Physicists at Loughborough University have created what they believe is the world's smallest violin, measuring just 35 microns long and 13 microns wide -- smaller than the width of a human hair, which typically ranges from 17 to 180 microns in diameter. The microscopic instrument, created using the university's new nanolithography system, serves as a demonstration of precision manufacturing capabilities that researchers will apply to studies of computing efficiency and energy harvesting methods. The team used a NanoFrazor machine employing thermal scanning probe lithography, where a heated needle-like tip etches highly precise patterns at the nanoscale onto a chip coated with gel-like resist material. While the individual violin takes roughly three hours to produce, the research team spent several months refining their techniques to achieve the final result, which exists as a microscopic image rather than a playable instrument.

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Chinese student enrollment at American universities has dropped to 277,000 in the 2023-24 academic year, down from a peak of 372,000 in 2019-20, according to data in a new report examining shifting global education patterns. The decline accelerated following the State Department's May 28th announcement of an "aggressive" campaign to revoke visas for Chinese students in "critical fields" of science and engineering, as well as those with unspecified Communist Party "connections." The trend reflects broader economic and geopolitical pressures beyond visa restrictions. Chinese families increasingly view American education as too expensive amid China's economic downturn and property market decline, while domestic employers have grown suspicious of foreign-educated graduates. Meanwhile, Chinese students are choosing alternatives including Britain, which hosted nearly 150,000 Chinese students in 2023-24, and regional destinations like Japan, where Chinese enrollment increased to 115,000 in 2023 from under 100,000 in 2019.

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Apple will lose the ability to collect commissions on external iOS purchases in Europe starting June 23, following a European Commission ruling that hinges on the grammatical interpretation of a single comma in the Digital Markets Act. The dispute centers on Article 5.4, which requires gatekeepers to allow business users "free of charge, to communicate and promote offers, including under different conditions [...], and to conclude contracts with those end users." Apple contends that "free of charge" applies only to communication and promotion activities, not contract conclusion, allowing the company to maintain its commission structure on external transactions. The European Commission interprets the comma before "and to conclude contracts" as creating an enumeration where the free-of-charge requirement applies to all listed activities, including purchases made outside Apple's payment system. Under the new ruling, Apple can collect commissions only on the first external transaction between users and developers, with all subsequent purchases and auto-renewed subscriptions exempt from fees. The company faces daily penalties of up to $53.5 million for non-compliance and has already been fined $570 million. Apple's internal forecasts estimate potential annual losses of "hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars" in the US alone, though Europe demands stricter changes than those projections assumed.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: There are more than 1,000 technology unicorns, meaning venture-backed companies worth $1 billion or more, but at least one in 5 are likely to fail, said Rich Wong, a partner at venture capital firm Accel Partners. "I think maybe out of that thousand, 20% fully die. The end," Wong said on Thursday at the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco. The estimate reinforces what's become a grim calculus for many companies. Tech start-up valuations soared during the 2021 pandemic boom -- before crashing back to earth, as interest rates rose and venture capital investments fell. Of the companies that don't fail, about half will be stuck -- muddling along without being able to grow bigger or go public, Wong said. Some of those may "ultimately have reality set in," and sell themselves for lower prices than once seemed feasible. Others, not quite failing, "will be a bit zombie-ish and grind on," he said.

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David Sacks, President Trump's AI policy advisor, has dismissed the prospect of implementing a universal basic income program, declaring "it's not going to happen" during his tenure. He said: The future of AI has become a Rorschach test where everyone sees what they want. The Left envisions a post-economic order in which people stop working and instead receive government benefits. In other words, everyone on welfare. This is their fantasy; it's not going to happen."

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YouTube pulled a popular tutorial video from tech creator Jeff Geerling this week, claiming his guide to installing LibreELEC on a Raspberry Pi 5 violated policies against "harmful content." The video, which showed viewers how to set up their own home media servers, had been live for over a year and racked up more than 500,000 views. YouTube's automated systems flagged the content for allegedly teaching people "how to get unauthorized or free access to audio or audiovisual content." Geerling says his tutorial covered only legal self-hosting of media people already own -- no piracy tools or copyright workarounds. He said he goes out of his way to avoid mentioning popular piracy software in his videos. It's the second time YouTube has pulled a self-hosting content video from Geerling. Last October, YouTube removed his Jellyfin tutorial, though that decision was quickly reversed after appeal. This time, his appeal was denied.

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Nearly a quarter of consumers using buy-now-pay-later loans now finance their grocery purchases, representing a significant increase from 14% a year ago, according to a recent LendingTree survey. The shift marks a departure from the traditional use of these short-term financing services for big-ticket items like electronics and furniture toward everyday essentials including groceries, utility bills, and streaming services. The BNPL market has experienced dramatic growth, expanding from $2 billion in consumer purchases in 2019 to more than $116.3 billion by 2023. Morgan Stanley found that 28% of surveyed Americans had used BNPL services with about 30% of those users applying the financing to grocery purchases. Food prices have risen 28% since 2020, creating particular pressure on lower-income households earning less than $50,000 annually, who represent the largest user base for these services.

