Microsoft is starting to gradually roll out a preview of Recall, its feature that captures screenshots of what you do on a Copilot Plus PC to find again later, to Windows Insiders. From a report: This new rollout could indicate that Microsoft is finally getting close to launching Recall more widely. Microsoft originally intended to launch Recall alongside Copilot Plus PCs last June, but the feature was delayed following concerns raised by security experts. The company then planned to launch it in October, but that got pushed as well so that the company could deliver “a secure and trusted experience.”
Albert Saniger, the founder and former CEO of Nate, an AI shopping app that promised a “universal” checkout experience, was charged with defrauding investors on Wednesday, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. From a report: Founded in 2018, Nate raised over $50 million from investors like Coatue and Forerunner Ventures, most recently raising a $38 million Series A in 2021 led by Renegade Partners. Nate said its app’s users could buy from any e-commerce site with a single click, thanks to AI. In reality, however, Nate relied heavily on hundreds of human contractors in a call center in the Philippines to manually complete those purchases, the DOJ’s Southern District of New York alleges.
Saniger raised millions in venture funding by claiming that Nate was able to transact online “without human intervention,” except for edge cases where the AI failed to complete a transaction. But despite Nate acquiring some AI technology and hiring data scientists, its app’s actual automation rate was effectively 0%, the DOJ claims.
OpenAI today announced a significant expansion of ChatGPT’s customization and memory capabilities. For some users, it will now be able to remember information from the full breadth of their prior conversations with it and adjust its responses based on that information.
This means ChatGPT will learn more about the user over time to personalize its responses, above and beyond just a handful of key facts.
Some time ago, OpenAI added a feature called “Memory” that allowed a limited number of pieces of information to be retained and used for future responses. Users often had to specifically ask ChatGPT to remember something to trigger this, though it occasionally tried to guess at what it should remember, too. (When something was added to its memory, there was a message saying that its memory had been updated.)
Remember when teachers demanded that you “show your work” in school? Some new types of AI models promise to do exactly that, but new research suggests that the “work” they show can sometimes be misleading or disconnected from the actual process used to reach the answer.
New research from Anthropic—creator of the ChatGPT-like Claude AI assistant—examines simulated reasoning (SR) models like DeepSeek’s R1, and its own Claude series. In a research paper posted last week, Anthropic’s Alignment Science team demonstrated that these SR models frequently fail to disclose when they’ve used external help or taken shortcuts, despite features designed to show their “reasoning” process.
(It’s worth noting that OpenAI’s o1 and o3 series SR models were excluded from this study.)
The US Department of Justice has indicted Albert Sangier for defrauding investors with misleading statements about his Nate financial technology platform. Founded by Sangier in 2018, Nate claimed it could offer shoppers a universal checkout app thanks to artificial intelligence. However, the indictment states that the so-called AI-powered transactions in Nate were actually completed by human contractors in the Philippines and Romania or by bots. Sangier raised more than $40 million from investors for the app.
This case follows reporting by The Information in 2022 that cast light on Nate’s use of human labor rather than AI. Sources told the publication that during 2021, “the share of transactions Nate handled manually rather than automatically ranged between 60 percent and 100 percent.”
Many ambitious and ethically challenged entrepreneurs have attempted to make their fortunes by disguising human actions as a mechanical or technological innovation over the centuries. Claiming the results as AI work is just the most digital age application of the idea.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/tech-founder-charged-with-fraud-for-ai-that-was-secretly-overseas-contract-workers-225910022.html?src=rss
The ls command is one of the most frequently used commands in Unix-based systems. This simple yet powerful two-letter command allows users to list files and directories efficiently. When combined with various options and wildcards, ls becomes an indispensable tool for file management.
In this article, we will explore practical examples of the ls command, followed by detailed explanations to ensure clarity and understanding.
Emma Frost is known as the White Queen and the moment you take to the field in her Diamond Form, you’ll know exactly why. A dominant, monarch-like force on the battlefield, Emma has everything you need to succeed as a Vanguard. She has tools for every situation and can go up against any hero and come out on top, so…
nDreams, the studio behind free-to-play arena shooter FRENZIES, announced that the game is heading out of early access later this year, although it won’t be coming to PSVR 2 as previously planned.
