An anonymous reader quotes a report from VICE News: EVA AI, a platform allowing you to create and connect with your own AI partner, recently surveyed 2,000 men and found that 8 in 10 would consider marrying an AI girlfriend if it were legal. Not only that, but 83% of men also believe they could form a deep emotional bond with an AI girlfriend. What's even scarier is that a whopping 78% of men surveyed said they would consider creating a replica of their ex, and three-quarters would duplicate their current partner to create a "polished" version of them. "AI companionship allows people to be their authentic selves without fear of judgment," said Cale Jones, head of community growth at EVA AI. "It creates a safe space to explore thoughts, emotions, and desires that might feel too vulnerable to share in real life. The benefits extend far beyond the virtual world: one EVA AI user discovered her bisexuality through this platform -- something she previously felt too insecure to explore in real life."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), Meta is in talks to move its incorporation from Delaware to Texas or other states. Reuters reports: The social media giant has talked to Texas officials about the potential changes, WSJ said, adding that the discussions predate President Donald Trump's new administration. The paperwork change would not relocate its corporate headquarters. A Meta spokesperson said that it does not plan on shifting its corporate headquarters out of Menlo Park, California, but declined to comment on reincorporation when contacted by Reuters. Texas is perceived by some businesses as having a more favorable legal and regulatory environment, particularly in areas such as taxation and corporate governance, which can be attractive to companies looking to cut costs and streamline operations.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Swiss canton ("state") of Basel-Stadt fixed a tax flyer typo by buying the incorrect domain and setting up a redirect, avoiding a $100,000 reprint cost. TechCrunch reports: As Swiss news outlet SRF reports, the Basel tax administration printed fliers that were supposed to include a URL to file taxes online. However, the Swiss country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of ".ch" was omitted, leaving just the Basel-Stadt suffix of ".bs" -- which just happens to be the ccTLD of the Bahamas. A spokesperson for Basel-Stadt's department of finance told SRF that it would cost the equivalent of around $100,000 to print and send out a batch of new flyers, so it was a no-brainer to fork out $1,000 to administer the new domain instead.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: What exactly is wrong with the batteries in some of Google's Pixel 4a phones still out there? Google has not really said. Now that many Pixel 4a owners are experiencing drastically reduced battery life after an uncommon update for an end-of-life phone, they are facing a strange array of options with no path back to the phone they had. Google's "Pixel 4a Battery Performance Program," announced in early January, told owners that an automatic update would, for some "Impacted Devices," reduce their battery's runtime and charging performance. "Impacted" customers could choose, within one year's time, between three "appeasement" options: sending in the phone for a battery replacement, getting $50 or the equivalent in their location, or receiving $100 in credit in the Google Store toward a new Pixel phone. No safety or hazard issue was mentioned in the support document. Google did not explain why only certain devices were affected, but Hector Martin -- of Asahi Linux on Apple silicon, open source Kinect drivers, and other fame -- took apart the update's binary kernel and has some guesses. Martin points out that the updated Pixel 4a kernel has these interesting characteristics: - It seems to have been built by a Google engineer "on their personal machine, not the proper buildsystem." -- There is no source provided, as would normally be required of a Linux kernel build, though it may only need to be provided on request under the GNU General Public License. - The maximum charge voltage of certain battery profiles changes from 4.44 volts to 3.95, which would mean batteries cannot charge to anywhere near their former potential. - There are two main battery profiles, with distinct "ATL" and "LSN" markers; Martin suggests they relate to Amperex Technology Limited and Lishen, manufacturers of battery cells. - LSN-tagged batteries assigned the "debug" profile can see capacity reduced from 3,080 milliamp hours (mAh) to 1,539 mAh. The big question is why Google pushed an automatic update to a phone from 2020. "No news or community reports have surfaced yet of Pixel 4a devices causing fires, or even simply failing to function, after four years," writes Ars' Kevin Purdy. "It's an automatic update with a strong fix, but for what?" Google's support page only states that the update will "improve the stability of their battery's performance."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has canceled a project to build advanced augmented reality glasses that would pair with its devices, Bloomberg reported Friday, marking the latest setback in its effort to create a headset that appeals to typical consumers. From the report: The company shuttered the program this week, according to people with knowledge of the move. The now-canceled product would have looked like normal glasses but include built-in displays and require a connection to a Mac, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the work wasn't public. The project had been seen as a potential way forward after the weak introduction of the Apple Vision Pro, a $3,499 model that was too cumbersome and pricey to catch on with consumers. The hope was to produce something that everyday users could embrace, but finding the right technology -- at the right cost -- has proven to be a challenge.