Monthly Archives: February 2025

Google’s AI Previews Erode the Internet, Edtech Company Says In Lawsuit

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Chegg has filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech giant of using AI-generated overviews to undermine publishers by reducing site traffic and eroding financial incentives for original content. Chegg claims this practice violates antitrust laws and threatens the integrity of the online information ecosystem. Reuters reports: This will eventually lead to a “hollowed-out information ecosystem of little use and unworthy of trust,” the company said. The Santa Clara, California-based company has said Google’s AI overviews have caused a drop in visitors and subscribers. Chegg was trading at around $1.63 on Monday, down more than 98% from its peak price in 2021.

The company announced it would lay off 21% of its staff in November. Nathan Schultz, CEO of Chegg, said on Monday that Google is profiting off the company’s content for free. “Our lawsuit is about more than Chegg — it’s about the digital publishing industry, the future of internet search, and about students losing access to quality, step-by-step learning in favor of low-quality, unverified AI summaries,” he said.

Publishers allow Google to crawl their websites to generate search results, which Google monetizes through advertising. In exchange, the publishers receive search traffic to their sites when users click on the results, Chegg said. But Google has started coercing publishers to let it use the information for AI overviews and other features that result in fewer site visitors, the company said. Chegg argued the conduct violates a law against conditioning the sale of one product on the customer selling or giving its supplier another product.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes’ Fraud Convictions Upheld

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“Elizabeth Holmes’ fraud conviction has been upheld by a federal appellate panel,” writes Slashdot reader ClickOnThis. MSNBC reports: A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday affirmed the convictions, sentences and nine-figure restitution ordered against both Holmes and Theranos president, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. […] Theranos was supposedly going to revolutionize medical laboratory testing with the ability to run fast, accurate and affordable tests with just a drop of blood from a finger prick. “But the vision sold by Holmes and Balwani was nothing more than a mirage,” 9th Circuit Judge Jacqueline H. Nguyen wrote (PDF) for the panel, adding that the “grandiose achievements touted by Holmes and Balwani were half-truths and outright lies.”

Holmes was convicted of crimes related to fraud against investors while the jury acquitted her or hung on other counts. Balwani was convicted on all counts at his trial. The federal panel rejected a slew of arguments from both defendants, including that their trials featured improper testimony from Theranos employees. While the ruling is a major setback for the defendants, they can further appeal to a fuller panel of 9th Circuit judges and the Supreme Court, which generally has broad discretion over whether to accept cases for review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

COVID shots protect kids from long COVID—and don’t cause sudden death

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COVID-19 vaccines cut the risk of long COVID by between 57–73 percent in kids and teens, according to a study published today in JAMA Network Open. And there’s more good news: A second study published today in the journal offered more data that the now-annual shots are not linked to sudden cardiac arrest or sudden cardiac death in young athletes—a claim that gained traction on social media and among anti-vaccine groups during the acute phase of the pandemic.

Together, the studies bolster current recommendations that children and teens should stay up to date on their COVID-19 vaccines, which are estimated to have prevented more than 3 million deaths and more than 18 million hospitalizations in the first two years of their use.  So far, the recommendations for kids have largely gone unheeded; only 14 percent of children aged 5 to 17 are up to date on their 2024–2025 COVID shot. Surveys suggest that parents largely think the vaccines are unnecessary, given that most children only have mild COVID infections.

Still, not all infections are mild, and even mild cases can lead to long COVID, according to the authors of the first study. An estimated 1 percent to 3 percent of children infected with SARS-CoV-2 will develop long COVID, defined as having symptoms that continue or develop four or more weeks after the initial phase of infection. With tens of millions of kids getting infected with the pandemic virus, a large number of them are at risk of developing the condition.

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Slice-of-life soccer game Despelote kicks off on May 1

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Despelote is heading to Switch, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC on May 1. Despelote is a super stylish soccer game that’s secretly about life in the Ecuadorian city of Quito in 2001, and it comes from local developers Julián Cordero and Sebastián Valbuena, and published by Panic. 

You play as 8-year-old Julián, and spend your time kicking the ball, meeting people and exploring life during Ecuador’s economic recovery just ahead of the unifying 2002 World Cup. The in-game city comprises actual photographs of places around Quito, but the backgrounds are covered in a layer of high-contrast grit, while people and the soccer ball stand out as stark line drawings. The audio was recorded on location, too, and the result is a game that looks and sounds like a soothing memory. 

