Apple's $3,499 Vision Pro headset has failed to gain widespread adoption despite advanced technology, with consumers preferring discreet wearables like smartwatches. The Verge: Nearly a year from launch, though, Apple hasn't done enough to demonstrate why the Vision Pro should be a potential showcase of the future of computing. It's taking a long time to put together its immersive content library, and while those are great demonstrations of what's possible, the videos have been short and isolating. There aren't many great games, either.

Yes, Apple keeps adding cool new software features. The wide and ultra widescreen settings for using a Mac display seem exceptionally useful. But those are pretty specific options for pretty specific use cases. There still isn't an immediate, obvious reason to buy a Vision Pro the way there usually is with the company's newest iPhones and Macs. If I bought a Vision Pro today, I wouldn't know what to do with it besides give myself a bigger Mac screen or watch movies, and I don't think either of those are worth the exorbitant price.

Airports are facing a growing nuisance as travelers increasingly watch videos and take calls on speakerphone without headphones, creating tension among passengers at gates and lounges.

Flight attendants at American Airlines, Alaska Air, and Delta have begun addressing the issue through announcements and website notices, though enforcement remains challenging, WSJ reports. Passengers report confrontations rarely end well, with offenders often dismissive or hostile when asked to use headphones. The story adds: The headphones-optional attitude isn't limited to air travel. Podcasts and sports games blare in open-plan offices. You can catch snippets of conversations on the sidewalk, some phones held aloft for video calls. Transit authorities in big cities have struggled to get passengers to keep their music to themselves on subways and commuter trains.

Witnesses say offenders span the generational and socioeconomic spectrum, from grandparents on speakerphone to toddlers on iPads and from first class to coach.

Air travel already overloads the senses with a cacophony of boarding announcements, beeping vehicles and crying babies. U.S. airlines generally don't allow voice and video calls in the air. But by takeoff, the damage has been done.

Apple may be worth one and a half Googles now, but the world's most valuable company needs its relationship with the world's largest search engine to keep clicking. From a report: Such was evident Monday when Apple filed papers seeking to participate in the penalty phase of the Justice Department's antitrust case against Google. The search giant lost that case in August and is now battling the government over what remedies are appropriate. The DOJ has a long wish list that includes breaking the company up, forcing Google to make key search and user data available to potential rivals, and stopping the payments Google makes to partners such as Apple.

The payments to Apple alone now reportedly equate to about $20 billion annually, and make Google the default search engine on devices like the iPhone. Apple didn't confirm any specific amounts in its filing, but did say the company feels compelled to "protect its commercial interests." Analysts widely estimate that the payments from Google are nearly pure profit for Apple, given relatively little incremental cost to generate that revenue. For Apple, $20 billion is about 16% of the operating income reported for the company's fiscal year that ended in September.

Modern LED headlights are significantly brighter and more glaring than traditional halogen bulbs, creating dangerous driving conditions, lighting experts report. The newer lights produce an intense, concentrated beam that is bluer and more disorienting, particularly affecting older drivers. "Headlights are getting brighter, smaller and bluer. All three of those things increase a particular kind of glare. It's called discomfort glare," said Daniel Stern, chief editor of Driving Vision News.

The annual defense policy bill signed by President Joe Biden Monday evening allocates $3 billion to help telecom firms remove and replace insecure equipment in response to recent incursions by Chinese-linked hackers. From a report: The fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act outlines Pentagon policy and military budget priorities for the year and also includes non-defense measures added as Congress wrapped up its work in December. The $895 billion spending blueprint passed the Senate and House with broad bipartisan support.

The $3 billion would go to a Federal Communications Commission program, commonly called "rip and replace," to get rid of Chinese networking equipment due to national security concerns. The effort was created in 2020 to junk equipment made by telecom giant Huawei. It had an initial investment of $1.9 billion, roughly $3 billion shy of what experts said was needed to cauterize the potential vulnerability.

