Bing's been copying Google's homework.

The appetite for AI-derived drivel isnt as strong as many publishers would have you believe, and demand for quality content is growing.

MacworldWith Samsung announcing Unpacked for January 22 and every other tech company announcing major new products this week, a rumor began circulating Tuesday that Apple was planning on getting in on the January fun.But almost as soon as it started, the rumor that Apple was planning to launch the iPhone SE successor later this month was debunked as completely untrue by Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman. However, Gurman does offer some clarification, explaining that while the new iPads and iPhone SE replacement are being developed on the iOS 18.3 train, they wont launch when the update arrives later this month.Its not clear whether Apple will hold an event to launch the new products, which are expected to include an 11th-gen iPad and possibly a new AirTag. Apple held a spring event in May 2024 to launch the M4 iPad Pro, 13-inch iPad Air, and Apple Pencil Pro, but hadnt previously held a spring event since the Peek Performance event in 2022 when the Mac Studio and M1 Ultra chip debuted.Gurman and others have reported that Apple is likely to launch new products in March or April, which should be several weeks after the release of iOS 18.3. Apple began testing the update in December and released the second beta this week.The iPhone SE 4, now expected to be called the iPhone 16E, will reportedly be a complete overhaul of Apples budget phone with a modern design based on the iPhone 14.

Capcoms Monster Hunter Wilds is getting a second open beta test next month. Its available from February 6th. 7 PM PT, to February 9th, 6:59 PM PT and February 13th to 16th on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. The same content from the first open beta, which featured a Story Trial and free roam Doshaguma Hunt, will be available with Gypceros added as a new target.The character creation tool will also be available, and creations carry over to the game. Character data from the previous open beta is also usable in the second. Cross-platform play will also be available. Participants will receive an item pack and a decorative weapon/Seikret charm for use in the game.Unfortunately, improvements to performance, various weapons, hitstop, etc. will not be available in this second open beta.Monster Hunter Wilds launches on February 28th. Head here for more details on the graphics modes for consoles. Capcom has confirmed PS5 Pro support at launch and is also looking into lowering the minimum specifications on PC.

The Battle of New Orleans, as painted by E. Percy Moran, showing Andrew Jackson emerge victorious over the British Library of CongressWhen Andrew Jackson arrived in New Orleans in winter 1814, diplomats were already negotiating peace. But neither the Louisianans he commanded nor the British troops advancing on them were wise to such peacemakingand New Orleans was in trouble.The United States had declared war on Great Britain back in June 1812, a few decades after winning independence in 1783. The U.S. aimed to stop the Royal Navys continued interference in American trade and seafaring and conquer remaining British territory in North America. The war was mostly fought around the Great Lakes and in Canada, but conflict wasnt restricted to the north. British forces burned Washington, D.C. in August 1814, then attempted to capture Baltimore, losing at Fort McHenry. Now, much farther south, the Royal Navy was closing in on New Orleans.At this time, the future seventh president was serving in the U.S. Army. Born in 1767, he was a British-hating orphan who came of age during the American Revolution. He loathed the British with good reason: Not only was he imprisoned by them, suffering starvation, disease and a sword slash to his face, but his entire family perished during the Revolution. After the war, Jackson moved to Tennessee and conducted a political career, but by 1812, he was back in the military.Jackson actually spent most of the War of 1812 fighting not the British, but Native Americans. His infamous treatment of Indigenous peoples would tarnish his reputation in the history books, but at the time, most regarded him as an immensely effective combat leader. After defeating the Creek peoples in Alabama in 1814, he was promoted to major general and made his way south to the headquarters of the Armys seventh district: New Orleans.New Orleaniansa diverse population including Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese immigrants, as well as enslaved and free African Americanswere terrified of a British invasion. The port citys inhabitants had heard of British war atrocities, as historian Ronald J. Drez told Louisiana Public Broadcasting in 2015. When Jackson came, says Drez, The whispered word [spread] throughout the city that a savior had arrived.Jackson worked to unite and calm New Orleanians through a public speech, saying that no British enemy soldier would enter their city, unless over my dead body. For the first time in the United States, Jackson declared martial lawmilitary control of the citizenryproclaiming, Those who are not for us are against us.Louisiana Governor William Claiborne had warned that the citys fragmented populace