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dell is the latest tech company to announce it's ending its hybrid and remote work policy. From a report: Starting March 3rd, Dell employees will have to show up in person five days a week. In an email obtained by Business Insider, CEO Michael Dell writes that 'all hybrid and remote team members who live near a Dell office will work in the office five days a week. We are retiring the hybrid policy effective that day.' "What we're finding is that for all the technology in the world, nothing is faster than the speed of human interaction. A thirty second conversation can replace an email back-and-forth that goes on for hours or even days," Dell writes. Despite this mandate, Dell also continues to sell remote work solutions, noting that remote work offers "benefits such as flexibility, reduced commute times, and cost savings for employees, while employers can access a broader talent pool, reduce overhead costs, and increase productivity."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google users have discovered that adding curse words to search queries disables the company's AI-powered overview feature. While Google's Gemini AI system typically avoids profanity, inserting expletives into search terms bypasses AI summaries and delivers traditional web results instead. Users can also disable AI overviews by adding "-ai" or other text strings after a minus sign to their queries.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI today launched o3-mini, a specialized AI reasoning model designed for STEM tasks that offers faster processing at lower costs compared to its predecessor o1-mini. The model, priced at $1.10 per million cached input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens, performs fact-checking before delivering results to reduce errors in technical domains like physics and programming, the Microsoft-backed startup said. (A million tokens are roughly 750,000 words) OpenAI claims that its tests showed o3-mini made 39% fewer major mistakes than o1-mini on complex problems while delivering responses 24% faster. The model will be available through ChatGPT with varying access levels -- free users get basic access while premium subscribers receive higher query limits and reasoning capabilities.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: At first blush, stock trading this week is hardly a paragon of the market-efficiency theory, an oft-romanticized idea in Economics 101. After all, big equity gauges plunged on Monday, spurred by fears of an AI model released a week earlier, before swiftly rebounding. A fresh academic paper suggests the rise of passive investing may be fueling these kind of fragile market moves. According to a study to be published in the prestigious American Economic Review, evidence is building that active managers are slow to scoop up stocks en masse when prices move away from their intrinsic worth. Thanks to this lethargic trading behavior and the relentless boom in benchmark-tracking index funds, the impact of each trade on prices gets amplified, explaining how sell orders, like on Monday perhaps, can induce broader equity gyrations.ÂAs a result, the financial landscape is proving less dynamic and more volatile in the era of Big Passive, according to authors at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, the Stockholm School of Economics and the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than 8,000 of the world's most-cited scientists have at least one retraction, according to a database that links retractions to top-cited papers. From a report: An analysis of the database, published in PLOS Biology on 30 January, attempts to map the scale of retractions and understand how they manifest. "Not every retraction is a sign of misconduct," says John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University in California, who led the study. "But it is important to have a bird's eye view, across all scientific fields, [of] people who are most influential in science." Retracted papers had a higher number of self-citations than did non-retracted papers. And papers with higher co-authorship numbers were more likely to be retracted than those with fewer co-authors. [...] In the study, the authors split the most-cited scientists into two groups. The first featured the 217,097 authors who were among the top 2% most-cited in their fields over their careers. The second group comprised the 223,152 scientists who made up the top 2% for citation impact in 2023, the most recent year for which there were data. The authors found that 8,747 (4%) of the most highly cited researchers in 2023 had at least one retraction during their career, as did 7,083 (3.3%) of the researchers who were most-cited over their careers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DeepSeek has emerged as the leading open-source AI model developer, surpassing Meta's Llama and Mistral, after releasing its latest model V3 with breakthrough cost efficiencies, research and consultancy firm SemiAnalysis reported on Friday. The Chinese startup, backed by hedge fund High-Flyer, reached this milestone through innovations in Multi-head Latent Attention technology, which cut inference costs by 93.3% versus standard methods. Despite offering services below cost to gain market share, its performance matches or exceeds OpenAI's GPT-4.