MethaneSAT, an $88 million satellite backed by Jeff Bezos and led by the Environmental Defense Fund to track global methane emissions, has been lost in space after going off course and losing power over Norway. "We're seeing this as a setback, not a failure," Amy Middleton, senior vice president at EDF, told Reuters. "We've made so much progress and so much has been learned that if we hadn't taken this risk, we wouldn't have any of these learnings." Reuters reports: The launch of MethaneSAT in March 2024 was a milestone in a years-long campaign by EDF to hold accountable the more than 120 countries that in 2021 pledged to curb their methane emissions. It also sought to help enforce a further promise from 50 oil and gas companies made at the Dubai COP28 climate summit in December 2023 to eliminate methane and routine gas flaring. [...] While MethaneSAT was not the only project to publish satellite data on methane emissions, its backers said it provided more detail on emissions sources and it partnered with Google to create a publicly-available global map of emissions. EDF reported the lost satellite to federal agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Space Force on Tuesday, it said. Building and launching the satellite cost $88 million, according to the EDF. The organization had received a $100 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund in 2020 and got other major financial support from Arnold Ventures, the Robertson Foundation and the TED Audacious Project and EDF donors. The project was also partnered with the New Zealand Space Agency. EDF said it had insurance to cover the loss and its engineers were investigating what had happened. The organization said it would continue to use its resources, including aircraft with methane-detecting spectrometers, to look for methane leaks. It also said it was too early to say whether it would seek to launch another satellite but believed MethaneSAT proved that a highly sensitive instrument "could see total methane emissions, even at low levels, over wide areas."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: No wonder Google is desperate for more power: The company's data centers more than doubled their electricity use in just four years. The eye-popping stat comes from Google's most recent sustainability report, which it released late last week. In 2024, Google data centers used 30.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity. That's up from 14.4 million megawatt-hours in 2020, the earliest year Google broke out data center consumption. Google has pledged to use only carbon-free sources of electricity to power its operations, a task made more challenging by its breakneck pace of data center growth. And the company's electricity woes are almost entirely a data center problem. In 2024, data centers accounted for 95.8% of the entire company's electron budget. The company's ratio of data-center-to-everything-else has been remarkably consistent over the last four years. Though 2020 is the earliest year Google has made data center electricity consumption figures available, it's possible to use that ratio to extrapolate back in time. Some quick math reveals that Google's data centers likely used just over 4 million megawatt-hours of electricity in 2014. That's sevenfold growth in just a decade. The tech company has already picked most of the low-hanging fruit by improving the efficiency of its data centers. Those efforts have paid off, and the company is frequently lauded for being at the leading edge. But as the company's power usage effectiveness (PUE) has approached the theoretical ideal of 1.0, progress has slowed. Last year, Google's company-wide PUE dropped to 1.09, a 0.01 improvement over 2023 but only 0.02 better than a decade ago. Yesterday, Google announced a deal to purchase 200 megawatts of future fusion energy from Commonwealth Fusion Systems, despite the energy source not yet existing. "It's a sign of how hungry big tech companies are for a virtually unlimited source of clean power that is still years away," reports CNN.

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Laptop Mag, a tech publication that began in 1991 as a print magazine, is shutting down after nearly 35 years. The Verge reports: Laptop Mag has evolved many times over the years. It started as a print publication in 1991, when Bedford Communications launched the Laptop Buyers Guide and Handbook. Laptop Mag was later acquired by TechMedia Network (which is now called Purch) in 2011 and transitioned to digital-only content in 2013. Future PLC, the publisher that owns brands like PC Gamer, Tom's Guide, and TechRadar, acquired Purch -- and Laptop Mag along with it. "We are incredibly grateful for your dedication, talent, and contributions to Laptop Mag, and we are committed to supporting you throughout this transition," [Faisal Alani, the global brand director at Laptop Mag owner Future PLC] said. Laptop Mag's shutdown follows the closure of long-running tech site AnandTech, which was also owned by Future PLC. It's not clear whether Laptop Mag's archives will be available following the shutdown.