The studio released a statement, saying it has “other exciting PS VR2 announcements coming” in lieu of Frenzies coming to PSVR 2:
“We’re excited to confirm that FRENZIES will be free-to-play when it leaves Early Access later this year! Since the start of Early Access on Meta Quest, we’ve seen a fantastic response from players who love FRENZIES’ unique brand of chaos, and we want to make sure we’re able to build upon that when we move out of Early Access.
As we focus on delivering the best possible version of FRENZIES, we’ve made the tough to decision to concentrate our efforts on the Meta Quest release and will no longer be releasing FRENZIES on PS VR2. We know this will be disappointing news to those who were eagerly awaiting the PS VR2 release but rest assured, we have some other exciting PS VR2 announcements coming your way soon!
For now, get ready for more FRENZIES updates in the coming weeks as we roll out our Early Access roadmap.”
Released in early access on Quest 2 and above back in October 2024, Frenzies brings fast-paced arena shooting action along with an assortment of standard weapons and game modes—all of which is packaged into a surprisingly solid, VR-native gameplay experience.
While PSVR 2 players hoping to jump in at launch are likely disheartened, it makes a good deal of sense from the developer’s perspective for a few reasons.
Over the past year, Quest has seen a significant bump in younger users adopting the platform alongside the entrance of the $300 Quest 3S, which has also concordantly boosted free-to-play content on the platform.
“We expect free-to-play (F2P) to become a broadly viable strategy for developers, who up until now have relied almost exclusively on premium apps. But we don’t think F2P will replace premium apps — both models are likely to coexist,” Samantha Ryan, Meta VP of Metaverse Content, said in February.
There’s also an increasingly difficult economic environment to navigate. It’s likely nDreams is looking to maximize its return by appealing solely to its largest prospective player pool, as the UK-based studio recently condensed both its nDreams Studio Orbital and nDreams Studio into its new internal studio ‘Compass’ following a round of layoffs.
Still, as one of the most senior XR game studios out there, nDreams has developed and published a dizzying number of high-quality VR games, including Vendetta Forever, Power Wash Simulator VR, Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, Synapse, Fracked, Little Cities, and Phantom: Cover Ops to name a few.
An engineering sample of Valve’s Steam Deck handheld appears to have sold on eBay for $2,000 (it was listed for $2,999.99), plus another $5 shipping. So $2,005 total, if our math checks out. That’s three times higher than Valve’s most expensive Steam Deck model, the OLED variant with 1TB of storage ($649) and seven and around five times more
This is a video of musician Ichika Nito performing his own uptempo arrangement of Beethoven’s Für Elise on guitar with a drum and bass backing that turns the song into a speedy club track. I remember in high school my music teacher actually tried to convince us Für Elise meant Elise the Werewolf. He got busted growing weed my junior year.
This week, as part of the process to develop a budget for fiscal-year 2026, the Trump White House shared the draft version of its budget request for NASA with the space agency.
This initial version of the administration’s budget request calls for an approximately 20 percent overall cut to the agency’s budget across the board, effectively $5 billion from an overall topline of about $25 billion. However, the majority of the cuts are concentrated within the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, which oversees all planetary science, Earth science, astrophysics research, and more.
According to the “passback” documents given to NASA officials on Thursday, the space agency’s science programs would receive nearly a 50 percent cut in funding. After the agency received $7.5 billion for science in fiscal-year 2025, the Trump administration has proposed a science topline budget of just $3.9 billion for the coming fiscal year.
Hutchinson has revealed the Caracal All Road, a revised version of its gravel race tyre designed specifically for all-road bikes.
The Caracal All Road takes the template of Hutchinson’s existing Caracal Race gravel tyre, with Hutchinson’s 127 TPI SwiftEasy casing and a semi-slick tread, and adds a puncture protection strip underneath the tread.
The size of the tyre is reduced to 700x35c (down from 700x40c), to fit a wider range of road and all-road bikes.
