Whether General Motors survives "depends in part on whether its bets on battery technology pay off," writes the Wall Street Journal.

At $33,600 the company's Chevy Equinox is one of the cheapest EVs in America (only $5,000 more than the gas-powered model). "But it also recently announced a novel type of battery that promises to be significantly cheaper, while still providing long range, due to be rolled out in 2028..." Like many of its competitors, GM has made huge investments in EV battery factories, and in production lines for the vehicles themselves, and it faces challenges in generating a return on investment in the short term... In the long run, however, GM's focus on creating a North American supply chain for batteries could prove savvy, says David Whiston, U.S. auto equities analyst at Morningstar. The company is investing $625 million to mine lithium in Nevada. It is working on sourcing every material and every part in its batteries domestically, down to the copper and aluminum foils that go into its cells, says [battery and sustainability lead Kurt] Kelty...

GM recently unveiled a new type of battery the company has been working on for a decade called lithium manganese-rich batteries, or LMR. These batteries combine the low cost of LFP batteries with the longer range of conventional, expensive lithium-ion batteries. What makes LMR batteries more affordable is that they use far less nickel, cobalt and other minerals that have become increasingly expensive. Instead, they use more manganese, a common element... The company's next initiative, says Kelty, is to further drive down the cost of its batteries by putting more of another common element, silicon, into them.
"If GM can continue to grow demand for its EVs, in a few years the rollout of its latest tech could give it a price and performance advantage..." the article points out. While the EV transition is happening more slowly than projected in the U.S., GM hiring Kelty is a bet that the country's current EV struggles are temporary, and that technologists like Kelty will help GM get past them. "When we reach cost parity with [internal combustion engine] vehicles, I think that's one big milestone," says Kelty. "When you get there, then you're really going to see the transition happen very quickly — and we're not that far away from it."

"Duolingo had been riding high," reports Fast Company, until CEO Luis von Ahn "announced on LinkedIn that the company is phasing out human contractors, looking for AI use in hiring and in performance reviews, and that 'headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work.'"

But then "facing heavy backlash online after unveiling its new AI-first policy", Duolingo's social media presence went dark last weekend. Duolingo even temporarily took down all its posts on TikTok (6.7 million followers) and Instagram (4.1 million followers) "after both accounts were flooded with negative feedback." Duolingo previously faced criticism for quietly laying off 10% of its contractor base and introducing some AI features in late 2023, but it barely went beyond a semi-viral post on Reddit. Now that Duolingo is cutting out all its human contractors whose work can technically be done by AI, and relying on more AI-generated language lessons, the response is far more pronounced. Although earlier TikTok videos are not currently visible, a Fast Company article from May 12 captured a flavor of the reaction:

The top comments on virtually every recent post have nothing to do with the video or the company — and everything to do with the company's embrace of AI. For example, a Duolingo TikTok video jumping on board the "Mama, may I have a cookie" trend saw replies like "Mama, may I have real people running the company" (with 69,000 likes) and "How about NO ai, keep your employees...."
And then... After days of silence, on Tuesday the company posted a bizarre video message on TikTok and Instagram, the meaning of which is hard to decipher... Duolingo's first video drop in days has the degraded, stuttering feel of a Max Headroom video made by the hackers at Anonymous. In it, a supposed member of the company's social team appears in a three-eyed Duo mask and black hoodie to complain about the corporate overlords ruining the empire the heroic social media crew built.
"But this is something Duolingo can't cute-post its way out of," Fast Company wrote on Tuesday, complaining the company "has not yet meaningfully addressed the policies that inspired the backlash against it... "

So the next video (Thursday) featured Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn himself, being confronted by that same hoodie-wearing social media rebel, who says "I'm making the man who caused this mess accountable for his behavior. I'm demanding answers from the CEO..." [Though the video carefully sidesteps the issue of replacing contractors with AI or how "headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work."] Rebel: First question. So are there going to be any humans left at this company?

CEO: Our employees are what make Duolingo so amazing. Our app is so great because our employees made it... So we're going to continue having employees, and not only that, we're actually going to be hiring more employees.

