Can red light therapy really help your skin? Here are the benefits certain wavelengths can bring your skin, and which LED face masks (and other LED devices) are worth buying.

With drones and A.I., researchers managed to double the number of mysterious geoglyphs in a matter of months.

Since last September, the tech giant has pumped $8 billion into the artificial intelligence start-up, a sign of intense competition in developing tools that are reshaping the tech sector.

MacworldApple is adding more and better ports to its latest MacBooks but for true flexibility and the very best extra functionality you should consider a docking station to expand your laptop into a full top-end desktop solution.We have tested and recommended the best Thunderbolt docks for Mac and best USB-C hubs for Mac, but now is a great time to look for deals in Black Friday and Cyber Monday weeks. Below we list the best Black Friday deals on some of these docks and hubs that we have recommended as the best of the best in our reviews.Examples of great deals include the iVanky FusionDock Max 1 (uniquely boasting two Thunderbolt 4 chips), the Wavlink Thunderbolt 4 Triple Display Docking Station (our favorite budget Thunderbolt 4 dock), the Satechi Dual Dock Stand (our best choice for Mac USB-C dock) and the CalDigit TS4 (the most powerful Thunderbolt 4 dock in our tests), as well as super hubs such as the Baseus 10Gbps USB-C Hub with 50% off its retail price. The Anker 675 is a combination monitor stand and fast USB-C dock, and has a third slashed from its MSRP.While the official Black Friday is on November 29 and Cyber Monday on December 2, were already seeing fantastic deals, so you might not want to wait. Well be updating this page regularly as more discounts come in.Some Amazon deals are for Prime subscribers only, so, you need to have a subscription to the service ($14.99 / 8.99 / CA$9.99 / AU$9.99per month or$139 / 95 / CA$99 / AU$79per year). You can sign up for the 30-day free trial to cover the Prime-only deals.However, there are many deals available when a subscription to Prime is not necessary and anyone can enjoy.Want to see how much you can save on Apple products? Take a look at ourBest Black Friday Apple Deals.First we look at the best Black Friday dock and hub deals in the U.S. and then the best we have found available in the U.K.Best Thunderbolt 4 docking station and hub Black Friday deals (U.S.)Docks include a multitude of ports from USB to HDMI and Ethernet to SD card readers. Connect Mac and dock via a single cable and all these extra ports are now at your disposal. Thunderbolt 4 has a super-fast 40Gbps data-transfer rate equal to that of most Macs own ports. They usually offer more advanced display options than USB-C docks.Wavlink Thunderbolt 4 Dock, 13 ports, dual HDMI 4K displays, 100W charging: now $159.99 (20% off at Amazon Prime, MSRP $199.99)iVANKY FusionDock Max 1, 20 ports, four 6K displays, 96W charging: now $373.98 ($70 off at Amazon, MSRP $439.99)Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Multimedia Pro Dock, 16 ports, dual 4K, 96W charging, now $244.99 ($105 off at Satechi with code HOLIDAY30, MSRP $349.99)CalDigit TS4 Thunderbolt 4 Dock, 18 ports, dual 6K displays, 98W charging,now $379.99 (16% off at Amazon, MSRP $449.95)OWC Thunderbolt Go Dock, 11 ports, two 5K displays, 90W charging, now $249.99 ($22 off at Amazon, MSRP $299.99)Kensington SD5700T Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station, 11 ports, dual 4K displays, 90W charging: now $167.49 (24% off at Amazon, MSRP $219.99)CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Element Hub, 8 ports, Dual 4K Displays, 60W Charging: now $143.99 (20% off at Amazon Prime, MSRP $179.99)Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Slim Hub: 4 ports, dual 4K, 60W charging, $93.80 (45% off at Satechi with code HOLIDAY30, MSRP $169.99)Best USB-C docking station Black Friday deals (U.S.)USB-C docks have a lesser data-transfer rate of between 5Gbps and 10Gbps but are usually cheaper and will suit many people as well as the faster Thunderbolt docks. Satechi Dual USB-C Docking Station and Stand, 10 ports, 10Gbps, Dual 4K HDMI, 75W charging, SSD enclosure: now $97.49 (35% off at Amazon, MSRP $149.99)Anker 675 USB-C Docking Station, 12-port 10Gbps monitor stand: now $169.99 (32% off at Amazon, MSRP $249.99)Best USB-C hub Black Friday deals (U.S.)Hubs offer fewer ports than full docking stations but eight strong ports may be all you require, so you could save money with one of these simple hubs.Anker 555 USB-C Hub, 8 ports, 4K display, 100W charging: now $39.99 (20% off at Amazon, MSRP $49.99)Baseus 10Gbps USB-C Hub, 6 ports, 4K HDMI, 100W charging: now $24.99 (50% off at Amazon, MSRP $49.99)Satechi USB C Hub Multiport Adapter V3, 8 ports, 4K display, 85W