about iOS 18, Apple took a few moments in its WWDC 2024 keynote to walk through some changes. There are a few minor UI changes and new features across Apple's first party apps. That includes a new floating tab bar. The bar expands into the side bar when you want to dig in, and you can cu

Apple announces macOS 15 Sequoia with window tiling, iPhone mirroring, and more

Apple announces macOS 15 Sequoia

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Enlarge / Using macOS S15 Sequoia to stream an iPhone's screen to a Mac while the iPhone stays locked. (credit: Apple) Apple has formally announced macOS 15 at its Worldwide Developers Conference. Codenamed Sequoia, the new release brings a combination of iOS 18 features and a few Mac-specific things to the devices it supports. Users who split their time between Windows and macOS will be the most

iOS 18 adds Apple Intelligence, customizations, and makes Android SMS nicer

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Enlarge (credit: Apple) The biggest feature in iOS 18, the one that affects the most people, was a single item in a comma-stuffed sentence by Apple software boss Craig Federighi: "Support for RCS." As we noted when Apple announced its support for "RCS Universal Profile," a kind of minimum viable cross-device rich messaging, iPhone users getting RCS means SMS chains with Android users "will be sli

Apple’s new Vision Pro software offers an ultrawide virtual Mac monitor

Apple unveils visionOS 2 update

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Enlarge / A Mac virtual monitor in visionOS 2. (credit: Samuel Axon) CUPERTINO, Calif.—Apple kicked off the keynote for its annual developer conference by announcing a new version of visionOS, the operating system that runs on the company's pricey but impressive Vision Pro mixed reality headset. The updates in visionOS 2 are modest, not revolutionary—mostly iterative changes, quality-of-life impr

Bird flu virus from Texas human case kills 100% of ferrets in CDC study

Texas bird flu lethal to ferrets

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Enlarge (credit: Getty | Yui Mok ) The strain of H5N1 bird flu isolated from a dairy worker in Texas was 100 percent fatal in ferrets used to model influenza illnesses in humans. However, the virus appeared inefficient at spreading via respiratory droplets, according to newly released study results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . The data confirms that H5N1 infections are si

Some company heads hoped return-to-office mandates would make people quit, survey says

Study reveals bosses hoped for turnover

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Enlarge / RTO mandates can boost workers' professional networks, but in-office employees may also spend more time socializing than remote ones. (credit: Getty ) A new survey suggests that some US companies implemented return-to-office (RTO) policies in the hopes of getting workers to quit. And despite the belief that such policies could boost productivity compared to letting employees work from h

Microsoft Gaming CEO: “I think we should have a handheld, too”

Phil Spencer excited about future Xbox hardware

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Enlarge / The "Xbox Series V" was a social media hoax, but the idea of a portable Xbox seems to still have legs inside Microsoft. (credit: Reddit ) The extremely long-standing rumors regarding Microsoft making a portable game console got a strong shot in the arm over the weekend from none other than Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer. Speaking on stage as part of an IGN Live interview , Spencer sa

Microsoft pulls release preview build of Windows 11 24H2 after Recall controversy

Microsoft makes Recall opt-in

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Enlarge / The Recall feature provides a timeline of screenshots and a searchable database of text, thoroughly tracking everything about a person's PC usage. (credit: Microsoft) On Friday, Microsoft announced major changes to its upcoming Recall feature after overwhelming criticism from security researchers, the press, and its users. Microsoft is turning Recall off by default when users set up PCs

Virgin Galactic has ceased flying its only space plane. Now what?

Virgin Galactic final spaceflights

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Enlarge / Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity spacecraft launches on Saturday. (credit: Virgin Galactic) On Saturday, the VSS Unity space plane made its final flight, carrying four passengers to an altitude of 54.4 miles (87.5 km) above the New Mexico desert. The spacecraft will now be retired after just seven commercial space flights, all made within the last year. Although the flight was characterized

Microsoft reveals first disc-less Xbox Series X

New white Xbox Series X

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Enlarge / Looking more like a refrigerator than ever before. (credit: Microsoft ) A new version of Microsoft's top-end Xbox Series X will launch without a disc drive for the first time this holiday season. The new "Digital Edition" console option—which sports 1 TB of storage and an Xbox Series S-like "Robot White" color scheme—will be available "in select markets" for an estimated retail price of

Why the fight over Elon Musk’s pay at Tesla won’t end with shareholder vote

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Enlarge Tesla shareholders will vote on Thursday on whether to restore the mammoth pay package for chief executive Elon Musk that was struck down by a Delaware judge this year. But that is not expected to close the book on a legal saga that has consumed the electric-car maker and the leading US business law court that dared to defy Musk and his overseers on the company’s board. In asking sharehol

How the Webb and Gaia missions bring a new perspective on galaxy formation

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Enlarge / NASA's James Webb Space Telescope reveals the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth. In a feat of galactic archeology, astronomers are using ever more detailed information to trace the origin of our galaxy—and to learn about how other galaxies formed in