was unlikely to be a ready fighting force. But Jacksons forceful organization proved effective, and he assembled an eclectic group of U.S. troops, Tennessee and Kentucky frontiersmen, Louisiana militiamen, New Orleans businessmen, free Black men, Choctaw Indigenous men, sailors and even pirates to stave off the British.On the morning of January 8, 10,000 British troops attacked Chalmette, just outside of New Orleans. In 30 minutes, they were shot into oblivion by Jacksons ragtag army. The British suffered about 2,000 casualties, while the Americans suffered 250.As one American soldier later recalled, When the smoke had cleared and we could obtain a fair view of the field, it looked at first glance like a sea of blood. It was not blood itself, but the red coats in which the British soldiers were dressed. The field was entirely covered in prostrate bodies.The British commander suffered fatal wounds during the battle, and his body was shipped home in a barrel of rum. Jackson, on the other hand, exited the battle having earned the loyalty of Louisianans, the nickname Old Hickory and a reputation that would help make him president in 1829.The Battle of New Orleans was Britains last attempt to regain a stronghold in America. From that day on, Drez notes, the United States ascended on the worlds stage, while the British Empire began a slow decline.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Experts warn that Metas decision toend its third-party fact-checking programcould allow disinformation and hate to fester online and permeate the real world.The company announced today that its phasing out a program launched in 2016 where it partners with independent fact-checkers around the world to identify and review misinformation across its social media platforms. Meta is replacing the program with a crowdsourced approach to content moderation similar to Xs Community Notes.Meta is essentially shifting responsibility to users to weed out lies on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, raising fears that itll be easier to spread misleading information about climate change, clean energy, public health risks, and communities often targeted with violence.Its going to hurt Metas users firstIts going to hurt Metas users first because the program worked well at reducing the virality of hoax content and conspiracy theories, says Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter. A lot of people think Community Notes-style moderation doesnt work at all and its merely window dressing so that platforms can say theyre doing something ...most people do not want to have to wade through a bunch of misinformation on social media, fact checking everything for themselves, Holan adds. The losers here are people who want to be able to go on social media and not be overwhelmed with false information.In a video, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed the decision was a matter of promoting free speech while also calling fact-checkers too politically biased. Meta also said that its program was too sensitive and that 1 to 2 out of every 10 pieces of content it took down in December were mistakes and might not have actually violated company policies.Holan says the video was incredibly unfair to fact-checkers who have worked with Meta as partners for nearly a decade. Meta worked specifically with IFCN-certified fact-checkers who had to follow the networks Code of Principles as well as Metas own policies. Fact-checkers reviewed content and rated its accuracy. But Meta not fact-checkers makes the call when it comes to removing content or limiting its reach.Poynter owns PolitiFact, which is one of the fact-checking partners Meta works with in the US. Holan was the editor-in-chief of PolitiFact before stepping into her role at IFCN.That process covers a broad range of topics, from false information about celebrities dying to claims about miracle cures, Holan notes. Meta launched the program in 2016 with growing public concern around the potential for social media to amplify unverified rumors online, like false stories about the pope endorsing Donald Trump for president that year.Metas decision looks more like an effort to curry favor with President-elect Trump. In his video, Zuckerberg described recent elections as a cultural tipping point toward free speech. The company recently named Republican lobbyist Joel Kaplan as its new chief global affairs officer and added UFC CEO and president Dana White, a close friend of Trump, to its board. Trump also said today that the changes at Meta were probably in response to his threats.Zucks announcement is a full bending of the knee to Trump and an attempt to catch up to [Elon] Musk in his race to the bottom. The implications are going to be widespread, Nina Jankowicz, CEO of the nonprofit American Sunlight Project and an adjunct professor at Syracuse University who researches disinformation, said in a post on Bluesky. Twitter launched its community moderation program, called Birdwatch at the time, in 2021, before Musk took over. Musk, who helped bankroll Trumps campaign and is now set to lead the incoming administrations new Department of Government Efficiency, leaned into Community Notes after slashing the teams responsible for content moderation at Twitter. Hate speech including slurs against Black