charging: now $69.99 (30% off at Amazon Prime, MSRP $99.99)Ugreen USB-C Hub, 4 USB-A ports: now $9.99 (33% off at Amazon Prime, MSRP $14.99)Satechi USB-C Hub Multiport Adapter Pro Hub Max, 7 ports, 4K HDMI, 100W charging: now $59.99 (40% off at Amazon Prime, MSRP $99.99)Anker 565 11-in-1 USB-C Hub: 11 ports, 4K display, 100W charging, now $54.99 (17% off at Amazon, MSRP $65.99)Best DisplayLink dock Black Friday deals (U.S.)DisplayLink is software that can help you connect more than one display to plain M1 and M2 MacBooks and also expand the external display capabilities of non-Pro/Max M3 and M4 Macs. Here are some tasty Black Friday deals we found on these handy docks and hubs.Plugable Thunderbolt 4 Dock for Quad Monitors, 11 ports, four 4K displays, 100W charging: now $239.96 (20% off at Amazon, MSRP $299.95)Plugable USB-C Laptop Docking Station: 14 ports, DisplayLink, dual 4K displays, 100W charging, now $159.96 (27% off at Amazon Prime, MSRP $219.99)Wavlink USB-C to Dual 4K DisplayPort & HDMI Adapter: 4 ports, DisplayLink, dual 4K HDMI or DisplayPort, now $55.99 (25% off at Amazon Prime, MSRP $74.99)Ugreen Revodok Pro 209 USB-C Docking Station: 9 ports, DisplayLink, dual 4K displays, 100W charging, now $118.99 (30% off at Amazon, MSRP $169.99)Now we move across the Atlantic to the best U.K. Black Friday dock and hub deals this year.Best Thunderbolt docking station Black Friday deals (U.K.)Wavlink Thunderbolt 4 Dock, 13 ports, dual HDMI 4K displays,100W Charging: now 129.59 (24% off at Amazon Prime, RRP 169.99)iVANKY FusionDock Max 1, 20 ports, four 6K displays, 96W charging: now 379.99 (120 off at Amazon, RRP 499.99)CalDigit TS4 Thunderbolt 4 Dock, 18 ports, dual 6K displays, 98W charging,now 341.99 (10% off at Amazon, RRP 379.99)CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Element Hub, 8 ports, Dual 4K Displays, 60W Charging: now 143.99 (28% off at Amazon Prime, RRP 199.99)Best USB-C docking station Black Friday deals (U.K.)Satechi Dual USB-C Docking Station and Stand, 10 ports, Dual 4K HDMI, 75W charging, SSD enclosure: now 56.86 (51% off at Amazon, RRP 115.47)Anker 675 USB-C Docking Station, 12-port monitor stand: now 189.98 (24% off at Amazon, RRP 249.99)Best USB-C hub Black Friday deals (U.K.)Anker 555 USB-C Hub, 8 ports, 4K display, 100W charging: now 39.98 (46% off at Amazon, RRP 74.49)Anker 565 USB-C Hub: 11 ports, 4K display, 100W charging, now 49.99 (44% off at Amazon, RRP 89.99)Baseus 10Gbps USB-C Hub, 6 ports, 4K HDMI, 100W charging: now $24.99 (50% off at Amazon, RRP 115.47)Satechi USB C Hub Multiport Adapter V3, 8 ports, 4K display, 85W charging: now $67.49 (25% off at Amazon Prime, RRP 89.99)Ugreen USB-C Hub, 4 USB-A ports: now $9.49 (37% off at Amazon, RRP 14.99)Satechi USB-C Hub Multiport Adapter Pro Hub Max, 7 ports, 4K HDMI, 100W charging: now 53.99 (40% off at Amazon, RRP 89.99)Black Friday 2024: Best deals for Apple productsCheck out these roundups for the best Apple deals:Apple Black Friday 2024 saleBest Black Friday 2024 Apple dealsBest Black Friday 2024 Mac DealsBest Black Friday 2024 MacBook dealsBest Black Friday 2024 AirPods dealsBest Black Friday 2024 Apple Watch dealsBest Black Friday 2024 iPad dealsBest Black Friday 2024 iPhone dealsBest Black Friday 2024 Mac monitor dealsBest Black Friday 2024 SSD and external hard drive dealsBest Black Friday 2024 Apple accessory deals

MacworldYou might think that connecting anonymously to a public Wi-Fi network doesnt reveal much about you. You might be using a VPN (virtual private network) to protect everything you do. Even if you arent, the vast majority of websites and email servers (and pretty much all those run by companies) use client-to-server encryption. But what if you could be tracked anyway?Apple has a solution for this as it does for many tracking systems. The companys trick lies in how Wi-Fi (and ethernet) adapters identify themselves over a local network. How MAC addresses workEvery network adapter has a unique, factory-assigned address baked in or programmed in at its manufacture. Its called a Media (or Medium) Access Control address; the abbreviation is MAC, confusingly enough, but it has nothing to do with Macintoshes. Where an IP (Internet Protocol) address defines your machines location on the internet, a MAC address defines it on your local area network (LAN). The MAC is in part how devices on a LAN all communicate with one another, whether over Wi-Fi or ethernet.Apple recognized that any fixed identifier could be used to track someone if the ID could be tied to records shared beyond a local network. When you connect to a wireless hotspot, your Wi-Fi MAC address gets transmitted because its an inherent part of that connection. If that MAC address doesnt change over time, the backend of a hotspot portal or a business locations point-of-sale