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‘The Antiquities’ Review: Relics of Late Human Life in 12 Exhibits

NYT Technology - Tue, 02/04/2025 - 21:00
According to Jordan Harrison’s museum piece of a play, we are long extinct by 2240. But the future has kept our Betamaxes.

Daniel Penny Is Hired by Venture Capital Firm Whose Founder Backed Trump

NYT Technology - Tue, 02/04/2025 - 19:46
Mr. Penny, who was acquitted after choking a mentally ill subway passenger to death, will work for Andreessen Horowitz. Before the killing, he had been an architecture student.

Are some AGI systems too risky to release? Meta says so.

Mashable - Tue, 02/04/2025 - 17:03

It seems like since AI came into our world, creators have put a lead foot down on the gas. However, according to a new policy document, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg might slow or stop the development of AGI systems that are deemed "high risk" or "critical risk."

AGI is an AI system that can do anything a human can do, and Zuckerberg promised to make it openly available one day. But in the document "Frontier AI Framework," Zuckerberg concedes that some highly capable AI systems won't be released publicly because they could be too risky.

The framework "focuses on the most critical risks in the areas of cybersecurity threats and risks from chemical and biological weapons."

SEE ALSO: Mark Zuckerberg doubles down on Meta's submission to Trump

"By prioritizing these areas, we can work to protect national security while promoting innovation. Our framework outlines a number of processes we follow to anticipate and mitigate risk when developing frontier AI systems," a press release about the document reads.

For example, the framework intends to identify "potential catastrophic outcomes related to cyber, chemical and biological risks that we strive to prevent." It also conducts "threat modeling exercises to anticipate how different actors might seek to misuse frontier AI to produce those catastrophic outcomes" and has "processes in place to keep risks within acceptable levels."

If the company determines that the risks are too high, it will keep the system internal instead of allowing public access.

SEE ALSO: Mark Zuckerberg wants more 'masculine energy' in corporate America

"While the focus of this Framework is on our efforts to anticipate and mitigate risks of catastrophic outcomes, it is important to emphasize that the reason to develop advanced AI systems in the first place is because of the tremendous potential for benefits to society from those technologies," the document reads.

Yet, it looks like Zuckerberg’s hitting the brakes — at least for now — on AGI’s fast track to the future.

Alphabet Earnings Fall Short of Expectations as Google Cloud Sales Disappoint

NYT Technology - Tue, 02/04/2025 - 16:38
The internet giant reported sales that narrowly missed Wall Street’s estimates and worried investors about the company’s A.I. business.

Valentines Day gifts for your wife: How to spoil your forever best friend

Mashable - Tue, 02/04/2025 - 16:28

Valentine's Day shopping for your wife should be easy. You've known her forever. You hear her talk about her interests on a daily basis. But finding something to showcase how much she means to you is more of an enigma than it seems. How do you nail romance without being too cliché or too vague? We scoured the internet to find gifts with the perfect combination of thoughtful and practical. For even more ideas, check out our guides to the best Valentine's Day gifts for her, Valentine's Day gifts for your girlfriend, and gifts for your wife.

Elon Musk’s X Becomes Weapon in Government Cost Cutting

NYT Technology - Tue, 02/04/2025 - 15:21
The billionaire has used the social media site to boast of victories, lash out at enemies and conduct polls for the initiative he calls the Department of Government Efficiency.

How Dark Match blends wrestling, horror, and satanic cults

Mashable - Tue, 02/04/2025 - 14:42

Chris Jericho, Ayisha Issa, and Lowell Dean break down how Dark Match uses themes, tropes and blends genres to make this unique film.

Dark Match is in theaters now.

A mindfulness-themed browser is (calmly) shaking up search

Mashable - Tue, 02/04/2025 - 14:08

An internet browser with built-in mindfulness and meditation tools? Sounds a little like buzzword fodder to me. However, I'm a tired, jaded journalist who'll try anything to feel more alive, so I tested the early access release, mindfulness-focused Opera Air and found its features straightforward and genuinely beneficial in the short period I played around with it.

Built by Norwegian browser maker Opera, Opera Air claims to be "the first browser built around the concept of mindfulness." Opera has released thematic versions of its own browsers in the past, including a gaming-focused browser with a “Panic Button,” and a crypto browser. The latest, Air, is designed as a browser that both functions like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari but also "helps its users manage stress, enhance their focus, and maintain emotional clarity throughout their day."