Rebel: How do we know that these aren't just empty promises? As long as you're in charge, we could still be shuffled out once the media fire dies down. And we all know that in terms of automation, CEOs should be the first to go.

CEO: AI is a fundamental shift. It's going to change how we all do work — including me. And honestly, I don't really know what's going to happen.

But I want us, as a company, to have our workforce prepared by really knowing how to use AI so that we can be more efficient with it.

Rebel: Learning a foreign language is literally about human connection. How is that even possible with AI-first?

CEO: Yes, language is about human connection, and it's about people. And this is the thing about AI. AI will allow us to reach more people, and to teach more people. I mean for example, it took us about 10 years to develop the first 100 courses on Duolingo, and now in under a year, with the help of AI and of course with humans reviewing all the work, we were able to release another 100 courses in less than a year.

Rebel: So do you regret posting this memo on LinkedIn.

CEO: Honestly, I think I messed up sending that email. What we're trying to do is empower our own employees to be able to achieve more and be able to have way more content to teach better and reach more people all with the help of AI.
Returning to where it all started, Duolingo's CEO posted again on LinkedIn Thursday with "more context" for his vision. It still emphasizes the company's employees while sidestepping contractors replaced by AI. But it puts a positive spin on how "headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work." I've always encouraged our team to embrace new technology (that's why we originally built for mobile instead of desktop), and we are taking that same approach with AI. By understanding the capabilities and limitations of AI now, we can stay ahead of it and remain in control of our own product and our mission.

To be clear: I do not see AI as replacing what our employees do (we are in fact continuing to hire at the same speed as before). I see it as a tool to accelerate what we do, at the same or better level of quality. And the sooner we learn how to use it, and use it responsibly, the better off we will be in the long run. My goal is for Duos to feel empowered and prepared to use this technology.

No one is expected to navigate this shift alone. We're developing workshops and advisory councils, and carving out dedicated experimentation time to help all our teams learn and adapt. People work at Duolingo because they want to solve big problems to improve education, and the people who work here are what make Duolingo successful. Our mission isn't changing, but the tools we use to build new things will change. I remain committed to leading Duolingo in a way that is consistent with our mission to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available.
"The backlash to Duolingo is the latest evidence that 'AI-first' tends to be a concept with much more appeal to investors and managers than most regular people," notes Fortune: And it's not hard to see why. Generative AI is often trained on reams of content that may have been illegally accessed; much of its output is bizarre or incorrect; and some leaders in the field are opposed to regulations on the technology. But outside particular niches in entry-level white-collar work, AI's productivity gains have yet to materialize.

It's like "a USB-C port for AI applications..." according to the official documentation for MCP — "a standardized way to connect AI models to different data sources and tools."

And now Microsoft has "revealed plans to make MCP a native component of Windows," reports DevClass.com, "despite concerns over the security of the fast-expanding MCP ecosystem." In the context of Windows, it is easy to see the value of a standardised means of automating both built-in and third-party applications. A single prompt might, for example, fire off a workflow which queries data, uses it to create an Excel spreadsheet complete with a suitable chart, and then emails it to selected colleagues. Microsoft is preparing the ground for this by previewing new Windows features.

— First, there will be a local MCP registry which enables discovery of installed MCP servers.

— Second, built-in MCP servers will expose system functions including the file system, windowing, and the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

— Third, a new type of API called App Actions enables third-party applications to expose actions appropriate to each application, which will also be available as MCP servers so that these actions can be performed by AI agents. According to Microsoft, "developers will be able to consume actions developed by other relevant apps," enabling app-to-app automation as well as use by AI agents.

MCP servers are a powerful concept but vulnerable to misuse. Microsoft corporate VP David Weston noted seven vectors of attack, including cross-prompt injection where malicious content overrides agent instructions, authentication gaps because "MCP's current standards for authentication are immature and inconsistently adopted," credential leakage, tool poisoning from "unvetted MCP servers," lack of containment, limited security review in MCP servers, supply chain risks from rogue MCP servers, and command injection from improperly validated inputs. According to Weston, "security is our top priority as we expand MCP capabilities."
Security controls planned by Microsoft (according to the article):

• A proxy to mediate all MCP client-server interactions. This will enable centralized enforcement of policies and consent, as well as auditing and a hook for security software to monitor actions.
• A baseline security level for MCP servers to be allowed into the Windows MCP registry. This will include code-signing, security testing of exposed interfaces, and declaration of what privileges are required.
• Runtime isolation through what Weston called "isolation and granular permissions."

