Roblox has introduced stricter safety measures for users under 13, including restricting direct messaging outside of games and experiences, regardless of parental permission. These updates aim to address criticism over child safety and regain trust, following a Bloomberg investigation highlighting predator risks on the platform. TechCrunch reports: During a press briefing, the company explained that users under the age of 13 will still be able to access in-game chats because Roblox believes that communication is fundamental to gameplay on the platform. Parents can change this setting if they wish. In addition, Roblox is age-gating certain experiences for users under 13. The new restrictions apply to games and experiences that are designed for socializing with people outside of a person's friends list, such as experiences that allow free-form writing or drawing. "The reason that we've made this decision is that we've seen that some of both the content and the conduct in these experiences is more appropriate for older users and teens," said Dina Lamdany, Roblox's product lead for user settings and parental controls, during the press briefing. Although Roblox already offers some parental controls, it previously only allowed them to be managed from a child's account. Now, the company is introducing remote management, which allows parents to adjust controls and see their child's activity from their own devices. To do so, parents can link their Roblox account to their child's account after verifying themselves using an ID or credit card. Parents can now also see their child's average weekly screen time and set daily time limits. They can also see their child's Friends list.

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According to Bloomberg, the U.S. Justice Department wants Google to sell off its Chrome browser as part of its ongoing search monopoly case. The recommendations will be made official on Wednesday. 9to5Google reports: At the top of the list is having Google sell Chrome "because it represents a key access point through which many people use its search engine." There are many questions about how that works, including what the impact on the underlying Chromium codebase would be. Would Google still be allowed to develop the open-source project by which many other browsers, like Microsoft Edge use? "The government has the option to decide whether a Chrome sale is necessary at a later date if some of the other aspects of the remedy create a more competitive market," reports Bloomberg. Google, which plans to appeal, previously said that "splitting off Chrome or Android would break them." Bloomberg reports that "antitrust officials pulled back from a more severe option that would have forced Google to sell off Android." However, the government wants Google to "uncouple its Android smartphone operating system from its other products, including search and its Google Play mobile app store, which are now sold as a bundle." Meanwhile, other recommendations include licensing Google Search data and results, as well as allowing websites that are indexed for Search to opt out of AI training.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Framework CEO Nirav Patel had one of the bravest tech demos that we've seen at a conference yet -- modifying a Framework Laptop from x86 to RISC-V live on stage. In the five-minute duration of one of the Ubuntu Summit's Lightning Talks, he opened up a Framework machine, removed its motherboard, installed a RISC-V-powered replacement, reconnected it, and closed the machine up again. All while presenting the talk live, and pretty much without hesitation, deviation, or repetition. It was an impressive performance, and you can watch it yourself at the 8:56:30 mark in the video recording. Now DeepComputing is taking orders for the DC-ROMA board, at least to those in its early access program. The new main board is powered by a StarFive JH7110 System-on-Chip. (Note: there are two tabs on the page, for both the JH7110 and JH7100, and we can't link directly to the latter.) CNX Software has more details about the SoC. Although the SoC has six CPU cores, two are dedicated processors, making it a quad-core 64-bit device. The four general-purpose cores are 64-bit and run at up to 1.5 GHz. It supports 8 GB of RAM and eMMC storage. [...] In our opinion, RISC-V is not yet competitive with Arm in performance. However, this is a real, usable, general-purpose computer, based on an open instruction set. That's no mean feat, and it's got more than enough performance for less demanding work. It's also the first third-party main board for the Framework hardware, which is another welcome achievement. The company has now delivered several new generations of hardware, including a 16-inch model, and continues to upgrade its machines' specs.