Despelote was announced in 2023 and originally due to land in 2024, but it now has a firm date of May 1. It’s already picked up a handful of accolades, including four nominations at the 2025 Independent Games Festival. There’s a demo on Steam, if you’re intrigued.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/slice-of-life-soccer-game-despelote-kicks-off-on-may-1-234256915.html?src=rss

How North Korea pulled off a $1.5 billion crypto heist—the biggest in history

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The cryptocurrency industry and those responsible for securing it are still in shock following Friday’s heist, likely by North Korea, that drained $1.5 billion from Dubai-based exchange Bybit, making the theft by far the biggest ever in digital asset history.

Bybit officials disclosed the theft of more than 400,000 ethereum and staked ethereum coins just hours after it occurred. The notification said the digital loot had been stored in a “Multisig Cold Wallet” when, somehow, it was transferred to one of the exchange’s hot wallets. From there, the cryptocurrency was transferred out of Bybit altogether and into wallets controlled by the unknown attackers.

This wallet is too hot, this one is too cold

Researchers for blockchain analysis firm Elliptic, among others, said over the weekend that the techniques and flow of the subsequent laundering of the funds bear the signature of threat actors working on behalf of North Korea. The revelation comes as little surprise since the isolated nation has long maintained a thriving cryptocurrency theft racket, in large part to pay for its weapons of mass destruction program.

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Dutch Software Firm Bird To Leave Europe Due To Onerous Regulations

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Cloud communications software firm Bird, one of the Netherlands’ most prominent tech startups, plans to move most of its operations out of Europe, its CEO said, citing restrictive regulations and difficulties hiring skilled technology workers. “We are mostly leaving Europe as it lacks the environment we need to innovate in an AI-first era of technology,” CEO Robert Vis told Reuters on Monday. “We foresee that regulations in Europe will block true innovation in a global economy moving extremely fast to AI,” he said in a text message response to Reuters queries.

Bird’s operations in future will be mostly split between New York, Singapore and Dubai, he said. Vis first announced the move abroad in a LinkedIn post over the weekend. Bird, formerly known as Message Bird, was founded in Amsterdam in 2011. It is a competitor of U.S.-based Twilio in the market for helping companies manage their communications with consumers across digital mediums such as messaging, email and video apps. It says it has developed an AI-powered platform that automates and streamlines business operations across entire organizations including tech leaders.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Perplexity Teases AI Web Browser Called Comet

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AI-powered search engine Perplexity is developing its own web browser named Comet. “Just like Perplexity reinvented search, we’re also reinventing the browser,” a Perplexity spokesperson told TechCrunch. “Stay tuned for updates.” From the report: In a post on X on Monday, the company launched a sign-up list for the browser, which isn’t yet available. It’s unclear when it might be — or what the browser will look like, even. But we do have a name: Comet. […] Perplexity may be betting that it can leverage its search engine user base to quickly ramp up and make some sort of a dent in the space with Comet.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sigma’s latest camera is so minimalist it doesn’t have a memory card slot

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Sigma has announced the BF, a new 24.6-megapixel full-frame, mirrorless camera that has a built-in SSD rather than an a CFexpress or SD card slot. The company is known for making lenses and unconventional cameras, and the BF’s design and unique approach to storage definitely fit the bill.

The Sigma BF is milled from a single block of aluminum, and looks it, with mostly flat, angular edges that don’t seem entirely designed for human hands, save for a thumb rest on the back. This is all part of the BF’s deliberately minimalist approach, which extends to the lack of text on the body of the camera and the camera’s haptic buttons. Besides the thumb rest, the back of the BF features a high-resolution display, pill-shaped status monitor for highlighting whatever setting you’re adjusting, a dial for navigating menus, an option button, a power button and a playback button. The top of the BF is even simpler: there’s just two microphones and a shutter button.

