Jurisdictions around the world are imposing EV mandates, regulating ICE vehicles out of production and sale. This is probably a necessary step to prevent us all from drowning in our homes, but the folks who sell ICE vehicles aren’t happy about it. Case in point: Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares, speaking to a group of UK…Read more...

There’s something slightly unnerving about seeing an enormous cruise ship out of water. A skyscraper-sized vessel propped up by a few planks of wood in a barren dry dock is definitely strange to see, but it gets even odder when you watch workers slowly cut a ship in half in pursuit of making the vessel even longer.Read more...

We learned last month that despite Fisker beginning production on its Ocean SUV, the startup automaker lost nearly half a billion dollars last year and desperately needed a bailout. Nissan was reportedly in negotiations to give Fisker $400 million, but that apparently fell through, so it looked like bankruptcy was the…Read more...

Tesla cut 10 percent of its workforce a few weeks ago, and now we’re getting a better look at what sort of severance package its recently laid-off workers are getting. CEO Elon Musk sent an email to impacted employees late at night on April 14 letting them know they were immediately terminated and cut out of Tesla’s…Read more...

Each year the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) publishes a new update of its Special 301 Report, highlighting countries that fail to live up to U.S copyright protection standards.
The annual overview is meant to urge foreign governments to improve policy and legislation in favor of U.S. copyright holders.
The process has shown itself to be an effective diplomatic tool and has helped to kick-start copyright reforms around the globe. Not all governments are equally susceptible to critique and Canada once described the process as flawed. Still, no country wants to be included in the list.
2024 Special 301 Report
USTR’s latest Special 301 Report, published yesterday, features considerable...

"They keep saying, you know, that I'm this mean girl on this set, that I harmed these people on set."View Entire Post ›

It was a strong day for all three major U.S. stock indexes after a big selloff the day before. Google parent Alphabet crossed the $2 trillion threshold for market capitalization on Friday.Read more...

Illustration: The Verge Google has spent the past year dealing with two of the biggest threats in its 25-year history: the rise of generative AI and the growing drumbeat of regulation. AI, in particular, has shaken the company to its core: it’s made big search changes, realigned the Search, Android, and hardware teams around AI, and launched its own Gemini AI model to capitalize on the opportunity. Google execs cut projects and laid off employees to refocus, and yesterday, it announced its first-ever dividend and a $70 billion share buyback alongside its Q1 2024 earnings. Investors, at least, are eating it up: Google parent company Alphabet has finally officially hit and maintained a $2 trillion market cap...

Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and director Lee Isaac Chung on location filming Twisters.Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal PicturesWhen Lee Isaac Chung was announced as the director of the long-awaited sequel Twisters, many of us scratched our heads. Chung is, obviously, a talented filmmaker. His most recent film, Minari, had just come off multiple Oscar nominations including a win. But to go from that small, personal film to the big-budget sequel to a beloved, albeit admittedly dumb blockbuster seemed a little beneath him. In fact, it was the opposite. Twisters was a movie Chung had not only almost been born into but became a near obsession while working on Minari. That film is mostly a quiet take on...

We’ve all seen a million videos online with singing Tesla coils doing their thang. [Zach Armstrong] wasn’t content to just watch, though. He went out and built one himself! Even better, he’s built a guide for the rest of us, too!
His guide concerns the construction of a Class-E solid state Tesla coil. These are “underrated” in his opinion, as they’re simple, cheap, and incredibly efficient. Some say up to 95% efficient, in fact! It’s not something most Tesla coil fans are concerned with, but it’s nice to save the environment while making fun happy sparks, after all.
[Zach]’s guide doesn’t just slap down a schematic and call it good. He explains the theory behind it, and the unique features...

“25 years ago, according to data published by the World Bank, only 5% of people in Kenya had access to basic electricity and its benefits. Since then, the country has made substantial progress, as the chart shows: by 2020, 71% of Kenyans had access to a basic electricity supply.” From Our World in Data.
The post Kenya’s Substantial Progress in Providing Access to Electricity appeared first on Human Progress.

