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• HP Escapes Customer Payouts in Printer-Bricking Lawsuit Settlement

  20-03-2025 23:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  A United States District Court judge has approved a settlement between HP and customers who sued the company for firmware updates that prevented printers from working with non-HP ink cartridges.
  The class-action lawsuit, filed in December 2020, alleged HP "wrongfully compels users" to buy only HP ink by issuing updates that block competitors' cartridges. Under the settlement, HP admits no wrongdoing and won't pay monetary damages to affected customers, though it will pay $5,000 each to the three
  
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• Gmail Rolls Out AI-Powered Search

  20-03-2025 22:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google is introducing an AI-powered update to Gmail search that prioritizes "most relevant" results based on recency, frequent contacts, and most-clicked emails. The feature aims to help users more efficiently locate specific messages in crowded inboxes. The update is rolling out globally to personal Google accounts, with business accounts to follow at an unspecified date. Users will have the option to toggle between the new AI-powered "most relevant" search and the traditional reverse chronolog
  
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• 'Kids Are Spending Too Much Class Time on Laptops'

  20-03-2025 21:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Over the past two decades, school districts have spent billions equipping classrooms with laptops, yet students have fallen further behind on essential skills, Michael Bloomberg argues. With about 90% of schools now providing these devices, test scores hover near historic lows -- only 28% of eighth graders proficient in math and 30% in reading.
  Bloomberg notes technology's classroom push came from technologists and government officials who envisioned tailored curricula. Computer manufacturers, d
  
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• AI-Driven Weather Prediction Breakthrough Reported

  20-03-2025 20:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  A new AI system called Aardvark could deliver weather forecasts as accurate as those from advanced public weather services but run on desktop computers, according to a project unveiled Thursday and published in Nature. Developed by the UK's Alan Turing Institute with partners including Cambridge University, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and Microsoft, Aardvark aims to make sophisticated forecasting accessible to countries with fewer resources, particularly in Africa.
  The
  
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• IBM Cuts Thousands of Jobs, Cloud Classic Unit Hit Hard: Report

  20-03-2025 19:01 via slashdot.org
  
  IBM is laying off thousands of employees across the United States, with approximately 25% of staff at its Cloud Classic operation affected, The Register reports, citing a source. "Concrete numbers are being kept private," a source told the publication. "It is in the thousands."
  Staff reductions have occurred in Raleigh, North Carolina; New York; Dallas, Texas; and California, the report said. Affected departments include consulting, corporate social responsibility, cloud infrastructure, sales, a
  
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• Nvidia Sells RTX GPUs From a 'Food Truck'

  20-03-2025 18:01 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Nvidia is selling its scarce RTX 5080 and 5090 graphics cards from a pop-up "food truck" at its GPU Technology Conference, where attendees paying over $1,000 for tickets can purchase the coveted hardware alongside merchandise. The company has only 2,000 cards available (1,000 each of RTX 5080 and 5090), released in small batches at random times during the three-day conference which concludes tomorrow.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
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• Apple Shakes Up AI Executive Ranks in Bid to Turn Around Siri

  20-03-2025 17:07 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Apple is undergoing a rare shake-up of its executive ranks, aiming to get its artificial intelligence efforts back on track after months of delays and stumbles, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has lost confidence in the ability of AI head John Giannandrea to execute on product development, so he's moving over another top executive to help: Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell. In a new role, Rockwell will be
  
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• Is Dark Energy Getting Weaker? New Evidence Strengthens the Case.

