A modern Windows PC works without much tweaking — mostly. But some settings out of the box are simply bad, undercutting your PC’s full performance or keeping you from getting the best picture from your monitor, for example. And somehow, File Explorer still doesn’t show file extensions by default in the year 2025. That’s just bad for security! I recently spoke to someone who was surprised to find he had been using his display incorrectly for years and found a few quick clicks instantly made his experience better. Lots of things in Windows are like that; every time I set up a new PC — and I do that often — there are settings I change immediately. Follow this roadmap, and you’ll find yourself getting a much better Windows experience than the software ever gave you out of the box. Want more Windows PC tips? Sign up for my free Windows Intelligence newsletter. I’ll send you free in-depth Windows Field Guides as a special welcome bonus! Windows default #1: Wrong Power Mode Windows 11 has a “Power Mode” option in its Settings window. On a high-performance desktop PC, it may be set to “Balanced” mode by default, likely making your CPU perform worse than it otherwise would. You likely want the best performance on your system — not slightly lower electricity use. The same is true on laptops. Windows 11 can now set different performance modes that will be used when your machine is plugged in and when it’s unplugged. But your laptop may not be set to run at maximum performance, even when it’s plugged in. To check this on Windows 11, head to Settings > System > Power and look under Power Mode. On a laptop, you’ll find those different options for when the PC is plugged in vs. running on battery power. I expect you’ll want Best Performance while plugged in — even if it may use a bit more electricity. It’s worth selecting maximum performance while your desktop or laptop is plugged in.Chris Hoffman, Foundry On Windows 10, you’ll find power plan options at Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options. Windows default #2: Low refresh rate A modern monitor “just works” out of the box — or so it appears. But while Windows will generally choose the right resolution, it’ll usually default to a low 60Hz refresh rate. This is true both for desktop PCs and laptops. On a laptop, a lower refresh rate means more battery life. But a higher refresh rate means a smoother picture. To check available refresh rates on Windows 11, head to Settings > System > Display > Advanced display and look at the “Choose a refresh rate” box. On Windows 10, go to Settings > System > Display, scroll down, and click “Advanced display settings.” Another tip? Windows also offers variable refresh rates if your hardware supports that feature, but sometimes that, too, is disabled by default. Be sure to activate the “Dynamic refresh rate” option here if it’s available, too. (If it’s not, your hardware likely doesn’t support it. Also, note that this feature is only available on Windows 11, not Windows 10.) You don’t have to stop there. Check out other ways to make your display easier on the eyes. Windows default #3: Hidden extensions Everyone should have file extensions visible on Windows. It’s crazy they’re not enabled by default in 2025. This isn’t just a geeky thing — it’s important for security. This will help you distinguish between a virus named Report.pdf.exe and a real document named Report.pdf. To unhide file extensions in Windows 11, launch File Explorer, click the “View” button on the toolbar, point to “Show,” and activate “File name extensions.” On Windows 10, open File Explorer, click the “View” button on the ribbon, and activate “File name extensions” under Show/hide. Windows default #4: Browser data access Whenever you launch Edge for the first time, it asks if you want to make your Edge experience better by importing data from other browsers. Edge can do this automatically if you don’t read closely, and it may be regularly slurping up browsing data from Chrome. Here’s how to stop Edge from copying your Chrome data. Windows default #5: Bing, Bing, everywhere Personally, I don’t want web searches in the Start menu. They slow down my searches and take me to Bing and Edge, a search engine and browser I don’t use. You can stop seeing web search results by turning them off with a registry hack or switching to a third-party Start menu, but Microsoft doesn’t provide an easy graphical toggle for this. Or, you can try using a different launcher entirely. Command Palette integrates web search results that respect your choice of default browser and search engine. The launcher Microsoft bundles in PowerToys is much more respectful of user choice than the Start menu.Chris Hoffman / Foundry Windows default #6: HDR mistakes Some modern desktop displays (and laptop displays) support HDR content. However, like those smooth higher refresh rates, HDR may be deactivated by default until you hunt it down. And, even if it’s activated, it might not be calibrated correctly for your display unless you do it yourself. To check whether HDR is available for your display on Windows 11 — and to activate it, if it is — head to Settings > System > Display. You’ll find an HDR toggle here, and you can turn it on or click it to see more settings. (On Windows 10, you’ll find HDR options at Settings > System > Display > Windows HD Color.) To calibrate your HDR display — assuming you have HDR available and turned on —download and run Microsoft’s Windows HDR Calibration app. It’ll walk you through choosing settings that look good to your eyes on your display and installing a color profile that’ll make HDR look better in Windows. Windows default #7: OneDrive aggression Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud syncing software is built right into Windows, which is convenient if you use it. But even if you do, you might not want OneDrive syncing your Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Music, and Videos folders to the cloud. If nothing else, these might use a good amount of space — and that’s a pain unless you have a Microsoft 365 subscription with 1TB of data (which is admittedly a good deal). The decision is up to you, but