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HarperCollins has partnered with an AI technology company to allow limited use of select nonfiction backlist titles for training AI models, offering authors the choice to opt in for a $2,500 non-negotiable fee. 404 Media reports: On Friday, author Daniel Kibblesmith, who wrote the children's book Santa's Husband and published it with HarperCollins, posted screenshots on Bluesky of an email he received, seemingly from his agent, informing him that the agency was approached by the publisher about the AI deal. "Let me know what you think, positive or negative, and we can handle the rest of this for you," the screenshotted text in an email to Kibblesmith says. The screenshots show the agent telling Kibblesmith that HarperCollins was offering $2,500 (non-negotiable). "You are receiving this memo because we have been informed by HarperCollins that they would like permission to include your book in an overall deal that they are making with a large tech company to use a broad swath of nonfiction books for the purpose of providing content for the training of an Al language learning model," the screenshots say. "You are likely aware, as we all are, that there are controversies surrounding the use of copyrighted material in the training of Al models. Much of the controversy comes from the fact that many companies seem to be doing so without acknowledging or compensating the original creators. And of course there is concern that these Al models may one day make us all obsolete." Kibblesmith called the deal "abominable." "It seems like they think they're cooked, and they're chasing short money while they can. I disagree," Kibblesmith told the AV Club. "The fear of robots replacing authors is a false binary. I see it as the beginning of two diverging markets, readers who want to connect with other humans across time and space, or readers who are satisfied with a customized on-demand content pellet fed to them by the big computer so they never have to be challenged again."

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Google is reportedly working on a multi-year project to migrate Chrome OS into Android, aiming to unify its operating systems and better compete with the iPad. This transition involves incorporating Chrome OS features like extensions and Linux app support into Android, with upcoming updates focused on improving desktop functionality and device compatibility. Android Authority reports: To better compete with the iPad as well as manage engineering resources more effectively, Google wants to unify its operating system efforts. Instead of merging Android and Chrome OS into a new operating system like rumors suggested in the past, however, a source told me that Google is instead working on fully migrating Chrome OS over to Android. While we don't know what this means for the Chrome OS or Chromebook brands, we did hear that Google wants future "Chromebooks" to ship with the Android OS in the future. That's why I believe that Google's rumored new Pixel Laptop will run a new version of desktop Android as opposed to the Chrome OS that you're likely familiar with. While Google hasn't publicly confirmed its intentions to turn Chrome OS into Android, it did mention back in June that Chrome OS would become more like Android by "embracing portions of the Android stack, like the Android Linux kernel and Android frameworks." Chrome OS already makes use of some Android tech, such as the operating system's Bluetooth stack code-named "Fluoride," so the announcement that it would start to use even more of Android came as no surprise. However, Google's announcement didn't tell the full story, as we've since discovered that not only is Google building a new version of Chrome for Android with extensions support but also a Terminal to run Linux apps on Android. The former is intended to achieve feature parity between Chrome for Android and Chrome OS, while the latter is intended to deliver a Crostini-like experience when Chromebooks transition to Android. However, there are still a lot of things that Google has to do to achieve feature parity between Android and Chrome OS. The desktop windowing changes that Google is introducing in the first quarterly platform release of Android 15 are just the beginning, as Google is working on a huge number of new Android features including improved keyboard and mouse support, external monitor support, multiple desktops, and more. All of these changes, we're told, are part of Google's internal Android-on-laptop project, though they'll also obviously benefit tablets like the upcoming Pixel Tablet 2.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An AI-generated nude photo scandal has shut down a Pennsylvania private school. On Monday, classes were canceled after parents forced leaders to either resign or face a lawsuit potentially seeking criminal penalties and accusing the school of skipping mandatory reporting of the harmful images. The outcry erupted after a single student created sexually explicit AI images of nearly 50 female classmates at Lancaster Country Day School, Lancaster Online reported. Head of School Matt Micciche seemingly first learned of the problem in November 2023, when a student anonymously reported the explicit deepfakes through a school portal run by the state attorney's general office called "Safe2Say Something." But Micciche allegedly did nothing, allowing more students to be targeted for months until police were tipped off in mid-2024. Cops arrested the student accused of creating the harmful content in August. The student's phone was seized as cops investigated the origins of the AI-generated images. But that arrest was not enough justice for parents who were shocked by the school's failure to uphold mandatory reporting responsibilities following any suspicion of child abuse. They filed a court summons threatening to sue last week unless the school leaders responsible for the mishandled response resigned within 48 hours. This tactic successfully pushed Micciche and the school board's president, Angela Ang-Alhadeff, to "part ways" with the school, both resigning effective late Friday, Lancaster Online reported. In a statement announcing that classes were canceled Monday, Lancaster Country Day School -- which, according to Wikipedia, serves about 600 students in pre-kindergarten through high school -- offered support during this "difficult time" for the community. Parents do not seem ready to drop the suit, as the school leaders seemingly dragged their feet and resigned two days after their deadline. The parents' lawyer, Matthew Faranda-Diedrich, told Lancaster Online Monday that "the lawsuit would still be pursued despite executive changes." Classes are planned to resume on Tuesday, Lancaster Online reported. But students seem unlikely to let the incident go without further action to help girls feel safe at school. Last week, more than half the school walked out, MSN reported, forcing classes to be canceled as students and some faculty members called for resignations and additional changes from remaining leadership.

