An anonymous reader shares a report: Nissan looks set to step back from merger talks with rival Honda, two sources said on Wednesday, calling into question a $60 billion tie-up to create the world's no.3 automaker and potentially leaving Nissan to drive its turnaround alone. Talks between the two Japanese automakers have been complicated by growing differences, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Reuters reported earlier that Nissan could call off talks after Honda sounded it out about becoming a subsidiary. Nissan baulked as this was a departure from what was originally framed as a merger of equals, one of the people said.

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Scientists are making significant advances in developing artificial blood substitutes, with two promising approaches emerging in 2025, the New Yorker reports. At the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Center for Blood Oxygen Transport and Hemostasis, researchers are testing ErythroMer, a synthetic nanoparticle that mimics red blood cells' oxygen-carrying capabilities. Simultaneously, the UK's National Health Service is conducting the first human trials of lab-grown blood cells. These developments address critical blood shortages - of the 38% of Americans eligible to donate, less than 3% do so regularly. Traditional donated blood also has significant limitations: platelets last only 5 days, red blood cells 42 days, and all require careful refrigeration and blood-type matching. DARPA awarded $46 million in early 2023 to develop ErythroMer, seeing potential for battlefield medicine where traditional blood storage isn't feasible. The synthetic blood can be stored as a powder and reconstituted when needed. There are still a lot of challenges, the report adds. The lab-grown blood currently costs about $75,000 per syringe compared to around $200 for a pint of donated blood, and production is limited to small quantities.

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Microsoft will charge commercial customers $61 per device in the first year to continue receiving Windows 10 security updates after support ends, The Register wrote in a PSA note Wednesday, citing text, with costs doubling each subsequent year for up to three years. Organizations can't skip initial years to save money, as the updates are cumulative. Some users may avoid fees if they connect Windows 10 endpoints to Windows 365 Cloud PCs. The program also covers Windows 10 virtual machines running on Windows 365 or Azure Virtual Desktop for three years with an active Windows 365 subscription.

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Since November, British telecom O2 has deployed an AI chatbot masquerading as a 78-year-old grandmother to waste scammers' time. The bot, named Daisy, engages fraudsters by discussing knitting patterns, recipes, and asking about tea preferences while feigning computer illiteracy. The Guardian has an update this week: In tests over several weeks, Daisy has kept individual scammers occupied for up to 40 minutes, with one case showing her being passed between four different callers. An excerpt from the story: "When a third scammer tries to get her to download the Google Play Store, she replies: 'Dear, did you say pastry? I'm not really on the right page.' She then complains that her screen has gone blank, saying it has 'gone black like the night sky'."

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Google parent Alphabet plans to spend $75 billion on capital expenditures in 2025, up from $52.5 billion last year, as it races to compete with Microsoft and Meta in AI infrastructure. CNBC: On its earnings call, Alphabet said it expects $16 billion to $18 billion of those expenses to come in the first quarter. Overall, the expenditures will go toward "technical infrastructure, primarily for servers, followed by data centers and networking," finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said. [...] Alphabet and its megacap tech rivals are rushing to build out their data centers with next-generation AI infrastructure, packed with Nvidia's graphics processing units, or GPUs. Last month, Meta said it plans to invest $60 billion to $65 billion this year as part of its AI push. Microsoft has committed to $80 billion in AI-related capital expenditures in its current fiscal year.

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A developer has successfully run the classic video game Doom on Apple's $50 Lightning to HDMI adapter, exploiting the device's built-in system-on-chip that runs a simplified iOS version.

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Temperatures at the north pole soared more than 20C above average on Sunday, crossing the threshold for ice to melt. From a report: Temperatures north of Svalbard in Norway had already risen to 18C hotter than the 1991-2020 average on Saturday, according to models from weather agencies in Europe and the US, with actual temperatures close to ice's melting point of 0C. By Sunday, the temperature anomaly had risen to more than 20C. "This was a very extreme winter warming event," said Mika Rantanen, a scientist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute. "Probably not the most extreme ever observed, but still at the upper edge of what can happen in the Arctic." Burning fossil fuels has heated the planet by about 1.3C since preindustrial times, but the poles are warming much faster as reflective sea ice melts. The increase in average temperatures has driven an increase in fiercely hot summers and unsettlingly mild winters.

