Technology

The tech giant just signed a deal to buy fusion power. Meanwhile, company emissions are up 50% since 2019.

In a memo to employees earlier this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared a vision for a near-future in which "personal [AI] superintelligence for everyone" forms "the beginning of a new era for humanity." The newly formed Meta Superintelligence Labs—freshly staffed with multiple high-level acquisitions from OpenAI and other AI companies—will spearhead the development of "our next generation of models to get to the frontier in the next year or so," Zuckerberg wrote.

The traffic receded as Chicago withdrew into the distance behind me on Interstate 90. Barns and trees dotted the horizon. The speakers in my rental car, playing Spotify from my smartphone, put out the opening riff of a laid-back psychedelic-rock song. When the lyrics came, delivered in a folksy vibrato, they matched my mood: “Smoke in the sky / No peace found,” the band’s vocalist sang.

Australians using search engines while logged in to accounts from the likes of Google and Microsoft will have their age checked by the end of 2025, under a new online safety code co-developed by technology companies and registered by the eSafety Commissioner.

Interesting exploit and a nice writeup of the process.

Can't we just ship Cruz off to Cancun permanently at this point?

After years of promising investors that millions of Tesla robotaxis would soon fill the streets, Elon Musk debuted his driverless car service in a limited public rollout in Austin, Texas. It did not go smoothly.

Dozens of YouTube channels are mixing AI-generated images and videos with false claims about Sean “Diddy” Combs’s blockbuster trial to pull in tens of millions of views on YouTube and cash in on misinformation.

Looking back, my subscription-ending journey—or perhaps more accurately, subscription-consciousness journey—was a product, at least in part, of post-COVID lockdown reflections on what I really need and how I’d really like to spend my time. The excess of my subscriptions had started to feel akin to hoarding, and I needed to clear space, even if most of that space was intangible. There was also the lightbulb realization that has become more and more common amongst Millennials, that, despite our monthly investments in accessing various forms of media, we don’t actually own most of the culture that we consume. What’s more, should the companies that do own that media go defunct or be sold to entities that we may prefer not to do business with, we really wouldn’t have much recourse—except to unsubscribe.

On Thursday, Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that digital platforms are responsible for users’ content — a major shift in a country where millions rely on apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, and YouTube every day.

archive.is link

Allows setting time limits on sites. To stop yourself from wasting your life on dumb stuff.

Following 404 Media’s reporting and in light of new legislation, automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company Flock has stopped agencies reaching into cameras in California, Illinois, and Virginia.

Warning: incoming rant.

After 20 years, being able to look at any corner of the planet in Google Earth doesn't seem that impressive, but it was a revolution in 2005. Google Earth has gone through a lot of changes in that time, and Google has some more lined up for the service's 20th anniversary. Soon, Google Earth will help you travel back in time with historic Street View integration, and pro users will get some new "AI-driven insights"—of course Google can't update a product without adding at least a little AI.

Compared to the whine and roar of the planes that came before, when the plane I had come to see appeared, the first thing I noticed was the lack of noise. As the plane circled back, and glided overhead on its second pass, the plane’s electric motor gave off a soft hum.

A Republican proposal to penalize states that regulate artificial intelligence can move forward without requiring approval from 60 senators, the Senate parliamentarian decided on Saturday. But the moratorium on state AI laws did not have unanimous Republican support and has reportedly been watered down in an effort to push it toward passage.

Web directories are as old as the web. They were an early (and for a while, the only) solution to the challenge of collecting and discovering interesting and useful links. Before search engines, this was how we found cool stuff online.

Does ChatGPT harm critical thinking abilities? A new study from researchers at MIT’s Media Lab has returned some concerning results.

Application optimization reduces disk usage and reclaims space. 🙂

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/46381349