Hutchinson describes the Caracal All Road as a “fit-and-forget” option for bikes without big tyre clearances. Hutchinson
Given most gravel bike tyres have got consistently wider in recent years, it might seem an odd step for Hutchinson to add a smaller size to the Caracal line-up.
However, Hutchinson says the Caracal All Road is aimed at “gravel-curious roadies” rather than experienced gravel cyclists – riders who “want the freedom to play off-road when the trail calls” but don’t want to sacrifice performance on the road.
The Caracal All Road is, Hutchinson claims, “a fit-and-forget gravel tyre offering, meaning riders no longer have to choose between road and gravel”, or waste time with pre-ride tyre swaps.
The Caracal All Road is at home both on- and off-road, according to Hutchinson. Hutchinson
Continuing on this theme, Hutchinson says it made the decision to add a puncture protection belt in order to bolster the tyre’s durability.
The Caracal Race, after all, is one of the fastest gravel bike tyres available (according to independent testing by bicyclerollingresistance.com), but it isn’t the most durable available.
As with all racy tyres, it achieves its speed by giving up some reliability, with a reduced casing thickness and the lack of a dedicated puncture protection strip beneath the tread.
The Hutchinson Caracal All Road uses a premium rubber compound on the tread for fast rolling. Hutchinson
The rubber compound used in the tread remains Hutchinson’s premium Mach Tread 3.0, which was originally developed for Hutchinson’s fastest road bike tyres, such as the Blackbird Racing Lab TLR.
Available with black or tan sidewalls and manufactured in France, the Caracal All Road costs £49.99 / €54.99.
Wider gravel options
Hutchinson’s Caracal Race tyre will soon be available in a larger 45c option. Simon von Bromley / Our Media
Alongside the Caracal All Road, Hutchinson has also announced it is releasing 45c versions of its Caracal Race and Caracal gravel tyres.
Previously, both of these tyres were only available in a single, 700x40c size. With wider tyres all the rage in gravel racing, though, Hutchinson appears to be responding to that demand.
Hutchinson says the 700x45c Caracal tyre is on sale now, with the 45c Caracal Race available from “June 2025 onwards”.
Pricing for both models is the same as the 40c versions, at £54.99 / €59.99 per tyre for the Caracal Race and £49.99 / €54.99 for the Caracal.
Microsoft is gradually rolling out new preview features to Windows Insiders, including Recall, which has been the target of critics’ security and privacy concerns since it was announced. It was originally supposed to be a preview experience that’s broadly available to all Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs when the first batch of AI-assisted devices hit the market in June last year. But Microsoft pushed back its release to ensure the feature was truly secure. It delayed the tool’s rollout yet again in October 2024 to “refine the experience before previewing it with Windows Insiders.”
Recall lets you quickly jump back to whatever you previously had open on your screen, whether it’s a web page, an image, a document, an email or a chat thread. It works by regularly taking screenshots of your activity in the background, which it then saves into a searchable database. If you want to go back to a particular task you were doing in the past, you can either browse through the screenshots in the tool’s timeline and choose one or type a query in the search bar of its interface with a description of what you’re looking for using natural language.
Due to the privacy and security concerns around Recall, Microsoft made it an opt-in feature. You’ll have to explicitly enable it, and you’ll have to verify your identity with a Windows Hello authentication method before you can access your snapshots. Further, you can delete any snapshot you want, and you can pause saving them anytime. As The Verge notes, Microsoft previously made Recall available to a smaller number of test users, but releasing it to all Insiders brings it one step closer to a wide release.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/microsoft-is-rolling-out-its-controversial-recall-feature-to-windows-insiders-130003854.html?src=rss
With both Ubuntu 25.04 and Fedora 42 releasing this month you may be curious how these two Linux distributions are competing for performance. Well, it’s a very tight race for common Intel/AMD x86_64 hardware. In this article are some benchmarks looking at clean installs of Ubuntu 25.04 and Fedora Workstation 42 on AMD Strix Point.
Valve’s rumored standalone XR headset, codenamed ‘Deckard’, has been the subject of speculation since mention was first discovered back in 2021. Now, information obtained by tech analyst and VR pundit Brad Lynch (aka ‘SadlyItsBradley‘) points to Valve gearing up production for the long-awaited device.
