An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Multiple studies and investigations have found that about half of American households watch TV and movies with subtitles on, but only a relatively small portion of those include someone with a hearing disability. That's because of the trouble many people have understanding dialogue in modern viewing situations, and Netflix has now introduced a subtitles option to help. The closed captioning we've all been using for years includes not only the words the people on-screen are saying, but additional information needed by the hard of hearing, including character names, music cues ("dramatic music intensifies") and sound effects ("loud explosion"). For those who just wanted to make sure they didn't miss a word here and there, the frequent descriptions of sound effects and music could be distracting. This new format omits those extras, just including the spoken words and nothing else -- even in the same language as the spoken dialogue. The feature will be available in new Netflix original programming, starting with the new season of You in multiple languages. Netflix says it's looking at bringing the option to older titles in the library (including those not produced by Netflix) in the future. Traditional closed captions are still available, of course. Those are labeled "English CC" whereas this new option is simply labeled "English" (or whatever your preferred language is).

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TV producer Alex Berger criticized Apple TV+ as "the worst marketer in the universe" for failing to promote his French-language show La Maison, despite its success in Europe. Berger said he initially partnered with Apple out of hope, but ultimately felt they undermined their own content by not supporting it properly. 9to5Mac reports: Rafa Sales Ross at Variety recently interviewed TV producer Alex Berger, who made La Maison for Apple TV+. That partnership is apparently not one he intends to repeat: "Marketing makes a show," he emphasized. "Apple, for example, is probably the worst marketer in the universe -- the best for iPhones, the worst for television. They don't do marketing, and it was an issue for us with 'La Maison.' We did a great show that had an amazing success in France and other places in Europe, but they never promoted it. It drove me crazy." Asked why, while believing Apple TV+ to lack in marketing efforts, did he decide to take "La Maison" to the streamer, Berger said simply: "Hope. We had hope." "Apple TV+ had never done a show in France and never really done a show in Europe," adds the producer. "'Slow Horses' started [things] in the U.K., but it was with the U.S.. I was hoping I would change them. We got very frustrated and just thought at one point that they were shooting themselves in the foot, and why? "La Maison faced the additional challenge of being a French-language series, at the time one of the only non-English shows on the streamer," notes 9to5Mac's Ryan Christoffel. "So it had an uphill battle already, making Apple's marketing struggles even more of a problem."

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YKK, the world's largest zipper maker, has unveiled a prototype self-propelled zipper that uses a motorized worm gear to zip itself closed at the push of a button. It currently relies on a wired remote and external power, and can zip spans up to 16 feet in under a minute. The Verge reports: Although some recent zipper innovations, such as Under Armour's one-handed MagZip upgrade, are designed to improve accessibility and make zippers easier to use for those with limited mobility, YKK envisions more industrial use cases for its prototype. As demonstrated in a video recently shared on the company's YouTube channel, the self-propelled zipper is seen connecting a pair of 16-foot-tall membranes in about 40 seconds. Zipping them together manually would require the use of a ladder or other machinery. In another video, the prototype is used to quickly connect a pair of 13-foot-wide temporary shelters standing over eight feet tall, taking about 50 seconds to progress from one side to the other. [...] In addition to miniaturizing the tech and adding a battery, YKK would also need to develop some safety mechanisms before its self-propelled zipper could ever reach consumers' clothing, ensuring there's nothing that might get stuck.

