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Tech

AI Summary

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) is at the forefront of AI innovation, recently announcing new AI agents capable of coding, security tasks, and DevOps, along with new models within its Nova AI family designed for enterprise applications.
  • The tech landscape is seeing an increased emphasis on AI-driven features across popular platforms, including Android's latest updates which introduce AI-powered notification summaries and accessibility improvements aimed at enhancing user experience.
  • Nuclear energy startup Antares has successfully raised $96 million to develop small modular reactors for diverse applications in land, sea, and space, highlighting a growing interest in sustainable energy solutions as part of the climate tech movement.
  • Cyber Monday has extended into December with ongoing sales, showcasing significant discounts across various tech products and services, from gaming consoles to streaming subscriptions, reflecting consumer interest in holiday shopping.
  • The competitive landscape for AI and cloud services is heating up, with Amazon and other leading firms like Google and Microsoft vying for dominance as they unveil new technologies and strategies to cater to enterprise needs while managing data security and privacy concerns.

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TechCrunch


Hacker News


Engadget

  • Instacart sues New York City over minimum pay, tipping laws an hour ago by Will Shanklin
    Politics & Government, Business, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Will Shanklin

    You can tell a lot about a company by what they're willing to sue over. Take Instacart, which just filed a lawsuit against New York City. Its beef? The company doesn't like five new city laws, set to take effect in January. They would require Instacart to pay workers more and give customers a tipping option of at least 10 percent. Reuters reports that Instacart's suit targets Local Law 124, which mandates that grocery delivery workers receive the same minimum pay as restaurant delivery workers. It also challenged Local Law 107, which mandates 10 percent or higher tipping options (or a

  • ExpressVPN adds a Fastest Location button and launches a new native Mac app 2 hours ago by Sam Chapman
    Software, Mobile Apps, Technology & Electronics, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Sam Chapman

    ExpressVPN, one of the best VPNs, is launching two brand-new features that sound confusingly like things it already does. Users on Android, Mac and iOS (but apparently not Windows, Linux or smart TVs) can now use Fastest Location to automatically pick the VPN server with the fastest download speed and lowest latency. Mac users are also getting an overhauled ExpressVPN app designed to work natively with MacOS. If you've used ExpressVPN before, your first reaction probably went something like "Wait, didn't it already have a Fastest Location button and a Mac app?" You're not wrong, but there's still a meaningful difference

  • Missing NBC on Fubo? Here's how to watch this week's NBA games and more 3 hours ago by Danica Creahan,Liz Kocan
    Media, Arts & Entertainment, Television, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Danica Creahan

    If you're a Fubo subscriber, you've certainly noticed that NBC and all NBCUniversal-owned channels have gone dark on the platform. For over a week, customers have gone without NBC programming like the Today Show, The Voice, and Sunday Night Football. Now, customers will have to find alternate methods of watching this week's NBA coverage on NBC, too. It's all because Fubo and NBCUniversal are having a contract dispute, so channels like NBC, USA Network, Telemundo, and Bravo have been unavailable on Fubo since Nov. 21, and as of now, there's no projected date for their return.  A message released by Fubo

  • Grok would prefer a second Holocaust over harming Elon Musk 3 hours ago by Will Shanklin
    Arts & Entertainment, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Will Shanklin

    Elon Musk's Grok continues to do humanity a solid by (accidentally) illustrating why AI needs meaningful guardrails. The xAI bot's latest demonstration is detailed in a pair of reports by Futurism. First, Grok applied twisted, Musk-worshipping logic to justify a second Holocaust. Then, it may have doxxed Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy. Last month, xAI's edgelord chatbot was caught heaping sycophantic praise on its creator. Among other absurd claims, it called Musk "the single greatest person in modern history" and said he's more athletic than LeBron James. Musk blamed the outputs on "adversarial prompting." (Counterpoint: Aren't gotcha prompts precisely the kinds

