Category: Tech

Most of Google’s AI efforts thus far have involved adding generative features to existing products, but NotebookLM is different. Created by the Google Labs team, NotebookLM uses AI to analyze user-provided documents. Starting today, it will be even easier to use NotebookLM to explore topics, as Google has added a “Discover Sources” feature to let the app look up its own sources. Previously, to create a new notebook, you had to feed the AI documents, web links, YouTube videos, or raw text. You can still do that, but you don’t have to with the addition of Discover functionality. Simply click the new button and tell NotebookLM what you’re interested in learning. Google says the app will consider “hundreds of potential web sources” in the blink of an eye, giving you the top ten from which to choose. There will be links available so you can peruse the suggestions before adding them to the model. The sources you select will be ingested as if they were documents you uploaded, creating a conversant AI for your chosen topic. The content of those sources will also be loaded into NotebookLM so you can refer to them directly. That’s not why you use NotebookLM, though. You use NotebookLM for all the nifty AI-assisted features. Read full article Comments

The company said it would offer customers the same prices it offers its employees on most of its vehicles.

New 25 percent tariffs on all foreign car imports into the United States went into effect this week as Tweety McTreason ignited his new trade war. It has caused something of a rush at dealerships around the country as customers descend on existing stock in an attempt to beat looming price increases of thousands of dollars. Now we’re starting to see how the automakers are reacting. Employee pricing for all Ford is in the rather enviable position of having the least exposure to the new vehicle tariff than all but Tesla; less than 20 percent of the cars, trucks, and SUVs that Ford sells in the US are imported from abroad. And it will lean into that with a new ad campaign with the slogan “From America, For America,” which launches today. (Note that this does not take into account the separate parts tariff that goes into effect before May 2.) Nevermind the slogan, though. The campaign extends Ford’s “A plan” pricing, which in plain English is its employee discount, to all its customers. The blue oval is offering A plan pricing on most 2024 and 2025 vehicles, including the all-electric F-150 Lightning and the Mustang Mach-E, as well as its various hybrids. Read full article Comments

The A.I. prediction world is torn between optimism and gloom. A report released on Thursday decidedly lands on the side of gloom.

Nintendo’s Switch 2 presentation gave us pricing for the console ($449 to start) and Nintendo’s product pages have given us pricing information for accessories ($80 for a Pro Controller, $90 for another pair of Joy-Cons, and $110 for a replacement dock, sheesh). But what Nintendo didn’t mention during the presentation was game pricing, either for standalone Switch 2 titles or the Switch 2 Edition upgrades for existing Switch games. Nintendo announced via its website after the presentation that Mario Kart World , the console’s flagship launch title, will cost $50 when you buy a digital copy as part of a Switch 2 bundle. But the game will cost $80 when you buy it on its own, $30 more than the pack-in version and $20 more than the usual $60 price for first-party Switch games. Pre-order listings at US retailers that have gone live since this morning also list several $80 games—we’ll use Wal-Mart’s as an example. The upgraded Switch 2 Editions for a trio of Switch games—2024’s Super Mario Party Jamboree, 2023’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and 2022’s Kirby and the Forgotten Land—are all going for $80, the same as Mario Kart World. Read full article Comments

Tweety McTreason says the tariffs will encourage investment in U.S. factories, but analysts say car buyers will have to pay thousands more.

Fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) are tremendously fond of fermented foodstuffs. Technically, it’s the yeast they crave, produced by yummy rotting fruit, but they can consume quite a lot of ethanol as a result of that fruity diet. Yes, fruit flies have ultra-fast metabolisms, the better to burn off the booze, but they can still get falling-down drunk—so much so, that randy inebriated male fruit flies have been known to court other males by mistake and fail to mate successfully. Then again, apparently adding alcohol to their food increases the production of sex pheromones in male fruit flies, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances. That, in turn, makes them more attractive to the females of the species. “We show a direct and positive effect of alcohol consumption on the mating success of male flies,” said co-author Ian Keesey of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. “The effect is caused by the fact that alcohol, especially methanol, increases the production of sex pheromones. This in turn makes alcoholic males more attractive to females and ensures a higher mating success rate, whereas the success of drunken male humans with females is likely to be questionable.” Read full article Comments

The co-founder of Oracle and friend of Tweety McTreason, who was a flamboyant fixture in the 1990s, has returned to the spotlight through — of all things — TikTok.

Last week, Health Secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the Trump administration would hack off nearly a quarter of employees at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees critical agencies including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The downsizing includes pushing out about 10,000 full-time employees through early retirements, deferred resignations, and other efforts. Another 10,000 will be laid off in a brutal restructuring, bringing the total HHS workforce from 82,000 to 62,000. “This will be a painful period,” Kennedy said in a video announcement last week. Early yesterday morning, the pain began. Read full article Comments

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns this summer with ten new episodes. Paramount+ has dropped a tantalizing one-minute teaser for the upcoming third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds., and it looks like the latest adventures of the starship Enterprise will bring romance, comedy, mystery, and even a bit of analog tech, not to mention a brand new villain. (Some spoilers for S2 below) We haven’t seen much from the third season to date. There was an exclusive clip during San Diego Comic Con last summer—a callback to the S2 episode “Charades,” in which a higher-dimensional race, the Kerkohvians, accidentally reconfigured Spock’s half-human, half-Vulcan physiology to that of a full-blooded human, just before Spock was supposed to meet his Vulcan fiancee’s parents. The S3 clip had the situation reversed: The human crew had to make themselves Vulcan to succeed on a new mission but weren’t able to change back. Read full article Comments

The iPhone maker spent years trying to move production of some products out of China to avoid tariffs. But now that may not matter.

The Meta chief, who was at the White House on Wednesday, has discussed the case with the president and his aides. A trial is set to start in less than two weeks.

Google DeepMind’s reported clampdown on sharing research will stifle AI innovation, warns the CEO of Iris.ai, one of Europe’s leading startups in the space. The UK-based lab has tightened its rules on releasing AI studies, the Financial Times reported this week. Citing seven current and former DeepMind scientists, the newspaper said the company has introduced stricter vetting and additional bureaucracy, making it harder to publish research. The changes aim to protect the company’s edge in AI, the sources said. Acquired by Google in 2014, DeepMind has long been a leader in computer science breakthroughs. In recent years, however, the lab… This story continues at The Next Web

Every entrepreneur has to overcome obstacles, but few have faced the challenges of Oleksandr Kosovan. As the founder and CEO of Ukrainian scaleup MacPaw, Kosovan runs his business in a country under invasion. The company has even been hit by missile barrages. As relentless Russian bombing and shelling pummel Ukraine, his team presses on with their work. In October, they released a new version of CleanMyMac, MacPaw’s flagship maintenance and optimisation product.  “It was completely developed during the war,” Kosovan tells TNW on a video call from his home in Kyiv. The software earned rave reviews. But two months later,… This story continues at The Next Web