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Some developers are "crying foul" after Microsoft's C/C++ extension for Visual Studio Code stopped working with VS Code derivatives like VS Codium and Cursor, reports The Register. The move has prompted Cursor to transition to open-source alternatives, while some developers are calling for a regulatory investigation into Microsoft's alleged anti-competitive behavior. From the report: In early April, programmers using VS Codium, an open-source fork of Microsoft's MIT-licensed VS Code, and Cursor, a commercial AI code assistant built from the VS Code codebase, noticed that the C/C++ extension stopped working. The extension adds C/C++ language support, such as Intellisense code completion and debugging, to VS Code. The removal of these capabilities from competing tools breaks developer workflows, hobbles the editor, and arguably hinders competition. The breaking change appears to have occurred with the release of v1.24.5 on April 3, 2025. Following the April update, attempts to install the C/C++ extension outside of VS Code generate this error message: "The C/C++ extension may be used only with Microsoft Visual Studio, Visual Studio for Mac, Visual Studio Code, Azure DevOps, Team Foundation Server, and successor Microsoft products and services to develop and test your applications." Microsoft has forbidden the use of its extensions outside of its own software products since at least September 2020, when the current licensing terms were published. But it hasn't enforced those terms in its C/C++ extension with an environment check in its binaries until now. [...] Developers discussing the issue in Cursor's GitHub repo have noted that Microsoft recently rolled out a competing AI software agent capability, dubbed Agent Mode, within its Copilot software. One such developer who contacted us anonymously told The Register they sent a letter about the situation to the US Federal Trade Commission, asking them to probe Microsoft for unfair competition -- alleging self-preferencing, bundling Copilot without a removal option, and blocking rivals like Cursor to lock users into its AI ecosystem.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast executives apparently realized something that customers have known and complained about for years: The Internet provider's prices aren't transparent enough and rise too frequently. This might not have mattered much to cable executives as long as the total number of subscribers met their targets. But after reporting a net loss of 183,000 residential broadband customers in Q1 2025, Comcast President Mike Cavanagh said the company isn't "winning in the marketplace" during an earnings call today. The Q1 2025 customer loss was over three times larger than the net loss in Q1 2024. While customers often have few viable options for broadband and the availability of alternatives varies widely by location, Comcast faces competition from fiber and fixed wireless ISPs. "In this intensely competitive environment, we are not winning in the marketplace in a way that is commensurate with the strength of the network and connectivity products that I just described," Cavanagh said. "[Cable division CEO] Dave [Watson] and his team have worked hard to understand the reasons for this disconnect and have identified two primary causes. One is price transparency and predictability and the other is the level of ease of doing business with us. The good news is that both are fixable and we are already underway with execution plans to address these challenges." [...] Cavanagh said that Comcast plans to make changes in marketing and operations "with the highest urgency." This means that "we are simplifying our pricing construct to make our price-to-value proposition clearer to consumers across all broadband segments," he said. Comcast last week announced a five-year price guarantee for broadband customers who sign up for a new package. Comcast said customers will get a "simple monthly price starting as low as $55 per month," without having to enter a contract, giving them "freedom and flexibility to cancel at any time without penalty." The five-year guarantee also comes with one year of Xfinity Mobile at no charge, Comcast said. [...] Additional offers are in the works, Cavanagh said. "We are not done. Providing more value to our customers with less complexity and friction is a top priority and you will see our go-to-market approach continue to evolve over the coming months," he said. Comcast investors shouldn't expect an immediate turnaround, though. "We anticipate that it will take several quarters for our new approach to gain traction and impact the business in a meaningful way," Cavanagh said.

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DoorDash has sent a proposal to buy the British meal delivery company Deliveroo for $3.6 billion. "The current offer marks the first formal approach since the last report in the summer," notes Reuters. From the report: The deal is expected to face no regulatory hurdles, as it provides DoorDash access to 10 new markets where it currently has no presence, creating a highly complementary footprint - other competitors might encounter more antitrust issues, the source said. Last year, Reuters reported DoorDash had shown interest in a takeover of Deliveroo, but a source said talks ended after disagreements on valuation. A deal between the two firms would help DoorDash solidify its footprint in Europe, after the U.S. meal delivery group's 2021 purchase of Finland-based rival Wolt Enterprises in an all-stock deal valued at about $8 billion.

