Bad news for anyone out there who still uses Skype: The Microsoft-owned phone and messaging platform has quietly stopped letting users top-up accounts with credit and buy Skype phone numbers. From a report: Instead, Skype is locking into SaaS mode: It's pushing users to take monthly subscriptions for regional and global Skype-to-phone plans, for a set monthly fee, likely impacting millions of people. The most recent figures Microsoft released for Skype last year said it had 36 million daily active users.

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said his company was able to stop hiring a year ago as it invested in AI that's doing the work of hundreds of staff across the firm. From a report: The buy now, pay later finance provider has seen headcount fall 22% to 3,500 during that time, mostly due to attrition, Siemiatkowski said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in New York on Thursday. The company now has about 200 people using AI for their core work, he said.

Siemiatkowski said that while the total wage bill is shrinking, he's been able to convince employees to get on board with the shift by promising they'll see a chunk of any productivity gains they reap from AI in their paycheck.

"People internally at Klarna are just rallying to deploy as much efficiency AI as they can," he said. "We're going to give some of the improvements that the efficiency that AI provides by increasing the pace at which the salaries of our employees increases."

EvenUp, a legal tech startup valued at over $1 billion, has largely relied on human workers rather than AI to process personal injury claims, according to Business Insider, which spoke to multiple employees.

The startup, which promised to automate the analysis of medical records and case files to determine accident compensation, saw its valuation surge from $85 million to $1 billion in October. Former staff members reported that supervisors instructed them not to use the AI system due to its unreliability, with some working until 3 a.m. to complete tasks manually.

The ex-employees cited numerous AI errors, including missed injuries, fabricated medical conditions, and incorrectly recorded doctor visits. While no errors made it into final products, such mistakes could have reduced victim payouts if not caught by human reviewers, they cautioned.

The U.S. and China signed a modified science and technology agreement on Friday, narrowing its scope and adding security safeguards to address growing technological rivalry between the world's two largest economies.

The updated pact, which extends cooperation for five years, focuses solely on basic research and excludes critical technologies like AI and quantum computing. The State Department said the agreement strengthens intellectual property protections and introduces new provisions for transparency and data sharing. The revision comes amid escalating tech tensions, with Washington restricting advanced chip exports to China and limiting U.S. investments in sensitive technologies that could enhance Chinese military capabilities.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Legislation was introduced in the Texas House of Representatives on Thursday to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve, which could serve as a proving ground for the U.S. Treasury. The proposed bill would enable the state to start building a strategic bitcoin reserve by accepting taxes, fees and donations in bitcoin that would be held for a minimum of five years, Republican state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione announced on an X Spaces event Thursday.

The Texas bill aims to provide a way to strengthen the state's fiscal stability and establish it as a leader in bitcoin innovation, according to the Satoshi Action Fund, a nonprofit bitcoin advocacy group that worked with Capriglione on the bill. "Probably the biggest enemy of our investments is inflation," Capriglione said. "A strategic bitcoin reserve, investing in bitcoin, would be a win-win for the state." "I just filed the bill ... entitled 'An act relating to the establishment of a bitcoin reserve within the state treasury of Texas and the management of cryptocurrencies by governmental entities,'" he said later. "My goal is to make this bill as big and as broad as possible," Capriglione said. "This initial step is to allow some optionality and flexibility on it, but if I am able to get support from other legislators, we will make it even stronger."

It's "unlikely" a U.S. strategic bitcoin reserve will be established, "but it helps get animal spirits back into the market," Needham's John Todaro told CNBC. He said it's also "unlikely to drive material price gains, as we do not expect the U.S. government will purchase bitcoin in any meaningful capacity, but it's an item that drives excitement and optimism."

Nigel Richards, a New Zealand-born Scrabble legend, won the Spanish World Scrabble Championship despite not speaking Spanish. The Guardian reports: The Spanish title wasn't the first time Richards' Scrabble skills had shattered linguistic barriers: in 2015 he made headlines when he won the francophone world championships without being able to speak or understand French. Instead he reportedly memorised the entire French Scrabble dictionary in nine weeks. [...]

