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      It's Tax Day, and no one knows how to file for prediction market winnings

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 15 April 2026 • 1 minute

    How do you file taxes on prediction market profits? It seems like the type of straightforward question any halfway decent bookkeeper should be able to answer. Right now, though, it’s a conundrum for tax experts across the country. “You have a vacuum of guidance,” says Patrick Camuso, an accountant who specializes in digital assets. “It puts the taxpayer in a bad position.”

    Prediction markets have been around for decades, so this isn’t a new issue. But platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have exploded in popularity since last year, which means the question of how to properly account for prediction market gains has shifted from a niche concern to something far more urgent for many people. While only a small sliver of the population actually uses the markets—around 3 percent, according to a recent poll —that still means millions of US residents are obligated to report their wins and losses to the Internal Revenue Service. There’s big money in play here. Kalshi, which has a predominantly American user base, saw over $12 billion in monthly trade volume this past March, according to markets tracker Defi Rate.

    Kalshi declined to comment. The IRS and Polymarket did not respond to requests for comment.

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      Ukraine’s military robot surge aims to offset drone risks to humans

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 14 April 2026 • 1 minute

    Ukrainian ground robots and drones have demonstrated how to overcome a Russian military position by themselves while forcing the surrender of Russian soldiers, claimed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. If true, that would represent a significant robotic milestone during the ongoing war that has already been significantly reshaped by drones—and it could offer lessons for how militaries worldwide may use robots and drones to do the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in future conflicts.

    The claim by Zelenskyy has not been independently verified but was accompanied by a promotional video in which he described Ukraine’s military robots as having completed over 22,000 missions in the last three months. Ukraine’s defense ministry also recently described a threefold increase in the Ukrainian military’s uncrewed ground vehicle missions over the last five months, with more than 9,000 robotic missions conducted in March, according to Scripps News . The growing robotic ground presence represents a new trend in a war that has become synonymous with drones.

    Zelenskyy’s statement may refer to an event that occurred in the Kharkiv Oblast in northeastern Ukraine last year, according to The Independent . It referenced a statement by the Ukrainian 3rd Separate Assault Brigade detailing how the unit had used flying drones and “kamikaze” ground robots to attack fortified Russian frontline positions at that time. The brigade’s statement also described Russian soldiers as surrendering to one of the unit’s robots after abandoning the battered fortifications. There are previous examples of individual or small groups of Russian soldiers surrendering to Ukrainian drones and even a robot while being recorded on video, so the idea of a group of Russian soldiers surrendering their position and themselves to a robot is not necessarily far-fetched. The battlefield exploits of such robots were also featured in a recent video by the Ukrainian government-run platform United24, which described a similar or possibly the same incident involving the same brigade.

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      Sony killing features for antenna, set-top box users of Bravia smart TVs in May

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 14 April 2026

    Sony is removing some features from its recent Bravia smart TVs next month, a move that will affect people who use an antenna or a set-top box.

    As of “late May 2026,” people who use an antenna with the affected TV models will see a reduced TV guide, according to a support page spotted by Cord Cutters News . Per the support page, “program information may not appear depending on the channel,” and “only programs from recently watched channels may be shown” for channels delivered through an antenna.

    Users will also no longer see channel logos or thumbnail images in program descriptions for TV channels delivered through an antenna.

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      Americans ask AI for health care. Hospitals think the answer is more chatbots.

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 14 April 2026

    With many Americans turning to Large Language Models for health advice, health systems around the country are eyeing and even rolling out their own branded chatbots in an attempt to harness this already popular tool and steer more people to their services. But the burgeoning trend is raising immediate questions and concerns for the country's complicated and generally underperforming health care system.

    Executives frame the new offerings as a convenience for patients, meeting people where they are and providing a service with digital equity. They also suggest their chatbots will be a safer alternative to commercial versions people are using now.

    "We are at an inflection point in healthcare," according to Allon Bloch, CEO of clinical AI company K Health. "Demand is accelerating, and patients are already using AI to navigate their lives."

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      Two-year-old Surface PCs get $300 price hikes as sub-$1,000 models go away

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 14 April 2026

    If you've been waiting for Microsoft to update its Surface PC lineup—perhaps with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 Elite processors—I've got bad news for you. Microsoft is shaking up its PC lineup, but it's doing so by instituting big price hikes across the entire lineup. This means you'll be paying at least $1,500 for Surface devices that launched at $1,000 just two years ago and that Microsoft no longer offers new Surface devices under $1,000 at all.

    The 12-inch Surface Pro tablet that originally started at $799 and the 13-inch Surface Laptop that launched at $899 now cost $1,049 and $1,149, respectively, a $250 price increase. The higher-end Surface Laptop and 13-inch Surface Pro from 2024 both started at $999 but increased to $1,199 in 2025 when their entry-level versions with 256GB of storage were discontinued; both now start at $1,499, a $300 increase.