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Google announced it will end software updates and remote control support for the first- and second-generation Nest Learning Thermostats (plus the 2014 European model) starting October 25th. "You will no longer be able to control them remotely from your phone or with Google Assistant, but can still adjust the temperature and modify schedules directly on the thermostat," the company wrote in a Friday blog post. The Verge reports: In other significant news, Google is flatly stating that it has no plans to release additional Nest thermostats in Europe. "Heating systems in Europe are unique and have a variety of hardware and software requirements that make it challenging to build for the diverse set of homes," the company said. "The Nest Learning Thermostat (3rd gen, 2015) and Nest Thermostat E (2018) will continue to be sold in Europe while current supplies last." [...] In a clear attempt to ease customer anger, Google is offering a $130 discount on the fourth-gen Nest Learning Thermostat in the US, $160 off the same device in Canada, and 50 percent savings on the Tado Smart Thermostat X in Europe since the Nest lineup will soon be gone. The original Nest thermostats were released while the company was an independent brand under the leadership of former Apple executive Tony Fadell. Google acquired Nest in 2014 for $3.2 billion.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Government censorship has found its way to Bluesky, but there's currently a loophole thanks to how the social network is structured. Earlier this month, Bluesky restricted access to 72 accounts in Turkey at the request of Turkish governmental authorities, according to a recent report by the Freedom of Expression Association. As a result, people in Turkey can no longer see these accounts, and their reach is limited. The report indicates that 59 Bluesky accounts were blocked on the grounds of protecting "national security and public order." Bluesky also made another 13 accounts and at least one post invisible from Turkey. Given that many Turkish users migrated from X to Bluesky in the hopes of fleeing government censorship, Bluesky's bowing to the Turkish government's demands has raised questions among the community as to whether the social network is as open and decentralized as it claims to be. (Or whether it's "just like Twitter" after all.) However, Bluesky's technical underpinnings currently make bypassing these blocks easier than it would be on a network like X -- even if it's not quite as open as the alternative social network Mastodon, another decentralized X rival. A Mastodon user could move their account around to different servers to avoid censorship targeted at the original Mastodon instance (server) where they first made posts that attracted the censors. Users on the official Bluesky app can configure their moderation settings but have no way to opt out of the moderation service Bluesky provides. This includes its use of geographic labelers, like the newly added Turkish moderation labeler that handles the censorship of accounts mandated by the Turkish government. (Laurens Hof has a great breakdown of how this all works in more technical detail here on The Fediverse Report.) Simply put, if you're on the official Bluesky app and Bluesky (the company) agrees to censor something in your region, there's no way to opt out of this to see the hidden posts or accounts. Other third-party Bluesky apps, which make up the larger open social web known as the Atmosphere, don't have to follow these same rules. At least, not for now.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said this week on the TBPN podcast that one reason Perplexity is building its own browser is to collect data on everything users do outside of its own app. This so it can sell premium ads. "That's kind of one of the other reasons we wanted to build a browser, is we want to get data even outside the app to better understand you," Srinivas said. "Because some of the prompts that people do in these AIs is purely work-related. It's not like that's personal." And work-related queries won't help the AI company build an accurate-enough dossier. "On the other hand, what are the things you're buying; which hotels are you going [to]; which restaurants are you going to; what are you spending time browsing, tells us so much more about you," he explained. Srinivas believes that Perplexity's browser users will be fine with such tracking because the ads should be more relevant to them. "We plan to use all the context to build a better user profile and, maybe you know, through our discover feed we could show some ads there," he said. The browser, named Comet, suffered setbacks but is on track to be launched in May, Srinivas said.

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New Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has mandated that employees return to the office four days a week starting September 1 to boost collaboration and decision-making. Tan also signaled upcoming job cuts and organizational changes, including a flatter management structure and fewer meetings. "When we spend time together in person, it fosters more engaging and productive discussion and debate," Tan wrote in a note to employees posted on Intel's website Thursday. "It drives better and faster decision-making. And it strengthens our connection with colleagues." Oregon Live reports: Intel factory workers and many researchers are already on site every day, in cleanrooms and labs. But Intel has thousands of employees in corporate roles who have spent at least part of their time working from home since the pandemic. The company adopted a "hybrid-first" approach in 2021, allowing most employees the flexibility to work from home much of the time. More recently, it sought to have workers on site about three days a week. "Adherence to this policy has been uneven at best," Tan said Thursday. "I strongly believe that our sites need to be vibrant hubs of collaboration that reflect our culture in action." Intel is Oregon's largest corporate employer, with 20,000 employees in the state, so bringing workers back to the office will have a big impact and could set a benchmark for other organizations. [...] On Thursday, Tan said he wants fewer and smaller meetings to free up employees to do their work. He also told employees to expect "several months" of job cuts, but Tan didn't specify how many positions he plans to eliminate.