Calls to replenish the fund have increased recently in the wake of two hacking campaigns by China, dubbed Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon, that saw hackers insert malicious code in U.S. infrastructure and break into at least eight telecom firms. The bill also includes a watered down requirement for the Defense Department to tap an independent third-party to study the feasibility of creating a U.S. Cyber Force, along with an "evaluation of alternative organizational models for the cyber forces" of the military branches.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: More than 140 Facebook content moderators have been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content including murders, suicides, child sexual abuse and terrorism. The moderators worked eight- to 10-hour days at a facility in Kenya for a company contracted by the social media firm and were found to have PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD), by Dr Ian Kanyanya, the head of mental health services at Kenyatta National hospital in Nairobi. The mass diagnoses have been made as part of lawsuit being brought against Facebook's parent company, Meta, and Samasource Kenya, an outsourcing company that carried out content moderation for Meta using workers from across Africa.

The images and videos including necrophilia, bestiality and self-harm caused some moderators to faint, vomit, scream and run away from their desks, the filings allege. The case is shedding light on the human cost of the boom in social media use in recent years that has required more and more moderation, often in some of the poorest parts of the world, to protect users from the worst material that some people post. The lawsuit claims that at least 40 moderators experienced substance misuse, marital breakdowns, and disconnection from their families, while some feared being hunted by terrorist groups they monitored. Despite being paid eight times less than their U.S. counterparts, moderators worked under intense surveillance in harsh, warehouse-like conditions.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Over the past year, OpenAI has dropped not-so-subtle hints about its revived interest in robotics: investing in startups developing hardware and software for robots such as Figure and Physical Intelligence and rebooting its internal robotics software team, which it had disbanded four years ago.

Now, OpenAI could be taking that interest to the next level. The company has recently considered developing a humanoid robot, according to two people with direct knowledge of the discussions. As a refresher, humanoid robots typically have two arms and two legs, distinguishing them from typical robots in a warehouse or factory that might have a single arm repeatedly performing the same task on an assembly line. Developers of humanoid robots think it will be easier for them to handle tasks in the physical world -- which is tailored to humans -- than it would be to change our physical environments to suit new robots.

Apple has long avoided directly purchasing Nvidia's chips and is now developing its own AI server chip with Broadcom, aiming for production by 2026, The Information reported Tuesday, shedding broader light on why the two companies don't get along so well.

The relationship deteriorated after a 2001 meeting where Steve Jobs accused Nvidia of copying technology from Pixar, which he then controlled. Relations worsened in 2008 when Nvidia's faulty graphics chips forced Apple to extend MacBook warranties without full compensation.

Rather than buying Nvidia's dominant AI processors directly like its tech peers, the Information reports, Apple rents them through cloud providers while also using Google's custom chips for training large AI models. The company's new chip project, code-named Baltra, marks its most ambitious effort yet to reduce reliance on external AI processors, despite being one of the largest indirect users of Nvidia chips through cloud services.

ASUS computer owners have been reporting widespread alarm after a Christmas-themed banner suddenly appeared on their Windows 11 screens, accompanied by a suspicious "Christmas.exe" process in Task Manager.

The promotional campaign, first reported by WindowsLatest, was delivered through ASUS' pre-installed Armoury Crate software. It displays a large wreath banner that covers one-third of users' screens. The unbranded holiday display, which can interrupt gaming sessions and occasionally crashes applications, has triggered security concerns among users who initially mistook it for malware.

PCWorld's Jon Phillips pays tribute to Gordon Mah Ung, "our hardware guru, host of The Full Nerd, exemplary tech journalist, and very good friend." He passed away over the weekend after a hard-fought battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 58. From the report: With more than 25 years' experience covering computer tech broadly and computer chips specifically, Gordon's dogged reporting, one-of-a-kind personality, and commitment to journalistic standards touched many, many lives. He will be profoundly missed by co-workers, industry sources, and the PC enthusiasts who read his words and followed him as a video creator.

Gordon studied journalism at San Francisco State University and then worked as a police reporter for the Contra Costa Times in the late 1990s. In 1997, he joined Computerworld (a PCWorld sister publication) before I recruited him to join boot magazine (later re-launched as Maximum PC), where he would ultimately lead hardware coverage for 16 years.