Deckard is still largely a mystery, although rumors suggest Valve’s next headset will be a standalone device that can also wirelessly stream PC VR games, ostensibly putting it competition with Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro.
Lynch, who is often involved in XR industry leaks, maintains Valve has been recently importing “equipment to manufacture VR headset facial interfaces inside the USA.”
“The equipment is being provided by Teleray Group who also manufactured the gaskets for the Valve Index and HP G2 Omnicept,” Lynch says in an X post.
Valve Index is nearly six years old now, so it’s unlikely the company is looking to prototype facial interfaces for the aging PC VR headset, which really only leaves its long-awaited next entry into the XR segment.
It’s uncertain whether Valve’s move to manufacture key parts in the US is an effort to sidestep increased tariffs on China, which US President Donald Trump levied in recent days.
Lynch however reports that Valve is using the same US-based facility previously dedicated to manufacturing the company’s Lighthouse 2.0 base stations, which Valve cleared out nearly two years ago.
“Maybe […] they wanted to use that facility for manufacturing some new components in the years they have Deckard on the market, dodging some tariff pressures(?), [or maybe] prototyping future HMDs gasket designs near/at Valve. This option I doubt since I’d wager they already have small scale R&D equipment already for many years,” Lynch speculates.
Having been the subject of rumor for nearly four years now, there’s been a mountain of reports and leaks concerning Deckard. The most recent reports however point to Valve actually gearing up production, which would suggest we’re not very far from its unveiling.
Valve ‘Roy’ Model Leak | Image courtesy Brad Lynch
In November 2024, leaked 3D models hidden in a SteamVR update appeared to show off a new VR motion controller, codenamed ‘Roy’, which departs from standard VR motion controller layouts by offering a more traditional gamepad-style button layout instead of the now widely-adopted Touch layout. Provided Valve is set on that design, it could mean Deckard will offer a 1:1 input experience with Steam Deck.
Then, in February, a report from serial leaker and data miner ‘Gabe Follower’ suggested Valve is releasing Deckard by the end of 2025, priced at $1,200. Gabe Follower maintains that Deckard’s rumored $1,200 price point “will be sold at a loss,” who further posits Deckard will use the same SteamOS as seen in Steam Deck, Valve’s handheld, albeit adapted for VR.
For those relying on OpenVPN for your virtual private networking (VPN) needs, one of the most exciting innovations in recent times besides transitioning to the WireGuard alternative is the OpenVPN DCO kernel driver. This “data channel offload” driver has the potential to provide significant performance advantages over the current OpenVPN performance…
Lucid Motors has announced that it’s acquiring certain facilities in Arizona owned by Nikola, an EV truck maker that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection back in February. It will also offer more than 300 former Nikola employees jobs across its facilities in the state, including roles in engineering, software, assembly, vehicle testing and warehouse support. Lucid says that most of the space it’s buying is comprised of state-of-the-art manufacturing and warehousing buildings. It’s also getting the equipment inside those buildings, such as Nikola’s battery and environmental testing chambers, machining equipment and a full-size chassis dynamometer, among others.
Nikola, which was founded in 2015, used those facilities as its factory, headquarters and development center for zero-emission heavy trucks. When it announced its bankruptcy in February, the company also said that it was going to sell off its assets. Lucid didn’t say how much it’s paying for the purchase, but the deal is valued at $30 million in cash and non-cash considerations, according to Electrek. The acquisition is part of Lucid’s planned expansion in Arizona, but it still has to be approved by the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.
“As we continue our production ramp of Lucid Gravity and prepare for our upcoming midsize platform vehicles, acquiring these assets is an opportunity to strategically expand our manufacturing, warehousing, testing, and development facilities while supporting our local Arizona community,” said Marc Winterhoff, Interim CEO at Lucid. The company launched its electric SUV, Gravity, 2024. At the moment, only the $94,000 Grand Touring trim is available, but Lucid plans to start production for the $79,900 Touring model sometime this year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/lucid-to-buy-nikolas-arizona-ev-facilities-after-the-latters-bankruptcy-123027329.html?src=rss