SEE ALSO: How to choose a meditation app that's right for you

Tech platforms, apps, and wearables aimed at boosting mindfulness have made companies and startups a mint for years, so it's understandable why eyebrows disappear into hairlines when a shiny new one comes along. However, the internet is a truly shitty place of late, a veritable tidal wave of misinformation and tech bros getting rich off unbridled abuse and harassment. We're all on it, day after day, so a browser pinging me to "Take a Break" on the regular doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world. So I tried it out.

Opera Air is instantly recognizable as a modern mindfulness offering

When you first install Opera Air, you'll meet the requisite verdant landscape of rolling hills and a lone hiker, overlaid with an inspirational Jon Kabat-Zinn quote: "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." Drenched in that overt earnestness, let's take a look around. You can choose a different wallpaper from mountaintop clouds, a meditation rock in a forest, or the company’s signature bubble overlaid on some naturescapes.

Mountains, check. Inspirational quote, check. Credit: Opera Air / Mashable screenshot

You can connect Opera Air with your Chrome or Firefox account, which will bring in all your bookmarks, or you can start fresh. On the homepage, Opera Air features default buttons for leading mindfulness apps including Headspace and Calm, professional creative database Behance, social publishing platforms Medium and Penzu, and mindfulness publisher Mindful.

Mashable asked Opera about whether these buttons were sponsored placements, and the company said they were not: "Currently, we do not have any partnerships or affiliations with other apps or sites. This is a selection of inspiring apps and websites that our users can find helpful. Of course they have full control to remove these sites if they don’t want them and wish to have a more minimalist experience."

Testing the "Take a Break" and "Boosts" features

Probably the most overt mindfulness plug-in here is the "Take a Break" button on the left hand menu. Pressing the icon that looks like three horizontal dashes will bring up a menu of options: breathing and neck exercises (3D-camera enabled or not), and guided meditations including a full body scan. You can actively seek the feature out or set your timer to enable break reminders for as regularly as you'd like (60 minutes seems to be a good ballpark number).

The "Take a Break" menu. Credit: Opera Air / Mashable screenshot

Opera told Mashable the company produced the exercises in-house and the sounds through an agency, all using licensed lo-fi music tracks and ambient sounds — you can change up the ambient sound if you prefer "vinyl record crackling" to "walking in mid shallow water" (I do). You can choose between voice guides (Emma or Alex, both voice actors) and Opera told Mashable they're available in English for now, with Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, and German planned to roll out soon.

These types of meditation are available on many mindfulness and meditation apps, some of which cost money and some which don’t, so this is nothing new. But it's free (for now, and remember the cardinal rule of apps and software: if it’s free, you're probably the product). Conveniently, however, it’s right there in your browser, so if you’re like me, doing a small meditation before heading into a video call meeting might be more likely for you than pulling out your phone. 

Featured Video For You Let's talk about meditation. For starters, what is it, actually?

I tried a seven-minute mindfulness meditation to “increase focus, ground the mind, and reduce stress." The meditation uses techniques like controlled breathing, identifying thoughts and emotions and letting them pass by without judgment, checking in with your posture, noticing the space around you, and other long-used hallmarks of the practice. And yeah, I felt focused afterward, and could potentially use this every day to make a real effort to make meditation a habit.

The "Boosts" are binaural beats. Credit: Opera Air / Mashable screenshot

The other mindfulness tool Open Air features is “Boosts," sitting above the “Take a Break” option in the left menu. It’s a menu of binaural beats, a long prevalent auditory technique that generates a unique frequency in the brain when you listen to two different frequencies at once — Opera told Mashable the platform uses pure sine waves and carrier frequencies of 120hz and 240hz to deliver a range of binaural beats between 1hz and 40hz. There are different frequency states, several of which help with focus and attention, some which are associated more with relaxation; Opera Air’s binaural beats offerings are titled Creativity Boost, Energized Focus, Deep Relaxation and more.

Other bits in Opera Air that aren't mindfulness-related

Like its standard Opera browsers, Opera Air also features the company’s ad blocker and Opera’s own free VPN, which you can switch on and off in the Settings. Here, you can also take control of your privacy and data settings.

On the sidebar, there’s also an inbuilt AI chatbot called Aria that’s been built using a combination of AI models GPT-4o, Gemini 1.5, and Imagen 3. Meta platforms WhatsApp and Messenger are also built into this menu, which feels weird to see underneath the mindfulness tools, but hey, this is a browser after all. Plus, you can switch these on or off in the Settings.

As I said, in 2025, with everything simmering online, an internet browser with an in-built mindfulness reminder seems like a pretty good idea. There's plenty of online spaces to get free meditation and mindfulness guidance right now, and this is one of them, one that's close at hand during your work day.