and transgender people increased on the platform after Musk bought the company, according to research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate. (Musk then sued the center, but a federal judge dismissed the case last year.) Advocates are now worried that harmful content might spread unhindered on Metas platforms. Meta is now saying its up to you to spot the lies on itsplatforms, and that its not their problem if you cant tell the difference, even if those lies, hate, or scams end up hurting you, Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said in an email. Ahmed describes it as a huge step back for online safety, transparency, and accountability and says it could have terrible offline consequences in the form of real-world harm.By abandoning fact-checking, Meta is opening the door to unchecked hateful disinformation about already targeted communities like Black, brown, immigrant and trans people, which too often leads to offline violence, Nicole Sugerman, campaign manager at the nonprofit Kairos that works to counter race- and gender-based hate online, said in an emailed statement to The Verge today. RelatedMetas announcement today specifically says that its getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate.Scientists and environmental groups are wary of the changes at Meta, too. Mark Zuckerbergs decision to abandon efforts to check facts and correct misinformation and disinformation means that anti-scientific content will continue to proliferate on Meta platforms, Kate Cell, senior climate campaign manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an emailed statement. I think this is a terrible decision ... disinformations effects on our policies have become more and more obvious, says Michael Khoo, a climate disinformation program director at Friends of the Earth. He points to attacks on wind power affecting renewable energy projects as an example. Khoo also likens the Community Notes approach to the fossil fuel industrys marketing of recycling as a solution to plastic waste. In reality, recycling has done little to stem the tide of plastic pollution flooding into the environment since the material is difficult to rehash and many plastic products are not really recyclable. The strategy also puts the onus on consumers to deal with a companys waste. [Tech] companies need to own the problem of disinformation that their own algorithms are creating, Khoo tells The Verge.

The original StanByMe portable TV and the Inspector Gadget-like briefcase follow-up were surprisingly popular, so of course, were getting a new one to kick off 2025. I like to imagine LG literally toting the StanbyME 2 to CES by the carrying straps you can affix to it, as the rep did in this video below.The 27-inch 1440p touchscreen on the StanbyME 2 should offer a sharper picture than the originals 1080p. It also lasts longer with a four-hour battery life, up from three and a half, but LG has not revealed pricing or availability details.You can still mount the TV to a floor stand that holds and charges it, but LG is unashamedly emphasizing its portability with the carrying strap, which you can also use to hang from a wall like a picture frame on a sturdy enough hook. Its also compatible with a folio cover that protects the display during transport and doubles as a tabletop stand, and you can magnetically attach the remote to the top of the TV. It has two USB-C ports that you can use for charging and peripherals like webcams, plus a traditional HDMI input.These upgrades feel relatively minor, but if you aspire to be a modern-dayRadio Raheemwith a TV on your shoulder and, presumably, the matching pill-shaped StanbyME XT7 Bluetooth speaker under your arm the StanbyME 2 might be the television for you. 1/7 Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge1/7 Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Baseus is following Ankers lead and debuting new charging accessories at CES 2025 that could help ensure youre never hunting for missing charging cables. The company is expanding its Enercore line with a new $69.99 wall charger, expected as soon as April 2025, featuring a pair of built-in USB-C cables that fully retract and stay out of the way when not in use.The retractable cables on the Baseus Enercore CJ11 are each a little over 32 inches long and work alongside an additional USB-C port so you can also use cables with different connectors. The charger can deliver up to 67W of power with one device connected, allowing you to charge a power-hungry device like a laptop. With two or three of its ports in use, the total power output drops to 65W.Baseus new car charger has two retractable USB-C cables attached to a pivoting head. Image: BaseusBaseus also announced a new car charger with more functionality than the one Anker released last November. The Baseus PrimeTrip VR2 Max also features two built-in retractable USB-C cables that are just over 31 inches in length, plus an additional USB-C and USB-A port on its base.The chargers retractable USB-C cables work alongside a pair of USB-C ports on its base. Image: BaseusIt connects to a vehicles auxiliary power outlet and delivers a total of 240W of power across all four ports and up to a maximum of 105W to a single port. Its expected to be available in April 2025 priced at $44.99.