Researchers at Northwestern University have successfully achieved quantum teleportation over a standard fiber optic cable carrying regular internet traffic, demonstrating that quantum and classical communication can coexist on existing infrastructure. The research has been published in the journal Optica. TechSpot reports: Nobody thought it would be possible to achieve this, according to Professor Prem Kumar, who led the study. "Our work shows a path towards next-generation quantum and classical networks sharing a unified fiber optic infrastructure. Basically, it opens the door to pushing quantum communications to the next level." "By performing a destructive measurement on two photons -- one carrying a quantum state and one entangled with another photon -- the quantum state is transferred onto the remaining photon, which can be very far away," said Jordan Thomas, a Ph.D. candidate in Kumar's laboratory and the paper's first author. "The photon itself does not have to be sent over long distances, but its state still ends up encoded onto the distant photon."

Prior to this study, many researchers were skeptical about the feasibility of quantum teleportation in cables carrying classic communications. The concern was that the entangled photons would be overwhelmed by the millions of other light particles present in the fiber optic cables. However, Kumar and his team were able to devise a solution. Through extensive studies of light scattering within fiber optic cables, the researchers identified a less crowded wavelength of light to place their photons. They also implemented special filters to reduce noise from regular Internet traffic. Kumar explained that he and his team conducted a meticulous analysis of light scattering patterns and strategically positioned their photons at a critical point where the scattering effect was minimized.

To validate their method, the team set up a 30-kilometer-long (18.6 miles) fiber optic cable with a photon at each end. They simultaneously transmitted quantum information and high-speed Internet traffic through the cable. The quality of the quantum information was measured at the receiving end while executing the teleportation protocol by making quantum measurements at the mid-point. The results showed that the quantum information was successfully transmitted, even in the presence of busy internet traffic.

Vietnam's Decree 147 mandates social media users on platforms like Facebook and TikTok to verify their identities and requires tech companies to store and share user data with authorities upon request, sparking concerns over increased censorship, self-censorship, and threats to free expression. Furthermore, the decree imposes restrictions on gaming time for minors and limits livestreaming to verified accounts. It becomes effective on Christmas Day. The Guardian reports: Decree 147, as it is known, builds on a 2018 cybersecurity law that was sharply criticized by the US, EU and internet freedom advocates who said it mimics China's repressive internet censorship. [...] Critics say that decree 147 will also expose dissidents who post anonymously to the risk of arrest. "Many people work quietly but effectively in advancing the universal values of human rights," Ho Chi Minh City-based blogger and rights activist Nguyen Hoang Vi told AFP.

She warned that the new decree "may encourage self-censorship, where people avoid expressing dissenting views to protect their safety -- ultimately harming the overall development of democratic values" in the country. Le Quang Tu Do, of the ministry of information and communications (MIC), told state media that decree 147 would "regulate behavior in order to maintain social order, national security, and national sovereignty in cyberspace." [...]

Human Rights Watch is calling on the government to repeal the "draconian" new decree. "Vietnam's new Decree 147 and its other cybersecurity laws neither protect the public from any genuine security concerns nor respect fundamental human rights," said Patricia Gossman, HRW's associate Asia director. "Because the Vietnamese police treat any criticism of the Communist party of Vietnam as a national security matter, this decree will provide them with yet another tool to suppress dissent."

Sweden has accused China of denying a request for Swedish prosecutors to board a Chinese ship that has been linked to the cutting of two undersea cables in the Baltic despite Beijing pledging "cooperation" with regional authorities. From a report: The Yi Peng 3 left the waters it had been anchored in since last month on Saturday -- despite an ongoing investigation. The ship was tracked sailing over the two fibre-optic cables, one between Sweden and Lithuania, and the other linking Helsinki and Germany, at around the time that they were cut on 17 and 18 November in Swedish territorial waters close to the Swedish islands of Gotland and Oland.

