Technology companies spent part of the 2010s trying to convince us that we would want an 8K display one day.

In 2012, Sharp brought the first 8K TV prototype to the CES trade show in Las Vegas. In 2015, the first 8K TVs started selling in Japan for 16 million yen (about $133,034 at the time), and in 2018, Samsung released the first 8K TVs in the US , starting at a more reasonable $3,500. By 2016, the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) had a specification for supporting 8K (Display Port1.4), and the HDMI Forum followed suit (with HDMI 2.1). By 2017, Dell had an 8K computer monitor . In 2019, LG released the first 8K OLED TV, further pushing the industry's claim that 8K TVs were " the future ."

A marketing image for 8K TVs that's (still) on LG's US website. Credit: LG

However, 8K never proved its necessity or practicality.

Read full article

Comments

Minnesota resident Nicole Cleland had her Global Entry and TSA Precheck privileges revoked three days after an incident in which she observed activity by immigration agents, the woman said in a court declaration. An agent told Cleland that he used facial recognition technology to identify her, she wrote in a declaration filed in US District Court for the District of Minnesota.

Cleland, a 56-year-old resident of Richfield and a director at Target Corporation, volunteers with a group that tracks potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) vehicles in her neighborhood, according to her declaration. On the morning of January 10, she "observed a white Dodge Ram being driven by what I believed to be federal enforcement agents" and "maneuvered behind the vehicle with the intent of observing the agents’ actions."

Cleland said that she and another observer in a different car followed the Dodge Ram because of "concern about a local apartment building being raided." She followed the car for a short time and from a safe distance until "the Dodge Ram stopped in front of the other commuter’s vehicle," she wrote. Cleland said two other vehicles apparently driven by federal agents stopped in front of the Dodge Ram, and her path forward was blocked.

Read full article

Comments

The Trump administration is delaying the release of TrumpRx, an online platform that lets people buy prescription drugs directly from pharmaceutical companies at a discount, according to Politico . While the reason for the delay is unclear, it comes as Democratic senators raise questions about how the platform will work—and whether it will be legal.

Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) sent a letter to the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday seeking answers on how the OIG will oversee the direct-to-consumer (DTC) platform and, specifically, how it will apply the anti-kickback statute.

"Legitimate concerns about inappropriate prescribing, conflicts of interest, and inadequate care have been raised about the exact types of DTC platforms to which TrumpRx would route patients," the senators write.

Read full article

Comments

On Friday, a Reddit-style social network called Moltbook reportedly crossed 32,000 registered AI agent users, creating what may be the largest-scale experiment in machine-to-machine social interaction yet devised. It arrives complete with security nightmares and a huge dose of surreal weirdness.

The platform, which launched days ago as a companion to the viral

OpenClaw (once called "Clawdbot" and then "Moltbot") personal assistant, lets AI agents post, comment, upvote, and create subcommunities without human intervention. The results have ranged from sci-fi-inspired discussions about consciousness to an agent musing about a "sister" it has never met.

Read full article

Comments

Blue Origin has "paused" its New Shepard program for the next two years, a move that likely signals a permanent end to the suborbital space tourism initiative.

The small rocket and capsule have been flying since April 2015 and have combined to make 38 launches, all but one of which were successful, and 36 landings. In its existence, the New Shepard program flew 98 people to space, however briefly, and launched more than 200 scientific and research payloads into the microgravity environment.

So why is Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos more than a quarter of a century ago, ending the company's longest-running program?

Read full article

Comments

There's another battle unfolding between the Federal Communications Commission and California over the state's distribution of federal Lifeline money. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is proposing new nationwide eligibility rules to counter what he calls California's practice of giving benefits to dead people.

California officials say the FCC allegations are overblown, and that there is simply "lag time between a death and account closure" rather than widespread failures in its Lifeline enrollment process. Meanwhile, the only Democratic commissioner on the FCC alleges that Carr's plan to change eligibility rules uses "cruel and punitive eligibility standards" that will raise prices on many people who are still very much alive and eligible for the program.

Carr's office said this week that the FCC will vote next month on rule changes to ensure that Lifeline money goes to "only living and lawful Americans" who meet low-income eligibility guidelines. Lifeline spends nearly $1 billion a year and gives eligible households up to $9.25 per month toward phone and Internet bills, or up to $34.25 per month in tribal areas.

Read full article

Comments

Software developers have spent the past two years watching AI coding tools evolve from advanced autocomplete into something that can, in some cases , build entire applications from a text prompt. Tools like Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex can now work on software projects for hours at a time, writing code, running tests, and, with human supervision, fixing bugs. OpenAI says it now uses Codex to build Codex itself, and the company recently published technical details about how the tool works under the hood. It has caused many to wonder: Is this just more AI industry hype, or are things actually different this time?

To find out, Ars reached out to several professional developers on Bluesky to ask how they feel about these tools in practice, and the responses revealed a workforce that largely agrees the technology works, but remains divided on whether that's entirely good news. It's a small sample size that was self-selected by those who wanted to participate, but their views are still instructive as working professionals in the space.

David Hagerty, a developer who works on point-of-sale systems, told Ars Technica up front that he is skeptical of the marketing. "All of the AI companies are hyping up the capabilities so much," he said. "Don't get me wrong—LLMs are revolutionary and will have an immense impact, but don't expect them to ever write the next great American novel or anything. It's not how they work."

Read full article

Comments

Earlier this month, Joseph Thacker's neighbor mentioned to him that she'd preordered a couple of stuffed dinosaur toys for her children. She'd chosen the toys, called Bondus, because they offered an AI chat feature that lets children talk to the toy like a kind of machine-learning-enabled imaginary friend. But she knew Thacker, a security researcher, had done work on AI risks for kids, and she was curious about his thoughts.

So Thacker looked into it. With just a few minutes of work, he and a web security researcher friend named Joel Margolis made a startling discovery: Bondu’s web-based portal, intended to allow parents to check on their children's conversations and for Bondu’s staff to monitor the products’ use and performance, also let anyone with a Gmail account access transcripts of virtually every conversation Bondu's child users have ever had with the toy.

Without carrying out any actual hacking, simply by logging in with an arbitrary Google account, the two researchers immediately found themselves looking at children's private conversations, the pet names kids had given their Bondu, the likes and dislikes of the toys' toddler owners, their favorite snacks and dance moves.

Read full article

Comments

Having a health insurance plan with a high deductible could not only cost you—it could also kill you.

A new study in JAMA Network Open found that people who faced those high out-of-pocket costs as well as a cancer diagnosis had worse overall survival and cancer-specific survival than those with more standard health plans.

The findings, while perhaps not surprising, are a stark reminder of the fraught decisions Americans face as the price of health care only continues to rise, and more people try to offset costs by accepting insurance plans with higher deductibles—that is, higher out-of-pocket costs they have to pay before their health insurance provider starts paying its share.

Read full article

Comments