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Apple has filed (PDF) a lawsuit against former Vision Pro engineer Di Liu, accusing him of stealing thousands of confidential files related to his work on Apple's augmented reality headset for the benefit of his new employer Snap. The company alleges Liu misled colleagues about his departure, secretly accepted a job offer from Snap, and attempted to cover his tracks by deleting files -- actions Apple claims violated his confidentiality agreement. The Register reports: Liu secretly received a job offer from Snap on October 18, 2024, a role the complaint describes as "substantially similar" to his Apple position, meaning Liu waited nearly two weeks to resign from Apple, per the lawsuit. "Even then, he did not disclose he was leaving for Snap," the suit said. "Apple would not have allowed Mr. Liu continued access had he told the truth." Liu allegedly copied "more than a dozen folders containing thousands of files" from Apple's filesystem to a personal cloud storage account, dropping the stolen bits in a pair of nested folders with the amazingly nondescript names "Personal" and "Knowledge." Apple said that data Liu copied includes "filenames containing confidential Apple product code names" and files "marked as Apple confidential." Company research, product design, and supply chain management documents were among the content Liu is accused of stealing. The complaint also alleges that Liu deleted files to conceal his activities, a move that may hinder Apple's ability to determine the full scope of the data he exfiltrated. "Mr. Liu additionally took actions to conceal his theft, including deceiving Apple about his job at Snap, and deleting files from his Apple-issued computer that might have let Apple determine what data Mr. Liu stole," the complaint noted. Whatever he has, Apple wants it back. The company demands a jury trial on a single count of breach of contract under a confidentiality and intellectual property agreement Liu was bound to. It also asks the court to compel Liu to return all misappropriated data, award damages to be determined at trial, and reimburse Apple's costs and attorneys' fees.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: Tinder is mandating new users in California verify their profiles using facial recognition technology starting Monday, executives exclusively tell Axios. The move aims to reduce impersonation and is part of Tinder parent Match Group's broader effort to improve trust and safety amid ongoing user frustration. The Face Check feature prompts users to take a short video selfie during onboarding. The biometric face scan, powered by FaceTec, then confirms the person is real and present and whether their face matches their profile photos. It also checks if the face is used across multiple accounts. If the criteria are met, the user receives a photo verified badge on their profile. The selfie video is then deleted. Tinder stores a non-reversible, encrypted face map to detect duplicate profiles in the future. Face Check is separate from Tinder's ID Check, which uses a government-issued ID to verify age and identity. "We see this as one part of a set of identity assurance options that are available to users," Match Group's head of trust and safety Yoel Roth says. "Face Check ... is really meant to be about confirming that this person is a real, live person and not a bot or a spoofed account." "Even if in the short term, it has the effect of potentially reducing some top-line user metrics, we think it's the right thing to do for the business," Rascoff said.

