In brief: It seems one profession that really loves generative AI is that of the cybercriminal. Microsoft warns that the technology has evolved to the point where creating an online scam can now take minutes rather than days or weeks and requires little technical knowledge.
Author: Desk
A hot potato: The FTC has filed a lawsuit against Uber over allegations that it engaged in deceptive billing and cancellation practices related to its Uber One subscription service. According to the agency, the ride-hailing giant made the process of cancelling needlessly difficult, charged some people during their free trial, and even signed up customers…
A hot potato: Next-generation DNA sequencing (NGS) faces mounting scrutiny over its cyber vulnerabilities. While NGS has revolutionized fields ranging from cancer diagnostics to infectious disease tracking, a new study warns that the systems enabling these advances could also be exploited as a gateway for hackers and malicious actors.
In brief: Microsoft is cracking down on those employees it considers to be low performers. The Redmond company has laid out new policies and tools in an internal email to managers, which include a ban on internal transfers for poor performers and a two-year rehiring block on those let go.
Forward-looking: Most highly recommended microSD cards offer maximum read speeds of around 250 MB/s, but the impending release of the Nintendo Switch 2 has increased demand for significantly faster memory cards. Just as microSD Express technology begins to gain mainstream acceptance, one vendor has introduced a new standard that doubles the theoretical performance.
Invisible Dark: Lone black holes passing through the galaxy should be a pretty common occurrence in the Milky Way, but they are notoriously hard to spot. According to recently published research, we have now confirmed the existence of the first-ever lone black hole. And it’s essentially in our neighborhood.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is trying to decide whether to keep an Affordable Care Act provision that requires insurers to offer no-cost preventive care tests. The court heard arguments Monday on whether the procedure for deciding which tests can be included under the national insurance program is legally flawed. A group of Christian plaintiffs are most bothered by the requirement for insurers to provide free HIV tests and medications. They said in their court filings that their contributions to the health insurance fund are inadvertently making them “complicit in facilitating homosexual behavior.” If they win their lawsuit, insurers could be relieved of the costs of the tests, passing them back to patients and undercutting a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The free tests are one of the most popular parts of the 15-year-old health insurance law, allowing early warning detection of high cholesterol, cancer, diabetes and other potentially deadly ailments. Obamacare is credi
WASHINGTON — Just days after winning the Masters golf tournament and becoming only the sixth player in men’s golf to win all the sport’s majors, Rory McIlroy scored a victory of a different kind back home in Great Britain, getting permission to install an air source heat pump on his $12 million estate in Surrey. McIlroy, who hails from Northern Ireland, was granted “very special” permission to install the heat pump for an outdoor swimming pool he’s installing at his home on the prestigious Wentworth Estate in the borough of Runnymede. However gaining that permission wasn’t easy, and came down to a dramatic final round that in its own way rivaled his beating Justin Rose in a playoff at Augusta two Sundays ago. The Runnymede borough council had initially deemed McIlroy’s plans “inappropriate” for an area deemed a greenbelt under national planning guidelines. That McIlroy was ultimately able to prevail came down to his being able to demonstrate the environmental benefits of the renewable energy-reliant heat pump
WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that it plans to end the use of petroleum-based synthetic food dyes in America’s food supply within the next two years in a bid to combat a myriad of health concerns, especially among children. The policy was announced by Marty Makary, the newly confirmed head of the Food and Drug Administration, at a press conference Tuesday afternoon at the headquarters of the Department of Health and Human Services. Also in attendance were Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and several representatives of the Make America Healthy Again movement. “For the last 50 years, we have been running one of the largest, uncontrolled scientific experiments in the world on our nation’s children, without their consent,” Makary said. “Today, we are ending that experiment, by removing petroleum-based chemicals from their food supply.” Though he quickly acknowledged eliminating what he called “chemical toxins” from the food supply is “not a silver bullet that will instantly
With the success of the iPhone 16e launch, Apple is now planning to make it an annual series, as the device is nearing the trial production stage. The so-called budget iPhone is slated to launch in May of next year, as per reports from a Chinese leaker from Apple’s supply chain. The iPhone 16e is…