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The Sydney-based CADA station secretly used an AI-generated host named "Thy" for its weekday shows over six months without disclosure. The Sydney Morning Herald reports: After initial questioning from Stephanie Coombes in The Carpet newsletter, it was revealed that the station used ElevenLabs -- a generative AI audio platform that transforms text into speech -- to create Thy, whose likeness and voice were cloned from a real employee in the ARN finance team. The Australian Communications and Media Authority said there were currently no specific restrictions on the use of AI in broadcast content, and no obligation to disclose its use. An ARN spokesperson said the company was exploring how new technology could enhance the listener experience. "We've been trialling AI audio tools on CADA, using the voice of Thy, an ARN team member. This is a space being explored by broadcasters globally, and the trial has offered valuable insights." However, it has also "reinforced the power of real personalities in driving compelling content," the spokesperson added. The Australian Financial Review reported that Workdays with Thy has been broadcast on CADA since November, and was reported to have reached at least 72,000 people in last month's ratings. Vice president of the Australian Association of Voice Actors, Teresa Lim, said CADA's failure to disclose its use of AI reinforces how necessary legislation around AI labelling has become. "AI can be such a powerful and positive tool in broadcasting if there are correct safeguards in place," she said. "Authenticity and truth are so important for broadcast media. The public deserves to know what the source is of what's being broadcast ... We need to have these discussions now before AI becomes so advanced that it's too difficult to regulate."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Air in the U.S. has gotten cleaner for decades, adding years to people's lives and preventing millions of asthma attacks, but nearly half of Americans still live with unhealthy air pollution, a new report finds. The report comes as the Trump administration is considering rolling back some key air quality regulations. Air quality across the country has improved dramatically since regulations like the Clean Air Act were put in place in the 1970s to govern sources of pollution like coal-fired power plants and emissions from diesel trucks. Despite that progress, the air is still unhealthy and polluted in many parts of the country. In 2023, nearly half of the country's inhabitants -- 156 million people -- lived in places heavy in smog or soot pollution that harms their lungs, hearts, and brains, according to the newest edition of the American Lung Association's State of the Air report. "Both these types of pollution cause people to die. They shorten life expectancy and drive increases in asthma rates," says Mary Rice, a pulmonologist at Harvard University. Pollution levels vary widely across the country, the report finds, with the worst soot pollution, averaged over the whole year, centered on California cities like Fresno and Bakersfield. Ozone pollution is highest in the Los Angeles region. Phoenix, Arizona, and Dallas, Texas, also rank in the top 10 most smog-heavy cities. Nationwide, people of color are about twice as likely to live somewhere with high soot and ozone pollution as white Americans. "The Clean Air Act is one of the greatest success stories in our country," says Rice. NPR notes that the law requires the EPA to revisit the science every five years, reassessing what health researchers have learned about the risks of breathing in poor air and adjusting the regulations accordingly. "So the air quality standards have kept pace with the science over time, and levels of fine particulate matter have declined over the last 50-plus years," Rice says. "As a result, life expectancy is longer, and asthma rates have gone down." [...] "We are best equipped to protect our health when we have all the information, like weather and air quality," she says.