After nearly three decades of playing Scrabble competitively, Richards is widely viewed as the best player of all time, with some chalking up his skills to his photographic memory and ability to quickly calculate mathematical probabilities. Intensely private and swift to turn down interviews, very little is known about his personal life. His reclusive nature -- along with his decades of Scrabble conquests and coups -- have turned him into a legend of sorts for some.

Astro Bot has been crowned winner of Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2024 tonight. The category also included Balatro, Black Myth Wukong, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. IGN reports: Astro Bot was one of the biggest winners of the night, taking home a total of four awards in categories including Best Family Game and Best Game Direction. Other notable winners included Metaphor: ReFantazio, which won Best Narrative, Best Art Direction, and Best RPG, and Balatro, which one Best Indie and Best Debut Indie. A full list of the nominees and winners can be viewed here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: It would be a nightmare lab leak: Synthetic bacteria escape the petri dish and unleash a global plague that life on Earth is incapable of defending itself against. That's the concern raised by a group of eminent researchers in a Policy Forum published online today in Science. The commentary's 38 authors, from a broad range of disciplines, argue that governments worldwide should prohibit research and funding aimed at creating so-called mirror-image bacteria whose chemical makeup differs in a fundamental way from that of naturally existing organisms.

All of life's primary biomolecules can exist in two mirror-image forms, like a left and right hand. But only one form is found in nature. Proteins are left-handed, for example, and DNA and RNA are right-handed. Synthetic biologists have previously synthesized mirror-image proteins and genetic molecules. And mirror-image amino acids and peptides -- the building blocks of proteins -- have been incorporated into several approved drugs. Because natural enzymes struggle to break down mirror-image biomolecules, these components help the drugs survive longer in the body. [...]

The concern, he and others say, is that taking this line of work many steps further could result in fully mirror-image bacteria that could reproduce. Such organisms would likely be able to infect and potentially harm a wide range of microbes, plants, and animals while resisting the molecules that enable predators to kill and digest existing microbes. "They are essentially unassailable to those enzymes," says John Glass, a co-author and synthetic biologist at the J. Craig Venter Institute. Animals' immune systems would also struggle to cope with mirror bacteria. They "would be invisible to the immune system until it was too late," says Timothy Hand, a co-author and immunologist at the University of Pittsburgh. The Policy Forum authors acknowledge it will be at least a decade before synthetic biologists will be capable of creating these life forms. Nevertheless, they recommend halting all research aimed at that goal and urge funding agencies not to support it. "It's hard to overstate how severe these risks could be," says Ruslan Medzhitov, an immunologist at Yale University and one of the authors. "If mirror bacteria were to spread through infected animals and plants, much of the planet's many environments could be contaminated. ... Any exposure to contaminated dust or soil could be fatal."

Jack Szostak, a co-author and a 2019 Nobel Prize-winning chemist at the University of Chicago, adds: "The result could be catastrophic irreversible damage, perhaps far worse than any challenge we've previously encountered."

Epic Games has partnered with Telefonica to pre-install its mobile game storefront on millions of Android devices. Engadget reports: As such, those who buy a phone from a Telefonica network such as O2 or Movistar in Spain, the UK, Germany and Spanish-speaking Latin America will immediately have the app, which offers access to Fortnite, Fall Guys and Rocket League Sideswipe. Epic will bring third-party games to the storefront as well, while the partners plan to offer mobile gamers on Telefonica's networks extra perks over the next year or so. Telefonica has more than 392 million customers. As such, this deal could bring Fortnite and Fall Guys to an even bigger audience.

Intel's interim co-CEOs acknowledged that the company may be forced to sell its manufacturing operations if a new chipmaking technology slated for next year does not succeed. Reuters reports: Speaking at a Barclays investment banking conference in San Francisco on Thursday, Michelle Johnston Holthaus and David Zinsner - who were tapped as co-CEOs after the ouster of former CEO Pat Gelsinger last week - were asked if the company's continued combination of manufacturing and design was tied to the success of a new chipmaking technology called 18A due next year. Intel plans to use that technology to bring manufacturing of a flagship PC chip back in-house after being forced to outsource its biggest product to rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. "Pragmatically, do I think it makes sense that they're completely separated and there's no tie?" Holthaus said of the company's product and manufacturing divisions. "I don't think so. But someone will decide that."