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India's competition watchdog has ordered WhatsApp to stop sharing user data with other Meta units for advertising purposes for five years and also levied a fine of $25.4 million for antitrust violations related to WhatsApp's controversial 2021 privacy policy. From a report: The Competition Commission of India, which began the investigation in 2021, found that WhatsApp's "take-it-or-leave-it" privacy update constituted an abuse of Meta's dominant position by forcing users to accept expanded data collection without an opt-out option. WhatsApp's 2021 privacy policy update required users to share their data with Meta companies in order to continue using the messaging service, removing a previous opt-out option that had existed since 2016. The mandatory data-sharing requirement expanded the scope of data collection and processing by Meta's group companies.

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Infosys founder Narayana Murthy has tripled down on his previous statements that 70-hour work weeks are what's needed in India and revealed he also thinks weekends were a mistake. From a report: Speaking on Indian TV channel CNBC-TV18 at the Global Leadership Summit in Mumbai last week Murthy once again declared he did not "believe in work-life balance." "I have not changed my view; I will take this with me to my grave," he asserted . The argument from Murthy, and like-minded colleagues he quotes, is that India is a poor country that has work to do improving itself. Work-life balance can wait. The Infosys founder held prime minister Narendra Modi and his cabinet up as an example of proper workaholics, claiming the PM toils for 100 hours a week, and suggested that not following suit demonstrates a lack of appreciation. "Frankly I was a little bit disappointed in 1986 when we moved from a six-day week to a five-day week," he added. "I was not very happy with that. I think in this country, we have to work very hard because there is no substitute for hard work even if you're the most intelligent guy," he said to an appreciative audience and laughing news anchor Shereen Bhan. Murthy claimed he himself worked six and a half days a week until retirement, typically 14 hours and 10 minutes a day, clocking on at 6:20 AM before downing tools at 8:30 PM.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: China's population is expected to shrink by 51 million -- more than the size of California -- over the next decade as policymakers struggle to reverse the country's falling birth rate, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. By 2035, the population is expected to drop to 1.36 billion, levels not seen since 2012, down from a peak of 1.41 billion in 2021, BI senior industry analyst Ada Li estimates. There could be a temporary spike in births in 2024 as the Year of the Dragon is considered an auspicious time to have children. But past single-year surges in birth rates have been short-lived, and this year may be no exception, especially with marriage rates at an all-time low, Li said. China faces a looming population crisis, with the United Nations projecting it could shrink to half its current size by 2100.

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The Belgian region of Flanders is rolling out personal data "pods" to 7 million citizens in a trial of World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee's vision for user-controlled data privacy. Five Belgian hospitals have begun storing patient visit information in the data pods, developed by Berners-Lee's startup Inrupt over the past five years. The system aims to help compliance with European privacy regulations by giving citizens control over their personal information, from medical records to social media posts. The initiative counters the current internet landscape dominated by major technology companies like Google and Meta, which store user data across their servers. Berners-Lee, who created the World Wide Web at CERN in 1989, advocates for returning data control to users through decentralized systems rather than leaving it vulnerable to harvesting by tech platforms and governments.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Blizzard Entertainment first released World of Warcraft in November 2004, so The New York Times celebrated the anniversary by outlining the many ways we can still see the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game's influence's 20 years later. For one thing, while multiplayer games and early social networks such as MySpace already existed, WoW provided a real preview of a future where everyone would connect to friends and strangers online. For another, the game made billions of dollars with a business model combining monthly subscriptions with in-game purchases (including for pets and animals that players could ride), becoming a massive cash cow for Blizzard and pointing the way to future internet business models.