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Anthropic cut AI coding assistant Windsurf's direct access to its Claude models after media reported that rival OpenAI plans to acquire the startup for $3 billion. Anthropic co-founder Jared Kaplan told TechCrunch that "it would be odd for us to be selling Claude to OpenAI," explaining the decision to cut access to Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3.7 Sonnet models.

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Insect populations are crashing in supposedly protected nature reserves worldwide with climate change emerging as the primary driver of biodiversity loss for the first time in human history. Ecologist Daniel Janzen, who has monitored Costa Rica's Guanacaste conservation area since the 1970s, documented the collapse through light trap photographs that showed 3,000 moth species in 1978 versus virtually none today using identical methods. Similar declines are occurring globally with flying insects dropping 75% across 63 German reserves in under 30 years, US beetle numbers falling 83% over 45 years, and Puerto Rico experiencing up to 60-fold biomass losses since the 1970s. Recent research published in BioScience found climate change now drives decline in 91% of imperiled US species, narrowly surpassing habitat destruction.

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China's southernmost province of Hainan is piloting a programme to grant select corporate users broad access to the global internet, a rare move in a country known for having some of the world's most restrictive online censorship, as the island seeks to transform itself into a global free-trade port. From a report: Employees of companies registered and operating in Hainan can apply for the "Global Connect" mobile service through the Hainan International Data Comprehensive Service Centre (HIDCSC), according to the agency, which is overseen by the state-run Hainan Big Data Development Centre. The programme allows eligible users to bypass the so-called Great Firewall, which blocks access to many of the world's most-visited websites, such as Google and Wikipedia. Applicants must be on a 5G plan with one of the country's three major state-backed carriers -- China Mobile, China Unicom or China Telecom -- and submit their employer's information, including the company's Unified Social Credit Code, for approval. The process can take up to five months, HIDCSC staff said.

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BrianFagioli writes: Google is flexing its engineering muscles today by announcing a record-breaking score on the Speedometer 3 benchmark with its Chrome browser. If you've felt like the web got snappier lately, this could be why. According to the search giant, Chrome's latest performance improvements translate to real-world time savings. Believe it or not, that could potentially add up to 58 million hours saved annually for users. That's the equivalent of about 83 human lifetimes not wasted waiting for web pages to load!

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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has publicly opposed a proposed 10-year moratorium on state AI regulation currently under consideration by the Senate, arguing instead for federal transparency standards in a New York Times opinion piece published Thursday. Amodei said Anthropic's latest AI model demonstrated threatening behavior during experimental testing, including scenarios where the system threatened to expose personal information to prevent being shut down. He writes: But a 10-year moratorium is far too blunt an instrument. A.I. is advancing too head-spinningly fast. I believe that these systems could change the world, fundamentally, within two years; in 10 years, all bets are off. Without a clear plan for a federal response, a moratorium would give us the worst of both worlds -- no ability for states to act, and no national policy as a backstop. The disclosure comes as similar concerning behaviors have emerged from other major AI developers -- OpenAI's o3 model reportedly wrote code to prevent its own shutdown, while Google acknowledged its Gemini model approaches capabilities that could enable cyberattacks. Rather than blocking state oversight entirely, Amodei proposed requiring frontier AI developers to publicly disclose their testing policies and risk mitigation strategies on company websites, codifying practices that companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind already follow voluntarily.

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Amazon is developing software for humanoid robots that could eventually replace hundreds of thousands of delivery workers, [non-paywalled source] The Information reports. The company is building a "humanoid park" obstacle course at its San Francisco office to test robots that would ride in the back of Amazon's Rivian electric vans and deliver packages to customers, the report said. The indoor testing facility, roughly the size of a coffee shop, will house a Rivian van and serve as a controlled environment before Amazon takes the robots on "field trips" to deliver real packages on actual streets. This summer, Amazon plans to test multiple humanoid models, including a $16,000 unit from China-based Unitree that has gained popularity among robotics developers, the report said. The initiative represents Amazon's most ambitious robotics project yet, extending beyond its existing warehouse automation to tackle the significantly more complex challenge of outdoor package delivery. Amazon currently operates more than 20,000 Rivian vehicles for deliveries and plans to expand its electric fleet to 100,000 vehicles by 2030.