“Moderna is expected to announce a partnership Wednesday with artificial-intelligence heavyweight OpenAI, a deal that aims to automate nearly every business process at the biotechnology company and boost the ChatGPT maker’s reach into the enterprise.  As part of the transaction, some 3,000 Moderna employees will have access to ChatGPT Enterprise, built on OpenAI’s most advanced language model, GPT-4, by the end of this week. Further integration of AI into more of its processes could help Moderna outpace its plan to roll out 15 new products within the next five years.” From Wall Street Journal.
The post At Moderna, OpenAI’s GPTs Are Changing Almost Everything appeared first on Human Progress.

“On Tuesday, Microsoft introduced three smaller A.I. models that are part of a technology family the company has named Phi-3. The company said even the smallest of the three performed almost as well as GPT-3.5, the much larger system that underpinned OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot when it stunned the world upon its release in late 2022. The smallest Phi-3 model can fit on a smartphone, so it can be used even if it’s not connected to the internet. And it can run on the kinds of chips that power regular computers, rather than more expensive processors made by Nvidia. Because the smaller models require less processing, big tech providers can charge customers less to use them. They hope that means more customers...

In an investigative report into crashes and deaths associated with Tesla Autopilot, federal regulators concluded that the system lacked standard protections.

Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby (1968)Screenshot: ParamountIt’s universally acknowledged that 1968's Rosemary’s Baby is an influential horror classic. Attempts to directly recapture that witchy magic, however, have fallen flat: 1976 made-for-TV sequel Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby is pretty universally despised, as is the 2014 miniseries remake with Zoe Saldaña. However, the latest Rosemary’s Baby-adjacent project actually seems... promising?Announced a few years ago but without many updates since then, Apartment 7A isco-written and directed by Natalie Erika James. James’ previous feature is 2020's Relic, a genuinely eerie tale of a woman (Emily Mortimer) struggling with caring for her...

You can forget a lot about desktops if you use laptops exclusively for 23 years. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge When the M3 MacBook Airs came out last month, I did a good ol’ double facepalm that Captain Picard would be proud of. The wedge shape was no more (kinda). My M2 MacBook Air 15 was slightly too big, too heavy, and no matter what certain people say, 8GB of RAM was not cutting it. Analyzing the various MacBook Air and MacBook Pro configurations and prices made my head hurt. Thinking about lugging around a heavier laptop made my back hurt.
So I said, “Screw it. I’m going back to the desktop life.” I traded in my M2 Air and got myself a Mac Mini. It made sense. I have a work-issued...

Demonstrations and counter-demonstrations on campus and beyond.

“New A.I. technology is generating blueprints for microscopic biological mechanisms that can edit your DNA, pointing to a future when scientists can battle illness and diseases with even greater precision and speed than they can today. Described in a research paper published on Monday by a Berkeley, Calif., startup called Profluent, the technology is based on the same methods that drive ChatGPT, the online chatbot that launched the A.I. boom after its release in 2022. The company is expected to present the paper next month at the annual meeting of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy.” From New York Times.
The post Generative AI Arrives in the Gene Editing World of CRISPR appeared first on Human...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Think about everything you do across Chrome, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, and everything else Google owns, and you get some idea of how much data you’re giving up to the company each day. For most of us, it’s... a lot.
Whether or not you think the data collection and targeted advertising is a worthwhile trade for the free apps you get in return, Google does at least provide a comprehensive online dashboard you can use to see some of what’s being gathered. You can use it to delete everything Google has already collected, stop it from collecting anything in the future, or automatically delete your data after a set period (like three months). You can also use these...

Illustration: The Verge Google is testing its AI listening skills with a feature that lets people speak into their phones and practice English with a conversational AI bot. Google first rolled out the speaking practice experience in October 2023. Originally, the feature only provided feedback on spoken sentences. Now, users can practice having ongoing conversations in the language they’re learning. TechCrunch reports that the feature is currently available for Search Labs users in Argentina, Colombia, India, Mexico, Venezuela, and Indonesia. Search Labs is Google’s sandbox for potential new Search features; however, the feature may also pop up based on translating to or from English with Google on an...