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Apple has stopped selling its Lightning-to-3.5mm headphone jack adapter in the U.S. and most countries, with limited stock remaining only in select European markets. The $9 accessory, introduced with iPhone 7 in 2016 (after the "courageous" move to stop including the headphone jack in iPhones), allowed users to connect traditional headphones to Lightning port iPhones. The discontinuation comes as Apple transitions to USB-C ports across its iPhone lineup.

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Donald Trump has named FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr to chair the U.S. communications regulator when he takes office in January 2025, citing Carr's stance against what Trump called "regulatory lawfare." Carr, a lawyer and longtime Republican who has served at the FCC under both Trump and Biden administrations, has emerged as a vocal critic of major social media companies' content moderation practices. "Humbled and honored" by the appointment, Carr pledged on X to "dismantle the censorship cartel." As the FCC's senior Republican commissioner, Carr has advocated for stricter oversight of technology companies, pushing for transparency rules on platforms like Google and Facebook, expanded rural broadband access, and tougher restrictions on Chinese-owned TikTok. Trump praised Carr as a "warrior for free speech" while announcing the appointment. During his campaign, Trump has said he would seek to revoke licenses of television networks he views as biased.

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Silicon Valley's venture-capital firms are having an easy time finding promising startups to back. The hard part is cashing out. From a report: Last year, U.S. venture firms returned $26 billion worth of shares back to their investors, the lowest amount since 2011, according to the data provider PitchBook. Startup investors say 2024 has continued the trend, with high levels of investment and few acquisition deals or initial public offerings. "We've raised a lot of money, and we've given very little back," Thomas Laffont, co-founder of investment firm Coatue Management, said at a recent conference. "We are bleeding cash as an industry." Last year, U.S. venture firms invested $60 billion more than they collected, the highest such deficit in PitchBook's 26 years of data. As a result, the investors that back VC firms, such as university endowments and pension funds, aren't seeing the type of profits the industry has long delivered. The decline is particularly notable because the past three years have been the highest three on record for total VC firm investments since 1998 -- as far as back as the PitchBook data goes. Much of that money has recently gone to artificial-intelligence startups -- a white-hot space in which valuations are rising fast and companies quickly burn through cash to develop new technology.

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The goal? "Make C++ and Rust interoperability easily accessible and approachable to the widest possible audience." And the Rust Foundation's "Interop Initiative" is specifically focused on the goal of interoperability "within the same executable," through either inline embedding that allows "integrated compilation", or foreign function interfaces. To that end, a statement addressing "the challenges and opportunities in C++ and Rust interoperability" was announced this week by the Rust Foundation. Pointing out that the "Interop Initiative" was launched in February 2024 with a $1M contribution from Google, it now "proposes a collaborative, problem-space approach engaging key stakeholders from both language communities. "Rather than prescribing specific solutions, this problem statement serves as a foundation for community input and participation in shaping both the strategic direction and tactical implementation of improved C++/Rust interoperability." Their official problem statement outlines three "key strategic approaches." - Improve existing tools and address tactical issues to reduce interoperability friction and risk in the short term. - Build consensus around long-term goals requiring changes to Rust itself and develop the tactical approaches to begin pursuing them. - Engage with the C++ community and committee to improve the quality of interoperation for both languages to help realize the mutual goals of safety and performance. And it argues that interoperability "is essential to pursuing safety and performance which is maintainable and scalable." A significant amount of development has gone into libraries to facilitate interoperability with both C and C++, but from the language and compiler level, the situation remains largely unchanged from the early days of Rust. As the desire to integrate Rust into more C++ codebases increases, the value of making C++/Rust interoperability safer, easier, and more efficient is rapidly increasing. While each language takes a different overall approach, both view safety as an essential concern in modern systems. Both Rust and C++ have language- and standard-library-level facilities to improve safety in seemingly compatible ways, but significant benefits are lost when transiting the foreign function interfaces (FFI) boundary using the C ABI... The consequence of this increased cost to interoperate means both C++ and Rust codebases are less able to access valuable code that already exists in the other language, and the ability to transition system components from one language to another is reduced outside of existing C-like interface boundaries. Ultimately, this reduction in freedom leads to worse outcomes for all users since technologists are less free to choose the most effective solutions.