MCP was introduced by Anthropic just 6 months ago, the article notes, but Microsoft has now joined the official MCP steering committee, "and is collaborating with Anthropic and others on an updated authorization specification as well as a future public registry service for MCP servers."

Wednesday Google security researchers published a preprint demonstrating that 2048-bit RSA encryption "could theoretically be broken by a quantum computer with 1 million noisy qubits running for one week," writes Google's security blog.

"This is a 20-fold decrease in the number of qubits from our previous estimate, published in 2019... " The reduction in physical qubit count comes from two sources: better algorithms and better error correction — whereby qubits used by the algorithm ("logical qubits") are redundantly encoded across many physical qubits, so that errors can be detected and corrected... [Google's researchers found a way to reduce the operations in a 2024 algorithm from 1000x more than previous work to just 2x. And "On the error correction side, the key change is tripling the storage density of idle logical qubits by adding a second layer of error correction."]

Notably, quantum computers with relevant error rates currently have on the order of only 100 to 1000 qubits, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently released standard PQC algorithms that are expected to be resistant to future large-scale quantum computers. However, this new result does underscore the importance of migrating to these standards in line with NIST recommended timelines.
The article notes that Google started using the standardized version of ML-KEM once it became available, both internally and for encrypting traffic in Chrome...

"The initial public draft of the NIST internal report on the transition to post-quantum cryptography standards states that vulnerable systems should be deprecated after 2030 and disallowed after 2035. Our work highlights the importance of adhering to this recommended timeline."

Valve's SteamOS 3.7.8 update brings official support for AMD-powered handhelds like Lenovo's Legion Go and Asus' ROG Ally, along with a new "Steam OS Compatible" library tab and key bug fixes. Other features include a battery charge limit, updated graphics drivers, and a shift to Plasma 6.2.5. Polygon reports: Valve outlines two requirements for the third-party devices not explicitly named in the update to run SteamOS on the handheld: they must be AMD-powered and have an NVMe SSD. Specific instructions for installing the operating system have been updated and listed here.

Before this huge update, players had to use an alternative like Bazzite to achieve a similar SteamOS experience on their devices. The new update also piggybacks off of Valve expanding the Steam Deck Verified categorization system to "any device running SteamOS that's not a Steam Deck" in mid-May. To make matters sweeter, a SteamOS-powered version of the Lenovo Legion Go S is scheduled to release on May 25. You can learn more about SteamOS 3.7.8 here.

Google's new AI video tool, Veo 3, is being used to create hyperrealistic videos that are now flooding the internet, terrifying viewers "with a sense that real and fake have become hopelessly blurred," reports Axios. From the report: Unlike OpenAI's video generator Sora, released more widely last December, Google DeepMind's Veo 3 can include dialogue, soundtracks and sound effects. The model excels at following complex prompts and translating detailed descriptions into realistic videos. The AI engine abides by real-world physics, offers accurate lip-syncing, rarely breaks continuity and generates people with lifelike human features, including five fingers per hand. According to examples shared by Google and from users online, the telltale signs of synthetic content are mostly absent.

In one viral example posted on X, filmmaker and molecular biologist Hashem Al-Ghaili shows a series of short films of AI-generated actors railing against their AI creators and prompts. Special effects technology, video-editing apps and camera tech advances have been changing Hollywood for many decades, but artificially generated films pose a novel challenge to human creators. In a promo video for Flow, Google's new video tool that includes Veo 3, filmmakers say the AI engine gives them a new sense of freedom with a hint of eerie autonomy. "It feels like it's almost building upon itself," filmmaker Dave Clark says.