Jan 08, 2025Ravie LakshmananIoT Security / ComplianceThe U.S. government on Tuesday announced the launch of the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, a new cybersecurity safety label for Internet-of-Things (IoT) consumer devices."IoT products can be susceptible to a range of security vulnerabilities," the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said. "Under this program, qualifying consumer smart products that meet robust cybersecurity standards will bear a labelincluding a new 'U.S Cyber Trust Mark.'"As part of the effort, the logo will be accompanied by a QR code that users can scan, taking them to a registry of information with easy-to-understand details about the security of the product, such as the support period and whether software patches and security updates are automatic.The information will also comprise details related to changing the default password and the various steps users can take to configure the device securely.The initiative, announced back in July 2023, is expected to involve third-party cybersecurity label administrators who will be in charge of evaluating product applications and authorizing use of the label. Compliance testing will be handled by accredited labs, the FCC added.Eligible products that come under the purview of the Cyber Trust Mark program include internet-connected home security cameras, voice-activated shopping devices, smart appliances, fitness trackers, garage door openers, and baby monitors.It does not cover medical devices regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); motor vehicles and equipment regulated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA); wired devices; and products used for manufacturing, industrial control, or enterprise applications.The program also does not extend to equipment added to the FCC's Covered List; and products manufactured by companies added to other lists for national security reasons (Department of Commerce's Entity List or Department of Defense's List of Chinese Military Companies), or banned from Federal procurement.To apply to use the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, manufacturers who meet the eligibility criteria must have their products tested by an accredited and FCC- recognized CyberLAB to ensure they meet the program's cybersecurity requirements, and then submit an application to a Cybersecurity Label Administrator with the necessary supporting documents."The U.S. Cyber Trust Mark program allows them to test products against established cybersecurity criteria from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology via compliance testing by accredited labs, and earn the Cyber Trust Mark label, providing an easy way for American consumers to see the cybersecurity of products they choose to bring into their homes," the White House said.Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.SHARE

MIT Technology Reviews Whats Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of themhere. For the last couple of years weve had a go at predicting whats coming next in AI. A fools game given how fast this industry moves. But were on a roll, and were doing it again. How did we score last time round? Our four hot trends to watch out for in 2024 included what we called customized chatbotsinteractive helper apps powered by multimodal large language models (check: we didnt know it yet, but we were talking about what everyone now calls agents, the hottest thing in AI right now); generative video (check: few technologies have improved so fast in the last 12 months, with OpenAI and Google DeepMind releasing their flagship video generation models, Sora and Veo, within a week of each other this December); and more general-purpose robots that can do a wider range of tasks (check: the payoffs from large language models continue to trickle down to other parts of the tech industry, and robotics is top of the list). We also said that AI-generated election disinformation would be everywhere, but herehappilywe got it wrong. There were many things to wring our hands over this year, but political deepfakes were thin on the ground. So whats coming in 2025? Were going to ignore the obvious here: You can bet that agents and smaller, more efficient, language models will continue to shape the industry. Instead, here are five alternative picks from our AI team. 1. Generative virtual playgrounds If 2023 was the year of generative images and 2024 was the year of generative videowhat comes next? If you guessed generative virtual worlds (a.k.a. video games), high fives all round. We got a tiny glimpse of this technology in February, when Google DeepMind revealed a generative model called Genie that could take a still image and turn it into a side-scrolling 2D platform game that players could interact with. In December, the firm revealed Genie 2, a model that can spin a starter image into an entire virtual world. Other companies are building similar tech. In