Intel has certified Shell's lubricant-based method for cooling servers more efficiently within data centers used for AI. From a report: The announcement on Tuesday, which follows the chipmaker's two-year trial of the technology, offers a way to use less energy at AI facilities, which are booming and are expected to double their electricity demand globally by 2030, consuming as much power then as all of Japan today, according to the International Energy Agency. So far, companies have largely used giant fans to reduce temperatures inside AI data centers, which generate more heat in order to run at a higher power. Increasingly, these fans consume electricity at a rate that rivals the computers themselves, something the facilities' operators would prefer to avoid, Intel Principal Engineer Samantha Yates said in an interview.

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Linux creator Linus Torvalds has abandoned his six-month experiment with a quieter low-profile keyboard in favor of his old mechanical one with Cherry MX Blue switches. In a post about Linux 6.15-rc6 on LKML.org, Torvalds explained that his typing accuracy suffered without the tactile feedback. "It seems I need the audible (or perhaps tactile) feedback to avoid the typing mistakes that I just kept doing," Torvalds wrote. The famously outspoken developer couldn't recall why he initially switched to the quieter keyboard, as he doesn't work in a shared office where the noise would disturb others. After the failed experiment with the unnamed quiet keyboard, Torvalds has now returned to what he describes as a "noisy clackety-clack" input device. He joked that since he can no longer blame his keyboard for typos, "going forward, I will now conveniently blame autocorrect."

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Microsoft is laying off 3% of employees across all levels and geographies, the company said Tuesday. "We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace," a spokesperson told CNBC. Microsoft had 228,000 employees worldwide at the end of June, meaning that the move will affect thousands of employees.

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Apple is embracing the world of brain computer interfaces, unveiling a new technology that one day could revolutionize how humans interact with their devices. From a report: The company is taking early steps to enable people to control their iPhones with neural signals captured by a new generation of brain implants. It could make Apple devices more accessible to tens of thousands of people who can't use their hands because of severe spinal cord injuries or diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. [...] Historically, humans interacted with their computers mechanically, using keyboards and mice. Smartphones introduced touch, a behavioral input, but still an observable physical movement. The new capability means Apple devices won't need to see the user make specific movements, the devices can detect user intentions from decoded brain signals. Apple has worked on the new standard with Synchron, which makes a stent-like device that is implanted in a vein atop the brain's motor cortex. The device called the Stentrode has electrodes that read brain signals. It translates the signals into selecting icons on a screen.

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Amazon's decade-old acquisition of Annapurna Labs has emerged as a pivotal element in its AI strategy, with the once-secretive Israeli chip design startup now powering AWS infrastructure. The $350 million deal, struck in 2015 after initial talks between Annapurna co-founder Nafea Bshara and Amazon executive James Hamilton, has equipped the tech giant with custom silicon capabilities critical to its cloud computing dominance. Annapurna's chips, particularly the Trainium processor for AI model training and Graviton for general-purpose computing, now form the foundation of Amazon's AI infrastructure. The company is deploying hundreds of thousands of Trainium chips in its Project Rainier supercomputer being delivered to AI startup Anthropic this year. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who led AWS when the acquisition occurred, described it as "one of the most important moments" in AWS history.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: After weeks of news about Google's antitrust travails, the tech giant will try to reset the narrative next week by highlighting advances it is making in artificial intelligence, cloud and Android technology at its annual I/O developer conference. Ahead of I/O, Google has been demonstrating to employees and outside developers an array of different products, including an AI agent for software development. Known internally as a "software development lifecycle agent," it is intended to help software engineers navigate every stage of the software process, from responding to tasks to documenting code, according to three people who have seen demonstrations of the product or been told about it by Google employees. Google employees have described it as an always-on coworker that can help identify bugs to fix or flag security vulnerabilities, one of the people said, although it's not clear how close it is to being released.

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Requesting concise answers from AI chatbots significantly increases their tendency to hallucinate, according to new research from Paris-based AI testing company Giskard. The study found that leading models -- including OpenAI's GPT-4o, Mistral Large, and Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet -- sacrifice factual accuracy when instructed to keep responses short. "When forced to keep it short, models consistently choose brevity over accuracy," Giskard researchers noted, explaining that models lack sufficient "space" to acknowledge false premises and offer proper rebuttals. Even seemingly innocuous prompts like "be concise" can undermine a model's ability to debunk misinformation.