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China's antitrust watchdog is laying the groundwork for a potential probe into Apple's policies and the fees it charges app developers, part of a broader push by Beijing that risks becoming another flashpoint in the country's trade war with the US. From a report: The State Administration for Market Regulation is examining Apple's policies, which include taking a cut of as much as 30% on in-app spending and barring external payment services and stores, people familiar with the matter said. Agency officials have spoken with Apple executives and app developers since last year, said the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive moves. The conversations stem from long-running disputes between Apple and developers such as Tencent and ByteDance over iOS store policies -- a source of tension between the US company and regulators worldwide. While Beijing has since 2024 targeted the practices of US tech firms from Nvidia to most recently Alphabet's Google, regulators may not formally move against Apple if the current conversations go well.

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Thailand cut power supply, fuel and internet to some border areas with Myanmar on Wednesday. It's an attempt to choke scam syndicates operating out of there that have become a growing security concern. Reuters: Scam compounds in Southeast Asia are suspected to have entrapped hundreds of thousands of people in illegal online and telecom operations, generating billions of dollars annually, according to a 2023 U.N. report. Thai Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul visited the Provincial Electricity Authority headquarters in Bangkok on Wednesday to oversee the effort to fight the crime rings. "They may turn to other sources of power supply or generate their own electricity. In the Thai Security Council orders, it also includes the halt in supplying oil and internet to them, which means that from now on any damage that occurs will have no connection to any resources in Thailand."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, according to renowned climate scientist Prof James Hansen, who said the international 2C target is "dead." A new analysis by Hansen and colleagues concludes that both the impact of recent cuts in sun-blocking shipping pollution, which has raised temperatures, and the sensitivity of the climate to increasing fossil fuels emissions are greater than thought. The group's results are at the high end of estimates from mainstream climate science but cannot be ruled out, independent experts said. If correct, they mean even worse extreme weather will come sooner and there is a greater risk of passing global tipping points, such as the collapse of the critical Atlantic ocean currents. Hansen, at Columbia University in the US, sounded the alarm to the general public about climate breakdown in testimony he gave to a UN congressional committee in 1988. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) defined a scenario which gives a 50% chance to keep warming under 2C -- that scenario is now impossible," he said. "The 2C target is dead, because the global energy use is rising, and it will continue to rise." The new analysis said global heating is likely to reach 2C by 2045, unless solar geoengineering is deployed. [...] In the new study, published in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, Hansen's team said: "Failure to be realistic in climate assessment and failure to call out the fecklessness of current policies to stem global warming is not helpful to young people." [...] Hansen said the point of no return could be avoided, based on the growing conviction of young people that they should follow the science. He called for a carbon fee and dividend policy, where all fossil fuels are taxed and the revenue returned to the public. "The basic problem is that the waste products of fossil fuels are still dumped in the air free of charge," he said. He also backed the rapid development of nuclear power. Hansen also supported research on cooling the Earth using controversial geoengineering techniques to block sunlight, which he prefers to call "purposeful global cooling." He said: "We do not recommend implementing climate interventions, but we suggest that young people not be prohibited from having knowledge of the potential and limitations of purposeful global cooling in their toolbox." Political change is needed to achieve all these measures, Hansen said: "Special interests have assumed far too much power in our political systems. In democratic countries the power should be with the voter, not with the people who have the money. That requires fixing some of our democracies, including the US."

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Meta's metaverse ambitions face a decisive year in 2025, with Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth warning employees that the project could become either "a legendary misadventure" or prove visionary, Business Insider is reporting, citing an internal memo. Bosworth called for increased sales and user engagement for Meta's mixed reality products, noting the company plans to launch several AI-powered wearable devices. The tech giant's Reality Labs division, which develops virtual and augmented reality products, reported record revenue of $1.08 billion in the fourth quarter but posted its largest-ever quarterly loss of $4.97 billion. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff the company's AI-powered smart glasses, which sold over 1 million units in 2024, marked a "great start" but would not significantly impact the business. The Reality Labs unit has accumulated losses of approximately $60 billion since 2020.

