A German court has sentenced two former Volkswagen executives to prison and handed suspended sentences to two others for their roles in the Dieselgate emissions scandal, marking the conclusion of a nearly four-year fraud trial. Politico reports: The former head of diesel development was sentenced to four and a half years in prison, and the head of drive train electronics to two years and seven months by the court in Braunschweig, German news agency dpa reported. Two others received suspended sentences of 15 months and 10 months. The scandal began in September 2015 when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice of violation. saying that the company had rigged engine control software that let the cars pass emissions tests while they emitted far more pollution in actual driving.

The company has paid more than $33 billion in fines and compensation to vehicle owners. Two VW managers received prison sentence in the U.S. The former head of the company’s Audi division, Rupert Stadler, was given a suspended sentence of 21 months and a fine of 1.1 million euros ($1.25 million). The sentence is still subject to appeal. Missing from the trial, which lasted almost four years, was former CEO Martin Winterkorn. Proceedings against him have been suspended because of health issues, and it’s not clear when he might go on trial. Winterkorn has denied wrongdoing. Further proceedings are open against 31 other suspects in Germany.

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If you’ve been thinking about picking up a family tablet for streaming, casual browsing, or giving the kids something budget-friendly to play on, the 2023 onn. 11″ Tablet Pro is worth a look—especially at this price. It’s currently going for $74.99 as an open-box deal on StackSocial. For context, the same model is listed at $128.99 on Amazon. Open Box means it’s likely been handled or returned in-store, so while the packaging might not look brand new, the tablet itself has been verified to be in good working condition. The device runs Android 13 and feels very much like using a large phone. It’s got a familiar interface (if you’ve used an Android phone before), which makes it easy to jump into without a learning curve.

The 11-inch LCD screen, with a 1200×2000 resolution, is crisp enough for Netflix or YouTube, and the 2.2GHz Octa-Core processor paired with 4GB RAM gives it just enough power to juggle casual multitasking—think video calls, browsing, and maybe a bit of app-based gaming. You’re also looking at 128GB of internal storage, which is generous for this price range, plus a microSD slot if you need extra room for downloads. The dual-camera setup (5MP on the front and 8MP on the back) isn’t winning any awards, but it’ll get the job done for video chats and quick snaps.

It also has a headphone jack (which isn’t a given anymore), a USB-C port for fast charging, and built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. Also, the 16-hour battery claim gives it real potential as a travel companion (it’s enough to last through long travel days or keep a kid entertained without constant charging). Plus, bonus points for Google Kids Space and Entertainment Space already baked in, which makes this a decent shared family device. Just keep in mind that while it checks a lot of boxes, it’s not a powerhouse—if you’re looking to run intensive apps or use it for work, this might fall short. But for basic day-to-day use, it’s a pretty compelling option under $80.

On Tuesday afternoon, just a few hours before a launch attempt of the ninth flight test of SpaceX’s Starship vehicle, Elon Musk spoke with Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger to talk about where his space company goes from here.

In recent weeks, Musk has dialed back his focus on politics and said he wants to devote the majority of his time to SpaceX and his other companies. So what does that mean?

The conversation came just ahead of the opening of Starship’s launch window, at 6:30 pm CT (23:30 UTC) in South Texas. Here is a lightly edited transcript of the interview.

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Anthropic is continuing to trickle down features to its free users. The latest one to make the leap out of subscriber-only mode is web search, which the company introduced to its AI chatbot Claude in March. According to Anthropic, connecting Claude to the web allows it to deliver more accurate responses based on the most up-to-date information available online. This feature is available to all Claude users starting today.

In addition, Anthropic has begun beta tests for voice mode on its mobile apps. This option lets users interact with Claude in natural conversations in an expansion of the platform’s existing dictation tools. There will be five voice options available to assign to Claude, and the AI assistant can provide full transcripts and voice mode summaries after a conversation.