Zinsner, also chief financial officer, outlined how Intel is already separating the finances and operations of this manufacturing division into a standalone subsidiary. Zinsner said Intel Foundry, as the division is known, is already run separately from Intel's other businesses and is setting up a separate operational board and business process software system. "That's going to happen," Zinsner said. "Does it ever fully separate? That's an open question for another day."

In an announcement that stunned New Zealand's research community, the country's center-right coalition government said it would divert half of the NZ$75 million Marsden Fund, the nation's sole funding source for fundamental science, to "research with economic benefits." From a report: Moreover, the fund would no longer support any social sciences and humanities research, and the expert panels considering these proposals would be disbanded.

Universities New Zealand, which represents the nation's eight universities, called the planned disinvestment in social science and humanities "astonishing." It was among several academic groups and many scientists calling for the government to reverse the unexpected decision.

In announcing the change, Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins said the fund should focus on "core science" that supports economic growth and "a science sector that drives high-tech, high-productivity, high-value businesses and jobs."

Nearly half of American teenagers say they are online "constantly," according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. The report was based on a survey of 1,391 U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 conducted from Sept. 18 to Oct. 10, 2024. The Associated Press reports: As in past years, YouTube was the single most popular platform teenagers used -- 90% said they watched videos on the site, down slightly from 95% in 2022. Nearly three-quarters said they visit YouTube every day. There was a slight downward trend in several popular apps teens used. For instance, 63% of teens said they used TikTok, down from 67% and Snapchat slipped to 55% from 59%.

This small decline could be due to pandemic-era restrictions easing up and kids having more time to see friends in person, but it's not enough to be truly meaningful. X saw the biggest decline among teenage users. Only 17% of teenagers said they use X, down from 23% in 2022, the year Elon Musk bought the platform. Reddit held steady at 14%. About 6% of teenagers said they use Threads, Meta's answer to X that launched in 2023. [...]

Meta's messaging service WhatsApp was a rare exception in that it saw the number of teenage users increase, to 23% from 17% in 2022. Pew also asked kids how often they use various online platforms. Small but significant numbers said they are on them âoealmost constantly.â For YouTube, 15% reported constant use, for TikTok, 16% and for Snapchat, 13%.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Besides phones and tablets, Android is available on smartwatches, TVs, and even cars. Google today announced Android XR as the next form factor the operating system is coming to. Google is using the catch-all term of extended reality (XR) to describe virtual (VR), mixed (MR), and augmented reality (AR). Android XR is for all device types, including headsets that offer video or optical see-through, screen-less "AI glasses," and AR glasses with displays. Going into Android XR, Google believes it has a proven track record of creating platforms. That is more than just making an operating system for themselves, but also catering to OEM partners, cultivating a developer ecosystem, and managing an app store.

[...] Google says Android XR is the first OS built from the ground up with Gemini. Google and Samsung are starting with the headset, which both consider a good starting point. Samsung has a developer kit called Project Moohan (or "infinity" in Korean) that is lightweight, has an external battery, and powered by the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2. Google imagines Android XR headsets as offering an infinite desktop for productivity. In this scenario, you're at a desk with a physical keyboard and mouse. A few partners already have this dev kit and more are being distributed to partners starting this week. Meanwhile, first-party apps like Chrome, YouTube, Google TV, Google Photos, and Google Maps are being optimized for Android XR.

However, glasses are the end goal and frames running Android XR are coming for "directions, translations or message summaries without reaching for your phone," though they are paired like any other wearable. The final realization of this vision is in-lens display. However, Google does not think that displays are a must, and this opens the door to display-less glasses that have microphones and cameras for input, while Gemini capably handles output. Google will "soon begin real-world testing of prototype glasses running Android XR with a small group of users." With today's launch, Google is releasing the Android XR SDK Developer Preview and an Android XR Emulator.

You can get a glimpse into the world of Android XR via this YouTube video.