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Scientists have demonstrated control over a newly theorized type of magnetism, known as altermagnetism, by manipulating nanoscale magnetic whirlpools in an ultra-thin wafer of manganese telluride. "Our experimental work has provided a bridge between theoretical concepts and real-life realization, which hopefully illuminates a path to developing altermagnetic materials for practical applications," says University of Nottingham physicist Oliver Amin, who led the research with PhD student Alfred Dal Din. From the report: Using a device that accelerates electrons to blinding speeds, a team led by researchers from the University of Nottingham showered an ultra-thin wafer of manganese telluride with X-rays of different polarizations, revealing changes on a nanometer scale reflecting magnetic activity unlike anything seen before. [...] More recently, a third configuration of particles in ferromagnetic materials was theorized. In what's referred to as altermagnetism, particles are arranged in a canceling fashion like antiferromagnetism, yet rotated just enough to allow for confined forces on a nanoscale -- not enough to pin a grocery list to your freezer, but with discrete properties that engineers are keen to manipulate into storing data or channeling energy. "Altermagnets consist of magnetic moments that point antiparallel to their neighbors," explains University of Nottingham physicist Peter Wadley. "However, each part of the crystal hosting these tiny moments is rotated with respect to its neighbors. This is like antiferromagnetism with a twist! But this subtle difference has huge ramifications." Experiments have since confirmed the existence of this in-between 'alter' magnetism. However, none had directly demonstrated it was possible to manipulate its tiny magnetic vortices in ways that might prove useful. Wadley and his colleagues demonstrated that a sheet of manganese telluride just a few nanometers thick could be distorted in ways that intentionally created distinct magnetic whirlpools on the wafer's surface. "Our experimental work has provided a bridge between theoretical concepts and real-life realization, which hopefully illuminates a path to developing altermagnetic materials for practical applications," says University of Nottingham physicist Oliver Amin. This research was published in the journal Nature.

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The United States Postal Service has suspended all package shipments from China and Hong Kong following President Donald Trump's decision to eliminate the de minimis exemption, which previously allowed small packages under $800 to enter the U.S. without import duties. "The move could potentially create chaos and confusion across the online shopping industry, as well as make purchases more expensive for consumers, especially because many global manufacturers and internet sellers are located in China," reports Wired. "Shoppers are now on the hook not only for the additional 10 percent tariff, but also whatever original tax rate their products were exempted from until Tuesday." From the report: Cindy Allen, who has worked in international trade for over 30 years and is the CEO of the consulting firm Trade Force Multiplier, gave WIRED an example of how much additional cost the tariff will incur: A woman's dress made of synthetic fiber shipped from China through de minimis will now be subject to a regular 16 percent tariff, a 7.5 percent Section 301 duty specifically for goods from China, the new 10 percent tariff required by Trump, additional processing fees and customs brokerage fees, and perhaps increased brokering and handling costs due to the sudden change in rules. "Will the dress that was $5 now cost $5.50 or $15?" says Allen. "That we don't know. It depends on how those retailers react and change their business models." In the immediate term, clearing customs will become a challenge for most ecommerce companies. Their long-term concern, though, is the potential impact on profitability. The appeal of Temu and Shein and similar Chinese ecommerce companies is how affordable their products are. If that changes, the ecommerce landscape and consumer behavior in the US may change significantly as well. While the USPS has announced the suspension of accepting any parcels from China and Hong Kong, CBP hasn't elaborated on how the agency will enforce Trump's new tariffs other than saying in an announcement that it will reject de minimis exemption requests from China starting today.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: For all motorists, but perhaps the Ferrari-collecting rocker Rod Stewart in particular, it will be music to the ears: researchers have developed a road surface that heals when it cracks, preventing potholes without a need for human intervention. The international team devised a self-healing bitumen that mends cracks as they form by fusing the asphalt back together. In laboratory tests, pieces of the material repaired small fractures within an hour of them first appearing. "When you close the cracks you prevent potholes forming in the future and extend the lifespan of the road," said Dr Jose Norambuena-Contreras, a researcher on the project at Swansea University. "We can extend the surface lifespan by 30%." Potholes typically start from small surface cracks that form under the weight of traffic. These allow water to seep into the road surface, where it causes more damage through cycles of freezing and thawing. Bitumen, the sticky black substance used in asphalt, becomes susceptible to cracking when it hardens through oxidation. To make the self-healing bitumen, the researchers mixed in tiny porous plant spores soaked in recycled oils. When the road surface is compressed by passing traffic, it squeezes the spores, which release their oil into any nearby cracks. The oils soften the bitumen enough for it to flow and seal the cracks. Working with researchers at King's College London and Google Cloud, the scientists used machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to model the movement of organic molecules in bitumen and simulate the behaviour of the self-healing material to see how it responded to newly formed cracks. The material could be scaled up for use on British roads in a couple of years, the researchers believe. Google published a blog post with more information about the "self-healing" asphalt.