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Figma has filed to go public on the NYSE under the ticker "FIG," marking one of the most anticipated IPOs in recent years following its scrapped $20 billion acquisition by Adobe. CNBC reports: Revenue in the first quarter increased 46% to $228.2 million from $156.2 million in the same period a year ago, according to Figma's prospectus. The company recorded a net income of $44.9 million, compared to $13.5 million a year earlier. As of March 31, Figma had 1,031 customers contributing at least $100,000 a year to annual revenue, up 47% from a year earlier. Clients include Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Netflix. More than half of revenue comes from outside the U.S. Figma didn't say how many shares it plans to sell in the IPO. The company was valued at $12.5 billion in a tender offer last year, and in April it announced that it had confidentially filed for an IPO with the SEC. [...] Figma was founded in 2012 by CEO Dylan Field, 33, and Evan Wallace, and is based in San Francisco. The company had 1,646 employees as of March 31. Before establishing Figma, Field spent over two years at Brown University, where he met Wallace. Field then took a Thiel Fellowship "to pursue entrepreneurial projects," according to the filing. The two-year program that Founders Fund partner Peter Thiel established in 2011 gives young entrepreneurs a $200,000 grant along with support from founders and investors, according to an online description. Field is the biggest individual owner of Figma, with 56.6 million Class B shares and 51.1% of voting power ahead of the IPO. He said in a letter to investors that it was time for Figma to buck the "trend of many amazing companies staying privately indefinitely." "Some of the obvious benefits such as good corporate hygiene, brand awareness, liquidity, stronger currency and access to capital markets apply," wrote Field. "More importantly, I like the idea of our community sharing in the ownership of Figma -- and the best way to accomplish this is through public markets." As a public company, Field said investors should "expect us to take big swings," including through acquisitions. In April, Figma bought the assets and team of an unnamed technology company for $14 million, according to the filing. They also registered over 13 million users per month, one-third of which are designers.

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BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: In a move that feels straight out of a different era, Xerox has officially acquired Lexmark for $1.5 billion. The deal includes net debt and assumed liabilities, and it pulls Lexmark out of the hands of Chinese ownership and into a freshly restructured Xerox. That's a lot of money for a company best known for making machines that spit out paper. According to Xerox, this is all part of a "Reinvention" strategy. The company now claims it will be one of the top five players in every major print category and the leader in managed print services. [...] Xerox says the new leadership team will include executives from both sides, and the combined business will now support over 200,000 clients in more than 170 countries. They'll also be running 125 manufacturing and distribution centers in 16 countries.

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AMC Theatres now warns customers that movies start 25-30 minutes after the listed showtime to account for ads and trailers, "making it easier for moviegoers to know the actual start time of their film screening," reports The Verge. From the report: Starting today, AMC will also show more ads than before, meaning its preshow lineup may have to be reconfigured to avoid exceeding the 30-minute mark. The company made an agreement with the National CineMedia ad network that includes as much as five minutes of commercials shown "after a movie's official start time," according to The Hollywood Reporter, and an additional 30-to-60-second "Platinum Spot" that plays before the last one or two trailers. AMC was the only major theater chain to reject the National CineMedia ad spot when it was pitched in 2019, telling Bloomberg at the time that it believed "US moviegoers would react quite negatively." Now struggling financially amid an overall decline in movie theater attendance and box-office grosses, AMC has reversed course, telling The Hollywood Reporter that its competitors "have fully participated for more than five years without any direct impact to their attendance."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: After 13 years of deploying robots into its warehouses, Amazon reached a new milestone. The tech behemoth now has 1 million robots in its warehouses, the company announced Monday. This one millionth robot was recently delivered to an Amazon fulfillment facility in Japan. That figure puts Amazon on track to reach another landmark: Its vast network of warehouses may soon have the same number of robots working as people, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ also reported that 75% of Amazon's global deliveries are now assisted in some way by a robot. Amazon also unveiled a new generative AI model called DeepFleet, built using SageMaker and trained on its own warehouse data, which improves robotic fleet speed by 10% through more efficient route coordination.

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Google will tell European Union antitrust regulators Tuesday that the bloc's Digital Markets Act is stifling innovation and harming European users and businesses. The tech giant faces charges under the DMA for allegedly favoring its own services like Google Shopping, Google Hotels, and Google Flights over competitors. Potential fines could reach 10% of Google's global annual revenue. Google lawyer Clare Kelly will address a European Commission workshop, arguing that compliance changes have forced Europeans to pay more for travel tickets while airlines, hotels, and restaurants report losing up to 30% of direct booking traffic.

