Annoyed Redditors tanking Google Search results illustrates perils of AI scrapers

Annoyed Redditors tanking Google Search results illustrates perils of AI scrapers

Fed up Londoners Apparently, some London residents are getting fed up with social media influencers whose reviews make long lines of tourists at their favorite restaurants, sometimes just for the likes. Christian Calgie, a reporter for London-based news publication Daily Express, pointed out this trend on X yesterday, noting the boom of Redditors referring people…

What I learned from 3 years of running Windows 11 on “unsupported” PCs

What I learned from 3 years of running Windows 11 on “unsupported” PCs

And those aren’t the only niceties that have become standard or near-standard on midrange and high-end laptops these days. We also have high-resolution, high-density displays; the adoption of taller screen aspect ratios like 16:10 and 3:2, giving us more vertical screen space to use; USB-C charging, replacing the need for proprietary power bricks; and backlit…

Apple teases “week of announcements” about the Mac starting on Monday

Apple teases “week of announcements” about the Mac starting on Monday

Apple has released new iPhones, new Apple Watches, a new iPad mini, and a flotilla of software updates this fall, but Mac hardware has gone unmentioned so far. That’s set to change next week, according to an uncharacteristically un-cryptic post from Apple Worldwide Marketing SVP Greg Joswiak earlier today. Imploring readers to “Mac [sic] their…

Russian coders removed from Linux maintainers list due to sanction concerns

Russian coders removed from Linux maintainers list due to sanction concerns

“Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements. They can come back in the future if sufficient documentation is provided.” That two-line comment, submitted by major kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman, accompanied a patch that removed about a dozen names from the MAINTAINERS file. “Some entries” notably had either Russian names or .ru email addresses. “Various…

iOS 18.2 developer beta adds ChatGPT and image-generation features

iOS 18.2 developer beta adds ChatGPT and image-generation features

Today, Apple released the first developer beta of iOS 18.2 for supported devices. This beta release marks the first time several key AI features that Apple teased at its developer conference this June are available. Apple is marketing a wide range of generative AI features under the banner “Apple Intelligence.” Initially, Apple Intelligence was planned…

Few truly shocked that NFL player used illegal stream to watch his own team

Few truly shocked that NFL player used illegal stream to watch his own team

Had Woolen been visiting his native Fort Worth, Texas, the local Fox affiliate likely would have been showing Detroit playing Minnesota. This would have meant purchasing a streaming service subscription to view the Seahawks (or, realistically, signing up for a free trial) after doing considerable research to determine the rules around local blackouts. Woolen is…

Report: Arm cancels Qualcomm’s architecture license, endangering its chip business

Report: Arm cancels Qualcomm’s architecture license, endangering its chip business

Any company that makes Arm chips must license technology from Arm Holdings plc, the British company that develops the instruction set. Companies can license the instruction set and create their own CPU designs or license one of Arm’s ready-made Cortex CPU core designs to incorporate into their own chips. Bloomberg reports that Arm is canceling…

San Francisco to pay $212 million to end reliance on 5.25-inch floppy disks

San Francisco to pay $212 million to end reliance on 5.25-inch floppy disks

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) board has agreed to spend $212 million to get its Muni Metro light rail off floppy disks. The Muni Metro’s Automatic Train Control System (ATCS) has required 5¼-inch floppy disks since 1998, when it was installed at San Francisco’s Market Street subway station. The system uses three floppy…

Streaming subscription fees have been rising while content quality is dropping

Streaming subscription fees have been rising while content quality is dropping

In Q2 2022, 78.6 percent thought their ad-free SVOD service had “moderate to very good” stuff to watch. But in Q2 2023, that dropped to 77.4 percent, and in Q2 2024, the percentage fell further to 74.5 percent. For ad-supported SVOD services, the percentage dropped from 74.2 percent in Q2 2023 to 60.8 percent in…

Qualcomm brings laptop-class CPU cores to phones with Snapdragon 8 Elite

Qualcomm brings laptop-class CPU cores to phones with Snapdragon 8 Elite

Qualcomm has a new chip for flagship phones, and the best part is that it uses an improved version of the Oryon CPU architecture that the Snapdragon X Elite chips brought to Windows PCs earlier this year. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is the follow-up to last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3—yet another change to the…