For more than a month afterwards it was anchored in the Kattegat strait between Sweden and Denmark where it was being observed by multiple countries and was boarded by Swedish police and other authorities last week. The ship tracking site VesselFinder showed the Yi Peng 3 heading north out of the strait on Saturday and on Monday China confirmed the ship had left in order to "ensure the physical and mental wellbeing of the crew." The Swedish foreign minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, said on Monday that China had not cooperated with Sweden's request to allow Swedish prosecutors onboard.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Department of Justice's list of solutions for fixing Google's illegal antitrust behavior and restoring competition in the search engine market started with forcing the company to sell Chrome, and late Friday night, Google responded with a list of its own.

Instead of breaking off Chrome, Android, or Google Play as the DOJ's filing considers, Google's proposed fixes aim at the payments it makes to companies like Apple and Mozilla for exclusive, prioritized placement of its services, its licensing deals with companies that make Android phones, and contracts with wireless carriers. They don't address a DOJ suggestion about possibly forcing Google to share its valuable search data with other companies to help their products catch up.

Lilium, once a darling in the nascent industry of electric aircraft that raised more than $1 billion before going public, has ceased operations and laid off about 1,000 workers after efforts to gain financing and exit insolvency failed. From a report: Lilium co-founder and CEO Patrick Nathen confirmed on LinkedIn that the 10-year-old company had stopped operating. "After 10 years and 10 months, it is a sad fact that Lilium has ceased operations. The company that Daniel, Sebastian, Matthias and I founded can no longer pursue our shared belief in more environmentally friendly aviation. This is heartbreaking and the timing feels painfully ironic," wrote Nathen. The layoffs cover the bulk of the company's workforce and come a few days after about 200 workers were let go, according to a regulatory filing on December 16.

Meta plans to add displays to its Ray-Ban smart glasses as soon as next year, Financial Times reports, as the US tech giant accelerates its plans to build lightweight headsets that can usurp the smartphone as consumers' main computing device. Financial Times: The $1.5tn social media group is planning to add a screen inside the $300 sunglasses it makes and sells in partnership with eyewear group EssilorLuxottica, according to people familiar with the plans. The updated Ray-Bans could be released as early as the second half of 2025, the people said. The small display would be likely to be used to show notifications or responses from Meta's virtual assistant.

The move comes as Meta pushes further into wearable devices and what chief executive Mark Zuckerberg hopes will be the next computing platform, as rivals such as Apple, Google and Snap also race to develop their own similar products.

A U.S. judge has ruled that Israeli spyware maker NSO Group breached hacking laws by using WhatsApp to infect devices with its Pegasus spyware. From a report: In a historic ruling on Friday, a Northern California federal judge held NSO Group liable for targeting the devices of 1,400 WhatsApp users, violating state and federal hacking laws as well as WhatsApp's terms of service, which prohibit the use of the messaging platform for malicious purposes.

The ruling comes five years after Meta-owned WhatsApp sued NSO Group, alleging the spyware outfit had exploited an audio-calling vulnerability in the messaging platform to install its Pegasus spyware on unsuspecting users' devices. WhatsApp said that more than 100 human rights defenders, journalists and "other members of civil society" were targeted by the malware, along with government officials and diplomats. In her ruling, Judge Phyllis Hamilton said NSO did not dispute that it "must have reverse-engineered and/or decompiled the WhatsApp software" to install its Pegasus spyware on devices, but raised questions about whether it had done so before agreeing to WhatsApp's terms of service.

Honda sketched plans for a drawn-out deal that amounts to a takeover of Nissan in all but name, as Japan's automakers struggle to keep up in an increasingly competitive global car industry. From a report: The two announced a tentative agreement Monday to set up a joint holding company that will aim to list shares in August 2026. While their executives called the transaction a merger, Honda will take the lead in forming the new entity and nominate a majority of its directors.

Nissan's partner Mitsubishi may also participate in the deal. Honda and Nissan both are having trouble contending with ascendant domestic automakers in China, which surpassed Japan as the world's largest car-exporting nation last year and is pulling further ahead in 2024. Honda Chief Executive Officer Toshihiro Mibe spoke to the level of level of difficulty ahead for the companies when he said during a press conference that their goal is to be competitive by 2030.