OneDrive often seems to make choices to sync data on its own. (And when it comes to data in particular, you should always make your own decisions.) To control what OneDrive is syncing, look for the “Manage backup” option in its Settings window. Here’s how to take control over folder backup and fight other OneDrive annoyances. Windows default #8: Taskbar and Start mess The standard Windows taskbar, Start menu, and Widgets pane are packed with things you probably don’t care about. To make a PC feel more like your own, I recommend customizing them. Here’s how: Taskbar: Unpin any shortcuts you don’t want by right-clicking them and choosing “Unpin from taskbar.” Then remove other items (such as the search box) by right-clicking an empty spot on the taskbar, selecting “Taskbar settings,” and tweaking the settings on this screen. Start menu: Unpin any shortcuts you don’t want by right-clicking them and selecting “Unpin from Start.” You can also select “Uninstall” to remove preinstalled apps you may not want. Then head to Settings > Personalization > Start to configure which exact elements are and aren’t included. You can hide lots of the recommendations, for example. Widgets: Here’s how to make the Widgets menu worth using on Windows 11. If you hide the feed, the Widgets experience instantly gets better.Chris Hoffman, Foundry Windows default #9: Ad overload By default, Windows is extremely noisy with advertisements all over the place, from the lock screen to the taskbar to the Start menu and notification popups. To trim this down and make Windows leave you alone, follow my guide to turning off ads in lots of places throughout Windows. Windows default #10: Disappointing app selection While Windows includes a variety of default apps that work fine, many of them aren’t the best. But you don’t have to pay for alternatives. I’ve got a list of my favorite free upgrades for built-in Windows applications. From better search tools to surprisingly powerful image editors and Notepad replacements, these are tools Windows enthusiasts like me have long relied on. Don’t just limit yourself to changing settings. Swap some of those default apps for ones you might prefer, and enjoy an enhanced Windows experience from start to finish. Let’s stay in touch! Sign up for my free Windows Intelligence newsletter today. I’ll send you three new things to try each Friday. Source: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3983426/windows-default-settings.html #bad #default #settings #you #need #change #windows

As part of Sony's fiscal year 2024 fourth quarter financial report, we learned that PS5 shipments have reached 77.8 million units to date. In the last quarter, Sony only shipped 2.8 million units of the PlayStation 5 console, a significant decrease from the 4.5 million units shipped in Q4 FY 2023. Full-year PS5 sales are also down: Sony sold 18.5 million units in fiscal year 2024, down from the 20.8 million consoles sold in fiscal year 2023. Sony also shared the forecast for fiscal year 2025, and the expectation is that PlayStation 5 hardware sales will decrease even further. However, this will be offset by first-party software sales, which are expected to increase with the release of titles like Ghost of Yotei, now set to launch on October 2. FY2025 Forecast (year-on-year) ◼ Sales: 370.0 billion yen (8%) decrease ·(ー) Decrease in sales of hardware due to a decrease in unit sales ·(ー) Impact of foreign exchange rates ·(+) Increase in sales of first-party game software titles ·(+) Increase in sales of non-first-party game software titles including add-on content ◼ OI: 65.2 billion yen（16%) increase ·(+) Impact of increase in sales of first-party game software titles Truth be told, even this year's PS5 hardware sales decrease was largely offset by software sales on PS4 and PS5, which increased from 2023's 286.4 million units to 2024's 303.3 million units. However, most of them were for third-party games, whereas first-party game sales decreased from 39.7 million units to 28.9 million units year-over-year. The digital download ratio of full game software sales on PS4 and PS5 rose from 2023's 70% to 2024's 76%. Sony also highlighted the 5% year-over-year increase in Monthly Active Users (MAUs), which rose from Q4 2023's 118 million to Q4 2024's 124 million. Admittedly, there's the fact that some PC games now require access to the PlayStation Network, which wasn't really the case last year. This could have contributed to the higher figure registered in 2024. Source: https://wccftech.com/ps5-reaches-77-8-million-units-shipped-sony-forecasts-further-decrease-in-unit-sales-for-fy2025/ #ps5 #reaches #million #units #shipped #sony #forecasts #further #decrease #unit #sales #for #fy2025

This article contains spoilers for Andor season 2 episodes 10-12 and Rogue One. The final three episodes of Andor may not pack quite the same emotional punch as the Ghorman arc, but they definitely bring this story together in an impactful way. It was revealed fairly early on that this season was going to lead up to the events of Rogue One, but how it did so was still very much a surprise. From the reveal of Krennic’s secret weapon program, to Bail’s arrival on Yavin 4, and so much more – the last three episodes have lined things up perfectly and added new context to the events of Rogue One in the process. Here’s everything you need to know about the Andor finale and how it connects to Rogue One. Luthen and Lonni’s Sacrifice This arc begins a year after the last, as all the others have, in 1 BBY. Kleya (Elizabeth Dulau) and Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård) receive an urgent message from Lonni (Robert Emms) asking to meet. For the first time, Luthen and Lonni meet in public rather than in their secret elevator hideout in the depths of Coruscant.  Lonni begs for safe passage for him and his family in exchange for the information he has, claiming that he’s been burned and that the Empire will likely be after him soon. Luthen agrees to take them to Yavin, giving Lonni just enough hope to spill what he knows. Lonni starts by warning Luthen that Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) knows he’s Axis and is trying to covertly assemble a team to apprehend him.  