Grubhub confirms data breach, both drivers and customers are affected

Mashable - Tue, 02/04/2025 - 14:04

Grubhub, the food delivery service, has been hacked. On Monday, the company confirmed a data breach that affects both its drivers and customers.

According to Grubhub, the malicious actor was able to gain entry into its systems via a third-party vendor that provides services for Grubhub's support team.

The hacker was able to access private information connected to customers, merchants, and drivers who previously interacted with Grubhub's customer service. Campus diners were also affected.

SEE ALSO: AT&T, Ticketmaster data breach hackers charged with stealing 50 billion records

Grubhub says the exact type of data stolen is different for each affected individual. The hacker obtained names, email addresses, and phone numbers. The unauthorized user also stole partial payment card information from some campus diners, which include the card type and last four digits on the card. Hashed passwords for "certain legacy systems" were also obtained.

It's unclear just how big the data breach is.

SEE ALSO: Man leaked classified Pentagon docs via Discord — now he’s sentenced to 15 years in prison

Grubhub says an investigation found that the intrusion was carried out through an account connected to a third-party service provider. Upon noticing the intrusion, Grubhub said they immediately removed the compromised account's access and terminated the service provider entirely from their systems.

Grubhub shared that customer and merchant login credentials and passwords were not breached. Financial information such as full payment card numbers, bank account details, drivers licenses, and social security numbers were also unaffected.

Bill threatens to make using DeepSeek a crime for Americans

Mashable - Tue, 02/04/2025 - 13:47

A proposed new law would make it illegal for Americans to download the popular Chinese AI app DeepSeek.

On Monday, Sen. Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri, introduced legislation that would "prohibit the import from or export to China of artificial intelligence technology."

While the announcement mentions DeepSeek, the bill called the Decoupling America’s Artificial Intelligence Capabilities from China Act doesn't explicitly mention the Chinese AI company. Instead it speaks more broadly about protecting U.S. intellectual property and preventing a foreign adversary from using technology that undermines national security.

SEE ALSO: DeepSeek just taught the AI industry 5 hard lessons

"America cannot afford to empower our greatest adversary at the expense of our own strength. Ensuring American economic superiority means cutting China off from American ingenuity and halting the subsidization of CCP innovation," said Hawley in the announcement, before referencing the "international concern" triggered by the launch of DeepSeek's R1 model.

In a matter of days, R1's arrival battered tech stocks and spooked the AI industry because the large language model (LLM) was reportedly made for a fraction of the cost of AI models like OpenAI's GPT-4, posing a threat to the American AI industry. OpenAI also claimed DeepSeek trained its AI off of OpenAI's data, which the internet found ironic since OpenAI is accused of doing the same thing to develop its own models.

There are also DeepSeek's ethics and privacy concerns. Users have discovered instances of censorship when using R1, such as not answering questions about Tiananmen Square or evading truths about Uyghur oppression. Then there's DeepSeek's privacy policy, which says it collects extensive data from users and stores it on Chinese servers, meaning it's vulnerable to access by the Chinese government.

With potential surveillance and data privacy issues in mind, the DeepSeek frenzy echoes the TikTok ban, which was put into effect for similar reasons. However, unlike the TikTok ban, Hawley's legislation seeks to penalize people for downloading DeepSeek, by making it a criminal act. If passed, the bill would enforce a $1 million fine, jail time for up to 20 years, or both, based on the Export Control Reform Act of 2018.

In addition to the ban of imports and exports of Chinese AI technology, Hawley's bill also proposes the prohibition of American companies "from conducting AI research in China or in cooperation with Chinese companies," and banning U.S. companies from investing in Chinese AI companies.

The language of the legislation is broad, which could be an effort to eliminate any loopholes that led to the rise of DeepSeek in the first place. Part of the reason why DeepSeek was developed so cost-efficiently was because of the U.S. restricted access to Nvidia GPUs imposed on China, forcing the company to work with chips that were possibly smuggled, less powerful, or purchased before the sanctions.

Tweet may have been deleted

However, some users on X commented on Hawley's post arguing that a reactionary bill hindering open source AI development could ultimately stifle U.S. innovation or push Chinese companies to find workarounds and innovate new technologies.

With China’s Antitrust Investigation Into Google, What’s at Stake?

NYT Technology - Tue, 02/04/2025 - 13:46
China said it had started an antitrust investigation of Google, which works with Chinese companies on smartphones and advertising outside the country.

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