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The new owners of VPN provider VPNSecure have drawn ire after canceling lifetime subscriptions. From a report: The owners told customers that they didn't know about the lifetime subscriptions when they bought VPNSecure, and they cannot honor the purchases.

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Apple is planning to use AI technology to address a frequent source of customer frustration: the iPhone's battery life. From a report: The company is planning an AI-powered battery management mode for iOS 19, an iPhone software update due in September, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The enhancement will analyze how a person uses their device and make adjustments to conserve energy, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the service hasn't been announced. To create the technology -- part of the Apple Intelligence platform -- the company is using battery data it has collected from users' devices to understand trends and make predictions for when it should lower the power draw of certain applications or features. There also will be a lock-screen indicator showing how long it will take to charge up the device, said the people.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: A new report claims that Nvidia has recently raised the official prices of nearly all of its products to combat the impact of tariffs and surging manufacturing costs on its business, with gaming graphics cards receiving a 5 to 10% hike while AI GPUs see up to a 15% increase. As reported by Digitimes Taiwan, Nvidia is facing "multiple crises," including a $5.5 billion hit to its quarterly earnings over export restrictions on AI chips, including a ban on sales of its H20 chips to China. Digitimes reports that CEO Jensen Huang has been "shuttling back and forth" between the US and China to minimize the impact of tariffs, and that "in order to maintain stable profitability," Nvidia has reportedly recently raised official prices for almost all its products, allowing its partners to increase prices accordingly.

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Chegg said on Monday it would lay off about 22% of its workforce, or 248 employees, to cut costs and streamline its operations as students increasingly turn to AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT over traditional edtech platforms. From a report: The company, an online education firm that offers textbook rentals, homework help and tutoring, has been grappling with a decline in web traffic for months and warned that the trend would likely worsen before improving. Google's expansion of AI Overviews is keeping web traffic confined within its search ecosystem while gradually shifting searches to its Gemini AI platform, Chegg said, adding that other AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic were courting academics with free access to subscriptions. As part of the restructuring announced on Monday, Chegg will also shut its U.S. and Canada offices by the end of the year and aim to reduce its marketing, product development efforts and general and administrative expenses.

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The climate crisis is threatening the future of the world's most popular fruit, as almost two-thirds of banana-growing areas in Latin America and the Caribbean may no longer be suitable for growing the fruit by 2080, new research has found. From a report: Rising temperatures, extreme weather and climate-related pests are pummeling banana-growing countries such as Guatemala, Costa Rica and Colombia, reducing yields and devastating rural communities across the region, according to Christian Aid's new report, Going Bananas: How Climate Change Threatens the World's Favourite Fruit. Bananas are the world's most consumed fruit -- and the fourth most important food crop globally, after wheat, rice and maize. About 80% of bananas grown globally are for local consumption, and more than 400 million people rely on the fruit for 15% to 27% of their daily calories.

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Western Digital has made a strategic investment in German startup Cerabyte, a company developing nearly indestructible ceramic-based data storage technology. The partnership aims to accelerate commercialization of Cerabyte's ceramic-on-glass material, which the company claims can preserve data for 5,000 years. Cerabyte recently demonstrated its technology's resilience by boiling storage devices in salt water and subjecting them to oven-level heat. The company states its ceramic storage withstands fire, moisture, UV light, radiation, corrosion, and EMP bursts. Beyond durability, Cerabyte aims to enable massive capacity increases as the industry moves toward what it calls the "Yottabyte era," while targeting storage costs below $1 per TB by 2030.

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The United States and China said Monday they reached an agreement to temporarily reduce the tariffs [non-paywalled source] they have imposed on each other in an attempt to defuse the trade war threatening the world's two largest economies. From a report: In a joint statement, the countries said they would suspend their respective tariffs for 90 days while they negotiate. Under the agreement, the United States would reduce the tariff on Chinese imports to 30 percent from its current 145 percent, while China would lower its import duty on American goods to 10 percent from 125 percent. "We concluded that we have a shared interest," said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at a news conference in Geneva where U.S. and Chinese officials met over the weekend. "The consensus from both delegations is that neither side wanted a decoupling," he said. The agreement breaks an impasse that had brought trade between China and the United States to a halt. Many American businesses had suspended orders, holding out hope that the two countries could strike a deal to bring down the tariff rates while raising the spectre of price increases.