system could build up a profile of you (or your device) using a variety of clues that includes any Bluetooth broadcasts, logging into a portal to gain free access, using a discount card while paying, and emitting other broadcast identifiers.They could sell this information to third-party information brokers who could track you widely across locations that also share and sell information and target you with ads even if all your web, email, and file-transfer connections were secure, as is the case in most scenarios today. Worse, its clear that law enforcement and government agencies routinely purchase access to location information without use of subpoenas or legal mechanisms that a provider or you would be informed of and could fight.While a MAC address is factory assigned, it can be changed. For instance, you may have had the experience of connecting to a Wi-Fi gateway to configure it and seeing an option buried in advanced settings to modify the MAC address. (This can sometimes be helpful when youre replacing a router, and your ISPs broadband modem or adapter is registered to that older devices MAC address.)The ability for a MAC to change and the potential for a MAC to be tracked is why Apple introduced a Private Wi-Fi address as a feature in iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and watchOS 7. It later added it to macOS. The feature is enabled by default for all Wi-Fi connections on all platforms. Apple made this feature more granularoffering ways to tune it furtherin iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15 Sequoia, and watchOS 11.Apple uses the term Private Wi-Fi address to refer to the MAC address for a Wi-Fi adapter. Its identical to a MAC address, but the company doesnt offer private MAC addresses for Ethernet connections.Change your private address settingsYou can view the settings only for individual networks because Apple lets you have different settings for each network to which you connect.On an iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > Wi-Fi and tap the connected network name. You can also change Private Wi-Fi options by tapping the i (info) icon next to a nearby network, or tapping Edit at the top of Wi-Fi settings and tapping the i icon.On a Mac, go to System Settings > Wi-Fi and click Details next to the connected network. You can also tap the (More) button next to a network shown as nearby to make changes to the Private Wi-Fi address settings. (You cant change stored MAC settings in macOS.)On a Watch, go to Settings > Wi-Fi, tap the name of the network, and the Private Address setting appears.The Private Wi-Fi address setting lets you control how much long-term information you leak about your device to nearby networks.FoundryThe latest releases of operating systems added a menu that offers Off, Fixed, and Rotating choices.By default when you connect to an open network (one with no encryption) or one using outdated encryption methods (WEP or the original WAP flavor), your operating system automatically sets the option to Rotating. In this case, your device invents a MAC address for every network you join and uses that address for two weeks. The address also changes if you choose Forget This Network and then connect again after 24 hours, or if you use the devices settings to reset your network settings (Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone/iPad > Reset > Reset Network Settings).You might ask: what if Apple generates a MAC address already in use? The number of possible addresses is vastover 280 trillion possibilitiesand unlike a global IP address, it only needs to be unique on the local network.If you connect to a network with WPA2 or later encryption, your device uses Fixed by default. You might also choose this on a personal or office local network even if Apples default isnt set to Fixed in order to ensure your address stays consistent.If you pick Off, youre warned about tracking and have to confirm before Private Wi-Fi address is disabled.You might change from Rotating to Off or Fixed if you think youre experiencing problems with a hotspot network that keeps losing your login. Ive seen this with airplane Wi-Fi and havent diagnosed whether its an issue with the airplanes authentication system or private MAC addressing.This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by a Macworld reader.Ask Mac 911Weve compiled a list of the questions we get asked most frequently, along with answers and links to columns:read our super FAQto see if your question is covered. If not, were always looking for new problems to solve! Email yours tomac911@macworld.com, including screen captures as appropriate and whether you want your full name used. Not every question will be answered, we dont reply to email, and we cannot provide direct troubleshooting advice.