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A study has found microplastic and nanoplastic pollution to be significantly higher in placentas from premature births than in those from full-term births. From a report: The levels were much higher than previously detected in blood, suggesting the tiny plastic particles were accumulating in the placenta. But the higher average levels found in the shorter pregnancies were a "big surprise" for the researchers, as longer terms could be expected to lead to more accumulation. Preterm birth is the leading cause of infant death worldwide, and the reasons for about two-thirds of all preterm births were unknown, said Dr Enrico Barrozo, of Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, US. The established link between air pollution and millions of premature births had spurred the research team to investigate plastic pollution. The new study only demonstrates an association between microplastics and premature births. Further research is needed in cell cultures and animal models to determine if the link is causal. Microplastics are known to cause inflammation in human cells, and inflammation is one of the factors that prompts the start of labour.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Taiwan's digital ministry said on Friday that government departments should not use Chinese startup DeepSeek's artificial intelligence (AI) service, saying that as the product is from China it represents a security concern. Democratically-governed Taiwan has long been wary of Chinese tech given Beijing's sovereignty claims over the island and its military and political threats against the government in Taipei. In a statement, Taiwan's Ministry of Digital Affairs said that government departments are not allowed to use DeepSeek's AI service to "prevent information security risks". "DeepSeek's AI service is a Chinese product, and its operation involves cross-border transmission and information leakage and other information security concerns, and is a product that jeopardises the country's information security," the ministry said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has filed an emergency motion [PDF] for a stay in the Google antitrust trial, warning that it faces "clear and substantial irreparable harm" if barred from participating in the case's remedies phase. The motion, filed on January 30, 2025, comes after Judge Amit Mehta denied Apple's request for limited intervention earlier in the week. Apple -- which makes more than $20 billion a year from Google to use the Android-maker's search engine on Safari -- argues that the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) proposed remedy -- which includes a prohibition on "any contract between Google and Apple in which there would be anything exchanged of value" --would prevent it from negotiating agreements that benefit millions of users. Without the ability to fully participate, Apple contends it will be left as a "mere spectator" while the government pursues restrictions that directly impact its business interests. The company asserts that intervention is necessary to develop evidence, participate in discovery, and cross-examine witnesses regarding its market role and incentives. Apple also seeks access to trial records while its appeal is pending, including witness lists, depositions, and discovery materials, to ensure it can respond effectively if granted party status.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nearly 100 journalists and other members of civil society using WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Meta, were targeted by spyware owned by Paragon, an Israeli maker of hacking software, the company alleged today. From a report: The journalists and other civil society members were being alerted of a possible breach of their devices, with WhatsApp telling the Guardian it had "high confidence" that the users in question had been targeted and "possibly compromised." The company declined to disclose where the journalists and members of civil society were based, including whether they were based in the US. The company said it had sent Paragon a "cease and desist" letter and that it was exploring its legal options. WhatsApp said the alleged attacks had been disrupted in December and that it was not clear how long the targets may have been under threat.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is charging business customers a $400 premium for Surface devices equipped with Intel's latest Core Ultra processors compared to models using Qualcomm's Arm-based chips, the company has disclosed. The Intel-powered Surface Pro tablet and Surface Laptop, starting at $1,499, come with a second-generation Core Ultra 5 processor featuring eight cores, 16GB of memory and 256GB storage. Comparable Qualcomm-based models begin at $1,099. The new Intel devices will be available to business customers from February 18, though versions with cellular connectivity will launch later. Consumer Surface devices will only be offered with Qualcomm processors. Microsoft also unveiled a USB 4 Dock supporting dual 4K displays and the Surface Hub 3, a conference room computer available in 50-inch or 85-inch touchscreen versions.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: A Canadian startup called Xanadu has built a new quantum computer it says can be easily scaled up to achieve the computational power needed to tackle scientific challenges ranging from drug discovery to more energy-efficient machine learning. Aurora is a "photonic" quantum computer, which means it crunches numbers using photonic qubits -- information encoded in light. In practice, this means combining and recombining laser beams on multiple chips using lenses, fibers, and other optics according to an algorithm. Xanadu's computer is designed in such a way that the answer to an algorithm it executes corresponds to the final number of photons in each laser beam. This approach differs from one used by Google and IBM, which involves encoding information in properties of superconducting circuits. Aurora has a modular design that consists of four similar units, each installed in a standard server rack that is slightly taller and wider than the average human. To make a useful quantum computer, "you copy and paste a thousand of these things and network