  • Pixelity will playtest its Evangelion XR game later this month 3 hours ago by Will Shanklin
    Media, Video Games, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Will Shanklin

    Neon Genesis Evangelion fans: Here's a chance to live the series, so to speak. Pixelity, developer of an upcoming XR game trilogy based on the classic anime, will hold on-site focus group tests this month. The playtests will take place in Japan from December 19 to 21, and in California on December 19. Pixelity says it will use the same number of players at each venue. If you’re near either location, you can apply for access today on Pixelity's X account. The XR trilogy, Evangelion: Cross Reflections, was announced earlier this year. The games will be set within the original anime's timeline,


The Verge

  • Indiegogo is launching ‘Express Crowdfunding’ so creators can ship things sooner 29 minutes ago by Jay Peters
    Creators, News, Tech

    Indiegogo is planning to launch a new “Express Crowdfunding” campaign format that lets creators ship things while the campaign is on-going instead of forcing creators to wait until the campaign is over. Indiegogo spokesperson Maciej Kuc tells The Verge that the change was spurred by Indiegogo’s recent move to the infrastructure from its new owner, board game crowdfunding company Gamefound: > Switching to an entirely new technology is always a major challenge. The technology Indiegogo is currently working on was originally created for Gamefound – a slightly more “typical” crowdfunding platform. Its core assumption was that creators run a campaign to raise

  • Google is experimentally replacing news headlines with AI clickbait nonsense 40 minutes ago by Sean Hollister
    AI, Google, Report, Tech

    “BG3 players exploit children,” reads an Google AI-generated headline. | Image: Google Did you know that BG3 players exploit children? Are you aware that Qi2 slows older Pixels? If we wrote those misleading headlines, readers would rip us a new one - but Google is experimentally beginning to replace the original headlines on stories it serves with AI nonsense like that. I read a lot of my bedtime news via Google Discover, aka "swipe right on your Samsung Galaxy or Google Pixel homescreen until you see a news feed appear," and that's where these new AI headlines are beginning to show up. They're

  • Amazon’s bet that AI benchmarks don’t matter an hour ago by Alex Heath
    AI, Column, Sources

    Rohit Prasad, Amazon's SVP of AGI. This is an excerpt of Sources by Alex Heath, a newsletter about AI and the tech industry, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week. Amazon's AI chief has a message for the model benchmark obsessives: Stop looking at the leaderboards. "I want real-world utility. None of these benchmarks are real," Rohit Prasad, Amazon's SVP of AGI, told me ahead of today's announcements at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. "The only way to do real benchmarking is if everyone conforms to the same training data and the evals are completely held out. That's not what's happening.

  • Silicon Valley is rallying behind a guy who sucks an hour ago by Tina Nguyen
    AI, Column, Policy, Politics, Regulator, Tech

    Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge subscribers that covers the political intrigue and power struggles between Big Tech and Big Government. Subscribe here for a weekly dispatch of tech oligarchs fighting regular oligarchs. Prior to last week, only highly specialized political insiders knew the extent of David Sacks' influence in the Trump White House: tech policy hawks, lobbyists, reporters, and right-wing operatives infuriated that the billionaire venture capitalist was turning Donald Trump toward artificial intelligence and against the interests of the MAGA base. A deeply reported New York Times article published on Sun … Read the full story at

  • Helldivers 2’s new ‘slim’ version saves 131GB of space on your drive 2 hours ago by Stevie Bonifield
    Gaming, News, PC Gaming

    If you’ve been short on storage on your PC, the latest Helldivers 2 beta update might help. The developers said Tuesday they’ve managed to cut down the PC file size for Helldivers 2 by about 85 percent, freeing up enough space for at least one or two more large games.  In a post on the game’s Steam page, the developers explained that they’ve been working on slimming down the game while also adding new content: > “The longer term goal has always been to bring the PC installation size much closer in line with the console versions. We are happy to report


Wired


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