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Waymo is now providing over 250,000 paid robotaxi rides per week in the U.S., up from 200,000 in February, as it expands into cities like Austin and grows partnerships with Uber and automakers. CNBC reports: "We can't possibly do it all ourselves," said Pichai on a call with analysts for Alphabet's first-quarter earnings. Pichai noted that Waymo has not entirely defined its long-term business model, and there is "future optionality around personal ownership" of vehicles equipped with Waymo's self-driving technology. The company is also exploring the ways it can scale up its operations, he said. The 250,000 paid rides per week are up from 200,000 in February, before Waymo opened in Austin and expanded in the San Francisco Bay Area in March. Waymo, which is part of Alphabet's Other Bets segment, is already running its commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin regions.

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The Trump administration introduced a new framework to expedite self-driving vehicle deployment by reducing regulatory hurdles, while maintaining mandatory safety incident reporting. NHTSA is also expanding its exemption program, allowing domestically produced autonomous vehicles lacking traditional safety controls to operate on U.S. roads. Reuters reports: The Trump administration said Thursday it aims to speed up the deployment of self-driving vehicles but will maintain rules requiring reporting of safety incidents involving advanced vehicles. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Thursday released a new framework to boost autonomous vehicles. "This administration understands that we're in a race with China to out-innovate, and the stakes couldn't be higher," Duffy said. "Our new framework will slash red tape." The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it will expand a program to exempt some self-driving vehicles from all safety requirements and will streamline but continue its requirement that vehicles equipped with certain advanced driver assistance systems or self-driving systems report safety incidents. NHTSA is expanding its Automated Vehicle Exemption Program to now include domestically produced vehicles that will allow companies to operate non-compliant imported vehicles on U.S. roads. It is currently only open to foreign assembled models.

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ZipNada shares a report from ZDNet: Microsoft's latest research identifies a new type of organization known as the Frontier Firm, where on-demand intelligence requirements are managed by hybrid teams of AI agents and humans. The report identified real productivity gains from implementing AI into organizations, with one of the biggest being filling the capacity gap -- as many as 80% of the global workforce, both employees and leaders, report having too much work to do, but not enough time or energy to do it. ... According to the report, business leaders need to separate knowledge workers from knowledge work, acknowledging that humans who can complete higher-level tasks, such as creativity and judgment, should not be stuck answering emails. Rather, in the same way working professionals say they send emails or create pivot tables, soon they will be able to say they create and manage agents -- and Frontier Firms are showing the potential possibilities of this approach. ... "Everyone will need to manage agents," said Cambron. "I think it's exciting to me to think that, you know, with agents, every early-career person will be able to experience management from day one, from their first job."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cybernews: Researchers at Cybernews have uncovered a major privacy breach involving WorkComposer, a workplace surveillance app used by over 200,000 people across countless companies. The app, designed to track productivity by logging activity and snapping regular screenshots of employees' screens, left over 21 million images exposed in an unsecured Amazon S3 bucket, broadcasting how workers go about their day frame by frame. The leaked data is extremely sensitive, as millions of screenshots from employees' devices could not only expose full-screen captures of emails, internal chats, and confidential business documents, but also contain login pages, credentials, API keys, and other sensitive information that could be exploited to attack businesses worldwide. After the company was contacted, access to the unsecured database was secured. An official comment has yet to be received.

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Microsoft has announced native PyTorch support for Windows on Arm devices with the release of PyTorch 2.7, making it significantly easier for developers to build and run machine learning models directly on Arm-powered Windows machines. This eliminates the need for manual compilation and opens up performance gains for AI tasks like image classification, NLP, and generative AI. Neowin reports: With the release of PyTorch 2.7, native Arm builds for Windows on Arm are now readily available for Python 3.12. This means developers can simply install PyTorch using a standard package manager like pip. According to Microsoft: "This unlocks the potential to leverage the full performance of Arm64 architecture on Windows devices, like Copilot+ PCs, for machine learning experimentation, providing a robust platform for developers and researchers to innovate and refine their models."