them together," says Christian Weedbrook, the CEO and founder of the company. Ultimately, Xanadu envisions a quantum computer as a specialized data center, consisting of rows upon rows of these servers. This contrasts with the industry's earlier conception of a specialized chip within a supercomputer, much like a GPU. [...] Xanadu's 12 qubits may seem like a paltry number next to IBM's 1,121, but Tiwari says this doesn't mean that quantum computers based on photonics are running behind. In his opinion, the number of qubits reflects the amount of investment more than it does the technology's promise. [...] Xanadu's next goal is to improve the quality of the photons in the computer, which will ease the error correction requirements. "When you send lasers through a medium, whether it's free space, chips, or fiber optics, not all the information makes it from the start to the finish," he says. "So you're actually losing light and therefore losing information." The company is working to reduce this loss, which means fewer errors in the first place. Xanadu aims to build a quantum data center, with thousands of servers containing a million qubits, in 2029. The company published its work on chip design optimization and fabrication in the journal Nature.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

During the company's fourth-quarter earnings call Thursday, Intel co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus announced that Intel has decided to cancel its Falcon Shores AI chip. Instead, it'll opt to use it as an internal test chip while shifting focus to Jaguar Shores for AI data center solutions. TechCrunch reports: "AI data center ... is an attractive market for us," Holthaus said during the call. "[B]ut I am not happy with where we are today. We're not yet participating in the cloud-based AI data center market in a meaningful way ... One of the immediate actions I have taken is to simplify our roadmap and concentrate our resources." The focus instead will be on Jaguar Shores, which Holthaus called Intel's opportunity to "develop a system-level solution at rack scale ... to address the AI data center more broadly." Holthaus tempered expectations for Falcon Shores last month, when she implied that it was an "iterative" step over the company's previous dedicated AI data center chip, Gaudi 3. "One of the things that we've learned from Gaudi is, it's not enough to just deliver the silicon," Holthaus said during Thursday's earnings call. "Falcon Shores will help us in that process of working on the system, networking, memory -- all those component[s]. But what customers really want is that full-scale rack solution, and so we're able to get to that with Jaguar Shores." "As I think about our AI opportunity, my focus is on the problems our customers are trying to solve, most notably the need to lower the cost and increase the efficiency of compute," Holthaus said. "As such, a one-size-fits-all approach will not work, and I can see clear opportunities to leverage our core assets in new ways to drive the most compelling total cost of ownership across the continuum."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bipartisan group of legislators has reintroduced the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act of 2025, aiming to mandate AM radio in all new vehicles at no additional cost. Adweek reports: The AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act was first introduced in May 2023. It continued to take on new co-sponsors through the fall of 2024. It was reintroduced as the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act of 2025 with 62 cosponsors. Upper Midwest senators showing support for the bill include Sens. John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer R-North Dakota, and Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, DFL- Minnesota. If enacted, the bill would require the Department of Transportation to issue a rule requiring new vehicles to maintain access to broadcast AM radio at no additional cost to the consumer and provide small vehicle manufacturers at least four years after the date DOT issues the rule to comply. The act also requires automakers to inform consumers, during the period before the rule takes effect, that the vehicles do not maintain access to broadcast AM radio. "With 82 million Americans tuning in each month, AM radio delivers more than just emergency alerts," says the National Association of Broadcasters in a news release. "It connects communities through hyper-local content, including news, weather and diverse cultural programming," according to a news release from the National Association of Broadcasters."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At an all hands meeting inside Meta Thursday, the company's co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said he was increasingly careful about what he says internally at Meta. From a report: "Everything I say leaks. And it sucks, right?," Zuckerberg said. Meta made changes to the question-and-answer section of the company all hands meeting because of the leaks, Zuckerberg said, according to meeting audio obtained by 404 Media. "I want to be able to be able to talk about stuff openly, but I am also trying to like, well, we're trying to build stuff and create value in the world, not destroy value by talking about stuff that inevitably leaks," he said. So rather than take direct questions, the company used a "poll" system, where questions asked beforehand were voted on so that "main themes" of questions were addressed. "There are a bunch of things that I think are value-destroying for me to talk about, so I'm not going to talk about those. But I think it'll be good. You all can give us feedback later," he added. "Maybe it's just the nature of running a company at scale, but it's a little bit of a bummer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.