    As originally reported by Windows Central, Microsoft is blaming "recent increases in memory and component costs" for the price hikes. Supply shortages for RAM and storage chips in particular have been wreaking havoc with consumer tech all year, delaying some launches, depleting stock of existing products , and raising prices for small and large companies alike.

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      Apple chooses Amazon satellites for iPhone, years after rejecting Starlink offer

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 14 April 2026

    Amazon today announced two satellite deals that it hopes will make its Amazon Leo network a more formidable competitor to SpaceX's Starlink. Amazon signed a merger agreement to buy satellite operator Globalstar and said it entered into an agreement with Apple to provide satellite service for iPhones and Apple Watches.

    Amazon is spending $11.6 billion for Globalstar, which already partnered with Apple for satellite messaging on the iPhone. Amazon said that buying Globalstar will help it enter the Direct-to-Device (D2D) market in which satellites provide connectivity to mobile phones.

    "In addition to the agreement with Globalstar, Amazon and Apple signed an agreement to provide satellite connectivity for current and future iPhone and Apple Watch features," according to Amazon, which operates the Amazon Leo satellite network formerly known as Kuiper Systems. Panos Panay, Amazon's senior VP of devices and services, said the Apple deal will make Amazon the "primary satellite service provider for iPhone and Apple Watch."

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      UK gov's Mythos AI tests help separate cybersecurity threat from hype

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 14 April 2026

    Last week, Anthropic announced it was restricting the initial release of its Mythos Preview model to "a limited group of critical industry partners," giving them time to prepare for a model that it said is "strikingly capable at computer security tasks." Now, the UK government's AI Security Institute (AISI) has published an initial evaluation of the model's cyber-attack capabilities that adds some independent public verification to those Anthropic reports.

    AISI's findings show that Mythos isn't significantly different from other recent frontier models when it comes to tests of individual cyber-security related tasks. But Mythos could set itself apart from previous models through its ability to effectively chain these tasks together into the multi-step series of attacks necessary to fully infiltrate some systems.

    "The Last Ones" finally falls

    AISI has been putting various AI models through specially designed Capture the Flag challenges since early 2023, when GPT-3.5 Turbo struggled to complete any of the group's relatively low-level "Apprentice" tasks. Since then, performance of subsequent models has risen steadily, to the point where Mythos Preview can complete north of 85 percent of those same Apprentice-level CTF tasks.

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      Google introduces "Skills" in Chrome to make Gemini prompts instantly reusable

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 14 April 2026 • 1 minute

    Chrome is the most popular browser in the world, and the competition is not even close. So the browser is a key part of Google's efforts to get everyone using its AI tools. The company's chatbot has already infused various parts of the Chrome UI, and you can even turn Gemini loose to control the browser . The latest AI addition to Chrome comes in the form of "Skills," reusable prompts you can access while browsing with a single click.

    Skills don't so much add new functionality as they make it easier to repeat tasks that were already possible with Gemini in Chrome. Previously, you would have to reenter the prompt each time you wanted Gemini to do something in Chrome; whether that meant typing it or copy-pasting from a saved document, you had to do it manually. Saving those favorite prompts as Skills in Chrome makes them quicker and easier to access.

    Saving a Gemini prompt as a reusable Skill

    The desktop version of Chrome will remember your saved Skills across devices. As long as you're logged in to your Google account, you can type forward slash ( / ) in Gemini or click the plus button to bring up your saved Skills. Simply click, and it will run in the current tab. You can also add additional tabs if it's a skill that pulls from multiple sources.

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      Physicists think they've resolved the proton size puzzle

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 14 April 2026 • 1 minute

    There has been considerable debate among physicists over the last 15 years about conflicting measurements of the charge radius of a hydrogen atom's proton—some confirming the predictions of our strongest theoretical models, others suggesting it was smaller than expected. The discrepancy hinted at possible exciting new physics. Now the debate seems to be winding down with the latest experimental measurements, described in two recent papers published in the journals Nature and Physical Review Letters , respectively. And the evidence has tilted in favor of a smaller proton radius and against new physics.

    "We believe this is the final nail in the coffin of the proton radius puzzle," Lothar Maisenbacher, of the University of California, Berkeley, who co-authored the Nature paper, told Ars.

    As previously reported , most popularizations discussing the structure of the atom rely on the much-maligned Bohr model , in which electrons move around the nucleus in circular orbits. But quantum mechanics gives us a much more precise (albeit weirder) description. The electrons aren’t really orbiting the nucleus; they are technically waves that take on particle-like properties when we do an experiment to determine their position. While orbiting an atom, they exist in a superposition of states, both particle and wave, with a wave function encompassing all the probabilities of its position at once. A measurement will collapse the wave function, giving us the electron’s position. Make a series of such measurements and plot the various positions that result, and it will yield something akin to a fuzzy orbit-like pattern.

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