Richard Speed writes via The Register: It was 30 years ago when the first public release of the Java programming language introduced the world to Write Once, Run Anywhere -- and showed devs something cuddlier than C and C++. Originally called "Oak," Java was designed in the early 1990s by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems. Initially aimed at digital devices, its focus soon shifted to another platform that was pretty new at the time -- the World Wide Web.

The language, which has some similarities to C and C++, usually compiles to a bytecode that can, in theory, run on any Java Virtual Machine (JVM). The intention was to allow programmers to Write Once Run Anywhere (WORA) although subtle differences in JVM implementations meant that dream didn't always play out in reality. This reporter once worked with a witty colleague who described the system as Write Once Test Everywhere, as yet another unexpected wrinkle in a JVM caused their application to behave unpredictably. However, the language soon became wildly popular, rapidly becoming the backbone of many enterprises. [...]

However, the platform's ubiquity has meant that alternatives exist to Oracle Java, and the language's popularity is undiminished by so-called "predatory licensing tactics." Over 30 years, Java has moved from an upstart new language to something enterprises have come to depend on. Yes, it may not have the shiny baubles demanded by the AI applications of today, but it continues to be the foundation for much of today's modern software development. A thriving ecosystem and a vast community of enthusiasts mean that Java remains more than relevant as it heads into its fourth decade.

Google's new AI Mode for Search, which is rolling out to everyone in the U.S., has sparked outrage among publishers, who call it "the definition of theft" for using content without fair compensation and without offering a true opt-out option. Internal documents revealed by Bloomberg earlier this week suggest that Google considered giving publishers more control over how their content is used in AI-generated results but ultimately decided against it, prioritizing product functionality over publisher protections.

News/Media Alliance slammed Google for "further depriving publishers of original content both traffic and revenue." Their full statement reads: "Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue. Now Google just takes content by force and uses it with no return, the definition of theft. The DOJ remedies must address this to prevent continued domination of the internet by one company." 9to5Google's take: It's not hard to see why Google went the route that it did here. Giving publishers the ability to opt out of AI products while still benefiting from Search would ultimately make Google's flashy new tools useless if enough sites made the switch. It was very much a move in the interest of building a better product.

Does that change anything regarding how Google's AI products in Search cause potential harm to the publishing industry? Nope.

Google's tools continue to serve the company and its users (mostly) well, but as they continue to bleed publishers dry, those publishers are on the verge of vanishing or, arguably worse, turning to cheap and poorly produced content just to get enough views to survive. This is a problem Google needs to address, as it's making the internet as a whole worse for everyone.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Vietnam's technology ministry has instructed telecommunication service providers to block the messaging app Telegram for not cooperating in combating alleged crimes committed by its users, according to a government document reviewed by Reuters.

The document, dated May 21 and signed by the deputy head of the telecom department at the technology ministry, ordered telecommunication companies to take measures to block Telegram and report on them to the ministry by June 2.

Europe has created just 14 companies worth more than $10 billion over the past 50 years compared to 241 in the United States, underscoring the continent's struggle to compete in the global technology race despite having a larger population and similar education levels.

The productivity gap has widened dramatically since the digital revolution began. European workers produced 95% of what their American counterparts made per hour in the late 1990s, but that figure has dropped to less than 80% today. Only four of the world's top 50 technology companies are European, and none of the top 10 quantum computing investors operate from Europe.

Several high-profile European entrepreneurs have relocated to Silicon Valley, including Thomas Odenwald, who quit German AI startup Aleph Alpha after two months, citing slow decision-making and lack of stock options for employees. "If I look at how quickly things change in Silicon Valley...it's happening so fast that I don't think Europe can keep up with that speed," Odenwald said.

The challenges extend beyond individual companies. European businesses spend 40% of their IT budgets on regulatory compliance, according to Amazon surveys, while complex labor laws create three-month notice periods and lengthy noncompete clauses.