The announcement that Amazon Web Services (AWS) will be Anthropics primary training partner confirms rumors of an even tighter partnership between the two companies.They announced Friday that Anthropic will use AWS Trainium processors to train and deploy its Claude family of models. Further, as predicted earlier this month, Amazon will invest an additional $4 billion in the startup, making its total investment $8 billion.AWS is already Anthropics primary cloud provider, and the OpenAI rival will now also primarily use Trainium and Inferentia chips to train and deploy its foundation models. Anthropic will also contribute to Trainium development in what the companies call a hardware-software development approach.While its unclear whether the agreement requires Anthropic to exclusively use AWS chips, it is a move by Amazon to challenge the likes of Nvidia and other dominant players as the AI chip race accelerates.This is a first step in broadening the accessibility of generative AI and AI models, Alvin Nguyen, Forrester senior analyst, told Computerworld.Accelerating Claude developmentAnthropic, which launched in 2021, has made significant progress with its Claude large language models (LLMs) this year as it takes on OpenAI. Its Claude 3 family comprises three LLMs: Sonnet, Haiku (its fastest and most compact), and Opus (for more complex tasks), which are all available on Amazon Bedrock. The models have vision capabilities and a 200,000 token context window, meaning they support large volumes of data, equal to roughly 150,000 words, or 500 pages of material.Notably, last month Anthropic introduced Computer Use to Claude 3.5 Sonnet. This capability allows the model to use computers as people do; it can quickly move cursors, toggle between tabs, navigate websites, click buttons, type, and compile research documents in addition to its generative capabilities. All told, the company claims that Sonnet outperforms all other available models on agentic coding tasks.Claude has experienced rapid adoption since its addition to Amazon Bedrock, AWS fully-managed service for building generative AI models, in April 2023, and now supports tens of thousands of companies across numerous industries, according to AWS. The foundation models are used to build a number of functions, including chatbots, coding assistants, and complex business processes.This has been a year of breakout growth for Claude, and our collaboration with Amazon has been instrumental in bringing Claudes capabilities to millions of end users on Amazon Bedrock, Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, said in an announcement.The expanded partnership between the two companies is a strategic one for both sides, signaling that Anthropics models are performant and versatile, and that AWS infrastructure can handle intense generative AI workloads in a way that rivals Nvidia and other chip players.From an Anthropic point of view, the benefit is guaranteed infrastructure, the ability to keep expanding models capabilities, and showcase them, said Nguyen, noting that it also expands their footprint and access.Its showing that they can work well with multiple others, he said. That increases comfort levels in their ability to get training done, to produce models, to get them utilized.AWS, meanwhile, has a premiere client, one of the faces of AI in Anthropic, said Nguyen.From silicon through the full stackAs part of the expanded partnership, Anthropic will also help to develop and optimize future versions of AWSs purpose-built Trainium chip. The machine learning (ML) chip supports deep learning training for 100 billion-plus parameter models.Anthropic said it is working closely with AWS Annapurna Labs to write low-level kernels that allow it to interact with Trainium silicon. It is also contributing to the AWS Neuron software stack to help strengthen Trainium, and is collaborating with the chip design team around hardware computational efficiency.This close hardware-software development approach, combined with the strong price-performance and massive scalability of Trainium platforms, enables us to optimize every aspect of model training from the silicon up through the full stack, Anthropic wrote in a blog post published Friday.This approach provides an advantage over more general purpose hardware (such as Nvidias GPUs) that do more than what is absolutely necessary, Nguyen pointed out. The companies long partnership also means they may have mitigated performance optimization advantages that Nvidia has with their CUDA platform.This type of deep collaboration between the software and hardware engineers/developers allows for optimizations in both the hardware and software that is not always possible to find when working independently, said Nguyen.