Then Lonni reveals what really has him shaken up – the truth about the Emperor’s Energy program. After holding on to Dedra’s code cert for a year, he finally dug through her files and found out about Krennic’s (Ben Mendelsohn) secret weapon program a.k.a. the Death Star. He says that the massacre on Ghorman, and the Imperial occupation of Jedha and Scarif are all connected. He tells Luthen all about the Kyber crystals on Jedha, Galen Erso’s involvement, everything that the Rebel Alliance needs to start looking into this. Luthen kills Lonni after he shares this information, presumably paranoid about the Empire finding out what he now knows. He relays all of this to Kleya and urges her to flee and get this information to the others as quickly as possible. He stays behind and starts destroying their comms relay when Dedra appears. She comes alone, cocky and confident that she has him on the ropes, but Luthen isn’t going to go out so easily. While Dedra is waxing poetic about how she finally has him, Luthen stabs himself with a nearby relic. Dedra attempts to keep him alive by transporting him to a hospital, but Kleya is able to sneak in and take him off life support, as she knows he would want. Dedra’s Folly Even though Dedra is finally successful at capturing Luthen, we find out that her “victory” came at a cost. As soon as she gets Luthen to the hospital, she’s arrested by the ISB and Krennic is brought in to interrogate her. He asks who she told about the secret project and how she heard about Galen Erso’s involvement. He also assumes that she gave Lonni her code cert. She denies this, but also admits that there were intel bundles that were forwarded to her office by mistake. Instead of reporting them, she sifted through them for information that could lead her to Axis. But that also left the information readily available for Lonni to steal. In the final moments of episode 12, we see Dedra is now a prisoner in an Imperial prison like Cassian once was. We don’t know for sure that this is Narkina 5, the Empire is a fan of uniformity after all, but it’s pretty safe to assume that it’s at least a similar work camp environment. The Empire turned on her as soon as she outlived her usefulness and because her desire to capture Axis put the Death Star plans at risk. Rescuing Kleya and Knowledge of the Death Star Meanwhile, Cassian (Diego Luna), Melshi (Duncan Pow), and K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) are bonding on Yavin when Wilmon (Muhannad Bhaier) hears a mysterious transmission that Cassian recognizes from his time with Luthen. Cassian, Melshi, and K-2SO immediately set off for Coruscant despite the protocols on Yavin forbidding them from doing so. Wilmon tells Draven (Alistair Petrie) why Cassian left, and he isn’t too thrilled about it. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! On Coruscant, Supervisor Heert (Jacob James Beswick) is put in charge of finding and capturing Kleya. He seeks advice from Dedra, which she begrudgingly gives from behind bars. The ISB is able to get Kleya’s comm table functioning enough to track her distress signal, arriving at the Coruscant safe house right after Cassian and Melshi do. At first it seems like the ISB might have them cornered, but K-2SO puts his brute force to work taking out the Imperial agents and helping them get Kleya out of Coruscant. A Meeting On Kafrene When Cassian returns to Yavin, he relays the information about Krennic’s program and the Death Star that Kleya and Luthen got from Lonni to Rebel leadership. Kleya was injured in the ISB attack and is still recovering, and Cassian knows that they need to act on this information as soon as possible. Luthen died for it, after all. The Rebel council isn’t sure if they can trust this information, but Mon wants to believe Cassian. One of Saw’s men, Tivik, has put out word that he has information, but will only speak to Cassian about it if he comes to Kafrene. Mon and Draven try to convince Bail to let Cassian follow this lead even though he’s currently being reprimanded for sneaking off Yavin to go rescue Kleya. He relents, sending Cassian and K-2SO off to Kafrene, which is where we first meet them in Rogue One. What Happened to Bix? In the final moments of the finale, we return to Mina-Rau, the planet that Bix, Brasso, and Wilmon sought refuge on after Ferrix. B2-EMO is still there, playing with the children. Finally we see Bix, standing in a field holding a child that we can probably assume is Cassian’s, and part of the reason she left a year ago. She knew that he would leave the rebellion for both of them, and she didn’t want him to do that. But now she and their child look out into the distance, at a sunrise that Cassian is currently fighting for, but will never see for himself. Both full seasons of Andor are available to stream on Disney+ now. Source: https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/andor-season-2-ending-explained-series-finale-rogue-one/ #andor #season #ending #explained #how #the #series #finale #connects #rogue #one

By the time you read these words, it’s quite possible that Adorama will be out of stock of the new DJI Mavic 4 Pro. But when I wrote them, the US-based retailer was still selling a drone that wasn’t supposed to go on sale in the US at all, with roughly 70 left in stock.This morning, I wrote how DJI was skipping the US with its most advanced drone yet, citing Trump’s tariffs among other reasons for the decision. DJI did not send the drone to US reviewers, and it wouldn’t provide US prices when we asked.But Adorama and B&H, two rival camera stores based in New York City, apparently didn’t get the message!Today, they both listed the drone for $2,699 — or $3,549 for the Fly More Kit, or $4,649 for the Creator Combo with the fancy new controller with the folding sticks and swiveling 1600-nit screen, or $1,299 for that controller all by its lonesome. B&H even issued a press release.B&H is only offering preorders today; I confirmed with Miguel Perez in the store’s drone department that “we don’t yet have it in stock,” and he wasn’t sure when stock might arrive. “It’s a little bit of a grey area for logistics between the US and China for aircraft,” he admits. But he says B&H isn’t taking anyone’s money — “we don’t charge until it ships” — and that he’s heard other US retailers like Adorama are selling the drone this very week.Adorama sales rep Steve Chill confirms that over the phone, and offers to put one on hold for me, because he says they’re moving fast. “We had a few hundred in stock, now we’re down to 70,” he says. “They’ll be gone tomorrow.”Over the phone, he says he has the $3,549 Fly More Combo right now if I want, though he’s out of the $2,699 base model. (At the time I reached out, Adorama’s website was showing the entry model in stock, shipping next week, though it’s now just listing a preorder again; however, the new DJI RC Pro 2 controller appears to be in stock too.)It’s not clear what’s happening. Did DJI ship some to the US early, but not enough for a full launch, perhaps? DJI spokesperson Daisy Kong doesn’t have an answer for me yet.If you want to try your luck, here are the links:DJI Mavic 4 Pro: Adorama, B&HDJI Mavic 4 Pro Fly More Combo: Adorama, B&HDJI Mavic 4 Pro Creator Combo: Adorama, B&HDJI RC Pro 2 Controller: Adorama, B&HOr, you could just call, like me.See More: Source: https://www.theverge.com/drone/666425/dji-mavic-4-pro-on-sale-preorder-adorama-bh-photo #dji #said #mavic #pro #wouldnt #launch #but #these #stores #are #selling #anyhow

13 May, 2025 Clare Dowdy finds out how the iconic car brand taps into the appetite for personalisation among the super-rich, and the incredible range of options these customers can decide on. At Rolls-Royce’s site in West Sussex, visitors are asked to put on a purple overall-style jacket. Nothing unusual there, it’s routine at manufacturing facilities to be handed a coat. But this jacket is made by Norton & Sons of Savile Row. If you weren’t picked up from the station in a Roller and driven up the drive past the 65 box-cut lime trees to the factory’s front door (as I was), then the jacket might be your first whiff that things are done differently here. A constellation of the night sky picked out in tiny lights on the headliner (ceiling) of a new car This factory has cornered the – admittedly niche – market in bespoke one-off motor cars, an object that is becoming increasingly desired by the very wealthy. From the welcoming reception desk to the pristine production line, from the embroidery workshop to the private dining room, the atmosphere is deferential. These people know their target audience. At Rolls-Royce, it’s all about making customers feel special. For example, staff know customers like to mark important anniversaries. So a customer can decide to celebrate the day they made their first billion by having the exact constellation of that night sky picked out in tiny lights on the headliner (ceiling) of their new car. This makes particular sense if you have a chauffeur, as you get a great view of the headliner from the back seat. That service isn’t on offer to off-the-peg Rolls-Royce customers, but to those who pay the extra to have their car personalised. The home of Rolls-Royce at Goodwood, outside Chichester And though it takes around three years to make an individualised car, demand is going up. Called Bespoke and Coachbuild, this service provides customers with a one-off Rolls-Royce, as they can choose their own detailing, materials, marquetry, patterns and paint colour. With Coachbuild, they can even dictate the shape of the car. That’s a four-year process. There was a surge in bespoke commissioning during the pandemic, when billionaires, like the rest of us, were twiddling their thumbs at home. These hand-crafted projects are increasingly complex, high-value and – all-importantly – high-margin. Meaning they need a lot of design input. So in January, Rolls-Royce earmarked £300million to extend its Bespoke and Coachbuild capabilities at Goodwood, outside Chichester. “Clients want more intriguing levels of bespoke, so we needed more space,” the RR spokesperson explains on my visit. Hence the new facility. Production takes place at the Goodwood site, designed by Grimshaw Architects, and opened in 2003 When RR’s Goodwood site, designed by Grimshaw Architects, opened in 2003, 300 staff made just one car a day. Now there are 2,500 staff at the site, producing 28 cars a day. Rolls-Royce was founded in the UK in 1904. Since 2003 it’s been part of BMW Group, when the German company acquired the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars marque. And that’s where Martina Starke comes in. Having joined BMW in 2001, she left her role as head of BMW Designworks’ Munich studio to become general manager of RR’s Bespoke Design in Goodwood in 2024. She oversees more than 30 designers, who collaborate with the engineers, craftspeople and artisans of Bespoke. These designers have backgrounds in 3D, colour trim, textiles, fashion, automotive and industrial design. Three designers work in the accessory design team, which can include creating anything from chess sets to picnic hampers “They not only create products, they create experiences and moments of wonder for our clients,” she says of the team. “I guide and support them as they look into the lifestyle of our clients to understand and capture their personal taste – so we can curate their beautiful masterpieces with material, colours and craftmanship.” She describes the work of Bespoke as storytelling. “My job is to nurture these stories as they come alive. They ask for something emotional and made for them – it’s a personal product.” But first the client must settle on the brief. This is either discussed at Goodwood, or with a designer and salesperson based at one of the company’s private offices in New York, Seoul, Dubai and Shanghai. The Middle East is the largest Bespoke region by average value per motor car, closely followed by North America and Europe. The ambition is to have a private office in every region, as having designers based in these key markets allows RR to react fast, Starke adds. These designers have a four-month induction course at Goodwood before they go into the field. Customers can choose their own design to have embroidered onto seats “There’s a conversation with the customer to understand what the idea is,” Starke says. So apart from headliners depicting the night sky, a customer might ask for a particular rose from their garden embroidered into the headliner, “or the face of your child, or dog, or horse painted in your vehicle so you have the loved ones with you in the car.” While imagination is limitless, the engineers need to confirm that it’s feasible. “If it’s possible, we might do several iterations. In the end we visualise the perfect wish,” Starke says. The fruits of this process include solid 18-carat gold sculptures, mother-of-pearl artworks, and holographic paint finishes. One client in Japan is having a cherry blossom design embroidered onto their headliner with 250,000 stitches. And when it comes to colour options, RR has 44,000 to choose from. But if the client can’t find the one they want, RR can make it up for them. This service was invaluable for the client who wanted the car exterior to match the colour of their dog’s fur. The private office at the Rolls-Royce site in Goodwood “What they really like is that we bring together the design and the craftmanship,” Starke says. “When they come to Goodwood and look at the woodwork or leather shop, they can touch, experience and understand it. When you have this high level of craftmanship it’s a different connection to people. It connects you to the makers.” This type of customisation is sought by clients who define luxury as something deeply personal to them, she adds. Starke’s department includes a three-strong accessory design team. “We’re not competing with other car brands, we’re competing with other luxury brands,” the spokesperson explains. Pieces in the accessories range include pens, luggage and dog leads Accessories designer Nick Abrams shows us a new magnetic chess set, which will sit along other pieces in the accessories range including pens, luggage and dog leads. This chess set costs €29,000, pre-tax. But of course, the client could customise it. All these opportunities for what Starke calls meaningful personal expression tap into a global trend. “Individualisation is growing because people want the storytelling. It’s self-expression, encapsulating your taste and philosophy,” she says. The exterior of Phantom Goldfinger, created to honour the 1964 James Bond film, Goldfinger Timandra Harkness is a broadcaster and author of Technology is Not the Problem explains why hyper-personalisation is a trend that’s still growing. “We live in an age increasingly obsessed with identity: consumers want what they buy to express who they are.” Now, mass production means most people in advanced economies can afford nice things, so merely wearing tall boots or gold lace isn’t enough, according to Harkness. “Standing out from the crowd today means buying things that only a few people can have, because they are artisanal, or limited-edition, or personalised. “Because mass production has put even luxury products within reach of the mass market, personalisation offers a way to stand out from the crowd,” she says. The interior of the Rolls-Royce Phantom Scintilla What does that mean for the top end of the market? “Bespoke products have added value: customers will pay a premium to own a commodity that nobody else owns, and that says something about them.” In 2024, RR’s one-off Arcadia Droptail was reported as costing its anonymous buyer $31million. 100 years ago, merely owning a car was a sign of wealth and status – and probably meant you could afford to employ a driver, Harkness points out. “Today it’s not even enough to drive a top-of-the-range car, so the wealthiest consumers need other ways to look – and feel – special. And feeling special is as important as outward signals,” she adds. “Nobody else will know this car matches your dog’s fur, but you will, and that will remind you every time you see it that nothing is too good for you, or your dog.” With the expansion of its personalisation capabilities, RR is betting on the continuation of this trend. If they’re right, then that will be good for the company and good for its designers. The interior of the Rolls-Royce Phantom Goldfinger Design disciplines in this article Industries in this article Brands in this article What to read next The car after the storm – Jaguar unveils new concept EV Automotive Design 3 Dec, 2024 Source: https://www.designweek.co.uk/the-perfect-wish-why-rolls-royce-is-doubling-down-on-personalised-design/ #the #perfect #wish #why #rollsroyce #doubling #down #personalised #design

A California judge slammed a pair of law firms for the undisclosed use of AI after he received a supplemental brief with “numerous false, inaccurate, and misleading legal citations and quotations.” In a ruling submitted last week, Judge Michael Wilner imposed $31,000 in sanctions against the law firms involved, saying “no reasonably competent attorney should out-source research and writing” to AI, as pointed out by law professors Eric Goldman and Blake Reid on Bluesky.“I read their brief, was persuaded (or at least intrigued) by the authorities that they cited, and looked up the decisions to learn more about them – only to find that they didn’t exist,” Judge Milner writes. “That’s scary. It almost led to the scarier outcome (from my perspective) of including those bogus materials in a judicial order.”As noted in the filing, a plaintiff’s legal representative for a civil lawsuit against State Farm used AI to generate an outline for a supplemental brief. However, this outline contained “bogus AI-generated research” when it was sent to a separate law firm, K&L Gates, which added the information to a brief. “No attorney or staff member at either firm apparently cite-checked or otherwise reviewed that research before filing the brief,” Judge Milner writes.When Judge Milner reviewed the brief, he found that “at least two of the authorities cited do not exist at all.” After asking K&L Gates for clarification, the firm resubmitted the brief, which Judge Milner said contained “considerably more made-up citations and quotations beyond the two initial errors.” He then issued an Order to Show Cause, resulting in lawyers giving sworn statements that confirm the use of AI. The lawyer who created the outline admitted to using Google Gemini, as well as the AI legal research tools in Westlaw Precision with CoCounsel.This isn’t the first time lawyers have been caught using AI in the courtroom. Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen cited made-up court cases in a legal document after mistaking Google Gemini, then called Bard, as “a super-charged search engine” rather than an AI chatbot. A judge also found that lawyers suing a Colombian airline included a slew of phony cases generated by ChatGPT in their brief.“The initial, undisclosed use of AI products to generate the first draft of the brief was flat-out wrong,” Judge Milner writes. “And sending that material to other lawyers without disclosing its sketchy AI origins realistically put those professionals in harm’s way.”See More: Source: https://www.theverge.com/news/666443/judge-slams-lawyers-ai-bogus-research #judge #slams #lawyers #for #ampamp8216bogus #aigenerated #researchampamp8217

May 12, 20257 min readPhysicists Build a ‘Black Hole Bomb’ in the LaboratoryAstronomical amounts of energy could be extracted from black holes—to build a gigantic bomb, for example. Experts have now implemented this principle in the laboratoryBy Manon Bischoff edited by Lee BillingsAn artist’s rendition of a black hole surrounded by a glowing accretion disc of material, the light from which is warped by the strong gravity. In principle, energy could be harvested from a spinning black hole—and lab-based demonstrations are beginning to show physicists how this could occur. Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Getty ImagesA bomb from a black hole would probably be the most destructive weapon in the universe. Hypothetically, it could be created by wrapping one of these cosmic monsters in mirrors and waiting for it to go “boom.” Now Hendrik Ulbricht of the University of Southampton in England and his colleagues have demonstrated this principle, called superradiance, in the lab using a rotating metal cylinder instead of a black hole. They submitted their results, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, to the preprint server arXiv.org in late March.“This work shows that a ‘black hole bomb’ can actually be built in the laboratory,” says physicist Vitor Cardoso of the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark, who was not involved in the study. “It thus provides a solid basis for studying the entire physics of black holes.”Among the strangest objects in the universe, black holes pack so much mass into such a small space that they can radically warp spacetime. A black hole’s gravitational pull is so strong that within a certain distance, nothing can escape it—not even light. Theorist Roger Penrose is one of the pioneers who first studied black holes mathematically in detail—work for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020. And amid that early work, he realized something surprising.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.As Penrose knew, nothing stands still in our cosmos, not even black holes. These massive monsters can spin, distorting spacetime in the process to form a kind of vortex. An approaching object can be caught up in this vortex and spiral around the spinning black hole. Even before the object passes the event horizon, beyond which not even light can escape gravity’s clutches, it reaches an area that physicists call the “ergosphere.” There the object would have to move faster than light to escape the rotation around the black hole.This ergosphere is a strange place, as Penrose noted, because objects there can possess negative energy. A particle, for example, could split into two equal-but-opposite parts: one with negative energy and another with positive energy. The former would then crash into the black hole (thus reducing the black hole’s energy), allowing the latter to escape the cosmic behemoth’s mighty grip. An external observer would see a particle with a certain energy falling toward the black hole, only to apparently rebound outward with higher energy. The black hole loses part of its rotational energy in the process.Black Hole Mining and SuperradianceIn principle, this would allow black holes to serve as gigantic sources of energy. The process could not only imbue massive objects with more energy but also amplify electromagnetic waves in a phenomenon called superradiance. This realization spurred some physicists to even imagine how advanced alien civilizations might use superradiance to generate energy. But despite how relatively simple it is to describe on paper, no one knew how the signal of superradiance could be observed in real black holes. Thus, the concept initially remained mere speculation.In 1971, however, two years after Penrose first described this phenomenon, physicist Yakov Zel’dovich published research that suggested that black holes aren’t the only objects that can be tapped as superradiant energy sources. Any rotating, axially symmetrical body that absorbs electromagnetic radiation—such as a metal cylinder—can also exhibit superradiance under certain circumstances. “Roughly speaking, the rotating absorber must rotate faster than the phase rotation of the incident radiation,” explains physicist Maria Chiara Braidotti of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, who was involved in the latest work. “If this condition is met, the absorption coefficient of the cylinder changes sign, thus amplifying the radiation.”Zel’dovich even went one step further by showing that superradiance could also take place in a vacuum and wouldn’t require an incoming electromagnetic wave. That’s because on quantum scales the vacuum is anything but empty. At any time, pairs of virtual particles and antiparticles can pop into existence, although they typically immediately annihilate each other again. The phenomenon is known as vacuum fluctuation. And these fluctuations could also be amplified in the vicinity of black holes —or a rotating metal cylinder. “Stephen Hawking didn’t believe this idea and tried to refute it,” explains Marion