AT&T is buying CenturyLink's consumer fiber broadband division for $5.75 billion, "giving the internet provider another 1.1 million fiber customers in 11 states," reports Ars Technica. "The all-cash deal is expected to close during the first half of 2026 assuming the companies obtain regulatory approval. AT&T will gain new customers in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington." From the report: The deal will give AT&T room to grow its user base by more than the 1.1 million existing CenturyLink customers, as AT&T said the network areas being sold include over 4 million fiber-enabled locations. [...] The company, previously called CenturyLink, is officially named Lumen now but still uses the CenturyLink brand name for home Internet service. AT&T, which has 9.6 million (PDF) fiber customers and 14.1 million broadband customers overall, said the infrastructure it is purchasing will help it expand fiber construction to new locations as well.

The deal is also notable for what it doesn't include: Lumen's enterprise fiber customers and the old copper DSL lines that were never upgraded to fiber. [...] The deal seems unlikely to improve matters for CenturyLink copper users. [...] Lumen will retain the CenturyLink consumer copper broadband and voice services, but selling the consumer fiber business makes it clear that the telco isn't focused on residential customers. Lumen said that offloading consumer fiber lines will help sharpen its focus on selling services to large businesses. The company is maintaining its business fiber lines. [Ars notes that there are still nearly 1.4 million CenturyLink copper internet customers that will likely see service continue to degrade under Lumen's ownership.] "The transaction will enable AT&T to significantly expand access to AT&T Fiber in major metro areas like Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle, as well as additional geographies," AT&T said.

"AT&T will gain access to Lumen's substantial fiber construction capabilities within its incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) footprint and plans to accelerate the pace at which fiber is being built in these territories," AT&T said. "AT&T now expects to reach approximately 60 million total fiber locations by the end of 2030 -- "roughly doubling where AT&T Fiber is available today."

The Internet Archive has begun livestreaming its microfiche digitization center on YouTube, showcasing the real-time preservation of fragile film cards into searchable public documents. The work is part of Democracy's Library, a global initiative to digitize and share millions of government records. 9to5Mac reports: The livestream was brought to life by Sophia Tung, who previously gained attention for her viral robotaxi depot stream. Her new video explains how and why this new livestream project came together [...].

The livestream features five scanning stations at work, with one shown in close-up as operators digitize microfiche cards in real time. Each card holds up to 100 pages of public records. High-resolution cameras capture the images, software stitches and crops the pages, and the results are made text-searchable and freely accessible through Democracy's Library. Live scanning takes place Monday through Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. PT, excluding U.S. holidays, with a second shift expected to begin soon.

Nvidia is facing backlash for allegedly manipulating the review process of its GeForce RTX 5060 GPU by withholding drivers, selectively granting early access to favorable reviewers, and pressuring media to present the card in a positive light. As The Verge's Sean Hollister writes, the debacle "should be a wake-up call for gamers and reviewers." Here's an excerpt from the report: Nvidia has gone too far. This week, the company reportedly attempted to delay, derail, and manipulate reviews of its $299 GeForce RTX 5060 graphics card, which would normally be its bestselling GPU of the generation. Nvidia has repeatedly and publicly said the budget 60-series cards are its most popular, and this year it reportedly tried to ensure it by withholding access and pressuring reviewers to paint them in the best light possible.

Nvidia might have wanted to prevent a repeat of 2022, when it launched this card's predecessor. Those reviews were harsh. The 4060 was called a "slap in the face to gamers" and a "wet fart of a GPU." I had guessed the 5060 was headed for the same fate after seeing how reviewers handled the 5080, which similarly showcased how little Nvidia's hardware has improved year over year and relies on software to make up the gaps. But Nvidia had other plans. Here are the tactics that Nvidia reportedly just used to throw us off the 5060's true scent, as individually described by GamersNexus, VideoCardz, Hardware Unboxed, GameStar.de, Digital Foundry, and more:

- Nvidia decided to launch its RTX 5060 on May 19th, when most reviewers would be at Computex in Taipei, Taiwan, rather than at their test beds at home.
- Even if reviewers already had a GPU in hand before then, Nvidia cut off most reviewers' ability to test the RTX 5060 before May 19th by refusing to provide drivers until the card went on sale. (Gaming GPUs don't really work without them.)
- And yet Nvidia allowed specific, cherry-picked reviewers to have early drivers anyhow if they agreed to a borderline unethical deal: they could only test five specific games, at 1080p resolution, with fixed graphics settings, against two weaker GPUs (the 3060 and 2060 Super) where the new card would be sure to win.
- In some cases, Nvidia threatened to withhold future access unless reviewers published apples-to-oranges benchmark charts showing how the RTX 5060's "fake frames" MFG tech can produce more frames than earlier GPUs without it.