The BF is compatible with L-mount lenses, and on top of photos, its 35mm full-frame sensor can capture 6K video, and supports things like HEVC encoding and recording at up to 120 frames per second. The built-in 230GB SSD in the BF is “capable of storing more than 14,000 JPEG files, 4,300 uncompressed RAW images or 2.5 hours of video at the highest-quality setting,” according to Sigma. Like plenty of modern mirrorless cameras, the BF also comes with several different color modes that can tweak the look of your photo. Options include modes like standard and rich, and color specific settings like powder blue, forest green and sunset red.

The Sigma BF viewed from the top with a silver lens attached.
Sigma

All of that sounds cool in theory, especially if you’re interested in a camera with an idiosyncratic design, but you have to be willing to pay for it. PetaPixel writes that the Sigma BF will be available body-only for $1,999 in April 2025, in either black or silver.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cameras/sigmas-latest-camera-is-so-minimalist-it-doesnt-have-a-memory-card-slot-223502411.html?src=rss

I Tried Yope, Gen Z’s New Favorite Photo-Sharing App

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I am always down to try a new social app (a face I have made so, so clear), especially when it involves sharing photos. And the trendy photo-sharing app of the the moment is Yope (available on iOS and Android). Launched in September 2024, it currently has 2.2 million monthly active users and 800,000 daily active users, many of whom are in the investor-coveted Gen Z demographic.

I am not a part of Gen Z, but as of today, I am one of the millions of people who used the app this month. It’s fun and all, but I’m not sure I’ll make it into that 800,000+ cohort of daily users. Here’s why, and what you need to know about Yope.

So, what’s Yope?

The easiest way to describe Yope is to say it’s kind of like a private Instagram crossed with a group chat. (I have never understood the appeal of having a private Instagram account, so I likewise don’t see the appeal of posting to an app designed to hide your content from the majority of users, but that’s me.) You can create and name groups, add friends to them, and then post your pictures to those groups. And that’s basically it. The pics create a stream that anyone in the small group can look at, and you can choose to have them appear on your lock screen. It that sense, it reminds me of Locket, an app I tested out three years ago that also sent your photos to your friends’ lock screens.

The problem for me was a lack of friends to put into a group. I synced my contacts right away, but out of 1,500 people on my phone, exactly zero of them were already on the app, signaling that all the hype around this being big for Gen Z might be true—though I definitely have some Gen-Z cousins saved in my phone, and none of them had it either.

To put the app through its paces, I had to send my referral link to a bunch of my friends and plead with them to download it, which they are sick of doing, given I am cajoling them into a new app every other week or so as it is. Only one, my lovely friend Danielle, agreed to it. This, at least, allowed me to create my first group.

I named it “pals” and Dani and I spent some time uploading pictures to the stream. It was cool for a few minutes, but with just two people, it got old quickly. It honestly wasn’t too different from how we used to use Snapchat, ages ago: Here’s a picture of what I’m looking at. There’s a picture of your face. OK, here’s one of my face.

You can respond to a photo without sending a photo, so the stream also functions as a basic chat. You can send real-time photos or pics from your camera roll, but that’s about it.

Is Yope worth downloading?

Yope on iOS
Yope is easy to use, but this is basically all it does.
Credit: Yope/Lindsey Ellefson

I’ve read a lot of discourse over the past few years about how the pendulum is swinging away from a cultural desire to post for the masses, and back to a compulsion to post for and interact with more tight-knit groups. Instead of tweeting or posting to a public Instagram, a lot of people do seem to enjoy being in small, interest-specific Discord or Telegram channels, in a way reminiscent of an earlier internet era that required one to seek out chatrooms to find like-minded people.

Personally, I am not one who desires a more curated online interactive experience, so I don’t really Vibe with Yope. Even if a lot of my friends were using it, I’d prefer to see everything in a jumble than sift through curated group feeds. But maybe that sounds good to you.

Yope positives:

  • Account setup is easy

  • The contact-syncing function is seamless (provided you have contacts who actually use the app)

  • There aren’t any filters, and there’s minimal risk your photos will be seen by anyone you don’t want to see them, unless your friends screenshot and share them (taking a screenshot does not trigger a notification to the group)

  • The lock screen function works well and updates immediately

  • There lack of features means it doesn’t feel overwhelming; all you can do is post photos into your group stream

  • It’s free

Yope negatives:

  • It gets a little boring if you don’t have a lot of people to share photos with

  • It’s yet another photo-sharing app to add to the list of ones you already have, each of which probably already includes the same group of friends you’d be sharing with on Yope

The bottom line: Nope

I personally won’t keep using Yope, at least not the way I used the similar BeReal for a long stretch in the summer of 2022. That doesn’t mean it won’t continue to gain traction with users who actually want an app that mixes Instagram with a group chat. It seems to have enough momentum to drum up investor capital, which could result in increased visibility and attract more users. Someone you know might even be using it by next month, even if you’re older than 27.