October, the AI startups Decart and Etched revealed an unofficial Minecraft hack in which every frame of the game gets generated on the fly as you play. And World Labs, a startup cofounded by Fei-Fei Licreator of ImageNet, the vast data set of photos that kick-started the deep-learning boomis building what it calls large world models, or LWMs. One obvious application is video games. Theres a playful tone to these early experiments, and generative 3D simulations could be used to explore design concepts for new games, turning a sketch into a playable environment on the fly. This could lead to entirely new types of games. But they could also be used to train robots. World Labs wants to develop so-called spatial intelligencethe ability for machines to interpret and interact with the everyday world. But robotics researchers lack good data about real-world scenarios with which to train such technology. Spinning up countless virtual worlds and dropping virtual robots into them to learn by trial and error could help make up for that. Will Douglas Heaven 2. Large language models that reason The buzz was justified. When OpenAI revealed o1 in September, it introduced a new paradigm in how large language models work. Two months later, the firm pushed that paradigm forward in almost every way with o3a model that just might reshape this technology for good. Most models, including OpenAIs flagship GPT-4, spit out the first response they come up with. Sometimes its correct; sometimes its not. But the firms new models are trained to work through their answers step by step, breaking down tricky problems into a series of simpler ones. When one approach isnt working, they try another. This technique, known as reasoning (yeswe know exactly how loaded that term is), can make this technology more accurate, especially for math, physics, and logic problems. Its also crucial for agents. In December, Google DeepMind revealed an experimental new web-browsing agent called Mariner. In the middle of a preview demo that the company gave to MIT Technology Review, Mariner seemed to get stuck. Megha Goel, a product manager at the company, had asked the agent to find her a recipe for Christmas cookies that looked like the ones in a photo shed given it. Mariner found a recipe on the web and started adding the ingredients to Goels online grocery basket. Then it stalled; it couldnt figure out what type of flour to pick. Goel watched as Mariner explained its steps in a chat window: It says, I will use the browsers Back button to return to the recipe. It was a remarkable moment. Instead of hitting a wall, the agent had broken the task down into separate actions and picked one that might resolve the problem. Figuring out you need to click the Back button may sound basic, but for a mindless bot its akin to rocket science. And it worked: Mariner went back to the recipe, confirmed the type of flour, and carried on filling Goels basket. Google DeepMind is also building an experimental version of Gemini 2.0, its latest large language model, that uses this step-by-step approach to problem solving, called Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking. But OpenAI and Google are just the tip of the iceberg. Many companies are building large language models that use similar techniques, making them better at a whole range of tasks, from cooking to coding. Expect a lot more buzz about reasoning (we know, we know) this year. Will Douglas Heaven 3. Its boom time for AI in science One of the most exciting uses for AI is speeding up discovery in the natural sciences. Perhaps the greatest vindication of AIs potential on this front came last October, when the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper from Google DeepMind for building the AlphaFold tool, which can solve protein folding, and to David Baker for building tools to help design new proteins. Expect this trend to continue next year, and to see more data sets and models that are aimed specifically at scientific discovery. Proteins were the perfect target for AI, because the field had excellent existing data sets that AI models could be trained on. The hunt is on to find the next big thing. One potential area is materials science. Meta has released massive data sets and models that could help scientists use AI to discover new materials much faster, and in December, Hugging Face, together with the startup Entalpic, launched LeMaterial, an open-source project that aims to simplify and accelerate materials research. Their first project is a data set that unifies, cleans, and standardizes the most prominent material data sets. AI model makers are also keen to pitch their generative products as research tools for scientists. OpenAI let scientists test its latest o1 model and see how it might support them in research. The results were encouraging. Having an AI tool that can operate in a similar way to a scientist is one of the fantasies of the tech sector. In