Once upon a time, wed say software is eating the planet. It still is, but these days our world is being consumed by generative AI (genAI), which is seeminglybeing added to everything. Now, Apples Siri is on the cusp of bringing in its own form of genAI in a more conversational version Apple insiders are already calling LLM Siri.What is LLM Siri?Apple has alreadytold us to expecta more contextually-aware version of Siri in 2025, part of the companys soon-to-be-growing Apple Intelligence suite. This Siri will be able to, for example, respond to questions and requests concerning a website, contact, or anything else you happen to be looking at on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. Think of it like an incredibly focused AI that works to understand what you are seeing and tries to give you relevant answers and actions that relate to it.Thats what we knew already. What we learn now (fromBloomberg)is that Apples AI teams are working to give Siri even more capabilities. The idea is to ensure Apples not-so-smart smart assistant can better compete against chatbots like ChatGPT, thanks to the addition of large language models (LLMs) likeOpenAIorGeminialready use.What will Smart Siri do?This smarter Siri will be able to hold conversations, and drill into enquiries, just like those competing engines particularly Advanced Voice Mode on ChatGPT. Siris responses will also become more human, enabling it to say, I have a stimulating relationship with Dr. Poole, and for you to believe that.These conversations wont only need to be the equivalent of a visit to the therapist on a rainy Wednesday; youll also be able to get into fact-based and research-focused conversations, with Siri dragging up answers and theories on command.In theory, youll be able to access all the knowledge of the internet and a great deal of computationally-driven problem solving from your now-much-smarter smartphone. Apples ambition is to replace, at least partially, some of the features Apple Intelligence currently hands off to ChatGPT, though I suspect the iPhone maker will be highly selective in the tasks it does take on.The company has already put some of the tools in place to handle this kind of on-the-fly task assignment; Apple Intelligence can already check a request to see whether it can be handled on the device, on Apples ownhighly secure servers, or needs to be handed over for processing by OpenAI or any other partners that might be in the mix.When will LLM Siri leap into action?Bloombergspeculates that this smarter assistant tech could be one of the highlight glimpses Apple offers at WWDC 2025. If thats correct, it seems reasonable to anticipate the tech will eventually be introduced across the Apple ecosystem, just like Apple Intelligence.You could be waiting a while for that introduction; the report suggests a spring 2026 launch for the service, which the company is already testing as a separate app across its devices.In the run-up to these announcements, Siricontinues to develop more features. As of iOS 18.3 it will begin to build a personal profile of users in order to provide better responses to queries. It will also be able to use App Intents, which let third-party developers make the features of their apps available across the system via Siri. ChatGPT integration will make its own debut next month.Will it be enough?Siri as a chatbot is one area in which Apple does appear to have fallen behind competitors. While it seems a positive at least in competitive terms that Apple is working to remedy that weakness, its current competitors will not be standing still (though unfurling AI regulation might put a glass ceiling to limit some of their global domination dreams).Apples teams will also be aware of work in the background taking place between former Apple designer Jony Ive and Sam Altmans OpenAI, and will want to ensure it has a moat in place to protect itself againstwhatever the fruits of that laborturn out to be.With that in mind, Apples current approach to identifykey areas in which it can make a difference and to work towards edge-based, private, secure AI makes sense and is likely to remain theprimary thrust of Apples future efforts.Though if theres one net positive every Apple user already enjoys out of the intense race to AI singularity it is that the pre-installed memory inside all Apple devices has now increased. Which means that even those who never, ever, ever want to have a conversation with a machine can get more stuff done quicker than before. Learn more about Apple Intelligencehere.You can follow me on social media! Join me onBlueSky, LinkedIn,Mastodon, andMeWe.