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Dr. Adam Rodman, a Boston-based internal medicine expert, helped design a study testing 50 licensed physicians to see whether ChatGPT improved their diagnoses, reports the New York TImes. The results? "Doctors who were given ChatGPT-4 along with conventional resources did only slightly better than doctors who did not have access to the bot. "And, to the researchers' surprise, ChatGPT alone outperformed the doctors." [ChatGPT-4] scored an average of 90 percent when diagnosing a medical condition from a case report and explaining its reasoning. Doctors randomly assigned to use the chatbot got an average score of 76 percent. Those randomly assigned not to use it had an average score of 74 percent. The study showed more than just the chatbot's superior performance. It unveiled doctors' sometimes unwavering belief in a diagnosis they made, even when a chatbot potentially suggests a better one. And the study illustrated that while doctors are being exposed to the tools of artificial intelligence for their work, few know how to exploit the abilities of chatbots. As a result, they failed to take advantage of A.I. systems' ability to solve complex diagnostic problems and offer explanations for their diagnoses. A.I. systems should be "doctor extenders," Dr. Rodman said, offering valuable second opinions on diagnoses. "The results were similar across subgroups of different training levels and experience with the chatbot," the study concludes. "These results suggest that access alone to LLMs will not improve overall physician diagnostic reasoning in practice. "These findings are particularly relevant now that many health systems offer Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant chatbots that physicians can use in clinical settings, often with no to minimal training on how to use these tools."

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The Tiobe index tries to track the popularity of programming languages by counting the number of search results for the language's name followed by the word "programming" (on 25 different search engines). And this month there were some surprises... By TIOBE's reckoning, compared to a year ago PHP has now fallen from #7 to #12, while Delphi/Object Pascal shot up five spots from #16 to #11. In that same year, Fortran jumped from #12 to #8 — while both Visual Basic and SQL dropped down a single rank. Toward the top of the list, C actually fell from the #2 spot over the last 12 months to the #4 spot. And Go just reached the #7 rank on the TIOBE's ranking of programming language popularity — "an all time high for Go," according to TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen. In this month's note, he explains what he thinks is unusual about this — starting by saying that Go programs are both fast, and easy in many ways — easy to deploy, easy to learn, and easy to understand. Python for instance is easy to learn but not fast, and deployment for larger Python programs is fragile due to dependencies on all kind of versioned libraries in the environment. If compared to Rust for instance (another contender for a top position), Go is a tiny bit slower, but the Go programs are much easier to understand. The next hurdle for Go in the TIOBE index is JavaScript at position #6. That will be a tough one to pass. JavaScript is ubiquitous in software development, although for larger JavaScript systems we see a shift to TypeScript nowadays. "If annual trends continue this way, Go will bypass JavaScript within 3 years," TIOBE's CEO predicts. (Adding "Let's see what the future has in store for Go...") Although the Go team actually has specific plans for the future, according to a blog post this week celebrating Go's 15th anniversary: We're working on making Go better for AI — and AI better for Go — by enhancing Go's capabilities in AI infrastructure, applications, and developer assistance. Go is a great language for building production systems, and we want it to be a great language for building production AI systems, too... For AI applications, we will continue building out first-class support for Go in popular AI SDKs, including LangChainGo and Genkit. And from its very beginning, Go aimed to improve the end-to-end software engineering process, so naturally we're looking at bringing the latest tools and techniques from AI to bear on reducing developer toil, leaving more time for the fun stuff — like actually programming! TIOBE's top 10 programming language rankings for the month of November: Python C++ Java C C# JavaScript Go Fortran Visual Basic SQL