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OpenAI is partnering with the California State University (CSU) system to bring ChatGPT Edu to the 23-campus community of 500,000 students, calling it the "largest implementation of ChatGPT by any single organization or company anywhere in the world." Fortune reports: As part of ChatGPT Edu, members of the CSU community will get special access to ChatGPT-4o and advanced research and analysis capabilities. The partnership allows schools to create customizable AI chatbots for any project, like a campus IT help desk bot, financial aid assistant, chemistry tutor, or orientation buddy. CSU also plans to introduce free AI skills training for its students, faculty, and staff as well as connect students with AI-related apprenticeship programs. CSU joins a number of other schools with ChatGPT Edu partnerships, including Arizona State University (AS), The University of Texas, Austin, University of Oxford, Columbia University, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Apple has announced Apple Invites, a new iPhone app designed to help you manage your social life. Engadget reports: The idea behind Apple Invites is that you can create and share custom invitations for any event or occasion. You can use your own photos or backgrounds in the app as an image for the invite. Image Playground is built into Invites and you can use that to generate an images for the invitation instead. Other Apple Intelligence features such as Writing Tools are baked in as well, in case you need a hand to craft the right message for your invitation. The tech giant also said it was increasing AppleCare+ subscription prices for the iPhone, "raising the cost by 50 cents for all models in the United States," according to MacRumors. From the report: Standard AppleCare+ for the iPhone 16 models is now priced at $10.49 per month, for example, up from the prior $9.99 per month price. The 50 cent price increase applies to all available AppleCare+ plans for Apple's current iPhone lineup, and it includes both the standard plan and the Theft and Loss plan. The two-year AppleCare+ subscription prices have not changed, nor have the service fees and deductibles. The increased prices are only applicable when paying for AppleCare+ on a monthly basis. Apple has not raised the prices of AppleCare+ subscription plans for the iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch.

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Google has updated its public AI principles page to remove a pledge to not build AI for weapons or surveillance. TechCrunch reports: Asked for comment, the company pointed TechCrunch to a new blog post on "responsible AI." It notes, in part, "we believe that companies, governments, and organizations sharing these values should work together to create AI that protects people, promotes global growth, and supports national security." Google's newly updated AI principles note the company will work to "mitigate unintended or harmful outcomes and avoid unfair bias," as well as align the company with "widely accepted principles of international law and human rights." Further reading: Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code of Conduct

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An anonymous reader writes: Low quality books that appear to be AI generated are making their way into public libraries via their digital catalogs, forcing librarians who are already understaffed to either sort through a functionally infinite number of books to determine what is written by humans and what is generated by AI, or to spend taxpayer dollars to provide patrons with information they don't realize is AI-generated. Public libraries primarily use two companies to manage and lend ebooks: Hoopla and OverDrive, the latter of which people may know from its borrowing app, Libby. Both companies have a variety of payment options for libraries, but generally libraries get access to the companies' catalog of books and pay for customers to be able to borrow that book, with different books having different licenses and prices. A key difference is that with OverDrive, librarians can pick and choose which books in OverDrive's catalog they want to give their customers the option of borrowing. With Hoopla, librarians have to opt into Hoopla's entire catalog, then pay for whatever their customers choose to borrow from that catalog. The only way librarians can limit what Hoopla books their customers can borrow is by setting a limit on the price of books. For example, a library can use Hoopla but make it so their customers can only borrow books that cost the library $5 per use. On one hand, Hoopla's gigantic catalog, which includes ebooks, audio books, and movies, is a selling point because it gives librarians access to more for cheaper price. On the other hand, making librarians buy into the entire catalog means that a customer looking for a book about how to diet for a healthier liver might end up borrowing Fatty Liver Diet Cookbook: 2000 Days of Simple and Flavorful Recipes for a Revitalized Liver. The book was authored by Magda Tangy, who has no online footprint, and who has an AI-generated profile picture on Amazon, where her books are also for sale. Note the earring that is only on one ear and seems slightly deformed. A spokesperson for deepfake detection company Reality Defender said that according to their platform, the headshot is 85 percent likely to be AI-generated. [...] It is impossible to say exactly how many AI-generated books are included in Hoopla's catalog, but books that appeared to be AI-generated were not hard to find for most of the search terms I tried on the platform. "This type of low quality, AI generated content, is what we at 404 Media and others have come to call AI slop," writes Emanuel Maiberg. "Librarians, whose job it is in part to curate what books their community can access, have been dealing with similar problems in the publishing industry for years, and have a different name for it: vendor slurry." "None of the librarians I talked to suggested the AI-generated content needed to be banned from Hoopla and libraries only because it is AI-generated. It might have its place, but it needs to be clearly labeled, and more importantly, provide borrowers with quality information." Sarah Lamdan, deputy director of the American Library Association, told 404 Media: "Platforms like Hoopla should offer libraries the option to select or omit materials, including AI materials, in their collections. AI books should be well-identified in library catalogs, so it is clear to readers that the books were not written by human authors. If library visitors choose to read AI eBooks, they should do so with the knowledge that the books are AI-generated."