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Tech enthusiast Matt Cole has created a comprehensive MicroSD card testing database, writing over 18 petabytes of data across nearly 200 cards since July 2023. Cole's "Great MicroSD Card Survey" uses eight machines running 70 card readers around the clock, writing 101 terabytes daily to test authenticity, performance, and endurance. The 15,000-word report covering over 200 different cards reveals significant quality disparities. Name-brand cards purchased from Amazon performed markedly better than identical models from AliExpress, while cards with "fake flash" -- inflated capacity ratings -- performed significantly worse than authentic storage. Sandisk and Kingston cards averaged 4,634 and 3,555 read/write cycles before first error, respectively, while Lenovo cards averaged just 291 cycles. Some off-brand cards failed after only 27 cycles. Cole tested 51 cards to complete destruction during the endurance testing phase.

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AT&T has launched a new Account Lock feature designed to protect customers from SIM swapping attacks. The security tool, available through the myAT&T app, prevents unauthorized changes to customer accounts including phone number transfers, SIM card changes, billing information updates, device upgrades, and modifications to authorized users. SIM swapping attacks occur when criminals obtain a victim's phone number through social engineering techniques, then intercept messages and calls to access two-factor authentication codes for sensitive accounts. The attacks have become increasingly common in recent years. AT&T began gradually rolling out Account Lock earlier this year, joining T-Mobile, Verizon, and Google Fi, which already offer similar fraud prevention features.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: A judge has sentenced a disgruntled IT worker to more than seven months in prison after he wreaked havoc on his employer's network following his suspension, according to West Yorkshire Police. According to the police, Mohammed Umar Taj, 31, from the Yorkshire town of Batley, was suspended from his job in nearby Huddersfield in July 2022. But the company didn't immediately rescind his network credentials, and within hours, he began altering login names and passwords to disrupt operations, the statement says. The following day, he allegedly changed access credentials and the biz's multi-factor authentication settings that locked out the firm and its clients in Germany and Bahrain, eventually causing an estimated $274,200 in lost business and reputational harm.

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AI agents are now conducting first-round job interviews to screen candidates before human recruiters review them, according to WashingtonPost, which cites job seekers who report being contacted by virtual recruiters from different staffing companies. The conversational agents, built on large language models, help recruiting firms respond to every applicant and conduct interviews around the clock as companies face increasingly large talent pools. LinkedIn reported that job applications have jumped 30% in the last two years, partially due to AI, with some positions receiving hundreds of applications within hours. The Society for Human Resource Management said a growing number of organizations now use AI for recruiting to automate candidate searches and communicate with applicants during interviews. The AI interviews, conducted by phone or video, can last anywhere from a few minutes to 20 minutes depending on the candidate's experience and the hiring firm's questions.

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Cloudflare today announced a "Pay Per Crawl" program that allows website owners to charge AI companies for accessing their content, a potential revenue stream for publishers whose work is increasingly being scraped to train AI models. The system uses HTTP response code 402 to enable content creators to set per-request prices across their sites. Publishers can choose to allow free access, require payment at a configured rate, or block crawlers entirely. When an AI crawler requests paid content, it either presents payment intent via request headers for successful access or receives a "402 Payment Required" response with pricing information. Cloudflare acts as the merchant of record and handles the underlying technical infrastructure. The company aggregates billing events, charges crawlers, and distributes earnings to publishers. Alongside Pay Per Crawl, Cloudflare has switched to blocking AI crawlers by default for its customers, becoming the first major internet infrastructure provider to require explicit permission for AI access. The company handles traffic for 20% of the web and more than one million customers have already activated its AI-blocking tools since their September 2024 launch, it wrote in a blog post.