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A new six-episode Dune series premiers tonight on HBO and Max — a prequel to the Denis Villeneuve-directed Dune movies set 10,000 years before the birth f Paul Atreides. The Hollywood Reporter writes that it "draws on source material from the 2012 novel Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, and Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, the origin of the Dune universe." Cord-cutters can stream Dune: Prophecy online without cable on Max, with subscriptions starting at $9.99 per month through both Prime Video and the Max website directly. Amazon offers a seven-day free trial to the Max channel. Those who want to watch Dune: Prophecy online without a traditional cable service can also get Max as an add-on to existing streaming services, including Hulu and DirecTV Stream. The San Francisco Chronicle describes the series as "">all palace intrigues, agonizing deaths and magical mind games." Taking a further cue from the network's top-rated Game of Thrones, this show indulges more sex and nudity than the Dune movies allow. It could be argued that elements like this introduce a liveliness often missing from the portentous big-screen behemoths, marking an improvement. Another fun touch here: Many characters are constantly baked. Set a millennium before Frank Herbert's novels and the films' events, and a century after humans overthrew their "thinking machine" overlords, the psychoactive "Spice" from the desert planet Arrakis is already the most valued substance in the universe. It's not only vital for spaceship navigation and to expand the mental powers of sorceressy sisterhoods like the Bene Gesserit, it's the club drug of choice for younger members of the galaxy-ruling Great Houses. As ever with "Dune" business, control of the Spice trade fuels much of the conflict and character motivations. Of which there are just enough to keep things interesting without becoming confusing... While the show can't match the outsize visual scope of Denis Villeneuve's films, it does pleasingly approximate those vast alien landscapes, Brutalist edifices and high-ceilinged chambers on a TV budget. For those who find Villeneuve's formal gigantism oppressive, the series' more human scale might be another welcome change of pace... There may not be an original thought in this "Dune" product's Spice-soaked head, but it is one professionally put-together piece of this sort of entertainment. "Tasked with making more material with less money and time, Prophecy cannot hope to equal Villeneuve's aesthetic accomplishments," writes Variety. "But at its best, the show does justice to the intricate politics and ethical debates that form a cornerstone of Frank Herbert's fictional universe... The primary Dune plot finds many echoes throughout Prophecy..." On the other hand, Vulture argues the six-episode series is "stuck in prequel quicksand," even calling it "an act of cowardice and abdication of creativity" (while also noting moments where it "feels like it's stretching itself to be something other than what we expect..."

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Slashdot unixbhaskar writes: Linus has released a fresh Linux kernel for public consumption. Please give it a try and report any glitches to the maintainers for improvement. Also, please do not forget to express your appreciation to those tireless folks who did all the hard work for you. The blog OMG Ubuntu calls it "one of the most biggest kernel releases for a while," joking that it's a "really real-time kernel." The headline feature in Linux 6.12 is mainline support for PREEMPT_RT. This patch set dramatically improves the performance of real-time applications by making kernel processes pre-emptible — effectively enabled proper real-time computing... Meanwhile, Linus Torvalds himself contributes a new method for user-space address masking designed to claw back some of the performance lost due to Spectre-v1 mitigations. You might have heard that kernel devs have been working to add QR error codes to Linux's kernel panic BSOD screen (as a waterfall of error text is often cut off and not easily copied for ad-hoc debugging). Well, Linux 6.12 adds support for those during Direct Rendering Manager panics... A slew of new RISC-V CPU ISA extensions are supported in Linux 6.12; hybrid CPU scaling in the Intel P-State driver lands ahead of upcoming Intel Core Ultra 2000 chips; and AMD P-State driver improves AMD Boost and AMD Preferred Core features. More coverage from the blog 9to5Linux highlights a new scheduler called sched_ext, Clang support (including LTO) for nolibc, support for NVIDIA's virtual command queue implementation for SMMUv3, and "an updated cpuidle tool that now displays the residency value of cpuidle states for a clearer and more detailed view of idle state information when using cpuidle-info." Linux kernel 6.12 also introduces SWIG bindings for libcpupower to make it easier for developers to write scripts that use and extend the functionality of libcpupower, support for translating normalized error addresses reported by an AMD memory controller into system physical addresses using a UEFI mechanism called platform runtime mechanism (PRM), as well as simplified loading of microcode patches on AMD Zen and newer CPUs by using the family, model, and stepping encoded in the patch revision number... Moreover, Linux 6.12 adds support for running as a protected guest on Android as well as perf and support for a bunch of new interconnect PMUs. It also adds the final conversions to the new Intel VFM CPU model matching macros, rewrites the PCM buffer allocation handling and locking optimizations, and improves the USB audio driver...