May has been a busy month for Anthropic, which just launched two new models last week. Opus 4 is a powerful coding-focused system that can use multiple tools in parallel and can run for several hours at a time, while Sonnet 4 is a hybrid reasoning model designed to move between quick queries and more complex ones. The current beta testing of voice mode will default to Sonnet 4.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropic-brings-web-search-to-free-claude-users-224222689.html?src=rss

After a year of rumors, Salesforce has officially acquired cloud data management firm Informatica in an $8 billion equity deal. “Under the terms of the deal, Salesforce will pay $25 in cash per share for Informatica’s Class A and Class B-1 common stock, adjusting for its prior investment in the company,” notes TechCrunch. From the report: Informatica was founded in 1993 and works with more than 5,000 customers across more than 100 countries. The company had a $7.1 billion market cap at the time of publication. This acquisition will help bolster Salesforce’s agentic AI ambitions, the company’s press release stated, by giving the company more data infrastructure and governance to help its AI agents run more “safely, responsibly, and at scale across the modern enterprise.” “Together, we’ll supercharge Agentforce, Data Cloud, Tableau, MuleSoft, and Customer 360, enabling autonomous agents to act with intelligence, context, and confidence across every enterprise,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in the press release. “This is a transformational step in delivering enterprise-grade AI that is safe, responsible, and deeply integrated with the world’s data.”

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On Sunday, independent AI researcher Simon Willison published a detailed analysis of Anthropic’s newly released system prompts for Claude 4’s Opus 4 and Sonnet 4 models, offering insights into how Anthropic controls the models’ “behavior” through their outputs. Willison examined both the published prompts and leaked internal tool instructions to reveal what he calls “a sort of unofficial manual for how best to use these tools.”

To understand what Willison is talking about, we’ll need to explain what system prompts are. Large language models (LLMs) like the AI models that run Claude and ChatGPT process an input called a “prompt” and return an output that is the most likely continuation of that prompt. System prompts are instructions that AI companies feed to the models before each conversation to establish how they should respond.

Unlike the messages users see from the chatbot, system prompts typically remain hidden from the user and tell the model its identity, behavioral guidelines, and specific rules to follow. Each time a user sends a message, the AI model receives the full conversation history along with the system prompt, allowing it to maintain context while following its instructions.

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OnePlus is replacing its iconic Alert Slider with a new customizable “Plus Key” on the upcoming OnePlus 13s, which launches the new AI Plus Mind feature that lets users capture and search content found on screen. This update is part of a broader AI push for its devices that includes tools like AI VoiceScribe for call summaries, AI Translation for multi-modal language support, and AI Best Face 2.0 for photo corrections. Engadget reports: What AI Plus Mind does is save relevant content to a dedicated Mind Space, where users can browse various information that they’ve saved. Users can then search for the detail they want to find using natural language queries. Both the Plus Key and the AI Plus Mind will debut on the OnePlus 13s in Asia. AI Plus Mind will roll out to the rest of the OnePlus 13 Series devices through a future software update, while all future OnePlus phone will come with the new physical key. Notably, the new button and feature bear similarities to Nothing’s physical Essential Key that can also save information inside the Essential Space app. Nothing was founded by Carl Pei who co-founded OnePlus.

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The Switch 2 is nearly here. On June 5, those of us who were lucky enough to snag preorders will start receiving their consoles, and will be able to play new games like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza.

Of course, Nintendo’s new console isn’t only compatible with Switch 2 games. It will play your original Switch games too. The thing is, it isn’t as simple as with other backwards compatible consoles: The Switch 2 uses emulation to run original Switch titles, so it isn’t playing those games natively. That works for the most part—Nintendo says virtually all first-party Switch games can run on Switch 2 without issue, and the same is true for most “partner” games.

However, some games run into problems with the emulation on Switch 2. Certain titles have issues when starting up (e.g. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Rocket League, and FINAL FANTASY), while others are “playable,” but suffer in-game compatibility issues (e.g. ALIEN: ISOLATION, Fall Guys, and Overcooked! All You Can Eat). Nintendo is investigating the issue for these titles, so hopefully they’ll all eventually be able to run on Switch 2 as well as they do on the original Switch.

These Switch games are getting updates for Switch 2

In fact, there’s already a list of titles with fixes on the way. Nintendo says 49 games with current problems running on Switch 2 will receive updates by system launch or shortly after to fix those issues. (The exception is Fortnite, which is apparently getting a true Switch 2 version rather than an update.)