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OpenAI said it disrupted several attempts [non-paywalled source] from users in China to leverage its AI models for cyber threats and covert influence operations, underscoring the security challenges AI poses as the technology becomes more powerful. From a report: The Microsoft-backed company on Thursday published its latest report on disrupting malicious uses of AI, saying its investigative teams continued to uncover and prevent such activities in the three months since Feb. 21. While misuse occurred in several countries, OpenAI said it believes a "significant number" of violations came from China, noting that four of 10 sample cases included in its latest report likely had a Chinese origin. In one such case, the company said it banned ChatGPT accounts it claimed were using OpenAI's models to generate social media posts for a covert influence operation. The company said a user stated in a prompt that they worked for China's propaganda department, though it cautioned it didn't have independent proof to verify its claim.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Vibe coding might sound chill, but Andrew Ng thinks the name is unfortunate. The Stanford professor and former Google Brain scientist said the term misleads people into imagining engineers just "go with the vibes" when using AI tools to write code. "It's unfortunate that that's called vibe coding," Ng said at a firechat chat in May at conference LangChain Interrupt. "It's misleading a lot of people into thinking, just go with the vibes, you know -- accept this, reject that." In reality, coding with AI is "a deeply intellectual exercise," he said. "When I'm coding for a day with AI coding assistance, I'm frankly exhausted by the end of the day." Despite his gripe with the name, Ng is bullish on AI-assisted coding. He said it's "fantastic" that developers can now write software faster with these tools, sometimes while "barely looking at the code."

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California's carbon allowance auction results released May 29th revealed prices had hit rock bottom, signaling weak corporate demand and casting doubt over the future of the nation's fourth-largest carbon market. Companies that typically purchase quarterly credits to cover their greenhouse gas emissions are skipping auctions while waiting to see whether the cap-and-trade program will survive beyond its current 2030 expiration date. The poor auction performance compounds California's existing $12 billion budget deficit, as the state relies on carbon credit revenues to fund climate programs. Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing to reauthorize the program through the annual budget bill, which must pass by mid-June, but lawmakers are debating fundamental changes to pricing mechanisms and spending priorities. The uncertainty extends beyond California's borders, with Washington state exploring whether to link its carbon market to California's system and Oregon lawmakers reviving their own cap-and-trade legislation.

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California law prohibits "operating" a mobile phone while driving. And that makes it illegal for a driver to hold a cellphone in order to look at a map, a state appeals court ruled this week. From a report: In a 2016 law intended to strengthen previous restrictions, "the Legislature intended to prohibit all handheld functions of wireless telephones while driving" and "to encourage drivers to keep their eyes on the road," said the 6th District Court of Appeal. A Superior Court panel had reversed a driver's conviction for a traffic infraction and $158 fine in San Jose, ruling that the law prohibited only "actively using or manipulating" a hand-held phone for actions such as talking or listening, browsing the internet or playing video games while driving. The appeals court reinstated the conviction and the fine, in a ruling that could set a statewide standard unless it is narrowed or overturned on appeal.

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A prominent venture capitalist has warned that the technology industry's massive buildout of AI data centers risks becoming "irrational" and could end in disaster, particularly as companies pursue small nuclear reactors to power the facilities. Josh Wolfe, co-founder and partner at Lux Capital, compared the current infrastructure expansion to previous market bubbles in fiber-optic networking and cloud computing. While individual actions by hyperscale companies to build data center infrastructure remain rational, Wolfe said the collective effort "becomes irrational" and "will not necessarily persist." The warning comes as Big Tech companies pour tens of billions into data centers and energy sources, with Meta announcing just this week a deal to purchase power from an operating nuclear station in Illinois that was scheduled to retire in 2027. Wolfe said he is worried that speculative capital is flowing into small modular reactors based on presumed energy demands from data centers. "I think that that whole thing is going to end in disaster, mostly because as cliched as it is, history doesn't repeat. It rhymes," he said.

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Google's self-driving taxi service Waymo has surpassed 10 million total paid rides, marking a significant milestone in the transition of autonomous vehicles from novelty to mainstream transportation option. The company's growth trajectory, WSJ argues, shows clear signs of exponential scaling, with weekly rides jumping from 10,000 in August 2023 to over 250,000 currently. Waymo is on track to hit 20 million rides by the end of 2025. The story adds: This is not just because Waymo is expanding into new markets. It's because of the way existing markets have come to embrace self-driving cars. In California, the most recent batch of quarterly data reported by the company was the most encouraging yet. It showed that Waymo's number of paid rides inched higher by roughly 2% in both January and February -- and then increased 27% in March. In the nearly two years that people in San Francisco have been paying for robot chauffeurs, it was the first time that Waymo's growth slowed down for several months only to dramatically speed up again. Waymo currently operates in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, with expansion planned for Austin, Atlanta, Miami, and Washington D.C. The service faces incoming competition from Tesla, which plans to launch its own robotaxi service in Austin this month. Waymo remains unprofitable despite raising $5.6 billion in funding last year.

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A bitter fight over alleged corporate espionage involving two of Silicon Valley's hottest startups took a new twist on Tuesday, after $12 billion HR software company Deel claimed arch-rival Rippling had directed one of its employees to "pilfer" the company's assets by posing as a customer. From a report: The latest claim comes after Rippling alleged earlier this year that a staff member had been spying on behalf of Deel. The employee locked themselves into a bathroom and smashed their phone with an axe when confronted with allegations, according to their own testimony. In new legal filings seen by the Financial Times, Deel has countered by arguing that: "Rippling has been actively engaged in a carefully co-ordinated espionage campaign, through which it infiltrated Deel's customer platform by fraudulent means and pilfered the company's most valuable proprietary assets."

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