  20-03-2025 16:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Cosmologists have uncovered stronger evidence that dark energy -- the mysterious force accelerating cosmic expansion -- may be weakening over time. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration presented their latest findings at the Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California, reinforcing their preliminary results from last year.
  The DESI team analyzed data from approximately 15 million galaxies collected over three years, more than doubling their previous dataset of 6 million g
  
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• Pebble Founder Warns of Limited iPhone Compatibility for Revived Smartwatch

  20-03-2025 15:02 via apple.slashdot.org
  
  Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky has warned that the company's revived smartwatch line will face significant functionality limitations when paired with iPhones, blaming Apple's restrictive policies that favor its own Apple Watch. "It's impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to send text messages, or perform actions on notifications (like dismissing, muting, replying) and many, many other things," Migicovsky wrote in a blog post, adding that the situation has "actually gotten worse over the last 8 y
  
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• 'There Are Two Kinds of Credit Cards'

  20-03-2025 14:05 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The credit-card market has quietly split in two, Atlantic argues in a new story: one offering generous benefits to wealthy Americans, the other offering expensive debt to the poor. Credit-card balances have reached an all-time high of $1.2 trillion, with serious delinquency rates climbing to their highest point since the Great Recession.
  "Transactors" pay off balances monthly and earn valuable rewards worth up to $3,000 annually in taxable income equivalent, while "revolvers" carry balances at a
  
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• Microsoft Developing Windows 11 Feature To Explain Hardware Performance Issues

  20-03-2025 12:02 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Microsoft is developing a new Windows 11 feature that will explain how hardware limitations affect PC performance. The latest preview builds include a hidden FAQ section in system settings that addresses GPU memory, system RAM, and OS version impacts.
  The feature, discovered by Windows observer "phantomofearth" in this week's Dev Channel build, requires manual activation. It provides specific recommendations for configurations like low RAM or GPUs with less than 4GB memory, and flags outdated Wi
  
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• Government Releases Thousands of Declassified Pages Related To JFK Assassination

  20-03-2025 09:05 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The National Archives has released thousands of pages of declassified records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. From a report: The records were posted to the National Archives' website, joining recently released records posted in 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2017-2018.
  "This release consists of approximately 80,000 pages of previously-classified records that will be published with no redactions," said the announcement from the Office of the Director of National Intellige
  
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• Nvidia Not Approached for Intel Stake, CEO Says

  20-03-2025 06:30 via slashdot.org
  
  Nvidia has not been approached about acquiring a stake in Intel, CEO Jensen Huang said on Wednesday, addressing speculation about potential semiconductor industry consolidation.
  "Nobody's invited us to a consortium," Huang told reporters at Nvidia's annual developer conference. "Nobody invited me. Maybe other people are involved, but I don't know. There might be a party. I wasn't invited."
  Reuters previously reported that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) had approached Nvidia, Broadc
  
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• GNOME 48 Released

  20-03-2025 04:30 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  prisoninmate writes: GNOME 48 desktop environment has been released after six months of development with major new features that have been expected for more than four years, such as dynamic triple buffering, HDR support, and much more. 9to5Linux reports: "Highlights of GNOME 48 include dynamic triple buffering to boost the performance on low-end GPUs, such as Intel integrated graphics or Raspberry Pi computers, Wayland color management protocol support, new Adwaita fonts, HDR (High Dynamic Range
  
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• OpenAI's o1-pro is the Company's Most Expensive AI Model Yet

  20-03-2025 03:28 via slashdot.org
  
  OpenAI has launched a more powerful version of its o1 "reasoning" AI model, o1-pro, in its developer API. From a report: According to OpenAI, o1-pro uses more computing than o1 to provide "consistently better responses." Currently, it's only available to select developers -- those who've spent at least $5 on OpenAI API services -- and it's pricey. Very pricey. OpenAI is charging $150 per million tokens (~750,000 words) fed into the model and $600 per million tokens generated by the model. That's
  
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• LG Ceases XR Product Efforts

  20-03-2025 01:06 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shares a report: LG has ceased its XR product commercialization efforts, it confirmed, though will still continue long-term R&D.
  The news of LG ending its XR product plans was first reported by South Korean news outlet The Bell, citing an industry source. In a statement given to the outlet, LG confirmed the claim but clarified that it will still continue long-term XR research and development.
  According to The Bell, LG took the decision because it believes the XR market is
  
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