Google unveiled Gemini 2.0 yesterday, almost exactly one year after Google's initial Gemini launch. The new release offers enhanced multimodal capabilities like native image and audio output, real-time tool use, and advanced reasoning to enable agentic experiences, such as acting as a universal assistant or research companion. VentureBeat reports: During a recent press conference, Tulsee Doshi, director of product management for Gemini, outlined the system's enhanced capabilities while demonstrating real-time image generation and multilingual conversations. "Gemini 2.0 brings enhanced performance and new capabilities like native image and multilingual audio generation," Doshi explained. "It also has native intelligent tool use, which means that it can directly access Google products like search or even execute code."

The initial release centers on Gemini 2.0 Flash, an experimental version that Google claims operates at twice the speed of its predecessor while surpassing the capabilities of more powerful models. This represents a significant technical achievement, as previous speed improvements typically came at the cost of reduced functionality. Perhaps most significantly, Google introduced three prototype AI agents built on Gemini 2.0's architecture that demonstrate the company's vision for AI's future. Project Astra, an updated universal AI assistant, showcased its ability to maintain complex conversations across multiple languages while accessing Google tools and maintaining contextual memory of previous interactions. [...]

For developers and enterprise customers, Google introduced Project Mariner and Jules, two specialized AI agents designed to automate complex technical tasks. Project Mariner, demonstrated as a Chrome extension, achieved an impressive 83.5% success rate on the WebVoyager benchmark for real-world web tasks -- a significant improvement over previous attempts at autonomous web navigation. Supporting these advances is Trillium, Google's sixth-generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), which becomes generally available to cloud customers today. The custom AI accelerator represents a massive investment in computational infrastructure, with Google deploying over 100,000 Trillium chips in a single network fabric.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware, written by Avram Piltch: Microsoft's Recall feature recently made its way back to Windows Insiders after having been pulled from test builds back in June, due to security and privacy concerns. The new version of Recall encrypts the screens it captures and, by default, it has a "Filter sensitive information," setting enabled, which is supposed to prevent it from recording any app or website that is showing credit card numbers, social security numbers, or other important financial / personal info. In my tests, however, this filter only worked in some situations (on two e-commerce sites), leaving a gaping hole in the protection it promises.

When I entered a credit card number and a random username / password into a Windows Notepad window, Recall captured it, despite the fact that I had text such as "Capital One Visa" right next to the numbers. Similarly, when I filled out a loan application PDF in Microsoft Edge, entering a social security number, name and DOB, Recall captured that. (Note that all info in these screenshots is made up). I also created my own HTML page with a web form that said, explicitly, "enter your credit card number below." The form had fields for Credit card type, number, CVC and expiration date. I thought this might trigger Recall to block it, but the software captured an image of my form filled out, complete with the credit card data. Recall did refuse to capture the credit card fields on the payment pages of Pimoroni and Adafruit. "So, when it came to real-world commerce sites that I visited, Recall got it right," adds Piltch. "However, what my experiment proves is that it's pretty much impossible for Microsoft's AI filter to identify every situation where sensitive information is on screen and avoid capturing it."

Indian teenager Gukesh Dommaraju made history by defeating China's Ding Liren to become the youngest world chess champion at 18, sealing a dramatic 7.5-6.5 victory in the 14-game match. The Guardian reports: The 18-year-old from Chennai dramatically snatched the decisive victory from a dead-drawn position in the final contest of their best-of-14-games showdown when Ding made one of the worst blunders in the 138-year history of world championship matchplay. The 32-year-old defending champion resigned moments later after a game that lasted 58 moves and just over four hours, sealing Gukesh's 7.5-6.5 win in the three-week match and rendering moot the widely expected prospect of tiebreaker matches on Friday afternoon.

In doing so, Gukesh shattered the age record held by Garry Kasparov, who was 22 when he toppled Anatoly Karpov in 1985. Gukesh admitted he didn't initially recognize Ding's rook move (55 Rf2??) as a blunder, saying it took a few seconds to spot that his opponent's bishop was trapped. He could barely conceal his excitement upon the discovery, while a devastated Ding could only bury his head in his hands. "When I realized it, it was probably the best moment of my life," said Gukesh, who brings home the $1.35 million winner's share of the $2.5 million prize fund along with the sport's most prestigious title.

