An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Honda said on Tuesday that it was scaling back its investment in electric vehicles given slowing demand and would be focusing on hybrids, now far more in favor, with a slew of revamped models. Japan's second-biggest automaker after Toyota also dropped a target for EV sales to account for 30% of its sales by the 2030 financial year. "It's really hard to read the market, but at the moment we see EVs accounting for about a fifth by then," CEO Toshihiro Mibe told a press conference. Honda has slashed its planned investment in electrification and software by that year by 30% to 7 trillion yen ($48.4 billion). It's one of a number of global car brands dialing back EV investment due to the shift in demand in favor of hybrids and as governments around the world ease timelines to meet emission rules and EV sales targets. Honda plans to launch 13 next-generation hybrid models globally in the four years from 2027. At the moment it sells more than a dozen hybrid models worldwide, though just three in the U.S. -- the Civic, which comes in hatchback and sedan versions, the Accord and the CR-V. It will also develop a hybrid system for large-size models that it plans to launch in the second half of the decade. The automaker is aiming to sell 2.2 million to 2.3 million hybrid vehicles by 2030, a huge jump from 868,000 sold last year. That also compares with a total of 3.8 million vehicles sold overall last year. Earlier this month, Honda announced it had put on hold for about two years a $10.7 billion plan to build an EV production base in Ontario, Canada, due to slowing demand for electric cars. Honda said, however, that it still plans to have battery-powered and fuel-cell vehicles make up all of its new car sales by 2040.

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A Massachusetts man has agreed to plead guilty to hacking into one of the top education tech companies in the United States and stealing tens of millions of schoolchildren's personal information for profit. From a report: Matthew Lane, 19, of Worcester County, Massachusetts, signed a plea agreement related to charges connected to a major hack on an educational technology company last year, as well as another company, according to court documents published Tuesday. While the documents refer to the education company only as "Victim-2" and the U.S. attorney's office declined to name the victim, a person familiar with the matter told NBC News that it is PowerSchool. The hack of PowerSchool last year is believed to be the largest breach of American children's sensitive data to date. According to his plea agreement, Lane admitted obtaining information from a protected computer and aggravated identity theft and agreed not to challenge a prison sentence shorter than nine years and four months. He got access simply by trying an employee's stolen username and password combination, the complaint says, echoing a private third-party assessment of the incident previously reported by NBC News.

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A new virtual machine manager called Karton is being developed specifically for the KDE Plasma desktop, aiming to offer a seamless, Qt-native alternative to GNOME-centric tools like GNOME Boxes. Spearheaded by University of Waterloo student Derek Lin as part of Google Summer of Code 2025, Karton uses libvirt and Qt Quick to build a user-friendly, fully integrated VM experience, with features like a custom SPICE viewer, snapshot support, and a mobile-friendly UI expected by September 2025. Neowin reports: To feel right at home in KDE, Karton is being built with Qt Quick and Kirigami. It uses the libvirt API to handle virtual machines and could eventually work across different platforms. Right now, development is focused on getting the core parts in place. Lin is working on a new domain installer that ditches direct virt-install calls in favor of libosinfo, which helps detect OS images and generate the right libvirt XML for setting up virtual machines more precisely. He's still refining device configuration and working on broader hypervisor support. Another key part of the work is building a custom SPICE viewer using Qt Quick from scratch: If you're curious, here's the list of specific deliverables Lin included in his GSoC proposal, though he notes the proposal itself is a bit outdated [...]. For those interested in the timeline, Lin's GSoC proposal says the official GSoC coding starts June 2, 2025. The goal is to have a working app ready by the midterm evaluation around July 14, 2025, with the final submission due September 1, 2025. You can learn more via KDE.org.

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KrebsOnSecurity was hit with a near-record 6.3 Tbps DDoS attack, believed to be a test of the powerful new Aisuru IoT botnet. The attack, lasting under a minute, was the largest Google has ever mitigated and is linked to a DDoS-for-hire operation run by a 21-year-old Brazilian known as "Forky." Brian Krebs writes: [Google Security Engineer Damian Menscher] said the attack on KrebsOnSecurity lasted less than a minute, hurling large UDP data packets at random ports at a rate of approximately 585 million data packets per second. "It was the type of attack normally designed to overwhelm network links," Menscher said, referring to the throughput connections between and among various Internet service providers (ISPs). "For most companies, this size of attack would kill them." [...] The 6.3 Tbps attack last week caused no visible disruption to this site, in part because it was so brief -- lasting approximately 45 seconds. DDoS attacks of such magnitude and brevity typically are produced when botnet operators wish to test or demonstrate their firepower for the benefit of potential buyers. Indeed, Google's Menscher said it is likely that both the May 12 attack and the slightly larger 6.5 Tbps attack against Cloudflare last month were simply tests of the same botnet's capabilities. In many ways, the threat posed by the Aisuru/Airashi botnet is reminiscent of Mirai, an innovative IoT malware strain that emerged in the summer of 2016 and successfully out-competed virtually all other IoT malware strains in existence at the time.