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Reviews weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.Well, what about China?This is a comment I get all the time on the topic of climate change, both in conversations and on whatever social media site is currently en vogue. Usually, it comes in response to some statement about how the US and Europe are addressing the issue (or how they need to be).Sometimes I think people ask this in bad faith. Its a rhetorical way to throw up your hands, imply that the US and Europe arent the real problem, and essentially say: if they arent taking responsibility, why should we? However, amid the playground-esque finger-pointing there are some undeniable facts: China emits more greenhouse gases than any other country, by far. Its one of the worlds most populous countries and a climate-tech powerhouse, and its economy is still developing.With many complicated factors at play, how should we think about the countrys role in addressing climate change?Chinas emissions are the highest in the world, topping 12 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency.Theres context missing if we just look at that one number, as I wrote in my latest story that digs into recent global climate data. Since carbon dioxide hangs around in the atmosphere for centuries, we should arguably consider not just a countrys current emissions, but everything its produced over time. If we do that, the US still takes the crown for the worlds biggest climate polluter.However, China is now in second place, according to a new analysis from Carbon Brief released this week. In 2023, the country exceeded the EUs 27 member states in historical emissions for the first time.This reflects a wider trend that were seeing around the world: Developing nations are starting to account for a larger fraction of emissions than they used to. In 1992, when countries agreed to the UN climate convention, industrialized countries (a category called Annex I) made up about one-fifth of the worlds population but were responsible for a whopping 61% of historical emissions. By the end of 2024, though, those countries share of global historical emissions will fall to 52%, and it is expected to keep ticking down.China, like all nations, will need to slash its emissions for the world to meet global climate goals. One crucial point here is that while its emissions are still huge, there are signs that the nation is making some progress.Chinas carbon dioxides emissions are set to fall in 2024 because of record growth in low-carbon energy sources. That decline is projected to continue under the countrys current policy settings, according to an October report from the IEA. Chinas oil demand could soon peak and start to fall, largely because its seeing such a huge uptake of electric vehicles.One growing question: With all this progress and a quickly growing economy, should we be expecting China to do more than just make progress on its own emissions?As I wrote in the newsletter last week, the current talks at COP29 (the UN climate conference) are focused on setting a new, more aggressive global climate finance goal to help developing nations address climate change. China isnt part of the group of countries that are required to pay into this pot of money, but some are calling for that to change given that it is the worlds biggest polluter.One interesting point hereChina already contributes billions of dollars in climate financing each year to developing countries, according to research published earlier this month by the World Resources Institute. The countrys leadership has said it will only make voluntary contributions, and that developed nations should still be the ones responsible for mandatory payments under the new finance goals.Talks at COP29 arent going very well. The COP29 president called for faster action, but progress toward a finance deal has stalled amid infighting over how much money should be on the table and who should pay up.Chinas complex role in emissions and climate action is far from the only holdup at the talks. Leaders from major nations including Germany and France canceled plans to attend, and the looming threat that the US could pull out of the Paris climate agreement is coloring the negotiations.But disagreement over how to think about Chinas role in all this is a good example of how difficult it is to assign responsibility when it comes to climate change, and how much is at play in global climate negotiations. One thing I do know for sure is that pointing fingers doesnt cut emissions.Now read the rest of The SparkRelated readingDig into the data with me in my latest story, which includes three visualizations to help capture the complexity of global emissions.Read more about why global climate finance is at the center of this years UN climate talks in last weeks edition of the newsletter.Keeping up with climateFusion energy has been a dream for decades, and a handful of startups say were closer than ever to making it a reality. This deep dive looks at a few of the companies looking to be the first to deploy fusion power. (New York Times) I recently visited one of the startups, Commonwealth Fusion Systems. (MIT Technology Review)President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Chris Wright to lead the Department of Energy. Wright is head of the fracking company Liberty Energy. (Washington Post)In the wake of Trumps election, it might be time for climate tech to get a rebrand. Companies and investors might increasingly avoid using the term, opting instead for phrases like energy independence or frontier tech, to name a few. (Heatmap)Rooftop solar has saved customers in California about $2.3 billion on utility bills this year, according to a new analysis. This result is counter to a report from a state agency, which found that rooftop panels impose over $8 billion in extra costs on consumers of the states three major utilities. (Canary Media)Low-carbon energy needs much less material than it used to. Rising efficiency in making technology like solar panels bodes well for hopes of cutting mining needs. (Sustainability by Numbers)New York governor Kathy Hochul has revived a plan to implement congestion pricing, which would charge drivers to enter the busiest parts of Manhattan. It would be the first such program in the US. (The City)Enhanced geothermal technology could be close to breaking through into commercial success. Companies that aim to harness Earths heat for power are making progress toward deploying facilities. (Nature) Fervo Energy found that its wells can be used like a giant underground battery. (MIT Technology Review)