Claude 3.7 Sonnet debuts with “extended thinking” to tackle complex problems

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On Monday, Anthropic announced Claude 3.7 Sonnet, a new AI language model with a simulated reasoning (SR) capability called “extended thinking,” allowing the system to work through problems step by step. The company also revealed Claude Code, a command line AI agent for developers currently available as a limited research preview.

Anthropic calls Claude 3.7 the first “hybrid reasoning model” on the market, giving users the option to choose between quick responses or extended, visible chain-of-thought processing similar to OpenAI’s o1 and o3 series models, Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, and DeepSeek’s R1. When using Claude 3.7’s API, developers can specify exactly how many tokens the model should use for thinking, up to its 128,000 token output limit.

The new model is available across all Claude subscription plans, and the extended thinking mode feature is available on all plans except the free tier. API pricing remains unchanged at $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens, with thinking tokens included in the output pricing since they are part of the context considered by the model.

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AT&T and Verizon Connect First Cellphone-To-Satellite Video Calls

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AT&T and Verizon have successfully completed their first cellphone-to-satellite video calls using AST SpaceMobile’s satellites, marking a significant step toward commercial satellite networks. The Verge reports: Verizon has completed its first cellphone-to-satellite video call, while AT&T has completed its first using satellites that will be used as part of a commercial network. […] Verizon pulled off “a live video call between two mobile devices with one connected via satellite and the other connected via Verizon’s terrestrial network connection,” according to a company press release.

In AT&T’s case, “AT&T and AST SpaceMobile have successfully completed another video call by satellite to an everyday smartphone over AT&T spectrum,” per AT&T’s press release. Both phone companies relied on AST’s constellation of five BlueBird satellites that were launched last September for the tests. AT&T’s initial video call test happened in June 2023.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How to Install the iOS 18.4 Developer Beta

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Last week, Apple launched their developer beta for iOS 18.4. The update brings fresh changes to iOS, including Priority Notifications, a new Genmoji button, and additional supported languages.

While it may be some time before iOS 18.4 is launched to all iPhone users, those curious to try out the new features can do so by installing the beta. However, doing so may cause some issues, so proceed with caution.

How to install the iOS 18.4 developer beta

It’s worth mentioning that there is some risk involved in installing a developer beta. The software can be unstable, as it is currently in testing and designed mainly for developers to make sure their apps are compatible with the latest iOS update. There are also likely bugs and glitches in this developer beta, which Apple is still working on fixing ahead of the public rollout. Those bugs can lead to data loss if you don’t properly back up your device before installing the beta. If you have a idea of what you’re doing and still want to try the new features, then go forth and have fun with the beta. However, it may not be a great idea to install the beta on your main iPhone.

As mentioned, you should back up your iPhone before installing the iOS 18.4 beta on your iPhone. I recommend backing up with your Mac or PC using Finder or iTunes. While you can use iCloud to back up your iPhone, this can be tricky with betas: If your iPhone backs up to iCloud while running iOS 18.4, you won’t be able to retrieve the data should you need to downgrade to the public iOS version. Backing up to your computer helps to ensure all your data from your iPhone stays intact.

Next, you’ll need to enroll your Apple ID in Apple’s developer program. To do so, first head to the Apple Developer site, then select Enroll. Log in to your Apple ID, fill out your information, and agree to Apple’s terms and conditions. While Apple has made it free to access developer betas, if you want to publish apps to the App Store, you’ll still need to pay Apple’s $99 yearly fee for full access to their developer program.

Once you’ve backed up your iPhone and enrolled your Apple ID, you’re ready to install the new developer beta. To install the beta, open Settings > General > Software Update. Below Automatic Updates, you should see an option for Beta Updates. Choose iOS 18.4 Developer Beta, then hit Back. Let iOS load for a moment, and you’ll see an option to Download and Install the beta.