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Spain has ordered Airbnb to remove over 65,000 listings that violate rental regulations, citing missing license numbers and unclear ownership details. The crackdown is part of a broader government effort to address the country's housing crisis, which many blame on unregulated short-term rentals reducing long-term housing supply. Reuters reports: Most of the Airbnb listings to be blocked do not include their licence number, while others do not specify whether the owner was an individual or a corporation, the Consumer Rights Ministry said in a statement on Monday. Consumer Rights Minister Pablo Bustinduy said his goal was to end the general "lack of control" and "illegality" in the holiday rental business. "No more excuses. Enough with protecting those who make a business out of the right to housing in our country," he told reporters. Bustinduy said Madrid's high court is backing the request to withdraw as many as 5,800 listings. Airbnb will appeal the decision, a spokesperson said on Monday. The company believes the ministry does not have the authority to make rulings over short-term rentals and failed to provide an evidence-based list of non-compliant accommodation. Some of the incriminated listings are non-touristic seasonal ones, the spokesperson said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Decrypt: The founder of online news publication TechCrunch has claimed that Coinbase's recent data breach "will lead to people dying," amid a wave of kidnap attempts targeting high-net-worth crypto holders. TechCrunch founder and venture capitalist Michael Arrington added that this should be a point of reflection for regulators to re-think the importance of know-your-customer (KYC), a process that requires users to confirm their identity to a platform. He also called for prison time for executives that fail to "adequately protect" customer information. "This hack -- which includes home addresses and account balances -- will lead to people dying. It probably has already," he tweeted. "The human cost, denominated in misery, is much larger than the $400 million or so they think it will actually cost the company to reimburse people." [...] He believes that people are in immediate physical danger following the breach, which exposed data including names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, government-ID images, and more. Arrington believes that in the wake of these attacks, crypto companies that handle user data need to be much more careful than they currently are. "Combining these KYC laws with corporate profit maximization and lax laws on penalties for hacks like these means these issues will continue to happen," he tweeted. "Both governments and corporations need to step up to stop this. As I said, the cost can only be measured in human suffering." Former Coinbase chief technology officer Balaji Srinivasan pushed back on Arrington's position that executives should be punished, arguing that regulators are forcing KYC onto unwilling companies. "When enough people die, the laws may change," Arrington hit back.

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Google on Tuesday unveiled Veo 3, an AI video generator that includes synchronized audio -- such as dialogue and animal sounds -- setting it apart from rivals like OpenAI's Sora. The company also launched Imagen 4 for high-quality image generation, Flow for cinematic video creation, and made updates to its Veo 2 and Lyria 2 tools. CNBC reports: "Veo 3 excels from text and image prompting to real-world physics and accurate lip syncing," Eli Collins, Google DeepMind product vice president, said in a blog Tuesday. The video-audio AI tool is available Tuesday to U.S. subscribers of Google's new $249.99 per month Ultra subscription plan, which is geared toward hardcore AI enthusiasts. Veo 3 will also be available for users of Google's Vertex AI enterprise platform. Google also announced Imagen 4, its latest image-generation tool, which the company said produces higher-quality images through user prompts. Additionally, Google unveiled Flow, a new filmmaking tool that allows users to create cinematic videos by describing locations, shots and style preferences. Users can access the tool through Gemini, Whisk, Vertex AI and Workspace.