Some reviewers apparently took Nvidia up on that proposition, leading to day-one "previews" where the charts looked positively stacked in the 5060's favor [...]. But the reality, according to reviews that have since hit the web, is that the RTX 5060 often fails to beat a four-year-old RTX 3060 Ti, frequently fails to beat a four-year-old 3070, and can sometimes get upstaged by Intel's cheaper $250 B580. And yet, the 5060's lackluster improvements are overshadowed by a juicier story: inexplicably, Nvidia decided to threaten GamersNexus' future access over its GPU coverage. Yes, the same GamersNexus that's developed a staunch reputation for defending consumers from predatory behavior, and just last month published a report on "GPU shrinkflation" that accused Nvidia of misleading marketing. Bad move! [...]

Nvidia is within its rights to withhold access, of course. Nvidia doesn't have to send out graphics cards or grant interviews. It'll only do it if it's good for business. But the unspoken covenant of product reviews is that the press, as a whole, gets a chance to warn the public if a movie, video game, or GPU is not worth their money. It works both ways: the media also gets the chance to warn that a product is so good you might want to line up in advance. That unspoken rule is what Nvidia is trampling here.

China has achieved substantial technological advances across robotics, AI, and semiconductor manufacturing as part of a seven-year self-reliance campaign that has tripled the country's research and development spending to $500 billion annually.

Chinese robot manufacturers captured nearly half of their domestic market by 2023, up from a quarter of installations just years earlier, while AI startups now rival OpenAI and Google in capabilities. The progress extends to semiconductors, where Huawei released a high-end smartphone powered by what industry analysts believe was a locally-produced advanced processor, despite U.S. export controls targeting China's chip access.

Morgan Stanley projects China's self-sufficiency in graphics processing units will jump from 11% in 2021 to 82% by 2027. Chinese companies have been purchasing as many industrial robots as the rest of the world combined, enabling highly automated factories that can operate in darkness. In space technology, Chinese firms won five of 11 gold medals when U.S. think tanks ranked the world's best commercial satellite systems last year, compared to four for American companies.

BrianFagioli writes: In a surprising move that will frustrate longtime fans, Mozilla has announced it will shut down Pocket on July 8, 2025. The once-popular read-it-later service, which helped users save and organize web content for later reading, will no longer function as normal after that date. While existing users can continue saving and reading articles until July, the service will switch to export-only mode afterward, with all user data permanently deleted on October 8. The Firefox-maker will also shut down Fakespot, a service that allows users to identify unreliable reviews, on July 1.

Verizon is officially asking for a waiver of the FCC's phone unlocking requirements. From a report: "Given the substantial and growing harms to consumers, competition and Verizon from this obligation -- and the lack of offsetting benefits -- the commission should waive this rule," the operator wrote.

Verizon faces phone unlocking requirements stemming from its acquisition of 700MHz spectrum in 2008, and also from conditions the FCC placed on the operator's acquisition of prepaid provider TracFone in 2021. The requirements mean that when a customer buys a phone from Verizon it's locked to Verizon's network for 60 days, so that they can only use it with a Verizon SIM card. After 60 days, Verizon automatically unlocks the phone, allowing that customer to use their phone on another carrier's network.

Google's expansion of Gemini's data access through "personal context" represents a fundamental shift in how AI assistants operate. Unlike competitors that start from scratch with each new user, Gemini can immediately tap into years of accumulated user data across Google's ecosystem. The Verge adds: Google first started letting users opt in to its "Gemini with personalization" feature earlier this year, which lets the AI model tap into your search history "to provide responses that are uniquely insightful and directly address your needs." But now, Google is taking things a step further by unlocking access to even more of your information -- all in the name of providing you with more personalized, AI-generated responses.

