Technology

The critical flaw in UEFI firmware—used by most server vendors and data centers—allows attackers to execute code early in the boot process.

The ultimate achievement of military AI may be making traditional warfare increasingly unnecessary.

Skiing can be done safely in your later decades, but it requires preparation and good equipment—and knowing when to call it quits for the day.

The Russian President praised Musk and said they are in "close" contact.

A.I. has uncovered a horde of software flaws, which engineers are racing to fix before they can be exploited and abused by hackers.

Steve Jobs and Tim Cook both dismissed the idea, but Apple’s new chief executive is reimagining some of the company’s most important products.

Travel expert Katy Nastro says 50,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles vanished from her account after someone redeemed them without permission.

Food and Drug Administration scientists did not support an effort by President Donald Trump's administration to loosen rules on unproven peptide drugs

Several Mississippi homes have been purchased near datacenters and one resident said realtor outlined target to buy more than 400 People in a Mississippi neighborhood, many of whom dislike a nearby power plant central to Elon Musk ’s artificial intelligence ambitions, have received a stark offer – to sell their houses to his company and make way. Real estate agents have been going door to door in Southaven, Mississippi, on behalf of xAI, touting a deal to purchase houses as long as the owners agree to not join a lawsuit against the company over the power plant’s noise. (Musk’s AI company officially became SpaceXAI in July and has lately been rebranded as SpaceXSI but to neighbors of the datacenter in Mississippi, it remains xAI.) Continue reading...

They claim to reduce fine lines, blemishes and redness – but which stand up to scrutiny? After consulting dermatologists and putting them to the test, we have crowned a brand new number one • The best anti-ageing creams, serums and treatments LED face masks are booming in popularity – despite being one of the most expensive at-home beauty products to hit the market. They claim to reduce the appearance of fine lines, stop spots and calm redness, with some even combining different types of light to enhance the benefits. However, it’s wise to be sceptical about new treatments that are costly and non-invasive, and to do your research before you buy. With this in mind, I interviewed doctors and dermatologists to find out whether these light therapy devices work. Continue reading...

AI tools are making it easier to modify and recreate games, raising questions about piracy, copyright and how far the technology could disrupt the industry • Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here If your social media algorithms have clocked that you’re into video games, something strange will have happened in the past few weeks. Your feed, like mine, will have been full of clips of streamers playing bizarre mashups of popular video games . Skyrim in Minecraft. Halo, except the main character is Mario. Skate 2 in Call of Duty maps. A flood of professional-looking fan-coded game mods that are mildly interesting to look at for 30 seconds, but ultimately inconsequential. Would I download a mod that lets me play Wii Bowling inside a zombie shooter? No, but I am very interested in where they came from. Of course, the answer – or at least, most of the answer – is AI. After a week of researching this (thanks especially to Replay Mode on YouTube for this informative video , which set me down this track) I now understand that these mashup mods are not just AI-generated videos, but AI-assisted coding. Basically, as of a few weeks ago, Anthropic’s Claude has become extremely good at decompiling video game code. Games are written by humans in readable code and then compiled into binary 1s and 0s that the PC or console running it can read; decompiling is the reversal of that process, revealing a game’s source code, which humans can then edit and mess around with for fun. This used to be an extremely laborious process. But now it is not, because humans aren’t doing much of it any more. Continue reading...

South Korea on Wednesday fined Google and Apple a combined $47.6 million, saying they abused their dominance in app store markets by forcing local developers onto their own payment systems and by unfairly delaying app reviews

Billed as the first end-to-end AI-created series on a major streaming service, this Turkish show looks like the result of the prompt ‘make it cinematic’ Just as the world reels from Elon Musk’s AI-powered The Odyssey remake – though “remake” feels rather generous for a seven-minute splat of synthetic sludge – another bucket of AI gunk is dropped on to our faces. For Prime Video’s AI-generated TV series Castle Walls, produced by Turkish production studio Ay Yapım using a melange of generative video tools, has arrived, billed as the first end-to-end AI-created series to premiere on a major streaming platform. It’s certainly more epic than Musk’s production, consisting of two 17-minute episodes. Set in the 11th century, the show revolves around the historic Alamut Castle, although it’s entirely absent of any real sense of time or place. I was briefly intrigued by the opening images, with their bold palette of blues and mustard browns and yellows – but as soon as the “people” appeared, looking like Vaseline-smeared Madame Tussauds creations slowly melting in the sun, everything came crashing down. Continue reading...

Google AI Overviews can't be permanently turned off, but adding -AI to your searches and using the built-in Web filter can help bypass AI summaries.

The author believes we are at a turning point as a species – and even in the shadow of big tech it’s up to us how we want to proceed ‘I am a storyteller by trade,” writes Jeanette Winterson on the first page of her 2021 book 12 Bytes , an idiosyncratic and thought-provoking series of essays in which she considered just how artificial intelligence might change everything about our lives. “And I know everything we do is a fiction until it’s a fact: the dream of flying, the dream of space travel, the dream of speaking to someone instantly, across time and space, the dream of not dying – or of returning.” She had already been thinking about our possible futures for at least 15 years – her 2007 novel, The Stone Gods, for instance, imagined a post-climate catastrophe world populated by robots and humans who never age, while 12 Bytes was preceded by Frankisstein: A Love Story , which alternates a recreation of the summer Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein with a trans doctor’s travels among present-day cryogenecists and AI-enabled robots. Continue reading...

In Ohio, many people are displeased with the state's rapid buildout of data centers. It's a hot issue in the midterms, as political candidates from both parties try to ease voter concerns.

NPR's Steve Inskeep asks Machine Gods host Casey Newton about the reaction to Anthropic's preparations to become a publicly traded company.

Labor government under pressure to create social media watchdog as new online safety standards bill passes lower house Follow our Australia politics live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast The federal government wants to ban AI chatbots which seek to create “emotional intimacy” after prime minister Anthony Albanese raised the alarm in a heartfelt speech about children treating these agents as their “best friend”. But Labor is coming under increasing pressure to empower the telecommunications ombudsman to become a watchdog for social media and AI to give Australians an external complaints mechanism and allow the “naming and shaming” of big tech. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s Politics, really newsletter here Continue reading...

New bombshell A24 documentary “You Can See Everything” draws backlash from a supporter of Elizabeth Holmes’ technology after clips of him were in the film, he says, without his permission. Now, he’s threatening to sue the filmmakers if they don't apologize. NBC News’ Chloe Melas reports.

The iPhone Duo went on sale less than a week ago, but some users are already reporting cracks and bright lines across the inner display near the hinge. NBC News’ Brian Cheung reports.