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Google has unveiled a major overhaul of its search engine with the introduction of A.I. Mode -- a new feature that works like a chatbot, enabling users to ask follow-up questions and receive detailed, conversational answers. Announced at the I/O 2025 conference, the feature is now being rolled out to all Search users in the U.S. Engadget reports: Google first began previewing AI Mode with testers in its Labs program at the start of March. Since then, it has been gradually rolling out the feature to more people, including in recent weeks regular Search users. At its keynote today, Google shared a number of updates coming to AI Mode as well, including some new tools for shopping, as well as the ability to compare ticket prices for you and create custom charts and graphs for queries on finance and sports. For the uninitiated, AI Mode is a chatbot built directly into Google Search. It lives in a separate tab, and was designed by the company to tackle more complicated queries than people have historically used its search engine to answer. For instance, you can use AI Mode to generate a comparison between different fitness trackers. Before today, the chatbot was powered by Gemini 2.0. Now it's running a custom version of Gemini 2.5. What's more, Google plans to bring many of AI Mode's capabilities to other parts of the Search experience. Looking to the future, Google plans to bring Deep Search, an offshoot of its Deep Research mode, to AI Mode. [...] Another new feature that's coming to AI Mode builds on the work Google did with Project Mariner, the web-surfing AI agent the company began previewing with "trusted testers" at the end of last year. This addition gives AI Mode the ability to complete tasks for you on the web. For example, you can ask it to find two affordable tickets for the next MLB game in your city. AI Mode will compare "hundreds of potential" tickets for you and return with a few of the best options. From there, you can complete a purchase without having done the comparison work yourself. [...] All of the new AI Mode features Google previewed today will be available to Labs users first before they roll out more broadly.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Sunday, the Chicago Sun-Times published an advertorial summer reading list containing at least 10 fake books attributed to real authors, according to multiple reports on social media. The newspaper's uncredited "Summer reading list for 2025" supplement recommended titles including "Tidewater Dreams" by Isabel Allende and "The Last Algorithm" by Andy Weir -- books that don't exist and were created out of thin air by an AI system. The creator of the list, Marco Buscaglia, confirmed to 404 Media (paywalled) that he used AI to generate the content. "I do use AI for background at times but always check out the material first. This time, I did not and I can't believe I missed it because it's so obvious. No excuses," Buscaglia said. "On me 100 percent and I'm completely embarrassed." A check by Ars Technica shows that only five of the fifteen recommended books in the list actually exist, with the remainder being fabricated titles falsely attributed to well-known authors. [...] On Tuesday morning, the Chicago Sun-Times addressed the controversy on Bluesky. "We are looking into how this made it into print as we speak," the official publication account wrote. "It is not editorial content and was not created by, or approved by, the Sun-Times newsroom. We value your trust in our reporting and take this very seriously. More info will be provided soon." In the supplement, the books listed by authors Isabel Allende, Andy Weir, Brit Bennett, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Min Jin Lee, Percival Everett, Delia Owens, Rumaan Alam, Rebecca Makkai, and Maggie O'Farrell are confabulated, while books listed by authors Francoise Sagan, Ray Bradbury, Jess Walter, Andre Aciman, and Ian McEwan are real. All of the authors are real people. "The Chicago Sun-Times obviously gets ChatGPT to write a 'summer reads' feature almost entirely made up of real authors but completely fake books. What are we coming to?" wrote novelist Rachael King. A Reddit user also expressed disapproval of the incident. "As a subscriber, I am livid! What is the point of subscribing to a hard copy paper if they are just going to include AI slop too!? The Sun Times needs to answer for this, and there should be a reporter fired."

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Delta can pursue much of its lawsuit seeking to hold cybersecurity company CrowdStrike liable for a massive computer outage last July that caused the carrier to cancel 7,000 flights, a Georgia state judge ruled. From a report: In a decision on Friday, Judge Kelly Lee Ellerbe of the Fulton County Superior Court said Delta can try to prove CrowdStrike was grossly negligent in pushing a defective update of its Falcon software to customers, crashing more than 8 million Microsoft Windows-based computers worldwide.

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Google today unveiled significant upgrades to its Gemini 2.5 AI models, introducing an experimental "Deep Think" reasoning mode for 2.5 Pro that allows the model to consider multiple hypotheses before responding. The new capability has achieved impressive results on complex benchmarks, scoring highly on the 2025 USA Mathematical Olympiad and leading on LiveCodeBench, a competition-level coding benchmark. Gemini 2.5 Pro also tops the WebDev Arena leaderboard with an ELO score of 1420. "Based on Google's experience with AlphaGo, AI model responses improve when they're given more time to think," said Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind. The enhanced Gemini 2.5 Flash, Google's efficiency-focused model, has improved across reasoning, multimodality, and code benchmarks while using 20-30% fewer tokens. Both models now feature native audio capabilities with support for 24+ languages, thought summaries, and "thinking budgets" that let developers control token usage. Gemini 2.5 Flash is currently available in preview with general availability expected in early June, while Deep Think remains limited to trusted testers during safety evaluations.

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Google is adding AI-powered live translation to Meet, enabling participants to converse in their native languages while the system automatically translates in real time with the speaker's original vocal characteristics intact. Initially launching with English-Spanish translation this week, the technology processes speech with minimal delay, preserving tone, cadence, and expressions -- creating an effect similar to professional dubbing but with the speaker's own voice, the company announced at its developer conference Tuesday. In some testings, WSJ found occasional limitations: initial sentences sometimes appear garbled before smoothing out, context-dependent words like "match" might translate imperfectly (rendered as "fight" in Spanish), and the slight delay can create confusing crosstalk with multiple participants. Google plans to extend support to Italian, German, and Portuguese in the coming weeks. The feature is rolling out to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers now, with enterprise availability planned later this year. The company says that no meeting data is stored when translation is active, and conversation audio isn't used to train AI models.