“Nothing appears remarkable about a dish of fresh ravioli made with solein. It looks and tastes the same as normal pasta. But the origins of the proteins which give it its full-bodied flavour are extraordinary: they come from Europe’s first factory dedicated to making human food from electricity and air. The factory’s owner, Solar Foods, has started production at a site in Vantaa, near the Finnish capital of Helsinki, that will be able to produce 160 tonnes of food a year. It follows several years of experimenting at lab scale.” From The Guardian.
The post Finnish Startup Begins Making Food “From Air and Solar Power” appeared first on Human Progress.

From Mr. and Mrs. Smith to Fallout, these are our picks for what you should be watching on the streamer.

Vegan pies are riddled with challenges. "I feel like one of the best mistakes that I see is sometimes people are trying to aim too high or overachieve," says Jennifer Yee, the proprietor of Bakers Bench , a Chinatown bakery known for its plant-based croissants and other baked goods. "I don't have to have a vegan crème brûlée pie," she remarks. A delicious blueberry or strawberry pie can win a ribbon. After trying a variety of plant-based butters, Yee has had success using Miyoko's and Earth Balance . "I like the flavor of Earth Balance but it can get a little waxy," she says. Combining the two, creates the perfect structure and flavor. For alternatives to dairy, Yee opts to blend soy and oat milks. Soy milk...

A few years back, Dan Pashman , host of The Sporkful, began a quest to create a new pasta shape. He aired details of the quest, dubbed "Mission Impastable," on his podcast and the resulting shape, "Cascatelli," became a success. It was named one of the best inventions of 2021 by Time Magazine. What does one make with cascatelli? Pashman, an inveterate tinkerer, has ideas. His new cookbook is Anything's Pastable . Pureed mapo tofu gets inside the ruffles of the cascatelli in this recipe developed by Andrea Nguyen. "It's flavor for days," Pashman says. Photo by Dan Liberti. People sent Pashman photographs of plates of cascatelli, 75% of which were heaped with tomato sauce, meat sauce, mac and cheese, and pesto....

At seventy, the comedian débuts as a movie director with “Unfrosted,” about the invention of the Pop-Tart. And, Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger on how to convince an election denier.

We last talked to chef Deuki Hong (who runs an ice cream shop and two bakeries in San Francisco) and journalist Matt Rodbard (the editor-in-chief of Taste ) eight years ago when they released their book Koreatown , which explores the rising popularity of Korean food across the United States. Proving the cuisine knows no borders, they've widened their lens with their latest venture, Koreaworld , which explores the influences on Korean cuisine and its impact on the world. Evan Kleiman: I'm so happy to have you. There's been no slowing down of the reach of Korean cuisine across the globe. As a person who is really lucky to live in Los Angeles, a city that has a huge Korean diaspora with all of that amazing food,...

What's in season at the farmers market this week? – strawberries!!! – the first cherries – the first mulberries – Murcott mandarins – lemons – limes – pomelos – baby lettuces – turnips – conehead cabbage Inspired by seasonal Southern California ingredients, chef Arnie Marcella seeks out strawberries at the farmers market. He'll put them to work at Cobi's where he uses local produce to create Southeast Asian-inspired dishes. (In 2023, the Santa Monica restaurant was named a Michelin Bib Gourmand , which recognizes refined cuisine at affordable prices.) Marcella relies on green almonds for a savory dish that mimics the flavors of indigenous mangos, adding summer squashes, fermented tofu, and...

From Road House to Bottoms, these are the must-watch films on Amazon Prime Video.

Arezou Appel , the founder of Zooies Cookies , was born in Tehran where she lived until she was five years old. She remembers her parents, who were both educators with strong personalities, disagreeing about many things — except food. "Food was a time where everything looked and felt amazing," Appel says. "The food we had was traditional, really good Persian food, which is very healthy with a lot of herbs, vegetables, fruit, and nuts. [My mom] would do non-Persian food as well because we lived here from the time I was five until I was seven. That was right before the Revolution in Iran, so the food from here also became something she was making." Appel became a chiropractor and practiced for eight years...

In arguments about Presidential immunity, the conservative Justices, who avoided mentioning Trump, made clear that they are less concerned with holding him accountable than with shielding former Presidents from retribution.

It’s a Xenomorph kind of day.Image: FoxHappy Alien Day to all those who celebrate. April 26, as many of you know, is the day pop culture has decided to celebrate one of the landmark franchises in science fiction: Alien. That’s because the planet in the sequel Aliens is LV-426—so, April 26. But while in the past Alien Day has been largely an excuse to simply rewatch or praise the old movies, this year is completely different. This is truly the best Alien Day ever. Why? Well, because there is so much amazing new Alien stuff coming, or out there right now, for fans to enjoy. Way more than ever before. What are we talking about? Here goes:Alien: RomulusImage: FoxAlien: RomulusThe most exciting thing coming...

Le thème sera étudié en lien avec le CESE « dans les prochains mois », a ajouté le président. Par ailleurs, le chef de l’Etat n’a pas exclu de recourir à des référendums, « au bon moment ».

Ah, dogs. They sure like to bark, don’t they? [rrustvold]’s dog likes to bark at the door when a package arrives. Or when someone walks by the house, or whenever the mood strikes, really. To solve the barking issue, at least near the front door, [rrustvold] built a spray bottle turret to teach the dog through classical conditioning.
As you can see from the image, it’s all about pulling the trigger on a standard spray bottle at the right time. This machine only sprays when two conditions are met: it hears noise (like barking) and detects motion (like overzealous tail wagging). It also has heat-seeking abilities thanks to a Raspberry Pi thermal camera.
To do the actual spraying, there’s a DC motor...

Nintendo is once again flexing its copyright muscles by filing takedown requests for user-generated content on the popular game platform.

Even now, the last-gen MacBook is a speedy machine with a stunning, spacious display. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge It’s been a good week for Apple fans. Not only did Apple announce its forthcoming “Let Loose” event, but the entire M3-powered 13-inch MacBook Air lineup received a notable discount. And now, the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 Pro chip has plunged to an all-time low. If you require a laptop capable of handling more intense workloads than the Air, authorized Apple retailer Expercom is selling the last-gen MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, a 12‑core CPU, and a 19‑core GPU for $1,998.99 ($500 off) via Amazon. Like the new M3-powered MacBook Pros, Apple’s...

Ukrainian President Zelensky says munitions in $6bn package "can save lives right now".

Image: Joey Spiotto/Gallery 1988George Lucas. Hayao Miyazaki. Stan Lee. Shigeru Miyamoto. Names such as these have defined our lives. The art and products geniuses like these have created are as important to us as anything. And while we decorate our homes and imaginations with their work, what about the people themselves? When is their time in the sun?That time is now. “Creators,” a new art show by Joey Spiotto, is now on exhibit at gallery1988.com. The artist, best known for his pop culture interpretations of Little Golden books, has taken that style and applied it to the people who have created all of our favorite bits of pop culture. “I have created A LOT of artwork over the years inspired by some of...

Tarana Burke says the overturning of Harvey Weinstein's 2020 conviction in New York is not a blow to MeToo.

Photo: io9/GizmodoPixar Fest is kicking off today at the Disneyland Resort in a celebration that will span both Disney California Adventure and Disneyland. At a recent media preview, io9 visited both parks getting in on the Pixar Fest action, which runs from now until August 4 with entertainment offerings that include characters from Turning Red, Elemental, Soul, and Luca. KC Wilkerson, the principal media designer for Disney Live Entertainment at the Disneyland Resort, is also the show director for the return of Together Forever—A Pixar Nighttime Spectacular. Wilkerson explainedhow the fireworks and projection show has grown since its last time at Disneyland. “Every single film is represented there....

L’agence régionale de santé de l’île a annoncé, vendredi 26 avril, la découverte de trois premiers cas autochtones, portant à treize le nombre de personnes porteuses de la bactérie prises en charge dans le département.

Les ministres de la défense, Sébastien Lecornu et Boris Pistorius, ont relancé le programme embourbé du MGCS en signant, vendredi 26 avril, un accord sur la répartition à 50-50 des tâches entre les deux pays.

The controversial National Security Minister was taken to hospital after his car overturned.

