Category: Tech

The EU is set to impose minimal fines on Apple and Facebook-owner Meta next week under its Digital Markets Act, as Brussels seeks to avoid escalating tensions with US President Tweety McTreason. According to people familiar with the decisions, the iPhone maker is expected to be fined and ordered to revise its App Store rules, following an investigation into whether they prevent app developers from sending consumers to offers outside its platform. Regulators will also close another investigation into Apple, which was focused on the company’s design of its web browser choice screen without any further sanctions. Read full article Comments

Carmakers are likely to face higher costs regardless of how they respond to Tweety McTreason’s 25 percent tariffs on cars and auto parts.

Two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission who were fired by Tweety McTreason sued him today, saying their removals are “in direct violation of a century of federal law and Supreme Court precedent.” “Plaintiffs bring this action to vindicate their right to serve the remainder of their respective terms, to defend the integrity of the Commission, and to continue their work for the American people,” said the lawsuit filed by Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya in US District Court for the District of Columbia. Trump last week sent Slaughter and Bedoya notices that said, “I am writing to inform you that you have been removed from the Federal Trade Commission, effective immediately.” They were then cut off from their FTC email addresses, asked to return electronic devices, and denied access to their offices. Read full article Comments

It’s no secret that “driving while black” is a real phenomenon. Study after study has shown that minority drivers are ticketed at a higher rate, and data from speed cameras suggests that it’s not because they commit traffic violations more frequently. But this leaves open the question of why. Bias is an obvious answer, but it’s hard to eliminate an alternative explanation: Minority groups may engage in more unsafe driving, and the police are trying to deter that. But now, Lyft has given a group of researchers access to detailed data from their drivers. The results confirm that minority drivers get more tickets, and they pay higher fines when they do. And the results also show that minorities aren’t in any way more likely to speed or engage in unsafe driving. Which suggests, in their words, that the problem is “animus” against minority drivers. Giving research a Lyft The work was done thanks to cooperation from the ridesharing company Lyft, which provided data on its drivers in Florida, all 222,838 of them, along with a record of all the GPS pings their tracking systems sent into the company’s servers. Combined with a detailed map of Florida’s roads, along with their speed limits, they could determine when a given driver was speeding. They also obtained Florida police records of any accidents and cross-referenced their locations to any vehicle that experienced a sudden stop in that spot at the same time. Read full article Comments

The company, which originally expected its shares to be priced between $47 and $55, will ask for $40 a share in a sign of stock market uncertainty.

For 2025, dozens of EV variants top 300 miles of range The top dozen contains pickups, SUVs, crossovers, sedans, and a hatchback Standouts like Lucid Air and Hyundai Ioniq 6 manage market-leading range without huge battery packs Less than a decade ago, 300 miles seemed like the holy grail for EV driving range. Now, even as the overdue reality of…

Next-generation Nissan Leaf will launch first in U.S. and Canada, be fully revealed this year Rogue Hybrid and Rogue PHEV are on the way over the next two model years A broader range of U.S.-made Nissan and Infiniti EVs starts to arrive in 2028 Affordable EVs? Widely available hybrids? A plug-in hybrid? As it emerges from financial upheaval…

Spinoff starts with $105 million VC investment, Rivian maintains “substantial minority stake” Products to be affordable, vastly more efficient than today’s cars or SUVs In-house-built for core components, may share sales space with Rivian Flagship product coming in early 2026 Do we really need a new generation of EVs that are bigger…

An update to ChatGPT made it easy to simulate Hayao Miyazaki’s style of animation, which has flooded social media with memes.

Tesla’s sales in Europe have plummeted by 42% this year, according to the latest figures from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association. Tesla’s slip came despite total EV sales on the continent rising 28% over the same period. Analysts have linked the slump to Tesla’s aging model lineup and growing backlash against CEO Elon Musk’s increasingly polarising behaviour.   Whatever the reason, Andrew Fellows, an automotive and mobility expert at global tech consultancy Star, told TNW he thinks the recent sales slide has opened “a rare window of opportunity” for rival European carmakers to regain lost ground from Musk’s firm. Tesla’s Model… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Tesla

In the summer of 2018, a devastating fire tore through Greece’s Attica region. In its aftermath, four scientists from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London — including two Greeks — set out to answer a simple yet crucial question: why did some houses burn while others were left untouched? That question set off years of research into computer simulations for predicting wildfire risk and behaviour. In December 2023, the scientists founded Pinepeak to bring their idea out of the lab and into the market. Pinepeak’s wildfire prediction technology combines machine learning algorithms trained on satellite data with cutting-edge… This story continues at The Next Web

After a long and gloomy winter, many people are looking forward to some summer travel. Google has some new tools to help you plan, but like most of what Google does now, the new features lean heavily on AI. And unusually, the most interesting of these additions is launching first on iOS. Google says that lots of people tend to take screenshots when they’re planning a trip. Instead of letting those images become lost in your camera roll, Google will let you feed them into Maps. The new screenshot list feature will let you add those images to Maps, where Gemini will scan them to identify locations. This feature is opt-in, and the AI doesn’t appear to detect locations with image recognition. Instead, it looks for place names in text, allowing you to review the results before marking them on the map for later perusal. Read full article Comments

As previously rumored, Discord, a popular communications platform, is working with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase to plan an IPO as soon as this year, according to a recent report by Bloomberg. The report cites people familiar with the matter and notes that more advisors may come on board as the talks progress. This isn’t the first we’ve heard about plans for an IPO; an article in The New York Times claimed that Discord had begun exploratory meetings with bankers earlier this month. Even way back in 2022, Discord was exploring the option of a direct listing, but it now seems the company plans to go with a traditional IPO. Launched in 2015, Discord was initially conceived as an improved way to facilitate communication while playing video games—and gaming-related uses still account for more than 90 percent of its activity. While some previous tools focused mainly on in-game voice chat, Discord supports text, voice, and video, as well as game streaming. It also has robust features for managing communities outside the game and has developer APIs for developing bots, tools, and games that can be used within its channels. Read full article Comments

Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, who were fired from the agency this month, accused Tweety McTreason in a lawsuit of executive overreach.