MIT Technology Reviews How To series helps you get things done.Since the start of the generative AI boom, artists have been worried about losing their livelihoods to AI tools. There have been plenty of examples of companies replacing human labor with computer programs. Most recently, Coca-Cola sparked controversy by creating a new Christmas ad with generative AI.Artists and writers have launched several lawsuits against AI companies, arguing that their work has been scraped into databases for training AI models without consent or compensation. Tech companies have responded that anything on the public internet falls under fair use. But it will be years until we have a legal resolution to the problem.Unfortunately, there is little you can do if your work has been scraped into a data set and used in a model that is already out there. You can, however, take steps to prevent your work from being used in the future.Here are four ways to do that.Mask your styleOne of the most popular ways artists are fighting back against AI scraping is by applying masks on their images, which protect their personal style from being copied.Tools such as Mist, Anti-DreamBooth, and Glaze add tiny changes to an images pixels that are invisible to the human eye, so that if and when images are scraped, machine-learning models cannot decipher them properly. Youll need some coding skills to run Mist and Anti-DreamBooth, but Glaze, developed by researchers at the University of Chicago, is more straightforward to apply. The tool is free and available to download as an app, or the protection can be applied online. Unsurprisingly, it is the most popular tool and has been downloaded millions of times.But defenses like these are never foolproof, and what works today might not work tomorrow. In computer security, breaking defenses is standard practice among researchers, as this helps people find weaknesses and make systems safer. Using these tools is a calculated risk: Once something is uploaded online, you lose control of it and cant retroactively add protections to images.Rethink where and how you sharePopular art profile sites such as DeviantArt and Flickr have become gold mines for AI companies searching for training data. And when you share images on platforms such as Instagram, its parent company, Meta, can use your data to build its models in perpetuity if youve shared it publicly. (See opt-outs below.)One way to prevent scraping is by not sharing images online publicly, or by making your social media profiles private. But for many creatives that is simply not an option; sharing work online is a crucial way to attract clients.Its worth considering sharing your work on Cara, a new platform created in response to the backlash against AI. Cara, which collaborates with the researchers behind Glaze, is planning to add integrations to the labs art defense tools. It automatically implements NoAI tags that tell online scrapers not to scrape images from the site. It currently relies on the goodwill of AI companies to respect artists stated wishes, but its better than nothing.Opt out of scrapingData protection laws might help you get tech companies to exclude your data from AI training. If you live somewhere that has these sorts of laws, such as the UK or the EU, you can ask tech companies to opt you out of having your data scraped for AI training. For example, you can follow these instructions for Meta. Unfortunately, opt-out requests from users in places without data protection laws are honored only at the discretion of tech companies.The site Have I Been Trained, created by the artist-run company Spawning AI, lets you search to find out if your images have ended up in popular open-source AI training data sets. The organization has partnered with two companies: Stability AI, which created Stable Diffusion, and Hugging Face, which promotes open access to AI. If you add your images to Spawning AIs Do Not Train Registry, these companies have agreed to remove your images from their training data sets before training new models. Again, unfortunately, this relies on the goodwill of AI companies and is not an industry-wide standard.If all else fails, add some poisonThe University of Chicago researchers who created Glaze have also created Nightshade, a tool that lets you add an invisible layer of poison to your images. Like Glaze, it adds invisible changes to pixels, but rather than just making it hard for AI models to interpret images, it can break future iterations of these models and make them behave unpredictably. For example, images of dogs might become cats, and handbags might become toasters. The researchers say relatively few samples of poison are needed to make an impact.You can add Nightshade to your image by downloading an app here. In the future, the team hopes to combine Glaze and Nightshade, but at the moment the two protections have to be added separately.

Apple will dramatically reduce the cost of speaker repair in the Apple Silicon 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro, ending the longstanding need to buy a whole replacement top case.Apple is making it more affordable to repair the MacBook Pro.The replacement of damaged speakers in these MacBook Pro models remains complex, but self-service repair will as much as 90% cheaper than at present. It's entirely because standalone speaker repair parts will be released soon.Consequently, users will not have to pay for a replacement battery, the MacBook Pro's top casing, or other unrelated components. As first spotted by MacRumors, this will be the first time that MacBook Pro speakers have been directly repairable since 2015. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums