What happens when we stop “living within the truth.”

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Starting with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qualcomm will offer device manufacturers (OEMs) the "ability to provide support for up to eight consecutive years of Android software and security updates." Qualcomm today announced a "program" in partnership with Google: "What this means is that support for platform software included in this program will be made available to OEMs for eight consecutive years, including both Android OS and kernel upgrades, without requiring significant changes or upgrades to the platform and OEM code on the device (a separation commonly referred as 'Project Treble' or the 'vendor implementation'). While kernel changes will require updating kernel mode drivers, the vendor code can remain unchanged while the software support is being provided." This program specifically includes "two upgrades to the mobile platform's Android Common Kernel (ACK) to support the eight-year window." It's ultimately up to manufacturers to update their devices, but the bottleneck going forward won't be the chip. Qualcomm today notes how the extended software support it's providing can "lower costs for OEMs interested in supporting their devices longer." The first devices to benefit are Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered smartphones launching with Android 15. Notably, the program runs for the "next five generations" of SoCs, including Snapdragon 8 and 7-series chips launching "later this year." Older chipsets will not benefit from this program.

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The nation’s biggest egg producer has seen rising revenues and profits. Now some Democrats are calling for an investigation into pricing practices in the industry.

Most American workers are not embracing AI chatbots in their jobs, with 55% rarely or never using these tools and 29% completely unfamiliar with them, according to a Pew Research Center survey released Tuesday. Only 16% of workers report regular use of AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot. Adoption is highest among younger workers (23% of those aged 18-29) and those with post-graduate degrees (26%). Among users, research (57%), editing content (52%), and drafting reports (47%) top the list of applications. While 40% find chatbots extremely or very helpful for working faster, just 29% say they significantly improve work quality. For the majority who don't use AI chatbots, 36% cite lack of relevance to their job as the primary reason. Employer attitudes remain largely neutral, with half neither encouraging nor discouraging usage. The technology sector leads in workplace adoption, with 36% of employers actively promoting chatbot use, followed by financial services (24%).

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Our World in Data: To decarbonize road transport, the world must move away from petrol and diesel cars and towards electric vehicles and other forms of low-carbon transport. This transition has already started. In fact, global sales of combustion engine cars are well past the peak and are now falling. As you can see in the chart, global sales peaked in 2018. This is calculated based on data from the International Energy Agency. Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates this peak occurred one year earlier, in 2017. Sales of electric cars, on the other hand, are growing quickly.

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A New York law mandating low-cost broadband is inspiring similar legislation across multiple states, despite industry opposition. The law requires ISPs with over 20,000 customers to offer $15 plans with 25Mbps speeds or $20 plans with 200Mbps to income-eligible residents. Vermont, Massachusetts, and California legislators have introduced comparable bills following New York's success. Vermont's proposal mirrors New York's pricing structure, while Massachusetts goes further by requiring 100Mbps speeds for the $15 tier. AT&T responded by withdrawing its 5G home internet service from New York rather than complying with the mandate. Industry lobby groups continue fighting these regulations, with USTelecom warning that state-level price controls will "undermine connectivity progress" and "discourage investment."

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Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Andrew Ferguson urging the FTC to require that companies admit when you're not really buying an ebook or video game. From a report: Wyden's letter, shared with The Verge, requests guidance to "ensure that consumers who purchase or license digital goods can make informed decisions and understand what ownership rights they are obtaining." Wyden wants the guidance to include how long a license lasts, what circumstances might expire or revoke the license, and if a consumer can transfer or resell the license. The letter also calls for the information "before and at the point of sale" in a way that's easily understandable. "To put it simply, prior to agreeing to any transaction, consumers should understand what they are paying for and what is guaranteed after the sale," Wyden says.

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Google has launched a free version of Gemini Code Assist, offering developers substantially higher usage limits than competing services. From a report: The AI coding assistant, powered by the fine-tuned Gemini 2.0 model, allows up to 180,000 code completions monthly -- 90 times more than GitHub Copilot's free tier limit of 2,000. The release comes just one day after Anthropic introduced Claude Code, underscoring intensifying competition in AI-powered development tools. Gemini Code Assist integrates with popular environments including Visual Studio Code, JetBrains IDEs, and GitHub, where it performs code reviews on both public and private repositories. Google's offering features a 128,000-token context window, enabling developers to work with larger codebases. The service supports all public domain programming languages and requires only a Gmail account to register, with no credit card needed. According to Ryan Salva, Google Cloud's senior director of product management, more than 75% of developers now rely on AI in their daily work, with over 25% of new code at Google being AI-generated. For developers wanting advanced features like private repository integration or Google Cloud service connections, premium tiers remain available.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Activision has finally admitted to using AI-generated content in its games and Call of Duty players aren't the least bit surprised. [...] After years of suspicions from the CoD community, it's now been confirmed by Activision directly that AI-generated content has indeed been featured throughout the FPS franchise. Upon visiting the Black Ops 6 Steam page, fans will notice a new change. Activision has now been forced to disclose its use of Artificial Intelligence in the game's creation. "Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets," Activision said in a statement provided to the platform.

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The performance artist Marina Abramovic celebrated the announcement of a new cultural center in a private home designed by the famed Mexican architect Luis Barragán.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is speeding up the release of its R2 model following the success of January's R1, which outperformed many US competitors at a fraction of the cost and triggered a $1 trillion-plus market selloff. The Hangzhou-based firm had planned a May release but now wants R2 out "as early as possible," Reuters reported Tuesday. The upcoming model promises improved coding capabilities and reasoning in multiple languages beyond English. DeepSeek's competitive advantage stems from its parent company High-Flyer's early investment in computing power, including two supercomputing clusters acquired before U.S. export bans on advanced Nvidia chips. The second cluster, Fire-Flyer II, comprised approximately 10,000 Nvidia A100 chips. DeepSeek's cost-efficiency comes from innovative architecture choices like Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) and multihead latent attention (MLA). According to Bernstein analysts, DeepSeek's pricing was 20-40 times cheaper than OpenAI's equivalent models. The competitive pressure has already forced OpenAI to cut prices and release a scaled-down model, while Google's Gemini has introduced discounted access tiers.

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By understanding the reasons, scientists hope to help both sexes age better.

At a meeting at the White House, President Trump declined to call President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a dictator while President Emmanuel Macron of France stated flatly that “the aggressor is Russia.”

Understanding the Alternative for Germany’s success in Sunday’s elections.

The response to Elon Musk’s “What did you do last week?” email to federal employees suggests that there may be limits to how far he can push the government’s work force.

Doug O’Donnell, a 40-year veteran of the I.R.S., was elevated last month after the last commissioner stepped down at the beginning of President Trump’s term.

Mayor Eric Adams announced on Monday that the hotel will stop housing migrants by June, calling the closure a milestone in New York City’s response to the crisis.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In France, rightsholders have taken legal action to compel large VPN providers to support their pirate site blocking program. The aim is to reinforce existing blocking measures, but VPN providers see this as a dangerous move, leading to potential security issues and overblocking. As a result, some are considering leaving France altogether if push comes to shove. [...] Earlier this month, sports rightsholders Canal+ and LFP requested blocking injunctions that would require popular VPNs to start blocking pirate sites and services. The full requests are not public, but the details available show that Cyberghost, ExpressVPN, NordVPN, ProtonVPN, and Surfshark are listed as respondents. [...] The blocking request has yet to be approved and several of the targeted VPN providers have reserved detailed commentary, for now. That said, the VPN Trust Initiative (VTI), which includes ExpressVPN, NordVPN and Surfshark as members, has been vocal in its opposition. VTI is part of the i2Coalition and while it doesn't speak directly for any of the members, the coalition's Executive Director Christian Dawson has been in regular discussions with VPN providers. From this, it became clear that VPN providers face difficult decisions. If VPN providers are ordered to block pirate sites, some are considering whether to follow in the footsteps of Cisco, which discontinued its OpenDNS service in the country, to avoid meddling with its DNS resolver. Speaking with TorrentFreak, VTI's Dawson says that VPNs have previously left markets like India and Pakistan in response to restrictive requirements. This typically happens when privacy or security principles are at risk, or if the technical implementation of blocking measures is infeasible. VTI does not rule out that some members may choose to exit France for similar reasons, if required to comply with blocking measures. "We've seen this before in markets like India and Pakistan, where regulatory requirements forced some VPN services to withdraw rather than compromise on encryption standards or log-keeping policies," Dawson says. "France's potential move to force VPN providers to block content could put companies in a similar position -- where they either comply with measures that contradict their purpose or leave the market altogether." "This case in France is part of a broader global trend of regulatory overreach, where governments attempt to control encrypted services under the guise of content regulation. We've already seen how China, Russia, Myanmar, and Iran have imposed VPN restrictions as part of broader censorship efforts." "The best path forward is for policymakers to focus on targeted enforcement measures that don't undermine Internet security or create a precedent for global Internet fragmentation," concludes Dawson. "As seen in other cases, blanket blocking measures do not effectively combat piracy but instead create far-reaching consequences that disrupt the open Internet."

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The firing of three judge advocate generals is one more element of this administration’s attack on the rule of law.

The Long Island native covered 16 Olympics, and had cameos in the movie “Cool Runnings” and the TV show “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”