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Tech companies are paying AI engineers unprecedented salaries as competition for talent intensifies, with some top engineers earning more than $10 million annually and typical packages ranging from $3 million to $7 million. OpenAI told staff this week it is seeking "creative ways to recognize and reward top talent" after losing key employees to rivals, despite offering salaries near the top of the market. The move followed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's claim that Meta had promised $100 million sign-on bonuses to the company's most high-profile AI engineers. Mark Chen, OpenAI's chief research officer, sent an internal memo saying he felt "as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something" after recent departures. AI engineer salaries have risen approximately 50% since 2022, with mid-to-senior level research scientists now earning $500,000 to $2 million at major tech companies, compared to $180,000 to $220,000 for senior software engineers without AI experience.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Summer started barely a week ago, and already the United States has been smothered in a record-breaking "heat dome." Alaska saw its first-ever heat advisory this month. And all of this comes on the heels of 2024, the hottest calendar year in recorded history. The world is getting hotter, faster. A report published last week found that human-caused global warming is now increasing by 0.27 degrees Celsius per decade. That rate was recorded at 0.2 degrees in the 1970s, and has been growing since. "Each additional fractional degree of warming brings about a relatively larger increase in atmospheric extremes, like extreme downpours and severe droughts and wildfires," said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California. While this aligns with scientific predictions of how climate change can intensify such events, the increase in severity may feel sudden to people who experience them. "Back when we had lesser levels of warming, that relationship was a little bit less dramatic," Dr. Swain said. "There is growing evidence that the most extreme extremes probably will increase faster and to a greater extent than we used to think was the case," he added. Take rainfall, for example. Generally, extreme rainfall is intensifying at a rate of 7 percent with each degree Celsius of atmospheric warming. But recent studies indicate that so-called record-shattering events are increasing at double that rate, Dr. Swain said.

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The FCC will suspend enforcement of rules that would lower prison phone and video call prices until April 1st, 2027. Trump-appointed FCC Chair Brendan Carr said that prisons won't have to comply with the pricing regulations [PDF], reversing plans to implement the caps this year. The rules would have dropped the price of a 15-minute phone call to 90 cents in larger prisons. Current fees can reach as high as $11.35 for a 15-minute call, which the FCC described in 2024 as "exorbitant." Four states -- Connecticut, California, Minnesota, and Massachusetts -- have made prison calls free. Former President Joe Biden signed the Martha Wright-Reed law in 2023, allowing the FCC to regulate prison call rates. The agency voted to adopt the new rates last year, with rules set to take effect on a staggered basis starting January 1st, 2025. Carr said the regulations are "leading to negative, unintended consequences" and would make caps "too low" to cover "required safety measures." FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez criticized the delay, stating the Commission "is now stalling, shielding a broken system that inflates costs and rewards kickbacks to correctional facilities."

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Encrypted communications provider Proton has joined an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, filing a legal complaint that claims the company's App Store practices harm developers, consumers, and privacy. The Switzerland-based firm joined a group of Korean developers who sued Apple in May rather than filing a separate case. Proton asked the US District Court for Northern California to require Apple to allow alternative app stores, expose those stores through its own App Store, permit developers to disable Apple's in-app payment system, and provide full access to Apple APIs. The company added a privacy-focused argument to typical antitrust complaints, contending that Apple's pricing model particularly penalizes companies that refuse to harvest user data. Developers of free apps typically sell user data to cover costs, while privacy-focused companies like Proton must charge subscriptions for revenue, making Apple's commission cuts more burdensome.

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Starting today, researchers funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be required to make their scientific papers available to read for free as soon as they are published in a peer-reviewed journal. That's according to the agency's latest public-access policy, aimed at making federally funded research accessible to taxpayers. From a report: Established under former US president Joe Biden, the policy was originally set to take effect on 31 December for all US agencies, but the administration of Biden's successor, Donald Trump, has accelerated its implementation for the NIH, a move that has surprised some scholars. That's because, although the Trump team has declared itself a defender of taxpayer dollars, it has also targeted programmes and research projects focused on equity and inclusion for elimination. And one of the policy's main goals is to ensure equitable access to federally funded research. The move means that universities will have less time to advise their researchers on how to comply with the policy, says Peter Suber, director of the Harvard Open Access Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There is usually "some confusion or even some non-compliance after a new policy takes effect, but I think universities will eventually get on top of that," he says.

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