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AMD has open-sourced its "GPU-IOV Module" for enabling SR-IOV-based virtualization on Instinct accelerators using the Linux kernel and KVM hypervisor, with features like GPU scheduling and VF/PF management. Notably, AMD plans to extend this virtualization support to client Radeon GPUs. Phoronix reports: The AMD GPU-IOV Module is for the Linux kernel and for providing SR-IOV based hardware virtualization in conjunction with the KVM hypervisor. GIM provides the GPU IOV virtualization, virtual function (VF) configuration and enablement, GPU scheduling for world switch, hang detection and FLR reset, and PF/VF handshake capabilities. Initially the AMD GIM driver is for the Instinct MI300X hardware and tested atop Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with ROCm 6.4. Those interested can find the AMD GIM code currently via GitHub. It's not laid out in the repository or any other public communications I've seen what any upstreaming plans are for this GIM driver to get it into the mainline Linux kernel.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Russian military personnel are being targeted with recently discovered Android malware that steals their contacts and tracks their location. The malware is hidden inside a modified app for Alpine Quest mapping software, which is used by, among others, hunters, athletes, and Russian personnel stationed in the war zone in Ukraine. The app displays various topographical maps for use online and offline. The trojanized Alpine Quest app is being pushed on a dedicated Telegram channel and in unofficial Android app repositories. The chief selling point of the trojanized app is that it provides a free version of Alpine Quest Pro, which is usually available only to paying users. The malicious module is named Android.Spy.1292.origin. In a blog post, researchers at Russia-based security firm Dr.Web wrote: "Because Android.Spy.1292.origin is embedded into a copy of the genuine app, it looks and operates as the original, which allows it to stay undetected and execute malicious tasks for longer periods of time. Each time it is launched, the trojan collects and sends the following data to the C&C server: - the user's mobile phone number and their accounts; - contacts from the phonebook; - the current date; - the current geolocation; - information about the files stored on the device; - the app's version." If there are files of interest to the threat actors, they can update the app with a module that steals them. The threat actors behind Android.Spy.1292.origin are particularly interested in confidential documents sent over Telegram and WhatsApp. They also show interest in the file locLog, the location log created by Alpine Quest. The modular design of the app makes it possible for it to receive additional updates that expand its capabilities even further.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Oil and gas companies are facing hundreds of lawsuits around the world testing whether they can be held responsible for their role in causing climate change. Now, two scientists say they've built a tool that can calculate how much damage each company's planet-warming pollution has caused -- and how much money they could be forced to pay if they're successfully sued. Collectively, greenhouse emissions from 111 fossil fuel companies caused the world $28 trillion in damage from extreme heat from 1991 to 2020, according to a paper published Wednesday in Nature. The new analysis could fuel an emerging legal fight.The authors, Dartmouth associate professor Justin Mankin and Chris Callahan, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, say their model can determine a specific company's share of responsibility over any time period. [...] Callahan and Mankin's work combines all of these steps -- estimating a company's historical emissions, figuring out how much those emissions contributed to climate change and calculating how much economic damage climate change has caused -- into one "end-to-end" model that links one polluter's emissions to a dollar amount of economic damage from extreme heat. By their calculation, Saudi Aramco is on the hook for $2.05 trillion in economic losses from extreme heat from 1991 to 2020. Russia's Gazprom is responsible for $2 trillion, Chevron for $1.98 trillion, ExxonMobil for $1.91 trillion and BP for $1.45 trillion. Industry groups and companies tend to object to the methodologies of attribution science. They could seek to contest the assumptions that went into each step of Mankin and Callahan's model. Indeed, every step in that process introduces some room for error, and stringing together all of those steps compounds the uncertainty in the model, according to Delta Merner, lead scientist at theScience Hub for Climate Litigation, which connects scientists and lawyers bringing climate lawsuits. She also mentioned that the researchers relied on a commonly used but simplified climate model known as the Finite Amplitude Impulse Response (FAIR) model. "It is robust for the purpose of what the study is doing," Merner said, "but these models do make assumptions about climate sensitivity, about carbon cycle behavior, energy balance, and all of the simplifications in there do introduce some uncertainty." The exact dollar figures in the paper aren't intended as gospel. But outside scientists said Mankin and Callahan use well-established, peer-reviewed datasets and climate models for every step in their process, and they are transparent about the uncertainty in the numbers.

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