You can see the full list of games to be updated for Switch 2 below:

• 112 Operator

• ACA NEOGEO ART OF FIGHTING 2

• ACA NEOGEO SAMURAI SHODOWN II

• ACA NEOGEO THE KING OF FIGHTERS ’95

• ACA NEOGEO THE KING OF FIGHTERS ’96

• ACTIVE LIFE Outdoor Challenge

• Airhead

• Alchemy Garden

• Baron: Fur Is Gonna Fly

• Batman: The Enemy Within

• Beyond the Ice Palace 2

• Boot Hill Bounties

• Bus Simulator 2023: City Driver

• Death Coming

• DOOM Eternal

• Eggy Party

• ENDER MAGNOLIA: Bloom in the Mist

• Everspace – Stellar Edition

• Fables Mosaic: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

• Fitness Boxing

• Floor Kids

• Fortnite (a Switch 2 version is in the works)

• FRAMED Collection

• Gal Guardians: Demon Purge

• Gas Guzzlers Extreme

• Guns, Gore and Cannoli

• Island Flight Simulator

• Korean Drone Flying Tour Jeju Island-1

• Mexican Train Dominoes Gold

• Monster Energy Supercross – The Official Videogame

• MUSYNX

• NBA 2K25

• Nova-111

• OMG Police – Car Chase TV Simulator

• Parents Vs Kids

• Perseverance: Complete Edition

• Pizza Tower

• Process of Elimination

• Slayin 2

• STAR WARS: Dark Forces Remaster

• Super Mega Baseball 3

• The Jackbox Party Pack

• The Jackbox Party Pack 2

• Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes

• Victor Vran Overkill Edition

• Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

• WolfFang 空牙2001 SkullFang 空牙外伝 Saturn Tribute Boosted

• World of Tanks Blitz

• Xtreme Sports

Unfortunately, there’s no true timeline for when these games will receive their updates. Nintendo’s “by launch or shortly after” pledge is quite vague: Will some games be patched? Will most? Which ones? How long after launch is “shortly after?”

The silver lining is that the fixes are on their way. If you have any of these Switch games, or you happen to buy them with your Switch 2, keep an eye out for these updates.

Currently, there are no nuclear power plants scheduled for construction in the US. Everybody with plans to build one hasn’t had a reactor design approved, while nobody is planning to use any of the approved designs. This follows a period in which only three new reactors have entered service since 1990. Despite its extremely low carbon footprint, nuclear power appears to be dead in the water.

On Friday, the Trump administration issued a series of executive orders intended to revive the US nuclear industry. These include plans to streamline the reactor approval process and boost the construction of experimental reactors by the Department of Energy. But they also contain language that’s inconsistent with other administration priorities and fundamentally misunderstands the use of nuclear power. Plus, some timelines might be, shall we say, unrealistic: three new experimental reactors reaching criticality in just over a year.

Slow nukes

The heyday of nuclear plant construction in the US was in the 1970s and 80s. But the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant soured public sentiment toward nuclear power. This also came at a time when nuclear plants typically generated only half of their rated capacity, making them an expensive long-term bet. As a result, plans for many plants, including some that were partially constructed, were canceled.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report : Washington is joining a growing list of states trying to tear down barriers for consumers who want to repair their electronics rather than buy new ones. Gov. Bob Ferguson last week signed the state’s new “Right to Repair” policy, House Bill 1483, into law. It was a yearslong effort to get the law approved. “This is a win for every person in Washington state,” said the bill’s prime sponsor, Rep. Mia Gregerson, D-SeaTac.

In 2021, the Federal Trade Commission reported that consumers with broken electronics don’t have much choice but to replace them because repairs require specialized tools, unique parts and inaccessible proprietary software. And those restrictions, the FTC found, disproportionately burden communities of color and low-income communities. Some companies engage in a practice called “parts pairing” that can make replacing parts of a device impossible. Washington’s new law would largely outlaw this tactic.