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Numerous coffee establishments across the US are actively restricting internet access and laptop use as they push back against remote workers monopolizing their spaces for hours. New York's Devocion chain limits WiFi to two-hour windows on weekdays and eliminates it entirely on weekends, while Detroit's Alba coffee shop has operated without WiFi since its 2023 opening. Some venues have resorted to physically taping over electrical outlets. DC-based cafe Elle initially launched without WiFi but reversed course after receiving negative Google reviews, implementing a compromise with access restricted to Monday-Thursday, 8am-3pm, with a 90-minute usage cap. The restrictions primarily aim to increase customer turnover, improve sales figures, and restore the community atmosphere that extended laptop sessions often diminish.

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Wearable startup Whoop just announced its new Whoop 5.0 fitness tracker yesterday, but some existing users are already calling foul. From a report: Previously, Whoop said people who had been members for at least six months would get free upgrades to next-generation hardware. Now, the company says that members hoping to upgrade from a Whoop 4.0 to 5.0 will have to pay up. Whoop is a bit different from other fitness trackers in that it runs entirely on a subscription membership model. Most wearable makers that have subscriptions will charge you for the hardware, and then customers have the option of subscribing to get extra data or features. A good example is the Oura Ring, where you buy the ring and then have the option of paying a monthly $6 subscription. Whoop, however, has until now said that you get the hardware for "free" while paying a heftier annual subscription. Previously, Whoop promised users that whenever new hardware was released, existing members would be able to upgrade free of charge so long as they'd been a member for at least six months.

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A U.S. senator introduced a bill on Friday that would direct the Commerce Department to require location verification mechanisms for export-controlled AI chips, in an effort to curb China's access to advanced semiconductor technology. From a report: Called the "Chip Security Act," the bill calls for AI chips under export regulations, and products containing those chips, to be fitted with location-tracking systems to help detect diversion, smuggling or other unauthorized use of the product. "With these enhanced security measures, we can continue to expand access to U.S. technology without compromising our national security," Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said. The bill also calls for companies exporting the AI chips to report to the Bureau of Industry and Security if their products have been diverted away from their intended location or subject to tampering attempts.

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Software firm 37signals is completing its migration from AWS to on-premises infrastructure, expecting to save $1.3 million annually on storage costs alone. CTO David Heinemeier Hansson announced the company has begun migrating 18 petabytes of data from Amazon S3 to Pure Storage arrays costing $1.5 million upfront but only $200,000 yearly to operate. AWS waived $250,000 in data egress fees for the transition, which will allow 37signals to completely delete its AWS account this summer. The company has already slashed $2 million in annual costs after replacing cloud compute with $700,000 worth of Dell servers in 2024. "Cloud can be a good choice in certain circumstances, but the industry pulled a fast one convincing everyone it's the only way," wrote Hansson, who began the repatriation effort in 2022 after discovering their annual AWS bill exceeded $3.2 million.

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A comprehensive analysis in Science Advances reveals that humans have explored less than 0.001% of the deep seafloor -- an area equivalent to merely one-tenth the size of Belgium. Oceanographer Katherine Bell and colleagues at the Ocean Discovery League compiled data from approximately 44,000 deep-sea dives conducted between 1958 and 2024, finding that expeditions have concentrated overwhelmingly around waters near the United States, Japan, and New Zealand. The study exposes significant gaps in ocean exploration, with vast regions -- particularly the Indian Ocean -- remaining virtually untouched by direct observation. Much of the existing dive data remains inaccessible to scientists, locked away by private companies.

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CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that became a household name after causing a massive global IT outage last year, has announced it will cut 5% of its workforce in part due to "AI efficiency." From a report: In a note to staff earlier this week, released in stock market filings in the US, CrowdStrike's chief executive, George Kurtz, announced that 500 positions, or 5% of its workforce, would be cut globally, citing AI efficiencies created in the business. "We're operating in a market and technology inflection point, with AI reshaping every industry, accelerating threats, and evolving customer needs," he said. Kurtz said AI "flattens our hiring curve, and helps us innovate from idea to product faster," adding it "drives efficiencies across both the front and back office. AI is a force multiplier throughout the business," he said. Other reasons for the cuts included market demand for sustained growth and expanding the product offering.

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