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The DeepComputing RISC-V Mainboard that Framework announced last year for its 13-inch laptops is now available for $199. Liliputing reports: If you already have a Framework Laptop 13 with an Intel or AMD motherboard, the new board is a drop-in replacement. But if you don't have a Framework Laptop you can also use the mainboard as a standalone computer: Framework sells a $39 Cooler Master case that effectively turns its mainboards into mini desktop computers. The RISC-V Mainboard comes from a partnership between Framework and DeepComputing, the Chinese company behind the DC-ROMA laptops, which were some of the first notebook computers to ship with RISC-V processors. The board features a StarFive JH7110 processor, which is a 1.5 GHz quad-core chip featuring SiFive U74 RISC-V CPU cores and Imagination BXE-4-32 graphics, 8GB of onboard RAM, and a a 64GB SD card for storage (there's also support for an optional eMMC module, but you'll need to bring your own). Since the board is designed to fit in existing laptop frames, it's the same size and shape as AMD or Intel models and has four USB ports in the same locations. But these ports are a little less versatile than the ones you might find on other Framework Laptop 13 Mainboards [...]. There's also a 3.5mm audio jack. You can check out the new board via the Framework Marketplace. Further reading: Late last year, Framework CEO Nirav Patel delivered one of the best live demos we've ever seen at a tech conference -- modifying a Framework Laptop from x86 to RISC-V live on stage.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has been demanding an overhaul of a $42.45 billion broadband deployment program, and now his telecom policy director has been chosen to lead the federal agency in charge of the grant money. "Congratulations to my Telecom Policy Director, Arielle Roth, for being nominated to lead NTIA," Cruz wrote last night, referring to President Trump's pick to lead the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Roth's nomination is pending Senate approval. Roth works for the Senate Commerce Committee, which is chaired by Cruz. "Arielle led my legislative and oversight efforts on communications and broadband policy with integrity, creativity, and dedication," Cruz wrote. Shortly after Trump's election win, Cruz called for an overhaul of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, which was created by Congress in November 2021 and is being implemented by the NTIA. Biden-era leaders of the NTIA developed rules for the program and approved initial funding plans submitted by every state and territory, but a major change in approach could delay the distribution of funds. Cruz previously accused the NTIA of "technology bias" because the agency prioritized fiber over other types of technology. He said Congress would review BEAD for "imposition of statutorily-prohibited rate regulation; unionized workforce and DEI labor requirements; climate change assessments; excessive per-location costs; and other central planning mandates." Roth criticized the BEAD implementation at a Federalist Society event in June 2024. "Instead of prioritizing connecting all Americans who are currently unserved to broadband, the NTIA has been preoccupied with attaching all kinds of extralegal requirements on BEAD and, to be honest, a woke social agenda, loading up all kinds of burdens that deter participation in the program and drive up costs," she said. Municipal broadband networks and fiber networks in general could get less funding under the new plans. Roth is "expected to change the funding conditions that currently include priority access for government-owned networks" and "could revisit decisions like the current preference for fiber," Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Congress defined priority broadband projects under BEAD as those that "ensure that the network built by the project can easily scale speeds over time to meet the evolving connectivity needs of households and businesses; and support the deployment of 5G, successor wireless technologies, and other advanced services." The Biden NTIA determined that only end-to-end fiber-optic architecture meet these criteria. "End-to-end fiber networks can be updated by replacing equipment attached to the ends of the fiber-optic facilities, allowing for quick and relatively inexpensive network scaling as compared to other technologies. Moreover, new fiber deployments will facilitate the deployment and growth of 5G and other advanced wireless services, which rely extensively on fiber for essential backhaul," the Biden NTIA said (PDF).

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