Cromb, a researcher in Ulbricht’s group at the University of Southampton and a contributor to the new work. “Not only did [Hawking] admit that Zel’dovich was right but he was also able to prove that even nonrotating black holes—without an ergosphere—spontaneously emit radiation.” This realization led to the discovery of Hawking radiation.According to the theoretical calculations, however, vacuum-based superradiance would be so faint that it could not be detected—unless, that is, it was somehow amplified. As Zel’dovich described, the rotating body (black hole or metal cylinder) could be encased in mirrors to reflect the amplified radiation back to the rotating body, intensifying it over and over again. As physicists William Press and Saul Teukolsky realized, so much energy could accumulate inside the mirrors that a gigantic explosion would occur. Press and Teukolsky, therefore, referred to the setup as a black hole bomb.Depending on how much rotational energy the black hole or the metal cylinder has, a result other than a gigantic explosion is conceivable, though. Cardoso and his colleagues described this possibility in a paper published in 2004 that showed how superradiance can cease if the black hole or metal cylinder loses too much angular momentum, thus defusing the explosion.Explosions in the LaboratoryUlbricht, Braidotti and their colleagues now wanted to test all these theoretical predictions in the laboratory. “Originally, we thought it would be too difficult to observe the actual effect,” Braidotti says, nothing that a cylinder would have to rotate so fast that it would be destroyed in the process. For this reason, she initially turned her attention to simpler systems in which superradiance can occur, including a setup with sound waves. “The breakthrough was our noticing how to reduce the frequencies of electromagnetic fields in a very simple way so that they are smaller than the rotation frequencies of the metal cylinders,” Ulbricht explains. The researchers only needed alternating current circuits for this. “This finding opened up the possibility of conducting the experiment with electromagnetic waves,” Braidotti says.The team then turned its attention to electromagnetic superradiance. “The experimental setup itself is quite simple: it consists of a rotating cylinder and the stator coils of a commercially available induction motor, combined with some capacitors and resistors,” Cromb says. These devices were placed around the metal cylinder to generate a magnetic field inside it, which produced electromagnetic radiation. At the same time, these devices also served as mirrors because they reflected the electromagnetic waves back toward the cylinder.“The biggest difficulty was that things were constantly exploding,” Cromb says. “It was a balancing act between measuring a reasonable signal and overloading the system. When the current through the coils became too high, the resistors in the circuit exceeded their rated voltage and burned out. This interrupted the electrical circuit, thus destroying the ‘mirror.’”The researchers initially feared that these overloads would prevent any observation of superradiance. But they were lucky. “The reinforcement was large enough to overcome the loss and enter the area of instability,” Cromb says. In fact, the team was able to show that the voltage in their structure increased exponentially, as predicted by Zel’dovich. This underpins the researchers’ claim of the first-ever lab-based demonstration of an electromagnetic version of a black hole bomb.Note, however, that despite the martial connotations of the name, the “bomb” Ulbricht and his team built in their lab isn’t anything like a military-grade munition—or even a firecracker. It would be quite useless as a weapon because its yield is only on the order of a millijoule of energy—that is, about the same amount involved in pressing a single key on a mechanical keyboard.Radiation-Free Superradiance?Next, Cromb and the team used their setup to study whether superradiance can also take place in a vacuum: Would an electromagnetic signal arise in their apparatus even without a magnetic field? Because the experiment took place at room temperature, thermal fluctuations overshadowed any vacuum fluctuations—meaning that the team could not directly detect the latter. But that very same thermal background noise, the researchers realized, would spontaneously generate electromagnetic waves that could theoretically be amplified.And that is what they did manage to demonstrate: by choosing the appropriate rotation speed of the cylinder, they generated electromagnetic waves out of nowhere, so to speak. Their work also confirmed the “defusing” scenario predicted by Cardoso: the metal cylinder was able to lose enough rotational energy to halt superradiance and stave off any explosion.According to Ulbricht, the most special thing about the work is its sheer simplicity. “Many physicists think that all the simple experiments have already been done and that new insights into the fundamentals of physics can only come from very complex and very expensive projects,” he says. “We proved the opposite.”“I didn’t expect that someone would be able to carry out such an experiment now,” Cardoso says. On the day the new work was posted to arXiv.org, he recalls, he was giving a series of lectures at Bangalore University in India. “I talked about superradiance and told the audience that no one had ever proven the electromagnetic superradiance or the bomb effect in the laboratory. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw the paper shortly afterwards!”The new work could lead to deeper insights about black holes, Cardoso says. “Superradiance is a little-known classical effect that plays an important role in the physics of black holes,” he explains. For example, extremely light particles, such as axions or special types of photons considered candidates for dark matter, could absorb the rotational energy of black holes, amplifying their signals. “This means that black holes can be used as gigantic particle detectors,” Cardoso explains. With a lab-based black hole bomb, physicists could test such hypotheses more precisely than ever before.In the future, Ulbricht would like to carry out the quantum version of the experiment, which would entail observing the spontaneous generation of electromagnetic waves and their amplification from the vacuum. Such direct experiments with vacuum fluctuations could open up completely new possibilities for the scientific community and the world, he says, potentially representing “a major breakthrough for physics.” Perhaps, Ulbricht muses, that work could allow researchers “in a few decades to understand whether it is possible in principle to generate energy from the vacuum—which would be an inexhaustible new source of energy.” Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-build-a-black-hole-bomb/ #how #build #black #hole #bomb

