Author: zppiot
During her ten years as CEO of General Motors, Mary Barra has made big investments in software and driverless cars. At a 2021 trade show, Barra said, “At General Motors our vision for the future is a world with zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion. The key to unlock that vision is electrification.”But it was her promise three years ago to stop selling gas-powered vehicles by 2035 – and GM’s ability to live up to it – that will likely define her legacy.Asked if she anticipates GM will be all-electric by 2035, Barra replied, “For our light-duty vehicles, yes.…
Plan would reopen Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power Microsoft data centers – CBS News Watch CBS News The owner of Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant, the site of the worst commercial nuclear disaster in U.S. history, announced this week that it plans to spend $1.6 billion to restart its remaining functional reactor as part of a 20-year deal to provide power to Microsoft data centers. Michael George has more. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On #Plan #reopen #Mile #Island #nuclear #plant #power #Microsoft…
Apple’s iPhone 16 lineup hit stores in some 60 countries Friday, but the new phones have not exactly been flying off the shelves. Some analysts attribute tepid demand for the new phones to the fact that they were missing a key attribute out of the box: the tech giant’s much-hyped artificial intelligence features. “One of the key factors for the lower-than-expected demand for the iPhone 16 Pro series is that the major selling point, Apple Intelligence, is not available at launch alongside the iPhone 16 release,” TF International Securities Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote in a blogpost. Despite the company’s best efforts, the…
Large social media companies and streaming platforms — including Amazon, Alphabet-owned YouTube, Meta’s Facebook and TikTok — engage in a “vast surveillance of users” to profit off their personal information, endangering privacy and failing to adequately protect children, the Federal Trade Commission said Thursday.In a 129-page report, the agency examined how some of the world’s biggest tech players collect, use and sell people’s data, as well as the impact on children and teenagers. The findings highlight how the companies compile and store troves of info on both users and non-users, with some failing to comply with deletion requests, the FTC…
FTC report shows “staggering” amount of personal data collected on social media sites – CBS News Watch CBS News The FTC ordered nine companies to provide information on their data collection practices. According to the report, through targeted ads on and off these platforms, they gather information like marital status, annual income, health conditions and religious faith, but don’t provide easy ways for users to opt out of data collection. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On #FTC #report #shows #staggering #amount #personal #data #collected #social #media…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. AI models let robots carry out tasks in unfamiliar environments What’s new: It’s tricky to get robots to do things in environments they’ve never seen before. Typically, researchers need to train them on new data for every new place they encounter, which can become very time-consuming and expensive. Now, researchers have developed a series of AI models that teach robots to complete basic tasks in new surroundings without further training or fine-tuning. What they achieved: The five AI…
I was reminded of that fact when my littlest woke me for an early-morning cuddle, sneezed into my face, and wiped her nose on my pajamas. I booked her flu vaccine the next morning. In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the flu vaccine for everyone over six months old. This year, following the spread of the “bird flu” H5N1 in cattle, the CDC is especially urging dairy farm workers to get vaccinated. At the end of July, the organization announced a $10 million plan to deliver free flu shots to people who work with livestock.…
These models were deployed on Stretch, a robot consisting of a wheeled unit, a tall pole, and a retractable arm holding an iPhone, to test how successfully they were able to execute the tasks in new environments without additional tweaking. Although they achieved a completion rate of 74.4%, the researchers were able to increase this to a 90% success rate when they took images from the iPhone and the robot’s head-mounted camera, gave it to OpenAI’s recent GPT-4o LLM model, and asked it if the task had been completed successfully. If GPT-4o said no, they simply reset the robot, and…
And while many ducks and geese seem to be able to survive being infected with the virus, other bird species are much more vulnerable. H5N1 is especially deadly for chickens, for example—their heads swell, they struggle to breathe, and they experience extreme diarrhea. Seabirds like puffins and guillemots also seem to be especially susceptible to the virus, although it’s not clear why. Over the last few years, we’ve seen the worst ever outbreak of bird flu in birds. Millions of farmed birds have died, and an unknown number of wild birds—in the tens of thousands at the very least—have also…
Bird flu has been spreading in dairy cows in the US—and the scale is likely to be far worse than it looks. In addition, 14 human cases have been reported in the US since March. Both are worrying developments, say virologists, who fear that the country’s meager response to the virus is putting the entire world at risk of another pandemic. Infections in dairy cattle, first reported back in March, brought us a step closer to human spread. Since then, the situation has only deteriorated. The virus appears to have passed from cattle to poultry on multiple occasions, and worse,…
Anything from stray fireworks to lightning strikes can start a wildfire. While it’s natural for many ecosystems to see some level of fire activity, the hotter, drier conditions brought on by climate change are fueling longer fire seasons with larger fires that burn more land. This means that the need to spot wildfires earlier is becoming ever more crucial, and some groups are turning to technology to help. My colleague James Temple just wrote about a new effort from Google to fund an AI-powered wildfire-spotting satellite constellation. Read his full story for the details, and in the meantime, let’s dig…
Craig Newmark, the founder of online classified-ads site Craigslist, thinks the U.S. has a cybersecurity problem. The entrepreneur turned philanthropist has pledged to donate $100 million to help safeguard the country from potential future cyberattacks, the Wall Street Journal first reported. Newmark will allocate $50 million to protect infrastructure, like power grids, from cyberattacks, including from foreign nations. The other half of his donation will be put toward educating the general public about how to safeguard their personal information, according to the report. Newmark, 71, retired from the company he founded in 2018. “The country is under attack,” Newmark told the Wall…
More than 120 bills related to regulating artificial intelligence are currently floating around the US Congress. This flood of bills is indicative of the desperation Congress feels to keep up with the rapid pace of technological improvements. Because of the way Congress works, the majority of these bills will never make it into law. But simply taking a look at them all can give us insight into policymakers’ current preoccupations: where they think the dangers are, what each party is focusing on, and more broadly, what vision the US is pursuing when it comes to AI and how it should…
Electric vehicles raise safety concerns as to whether guardrails can handle car’s excess weight – CBS News Watch CBS News Guardrails on U.S. roads are typically tested against vehicles weighing up to 5,000 lbs. However, many electric vehicles weigh up to 30% more than that, raising safety concerns on whether guardrails would hold up in a collision. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On #Electric #vehicles #raise #safety #concerns #guardrails #handle #cars #excess #weight
Avoiding mandates is a practical matter for the House committee. “Republicans don’t go in for mandates for the most part. They generally aren’t going to go for that. So we would have a hard time getting support,” says Vaughan. “We’ve heard concerns about stifling innovation, and that’s not the approach that we want to take.” When MIT Technology Review asked about the origin of these concerns, they were attributed to unidentified “third parties.” And fears of slowing innovation don’t just come from the republican side. “What’s most important to me is that the United States of America is establishing aggressive…
Instagram rolling out protected accounts for people under 18 – CBS News Watch CBS News Instagram announced Tuesday that it will be rolling out new protected accounts for people under 18. The accounts will automatically be private and can only receive messages from people they follow. Jo Ling Kent spoke with parents and Meta’s safety chief about the changes. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On #Instagram #rolling #protected #accounts #people