During Google I/O on Tuesday, Google introduced something called "personal context," which will allow Gemini models to pull relevant information from across Google's apps, as long as it has your permission. One way Google is doing this is through Gmail's personalized smart replies -- the AI-generated messages that you can use to quickly reply to emails.

To make these AI responses sound "authentically like you," Gemini will pore over your previous emails and even your Google Drive files to craft a reply tailored to your conversation. The response will even incorporate your tone, the greeting you use the most, and even "favorite word choices," according to Google.

BrianFagioli writes: Signal has officially had enough, folks. You see, the privacy-first messaging app is going on the offensive, declaring war on Microsoft's invasive Recall feature by enabling a new "Screen security" setting by default on Windows 11. This move is designed to block Microsoft's AI-powered screenshot tool from capturing your private chats.

If you aren't aware, Recall was first unveiled a year ago as part of Microsoft's Copilot+ PC push. The feature quietly took screenshots of everything happening on your computer, every few seconds, storing them in a searchable timeline. Microsoft claimed it would help users "remember" what they've done. Critics called it creepy. Security experts called it dangerous. The backlash was so fierce that Microsoft pulled the feature before launch.

But now, in a move nobody asked for, Recall is sadly back. And thankfully, Signal isn't waiting around this time. The team has activated a Windows 11-specific DRM flag that completely blacks out Signal's chat window when a screenshot is attempted. If you've ever tried to screen grab a streaming movie, you'll know the result: nothing but black.

Three teenagers nearly escaped prosecution for a 2020 house fire that killed five people until Denver police discovered a novel investigative technique: requesting Google search histories for specific terms. Kevin Bui, Gavin Seymour, and Dillon Siebert had burned down a house in Green Valley Ranch, mistakenly targeting innocent Senegalese immigrants after Bui used Apple's Find My feature to track his stolen phone to the wrong address.

The August 2020 arson killed a family of five, including a toddler and infant. For months, detectives Neil Baker and Ernest Sandoval had no viable leads despite security footage showing three masked figures. Traditional methods -- cell tower data, geofence warrants, and hundreds of tips -- yielded nothing concrete. The breakthrough came when another detective suggested Google might have records of anyone searching the address beforehand.

Police obtained a reverse keyword search warrant requesting all users who had searched variations of "5312 Truckee Street" in the 15 days before the fire. Google provided 61 matching devices. Cross-referencing with earlier cell tower data revealed the three suspects, who had collectively searched the address dozens of times, including floor plans on Zillow.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As electric vehicles reduce car exhaust as a source of particulate emissions, people are increasingly focusing on other vehicular sources of pollution that won't go away with electrification. Tires are one of them, particularly as we grapple with overweight EVs with tire-shredding torque. And brakes are another -- even an EV with regenerative braking will occasionally need to use its friction brakes, after all. Over in Europe, the people responsible for writing regulations have taken this into consideration with the upcoming Euro 7 standard, which sets new limits on 10- and 2.5-micron particulate emissions on all new vehicles -- including EVs -- starting next year. And to help OEMs achieve that target, Brembo has developed a new brake and pad set called Greentell that it says cuts brake dust emissions by 90 percent, improving durability in the process.

[...] Brembo investigated a range of solutions before settling on using laser metal deposition. Physical vapor deposition, as used as a durability coating for wristwatches and firearms, was ruled out due to cost. "So it can be used for some special application or some small pieces, but when you are speaking about 20 kilos of cast iron, PVD is not the right solution. LMD is a technology that [has been] available... [for] years, but [it hasn't yet been] applicable in a high volume application. So the goal is to find the best compromise between performance and process," [Fabiano Carminati, VP of disc technical development at Brembo] told me. Together with the reduction in brake dust, there's an 80 percent reduction in surface corrosion compared to conventional brakes, but they won't last forever. "The thickness of the layer that we apply is not so high -- we apply just 100-120 microns. That means that the disk is not a lifetime disk," he said. That said, Greentell brakes should need replacing less often, and while that's not entirely in Brembo's best financial interests, neither is not being able to offer its customers a Euro 7-compliant product.