Starting Jan. 1, 2026, the law will require manufacturers to make tools, parts and documentation needed for diagnostics and maintenance available to independent repair businesses. The requirement applies to digital electronics, like computers, cellphones and appliances, sold in Washington after July 1, 2021. Manufacturers won’t be able to use parts that inhibit repairs. The state attorney general’s office could enforce violations of the new law under the Consumer Protection Act.

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Apple has bought a game studio for the first time. Digital Trends reported on Tuesday that the company has scooped up RAC7. The two-person team is behind the Apple Arcade hit Sneaky Sasquatch.

For years, some investors have hoped Apple would apply its full clout to the gaming industry. Although recent years have seen the launches of Apple Arcade and Game Mode for Macs, there’s still untapped potential. Another piece of news on Tuesday makes it easier to speculate that something is brewing. Bloomberg reported that the company will launch a revamped gaming app at WWDC. The new app is said to replace the oft-forgotten Game Center.

However, Giovanni Colantonio of Digital Trends suggests the acquisition isn’t necessarily a sign of what’s to come. He notes that Apple described the RAC7 purchase as a unique situation to help the small studio grow. “We will continue to deliver a great experience for Apple Arcade players with hundreds of games from many of the best game developers in the world,” Apple told the publication.

Sneaky Sasquatch was a launch title for Apple Arcade in 2019. Engadget’s Devindra Hardawar described it as an example of how the service can let developers “cut loose and get weird.” And weird, it is. (Delightfully so!) You play as the mythic Bigfoot, tiptoeing around a forest. What starts as a quirky stealth game takes even stranger turns. As you progress, you’ll learn to drive cars, disguise yourself as a human and hit the slopes.

Over five years later, the quirky title is still one of Apple Arcade’s tentpole games. It sits alongside favorites like Katamari Damacy Rolling Live, Skate City: New York and Threes! And we can’t forget one of Engadget’s all-time favorite games, Balatro. The “almost perfect” port of the deck-building game hit the service last year.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/apple-buys-the-maker-of-sneaky-sasquatch-210305065.html?src=rss

A Qualcomm-commissioned study found that Apple’s inaugural C1 modem, debuting in the iPhone 16e, significantly underperformed compared to Qualcomm-powered Android devices in challenging network conditions. The research by Cellular Insights tested devices on T-Mobile’s 5G network in New York City, where Android phones achieved download speeds up to 35% faster and upload speeds up to 91% quicker than the iPhone 16e.

The performance gap widened when networks were congested or devices operated farther from cell towers — precisely the scenarios where next-generation modems should excel, according to the report. The iPhone 16e became “noticeably hot to touch and exhibited aggressive screen dimming within just two-minute test intervals” during testing. This study arrives as Apple attempts to reduce its dependence on Qualcomm, which has historically provided modems for the entire iPhone lineup and represents roughly 20% of Qualcomm’s revenue.

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National Public Radio sued President Trump and his administration today over Trump’s move to block funding for public broadcasting. NPR said Trump acted illegally, and that losing federal funding could force it to shut newsrooms and dramatically scale back news coverage.

On May 1, Trump issued an executive order titled, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” in which he ordered the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and all US agencies to cease federal funding for NPR and PBS. The White House had previously alleged that NPR and PBS “spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.'”

NPR’s lawsuit in US District Court for the District of Columbia asked the court to declare Trump’s executive order and all actions to implement it unconstitutional. NPR’s lawsuit said that Trump “has no authority under the Constitution to take such action. On the contrary, the power of the purse is reserved to Congress, and the President has no inherent authority to override Congress’s will on domestic spending decisions. By unilaterally imposing restrictions and conditions on funds in contravention of Congress, the Order violates the Separation of Powers and the Spending Clause of the Constitution.”

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If you wanted to get a COVID vaccine during pregnancy, to protect yourself and your future baby from the virus, that may soon be difficult to impossible. According to a short video posted on X, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who is also a noted anti-vaccine activist, said that the COVID-19 vaccine “has been removed” from the list of vaccines recommended in pregnancy, as well as the list of vaccines recommended for healthy children. This announcement sidesteps the usual regulatory process, and it’s not clear exactly what will happen next—but here’s what we know. 

