Technology News

  • This week’s new entertainment releases include Taylor Swift's “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” a glossy look at opioid addiction with the movie “Pain Hustlers” starring Emily Blunt, Chris Evans and Andy Garcia, and the streaming horror flick “Five Nights at Freddy’s.” There's also Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey co-starring in "Fellow Travelers" as two men whose love story stretches across the cultural and political milestones in U.S. history. And there's a documentary on the duo Milli Vanilli that examines one of music’s biggest lip-syncing scandals and Apple TV+ has a new family friendly animated series from Dreamworks called “CURSES!” in time for Halloween.

    October 27, 2023
  • As schools across the country debate banning AI chatbots, some math and computer science teachers are embracing them as just another tool. Artificial intelligence can serve as a tutor, giving a student who is struggling with a problem immediate feedback. It can help a teacher plan math lessons, or write math problems geared toward different levels of instruction. It can show new computer programmers sample code, allowing them to skip over the chore of learning to write basic code.

    October 24, 2023
  • Malaysia’s government says it will allow Lynas Rare Earths to continue to import and process rare earths until March 2026. Science Minister Chang Lih Kang said licensing conditions that called for the Australian miner to halt all activities producing radioactive waste have been lifted. That came after Lynas proposed a new technology to extract radioactive elements from the waste it produces. The Atomic Energy Licensing Board said Lynas' proposal was feasible. Chang said Malaysia had not softened its stance but considered it a win-win situation. Lynas has been operating in Malaysia since 2012, its first plant outside China producing minerals that are crucial to high-tech manufacturing.

    October 24, 2023
  • Tens of thousands of people, many of them Chinese, have been caught up in cyber scams based in Southeast Asia. Local and Chinese authorities have netted thousands of people in a crackdown on such schemes, but experts say they are failing to root out the local elites and criminal networks that are running the scams. When scam operations are shut down in one place they often just resurface elsewhere. The problem is an embarrassment for Beijing and is discouraging ordinary Chinese from traveling to Southeast Asia out of concern they might be duped or kidnapped and trapped in a cyber scam scheme.

    October 23, 2023
  • The White House says the dozens of U.S. technology hubs President Joe Biden is announcing will help communities across the country become centers of innovation critical to its competitiveness. Biden is designating 31 technology hubs that reach 32 states and Puerto Rico. The tech hubs are designed to help spur innovation in industries concentrated in these areas and to create jobs. The Democratic president announced the tech hubs Monday. The tech hubs are the result of a process the Commerce Department launched in May for cities to share $500 million in grants. The hubs tie into Biden's economic message that people should able to find good jobs wherever they live.

    October 23, 2023
  • Federal prosecutors have expanded investigations into Tesla beyond the electric vehicle maker’s partially automated driving systems, and they have issued subpoenas for information instead of simply requesting it. The company disclosed in a Monday regulatory filing that the Department of Justice is looking into “personal benefits, related parties, vehicle range and personnel decisions” without giving details. Legal experts say that the filing indicates that prosecutors may be investigating CEO Elon Musk, and whether the company has been candid in describing the features of its vehicles. Tesla didn't respond to a request for comment.

    October 23, 2023
  • A California business owner will spend a year in federal prison for sending more than 200 vile online messages to a father whose daughter was killed in a Florida school massacre. James Catalano of Fresno must also serve three years probation and undergo mental health treatment after pleading guilty to cyberstalking Fred Guttenberg. Guttenberg has become an outspoken advocate for stronger gun laws after his 14-year-old daughter Jaime was murdered at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. Guttenberg said that Friday's sentencing sends a message to others who would send similar messages to the relatives of gun massacre victims. Attorneys for the 62-year-old Catalano did not return a call Monday seeking comment.

    October 23, 2023
  • Ever wonder how Homo sapiens got so smart? How come we developed actual language when all the other animals didn’t? How about what first made a nematode turn its body in a different direction? Or……

    October 23, 2023
  • Two New York hospitals that were hit with a cyberattack have resumed admitting emergency patients after shutting down their computer systems to investigate. Ambulances were diverted from HealthAlliance Hospital in Kingston and the affiliated Margaretville Hospital in Margaretville last week due to a cyberattack that hit the two facilities as well as Mountainside Residential Care Center, a skilled nursing facility. Hospital officials say the ambulance diversion ended Saturday night and the hospitals have resumed admitting patients. Emergency stroke patients will still temporarily be taken to other area hospitals. The investigation continues into the source of the attack.

    October 23, 2023
  • Mark Barlet founded AbleGamers in 2004. It’s a nonprofit that works to combat social isolation among people with disabilities using “the power of video games.” Most recently, his organization worked with Sony to help create its new Access controller, designed to make it easier for people with disabilities to play. Playing video games has long been a challenge for people with disabilities, chiefly because the standard controllers for the PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo can be difficult, or even impossible, to maneuver for people with limited mobility. But, thanks in part to advocacy organizations such as Barlet's, the industry is working on making video games more accessible.

    October 23, 2023
  • Chinese state media report that Foxconn, a Fortune 500 company known globally for making Apple iPhones, was recently subjected to searches by Chinese tax authorities. Such a move, reported Sunday, against a major Taiwanese enterprise in China is rare. Tensions have been high between China and Taiwan in recent years. China claims the democratic self-governing island as part of its own territory. Foxconn's founder, Terry Gou, said in August that he would be running as a candidate in Taiwan’s presidential elections, which will be held early next year. He then resigned from his seat on the board of Foxconn. Gou is seen as a China-friendly candidate.

    October 22, 2023
  • Paddy Cosgrave, the chief executive officer of a prominent European tech conference called Web Summit, resigned from his role on Saturday amid backlash for his public statements that suggested Israel was committing war crimes. A spokesperson for Web Summit, which organizes one of the world’s largest tech conferences every year, said in an e-mailed statement sent to The Associated Press that it will appoint a new CEO, and the conference will go ahead next month in Lisbon as planned. Cosgrave is the founder of Web Summit. In a statement released Saturday, he said that his personal comments “have become a distraction from the event, and our team, our sponsors, our startups and the people who attend.”

    October 21, 2023
  • India has successfully carried out the first of a series of key test flights after overcoming a technical glitch ahead of its planned mission to take astronauts into space in 2025. The space agency says the test involved launching a module to outer space and bringing it back to earth to test the spacecraft’s crew escape system. India's space agency chief S. Somanath said the test was carried out successfully on Saturday after overcoming a technical hitch. In September, India successfully launched its first space mission to study the sun. That was less than two weeks after a successful uncrewed landing near the south pole region of the moon making it the fourth country to achieve the milestone.

    October 21, 2023
  • Hospitals and health care systems are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to help summarize doctors’ notes and analyze health records. But a new study led by Stanford School of Medicine researchers cautions that popular chatbots are also perpetuating racist, debunked medical ideas. That is prompting concerns the tools could worsen health disparities for Black patients. Powered by AI models trained on troves of text pulled from the internet, chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google’s Bard responded to the researchers’ questions with a range of misconceptions and falsehoods about Black patients, according to the study published Friday in the academic journal Digital Medicine.

    October 20, 2023
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