Yahoo laid off around 25% of its cybersecurity team -- known as The Paranoids -- over the last year, TechCrunch has learned. From the report: Overall, the company has laid off or lost through attrition 40 to 50 people from a total of 200 employees in the cybersecurity team since the start of 2024, according to multiple current and former Yahoo employees who spoke to TechCrunch on condition of anonymity. (Yahoo is TechCrunch's parent company.)

The Paranoids are not the only team affected by the layoffs. Valeri Liborski, who was appointed Yahoo's chief technology officer in September, sent an email this week to employees announcing changes across the broader technology unit, including enterprise productivity and core services. The email to staff, which was obtained by TechCrunch, said: "This was a very difficult decision and one I have not taken lightly."

The Paranoids' so-called red team, or offensive security team -- which conducts cyberattack simulations to identify weaknesses in the company's network before external hackers can -- was eliminated entirely this week, and there have been at least three rounds of layoffs impacting the cybersecurity team this year, according to the sources.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Deep in the Canadian Arctic, scientists and entrepreneurs brave sub-zero temperatures, whipping winds and snowstorms to drill holes through the sea ice to pump out the seawater below and freeze it on the surface. The group from the UK start-up Real Ice is in Cambridge Bay, a tiny coastal village in Nunavut, to try to prove they can grow and restore Arctic sea ice.

Their ultimate plan is to thicken ice over more than 386,000 square miles of the Arctic -- an area more than twice the size of California -- with the aim of slowing down or even reversing summer ice loss and, in doing so, help to tackle the human-caused climate crisis. It's a bold plan, and one of many controversial geo-engineering proposals to save the planet's vulnerable polar regions that range from installing a giant underwater "curtain" to protect ice sheets, to sprinkling tiny glass beads to reflect away sunlight.

Some Arctic scientists and experts have criticized Real Ice's methods as unproven at scale, ecologically risky and a distraction from tackling the root cause of climate change: fossil fuels. But the company says its project is inspired by natural processes and offers a last chance to protect a disappearing ecosystem as the world fails to act swiftly on climate change.

Apple's ambitious plan to create in-house components for its devices will include switching to a homegrown chip for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections starting next year, a move that will replace some parts currently provided by Broadcom. From a report: The chip, code-named Proxima, has been in development for several years and is now slated to go into the first products in 2025, according to people familiar with the matter. Like Apple's other in-house chips, Proxima will be produced by partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

The transition is separate from Apple's highly anticipated shift from Qualcomm cellular modems -- details of which Bloomberg News reported last week -- but the two parts will eventually work together. Apple's goal is to develop an end-to-end wireless approach that is tightly integrated with its other components and more energy-efficient, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the initiative hasn't been announced. Representatives for Cupertino, California-based Apple and Palo Alto, California-based Broadcom declined to comment.

Social media giants confronted a familiar dilemma over user content moderation after murder suspect Luigi Mangione's arrest in the killing of UnitedHealthcare's CEO on Monday, highlighting the platforms' varied approaches to managing digital footprints of criminal suspects.

Meta quickly removed Mangione's Facebook and Instagram accounts under its "dangerous organizations and individuals" policy, while his account on X underwent a brief suspension before being reinstated with a premium subscription. LinkedIn maintained his profile, stating it did not violate platform policies. His Reddit account was suspended in line with the platform's policy on high-profile criminal suspects, while his Goodreads profile fluctuated between public and private status.

The New York Times adds: When someone goes from having a private life to getting public attention, online accounts they intended for a small circle of friends or acquaintances are scrutinized by curious strangers -- and journalists.

In some cases, these newly public figures or their loved ones can shut down the accounts or make them private. Others, like Mr. Mangione, who has been charged with murder, are cut off from their devices, leaving their digital lives open for the public's consumption. Either way, tech companies have discretion in what happens to the account and its content. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects companies from legal liability for posts made by users.