The announcement may not be entirely valid

RFK, Jr made the announcement in a video where he stood alongside the NIH director Jay Bhattacharya and FDA commissioner Marty Makary. Notably, nobody from the CDC was present. The FDA approves vaccines, but it’s the CDC that is in charge of recommendations. (It is not clear who the CDC’s acting director actually is, or whether there is one.) 

Normally, the CDC has an advisory panel called ACIP (the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices) that reviews scientific evidence to make recommendations for vaccines. They’ll vote on whether a given vaccine should be recommended for everybody in a group of people. Their decisions are then passed to CDC leadership, who make the final call as to whether the vaccine gets officially recommended for that group. 

Vaccines are not usually added or removed to the recommended list by the CDC without consulting with ACIP, and they definitely aren’t usually added or removed by tweeting a video. 

Dorit Reiss, a law professor who specializes in vaccine policy, posted on LinkedIn that the announcement may not be legally valid if it’s not immediately followed by supporting documentation. She says: “Under administrative law, to avoid being found arbitrary and capricious, an agency’s decision has to meet certain criteria, including explaining the agency’s fact finding, a connection between the facts and the decisions, etc. A one minute video on Twitter doesn’t quite get you there.” 

So far, the CDC’s web page on vaccines recommended in pregnancy still says that “A pregnant woman should get vaccinated against whooping cough, flu, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).” The adult and child vaccine schedules still include COVID vaccines.

Strangely, this move on behalf of the CDC contradicts the one we reported about recently from the FDA. The FDA plans to require extra steps (possibly unethical and/or impractical ones) to approve new COVID vaccines for healthy children and adults. But these steps don’t apply to people who are at high risk for complications of COVID. The FDA’s policy announcement included a list of those high risk health conditions—which includes pregnancy.

Why it matters which vaccines are “recommended”

Recommending a vaccine doesn’t just mean expressing an opinion; the Affordable Care Act requires that vaccines recommended by ACIP must be covered by most private insurance and Medicaid expansion plans without any cost sharing. That means no deductible and no copay—so these vaccines must be free to you out of pocket if you fall into a group of people for whom they are recommended. 

The recommended vaccines include all the standard childhood vaccines, plus your seasonal flu shot, and other vaccines that are recommended for adults, for people who are pregnant, and so on. The full schedules are here. If you’ve gotten a COVID shot, a flu shot, a tetanus shot, a shingles shot—the shot’s inclusion on this list is why you were able to (probably) get it for free.

So taking a vaccine off the recommended list means that it could be prohibitively expensive. GoodRX, which keeps tabs on pharmacy prices, reports that COVID shots may cost $200 or more out of pocket, plus any applicable administration fee that the provider might charge.

Taking a vaccine off the recommended list may also mean it won’t be covered by the Vaccines for Children program, which provides free vaccines to children who don’t have coverage for them through health insurance.

Whether or not the vaccine actually gets taken off the list, the recent HHS announcement has another impact: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said in a statement that “Following this announcement, we are worried about our patients in the future, who may be less likely to choose vaccination during pregnancy despite the clear and definitive evidence demonstrating its benefit.” 

The ACOG statement also pointed out a few ways in which removing the vaccines from the recommended list is not “common sense and good science,” as the HHS announcement claimed. ACOG writes: “As ob-gyns who treat patients every day, we have seen firsthand how dangerous COVID infection can be during pregnancy and for newborns who depend on maternal antibodies from the vaccine for protection. We also understand that despite the change in recommendations from HHS, the science has not changed. It is very clear that COVID infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and it can cause devastating consequences for families.”

Police have arrested a third suspect linked to one of the most extreme bitcoin-related kidnapping and torture cases in the United States, The New York Times reported.

The arrest came after an Italian man, Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan, escaped a luxury Manhattan townhouse after three weeks of alleged imprisonment.

Running to a traffic agent for help, he later told police that he was tortured by colleagues for his bitcoin password, “bound with electrical cords and whipped with a gun,” his feet submerged in water while a Taser gun sent jolts through his body, the NYT reported. At times he feared for his life—allegedly once held suspended from the ledge of the fifth-story building—but he seemingly never gave up his password, a resistance that only prompted more extreme violence.

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