Silicon Valley is betting the farm on AI. Data centers are straining power grids. Model training costs are heading toward billions. Yet across the software industry, AI revenue remains theoretical. From a report: Hyperscalers -- combined with Meta and Oracle -- plan to spend $292 billion on AI infrastructure by 2025 -- an 88% increase since 2023. Two-thirds of software companies, however, still report decelerating growth in 2024.

Semiconductor stocks have surged 43% year-to-date on AI expectations, while the software index IGV is up 30%. Microsoft, despite its OpenAI investment, has underperformed the IGV by 19% since ChatGPT's release. Microsoft's AI revenue run rate is 3% of total revenue, according to estimates by investment bank Jefferies. Snowflake expects immaterial AI contribution in fiscal 2025. Salesforce isn't factoring in material contribution from new AI products into FY25 guidance. Adobe's Firefly AI, launched in March 2023, hasn't accelerated revenue.

Alphabet's Waymo robotaxis are providing "hundreds of thousands of driverless rides each month," reports the Washington Post. But as the robotaxi service expands in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin, some passengers "have found that traveling by robotaxi can make riders into sitting ducks for a new form of public harassment." The Washington Post spoke with four Waymo passengers, three of them women, who said they experienced harassment or what felt like threats to their safety from people who followed, obstructed or attempted to enter a driverless vehicle they were riding in...

Elliot, a tech worker in San Francisco, recalled in a phone interview a "scary" situation during a Waymo ride late one night in October. A pedestrian tried to enter the driverless vehicle as it waited at a red light. "Go away," Elliot yelled at the man as he knocked on the window before briefly flashing what looked like a knife, video of the incident viewed by The Post showed... In the moment, Elliot said, he wished someone could have "slammed on the gas and gotten away from this guy," adding that Waymo should change how its vehicles respond in such situations...

Madelline, a 25-year-old restaurant server in San Francisco, said that during a recent Waymo ride at around 2 a.m., the driverless vehicle had to stop after two drivers ahead began yelling at each other and throwing things out of their cars in what appeared to be a road rage dispute. The two cars blocked an intersection and one person got out of one of the vehicles. "I was definitely panicking a little bit," Madelline said, as her car waited for the road to clear instead of turning off as a human driver might do... She would like to have more control over a robotaxi's route but still prefers Waymo rides to using Uber or Lyft, whose drivers sometimes make her uncomfortable...

In September, Amina V. was on her way to a hair appointment when a man stepped in front of her robotaxi and the car stalled in the middle of the street. She already had been recording herself in the Waymo, so she turned the camera to capture the man hitting on her while her car stood frozen in San Francisco's Soma neighborhood.
And one Saturday night at 10:30 p.m., a tech worker named Stephanie took a driverless Waymo robotaxi with her sister, and reports confronting "several young men close to the robotaxi honking and yelling, 'Hey, ladies — you guys are hot.' If she or another human had been driving, it would have been easy to reroute the car to avoid leading the pursuers to her home. But she was scared and didn't know how to change the robot's path. She called 911, but a dispatcher said they couldn't send a police car to a moving vehicle, Stephanie recalled... [S]he said the other car gave up the chase when the Waymo was a minute from her house. She and her sister arrived home safely, though terrified. Stephanie didn't catch the car's license plate number, which the 911 dispatcher requested after her ride concluded. Waymo vehicles, like other driverless cars in development, use multiple cameras to help make sense of the world around them. But when she later asked the company for the car's video footage, hoping it had captured the license plate, Waymo declined to provide it, she said.

She would like closer coordination between Waymo and first responders and says she is now unsure about self-driving rides after dark. "I would feel safe taking it during the day," Stephanie said. But "at night, maybe I'm safer having someone else in the car just in case something happens."
A Waymo spokesperson told the Washington Post that their support agents will stay on the line with riders who call in about incidents like this, also working with law enforcement as appropriate — but the agents can't change the vehicle's specific route. (The Post adds that Waymo passengers "can tell a vehicle to pull over or change its next stop or destination using the Waymo app, or ask a support agent to make similar changes.")