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Not necessarily the easy way to program an EPROM
Elliot and Dan got together to enshrine the week’s hacks in podcast form, and to commiserate about their respective moms, each of whom recently fell victim to phishing attacks. It’s not easy being ad hoc tech support sometimes, and as Elliot says, when someone is on the phone telling you that you’ve been hacked, he’s the hacker. Moving on to the hacks, we took a look at a hacking roadmap for a cheap ham radio, felt the burn of AM broadcasts, and learned how to program old-school EPROMs on the cheap.
We talked about why having a smart TV in your house might not be so smart, especially for Windows users, and were properly shocked by just how bad wireless...

Riyad annonce des milliards de dollars d’investissements en IA et communique massivement auprès de sa population sur les perspectives de développement de cette technologie. Pour trouver leur place dans la compétition internationale, les Saoudiens n’hésitent pas à s’allier avec les Chinois contre les intérêts américains.

Ce 26 avril, le taux de change entre les devises japonaises et américaines a atteint un niveau inédit depuis trente-quatre ans. Néanmoins, la Banque du Japon refuse de réagir, malgré la baisse indéniable du pouvoir d’achat des Japonais, s’alarme la presse nippone.

Un conseil d’experts, assez pléthorique, examinera désormais la compatibilité des livres proposés à la publication avec les lois russes. Leurs “recommandations” ont déjà poussé des éditeurs à retirer de la vente des œuvres russes ou étrangères majeures.

For the most sensitive parts of the human body, friction is the enemy. Here’s how to keep it at bay.

“We’re not giving him a free pass to do whatever he wants—we’re buying him time so he can get elected and then do whatever he wants.”

Evoquant des « troubles à l’ordre public », la préfecture avait fait évacuer la voie publique. Dans l’après-midi, les forces de l’ordre s’étaient déployées pour mettre fin à un face-à-face tendu avec des manifestants pro-israéliens.

The US Secretary of State was speaking to the BBC at the end of a three-day trip to China.

L’année dernière, les travailleurs de la tech ont été plus attirés par New York, Austin ou Los Angeles que par San Francisco, Seattle ou Boston, montre une étude. Mais si la région de la Baie a perdu des professionnels, elle est aussi devenue le pôle numéro un de l’intelligence artificielle, note “Business Insider”.

Plusieurs séries d’animation occidentales auraient été sous-traitées à des studios nord-coréens, à l’insu des diffuseurs, malgré les sanctions contre Pyongyang. La découverte d’un blogueur américain, Nick Roy, fait sensation. Pourtant, le phénomène est déjà connu depuis plusieurs années.

There’s a trend recently, of big-name security appliances getting used in state-sponsored attacks. It looks like Cisco is the latest victim, based on a report by their own Talos Intelligence.
This particular attack has a couple of components, and abuses a couple of vulnerabilities, though the odd thing about this one is that the initial access is still unknown. The first part of the infection is Line Dancer, a memory-only element that disables the system log, leaks the system config, captures packets and more. A couple of the more devious steps are taken, like replacing the crash dump process with a reboot, to keep the in-memory malware secret. And finally, the resident installs a backdoor in the VPN...

David Adjmi’s cult-hit play features seventies-inspired rock songs by Will Butler, while Eddie Redmayne presides over a demonic version of the Kit Kat Club.

Tatyana “Down Bad”
The lyrics of “Down Bad” are extremely “written in 2023” but the sound is more like something that would’ve appeared on this site back in 2003-2007. It’s right on the edge of electroclash aesthetics, has a pulsing synth groove that resembles at least three LCD Soundsystem songs, and the vocal melody sounds like something that could’ve been on a Sugababes or Girls Aloud record. But despite sounding so much like music from nearly 20 years ago, it doesn’t hit as retro, maybe because technology hasn’t changed so much in that time to signal any sort of obsolescence. The lyrics are pretty standard for pop these days – bitter and cutting lines about a bad relationship...

If an extra floating UFO Bluetooth speaker or mini mug ice cream maker ends up coming home with you, too, well — oops.View Entire Post ›

Opération remédiation 65 : un hack massif du système informatique mondial de Volkswagen, le plus grand constructeur automobile européen, vient d'être porté à la lumière du public....

Un ressortissant russe arrêté pour échange illégal de cryptomonnaies en Thaïlande. Il avait installé son business dans une boutique de cannabis !...