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Adobe will rebrand its Creative Cloud All Apps subscription to "Creative Cloud Pro" on June 17 for North American users, making significant price increases while bundling AI features. Individual annual subscribers will see monthly rates jump from $59.99 to $69.99, while monthly non-contracted subscribers face a $15 hike to $104.99. The revamped plan includes unlimited generative AI image credits, 4,000 monthly "premium" AI video and audio credits, access to third-party models like OpenAI's GPT, and the beta Firefly Boards collaborative whiteboard. Adobe will also offer a cheaper "Creative Cloud Standard" option at $54.99 monthly with severely reduced AI capabilities, but this plan remains exclusive to existing subscribers -- forcing new customers into the pricier AI-focused tier.

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Microsoft is starting to integrate AI shortcuts, or what it calls AI actions, into the File Explorer in Windows 11. From a report: These shortcuts let you right-click on a file and quickly get to Windows AI features like blurring the background of a photo, erasing objects, or even summarizing content from Office files. Four image actions are currently being tested in the latest Dev Channel builds of Windows 11, including Bing visual search to find similar images on the web, the blur background and erase objects features found in the Photos app, and the remove background option in Paint. Similar AI actions will soon be tested with Office files, The Verge added.

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America's regional state universities are experiencing steep enrollment declines, triggering economic crises in the towns that depend on them, while flagship universities continue to thrive. At Western Illinois University in Macomb, enrollment has plummeted 47% since 2010, driving the city's population down 23% to 14,765. Empty dorms have been repurposed or demolished, while local businesses struggle to survive. "It's almost like you're watching the town die," Kalib McGruder, a 28-year veteran of the campus police department, told WSJ. An analysis of 748 public four-year institutions reveals enrollment at prestigious state universities increased 9% between 2015 and 2023, while regional state schools saw a 2% decline. The University of Tennessee Knoxville's enrollment jumped 30% as the state's regional colleges collectively fell 3%. With high school graduate numbers expected to decline starting next year after reaching a record high in 2024, the outlook for struggling college towns appears bleak.

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French authorities have denied Telegram founder Pavel Durov's request to travel to the U.S. for "negotiations with investment funds." From a report: The Paris prosecutor's office told POLITICO that it rendered its decision on May 12 "on the grounds that such a trip abroad did not appear imperative or justified." Durov was arrested in August 2024 at a French airport and has been under strict legal control since last September, when he was indicted on six charges related to illicit activity on the messaging app he operates. He is forbidden to leave France without authorization -- which he obtained to travel to Dubai from March 15 to April 7, the prosecutor's office said. Russian-born Durov is a citizen, among other countries, of France and the United Arab Emirates.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Intel has considered divesting its network and edge businesses as the chipmaker looks to shave off parts of the company its new chief executive does not see as crucial, three sources familiar with the matter said. Talks about the potential sale of the group, once called NEX in Intel's financial results, are a part of CEO Lip-Bu Tan's strategy to focus its tens of thousands of employees on areas in which it has historically thrived: PC and data center chips.

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Survey response rates have collapsed from 30-50% in the 1970s to as low as 5% today, while AI agents now account for an estimated 20% of survey responses, according to a new analysis. The UK's Office for National Statistics has seen response rates drop from 40% to 13%, with some labor market questions receiving only five human responses. The U.S. Current Population Survey hit a record low 12.7% response rate, down from 50% historically.

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The US tech sector shed 214,000 jobs in April amid continuing economic uncertainty, according to CompTIA analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Companies are extending hiring timelines to two or three times longer than last year while significantly raising skill requirements, particularly for AI competencies. "It's the great hesitation," said George Denlinger of Robert Half, noting employers now demand 10-12 skills instead of 6-7 previously. Entry-level programming positions are disappearing as AI assumes those functions, with Janco Associates CEO Victor Janulaitis observing that "a job that has been eliminated from almost all IT departments is an entry-level IT programmer."

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Klarna's net loss more than doubled in the first quarter [non-paywalled link] as more consumers failed to repay loans from the Swedish "buy now, pay later" lender as concerns rose about the financial health of US consumers. Financial Times: The fintech, which offers interest-free consumer loans to allow customers to make retail purchases, on Monday reported a net loss of $99 million for the three months to March, up from $47 million a year earlier. The company, which makes money by charging fees to merchants and to consumers who fail to repay on time, said its customer credit losses had risen to $136 million, a 17% year-on-year increase. The increased failure to repay comes on the back of gloomy economic sentiment in the US, where a closely watched measure of consumers' confidence last week fell to its second-lowest level on record. US President Donald Trump's trade war has driven expectations of higher inflation. Further reading: The Klarna Hype Machine.

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