Two years after partnering with OpenAI to automate marketing and customer service jobs, financial tech startup Klarna says it's longing for human connection again.Once gunning to be OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's "favorite guinea pig," Klarna is now plotting a big recruitment drive after its AI customer service agents couldn't quite hack it.The buy-now-pay-later company had previously shredded its marketing contracts in 2023, followed by its customer service team in 2024, which it proudly began replacing with AI agents. Now, the company says it imagines an "Uber-type of setup" to fill their ranks, with gig workers logging in remotely to argue with customers from the comfort of their own homes."From a brand perspective, a company perspective, I just think it’s so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will be always a human if you want," admitted Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the Swedish fintech's CEO.That's a pretty big shift from his comments in December of 2024, when he told Bloomberg he was "of the opinion that AI can already do all of the jobs that we, as humans, do." A year before that, Klarna had stopped hiring humans altogether, reducing its workforce by 22 percent.A few months after freezing new hires, Klarna bragged that it saved $10 million on marketing costs by outsourcing tasks like translation, art production, and data analysis to generative AI. It likewise claimed that its automated customer service agents could do the work of "700 full-time agents."So why the sudden about-face? As it turns out, leaving your already-frustrated customers to deal with a slop-spinning algorithm isn't exactly best practice.As Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg, "cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality."Klarna isn't alone. Though executives in every industry, from news media to fast food, seem to think AI is ready for the hot seat — an attitude that's more grounded in investor relations than an honest assessment of the tech — there are growing signs that robot chickens are coming home to roost.In January of last year, a survey of over 1,400 business executives found that 66 percent were "ambivalent or outright dissatisfied with their organization’s progress on AI and GenAI so far." The top issue corporate bosses cited was AI's "lack of talent and skills."It's a problem that evidently hasn't improved over the year. Another survey recently found that over 55 percent of UK business leaders who rushed to replace jobs with AI now regret their decision.It's not hard to see why. An experiment carried out by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University stuffed a fake software company full of AI employees, and their performance was laughably bad — the best AI worker finished just 24 percent of the tasks assigned to it.When it comes to the question of whether AI will take jobs, there seem to be as many answers as there are CEOs excited to save a buck.There are gray areas, to be sure — AI is certainly helping corporations speed up low-wage outsourcing, and the tech is having a verifiable effect on labor market volatility — just don't count on CEOs to have much patience as AI starts to chomp at their bottom line.Share This Article Source: https://futurism.com/klarna-openai-humans-ai-back #company #regrets #replacing #all #those #pesky #human #workers #with #just #wants #its #humans #back

It feels like a minor problem, I'll admit it. But you know when you check into a hotel and have to spend the next fifteen minutes connecting all your Apple devices to the network? Starting from your iPhone, then moving to your iPad, and then your Mac? Well, it looks like Apple understands your pain. According to a new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, iOS 19 will include a new feature that will automatically connect multiple devices to the same public Wi-Fi network after you log in with just one of them.That's convenient for a couple of reasons. Beyond just keeping you from having to cycle through all your devices, it can also reduce the amount of paperwork you have to fill out. When signing into wifi at a location with public access, like a gym, café, hotel, or the airport, you'll often be asked to fill out a web form. These will usually ask for some information, but can also include captchas, or even unique codes that limit how much data you can access on a per-device basis.This new system means you'll only have to fill out the form once. Once you get through a web form, the wifi login and details will sync automatically between all your connected Apple devices, just like they do right now for a regular wifi network. Of course, this hasn't been 100% confirmed yet, and there are still a few questions to answer. How will this work for wifi networks that limit that amount of devices you can connect to them, for instance? Still, Gurman has a credible track record of leaking software and hardware changes currently on Apple's roadmap, so we'll likely see more on this in due time. iOS 19 is expected to be announced at WWDC in June, and according to the rumors, will come with a pretty big redesign for iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Source: https://lifehacker.com/tech/ios-19-will-make-it-easier-to-sign-into-public-wifi-on-multiple-devices?utm_medium=RSS #ios #will #make #easier #sign #into #public #wifi #multiple #devices