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This week Alphabet CEO Sundar Picahi assured investors that their long-term AI focus and investment (and a "commitment to innovation") "are paying off," reports the Associated Press. Alphabet's stock has already soared 20% this year, and it's "still thriving" as the company "navigates through a pivotal shift to AI and battles regulators..." Alphabet earned $26.3 billion, or $2.12 per share during the most recent quarter, a 34% increase from a year ago. Revenue rose 15% from the same time last year to $88.27 billion... The profits would have been even higher if Google wasn't pouring so much money into building up its AI arsenal in a technological arms race that includes other industry heavyweights Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook parent Meta Platforms and rising star OpenAI. The AI investments are the primary reason Google's capital expenditures in the past quarter soared 62% from the same time last year to $13.1 billion. The AI spending will likely stay at roughly the same level during the current October-December period, and the rise even higher next year, according to Anat Ashkenazi, Alphabet's chief financial officer. But Ashkenazi also emphasized the Mountain View, California, company will act on cost-cutting opportunities in other areas to help boost profits. Alphabet already has trimmed its payroll from more than 190,000 worldwide employees early last year to about 181,000 workers now. In an example of how AI can perform tasks that once required human brainpower, Pichai said the technology is now writing more than 25% of the company's new computer coding. After the results, investors sent Alphabet's stock price up 5% in extended trading, the article points out. "Both Alphabet's profit and revenue increased at a brisker pace than industry analysts anticipated, thanks primarily to a moneymaking machine powered by Google's ubiquitous search engine... [Google's digital search-engine ads earned $49.39 billion, 12% more than the same quarter of 2023.] And Google's cloud division is growing at an even more robust rate, thanks to demand for AI services. The cloud division generated $11.35 billion in revenue during the past quarter, a 35% increase from last year." And meanwhile over at Microsoft, quarterly sales surged 16% to $65.6 billion, reports the Associated Press. But again, "the company sought to assure investors its huge spending on artificial intelligence is paying off." The company has spent billions of dollars to expand its global network of data centers and other physical infrastructure required to develop AI technology... As a result, AI-related products are now on track to contribute about $10 billion to the company's annual revenue, the "fastest business in our history to reach this milestone," CEO Satya Nadella said on a call with analysts Wednesday. [Though Microsoft "hasn't yet formally reported revenue specifically from AI products," the article notes later, with Microsoft instead saying it's infused AI and Copilot into all its business segments.] Just in the last quarter, Microsoft spent $20 billion "mostly for its cloud computing and AI needs," the article points out. But there's still making plenty of money... The software maker also reported an 11% increase in quarterly profit to $24.7 billion, or $3.30 per share, which beat Wall Street expectations for the July-September period... Leading in sales for the quarter was Microsoft's productivity business segment, which includes its Office suite of email and other workplace products, growing 12% to $28.3 billion. Microsoft's cloud-focused business segment grew 20% from the same time last year to $24.1 billion for the three months ending Sept. 30. Its personal computing business, led by its Windows division, grew 17% to $13.2 billion. A big part of that growth came from Microsoft's Xbox video game business, which was boosted by its purchase of game publishing giant Activision Blizzard a year ago.

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