a manifesto published in October last year, Anthropic founder Dario Amodei highlighted science, especially biology, as one of the key areas where powerful AI could help. Amodei speculates that in the future, AI could be not only a method of data analysis but a virtual biologist who performs all the tasks biologists do. Were still a long way away from this scenario. But next year, we might see important steps toward it. Melissa Heikkil 4. AI companies get cozier with national security There is a lot of money to be made by AI companies willing to lend their tools to border surveillance, intelligence gathering, and other national security tasks. The US military has launched a number of initiatives that show its eager to adopt AI, from the Replicator programwhich, inspired by the war in Ukraine, promises to spend $1 billion on small dronesto the Artificial Intelligence Rapid Capabilities Cell, a unit bringing AI into everything from battlefield decision-making to logistics. European militaries are under pressure to up their tech investment, triggered by concerns that Donald Trumps administration will cut spending to Ukraine. Rising tensions between Taiwan and China weigh heavily on the minds of military planners, too. In 2025, these trends will continue to be a boon for defense-tech companies like Palantir, Anduril, and others, which are now capitalizing on classified military data to train AI models. The defense industrys deep pockets will tempt mainstream AI companies into the fold too. OpenAI in December announced it is partnering with Anduril on a program to take down drones, completing a year-long pivot away from its policy of not working with the military. It joins the ranks of Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, which have worked with the Pentagon for years. Other AI competitors, which are spending billions to train and develop new models, will face more pressure in 2025 to think seriously about revenue. Its possible that theyll find enough non-defense customers who will pay handsomely for AI agents that can handle complex tasks, or creative industries willing to spend on image and video generators. But theyll also be increasingly tempted to throw their hats in the ring for lucrative Pentagon contracts. Expect to see companies wrestle with whether working on defense projects will be seen as a contradiction to their values. OpenAIs rationale for changing its stance was that democracies should continue to take the lead in AI development, the company wrote, reasoning that lending its models to the military would advance that goal. In 2025, well be watching others follow its lead. James ODonnell 5. Nvidia sees legitimate competition For much of the current AI boom, if you were a tech startup looking to try your hand at making an AI model, Jensen Huang was your man. As CEO of Nvidia, the worlds most valuable corporation, Huang helped the company become the undisputed leader of chips used both to train AI models and to ping a model when anyone uses it, called inferencing. A number of forces could change that in 2025. For one, behemoth competitors like Amazon, Broadcom, AMD, and others have been investing heavily in new chips, and there are early indications that these could compete closely with Nvidiasparticularly for inference, where Nvidias lead is less solid. A growing number of startups are also attacking Nvidia from a different angle. Rather than trying to marginally improve on Nvidias designs, startups like Groq are making riskier bets on entirely new chip architectures that, with enough time, promise to provide more efficient or effective training. In 2025 these experiments will still be in their early stages, but its possible that a standout competitor will change the assumption that top AI models rely exclusively on Nvidia chips. Underpinning this competition, the geopolitical chip war will continue. That war thus far has relied on two strategies. On one hand, the West seeks to limit exports to China of top chips and the technologies to make them. On the other, efforts like the US CHIPS Act aim to boost domestic production of semiconductors. Donald Trump may escalate those export controls and has promised massive tariffs on any goods imported from China. In 2025, such tariffs would put Taiwanon which the US relies heavily because of the chip manufacturer TSMCat the center of the trade wars. Thats because Taiwan has said it will help Chinese firms relocate to the island to help them avoid the proposed tariffs. That could draw further criticism from Trump, who has expressed frustration with US spending to defend Taiwan from China. Its unclear how these forces will play out, but it will only further incentivize chipmakers to reduce reliance on Taiwan, which is the entire purpose of the CHIPS Act. As spending from the bill begins to circulate, next year could bring the first evidence of whether its materially boosting domestic chip production. James ODonnell