Today at its pre-filmed Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, Apple was finally prepared to fully introduce the long-delayed "Apple Intelligence" update for its Siri voice assistant. The new "Siri AI"—now being promised for OS updates rolling out "this fall"—will come alongside a new Google-powered update to Apple's on-device Foundation Models, as well as tighter integration of all these AI capabilities across Apple's many operating systems.

Unlike other companies that "appear to be racing forward, seemingly pursuing AI for the sake of AI, with little regard for the people... it's meant to serve," Apple's SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said, "we believe that truly helpful AI must be centered around you and your needs."

Just a friendly chat with your AI assistant

The company highlighted this kind of focus in a series of scripted conversational demos with Siri AI , complete with seemingly unedited, multi-second pauses between each spoken prompt and Siri's response. In these demos, Apple executives showed Siri AI bouncing between different usage modes and app-based tasks as needed in an effort to highlight how Apple Intelligence can now be used "well beyond one-shot tasks" for a "brand new conversational experience" with the virtual assistant.

Read full article

Comments

Google's NotebookLM was one of the company's first forays into generative AI technology, and in un-Googley fashion, it hasn't been shut down yet. In fact, NotebookLM is getting one of its biggest updates, ever, today, moving to the latest Gemini 3.5 model, support for more file types, and streamlined web source integration. Google also says NotebookLM will be able to do more with all those queries thanks to embedded support for Antigravity.

Gemini 3.5 Flash debuted at Google I/O this year , promising much faster and more efficient processing. Google has claimed that companies worried about token costs can save big by moving their projects to the new Flash model while also getting outputs that are of similar or better quality. Those improvements are now filtering down to other Google products. NotebookLM, which launched in 2023 at the very beginning of the AI boom, lets you analyze specific sources like documents and webpages with Google's latest AI models.

Google conducted side-by-side evaluations of NotebookLM on the old Gemini 3.1 branch and with the updated 3.5. The company is being somewhat vague about the nature of the tests, breaking things up into "top five core evaluation dimensions," which are Accuracy and Quality, Multilingual Support, Large Document Analysis, Document Creation, and Advanced Research. In these tests, Google says NotebookLM averaged a 65 percent win rate versus the older model.

Read full article

Comments

Humanity has littered the sky with the refuse of fossil fuel use, releasing enough CO ₂ to change the planet’s climate. We are also chucking incredible sums of carbon in the form of plastics into landfills and into the environment around (and inside of ) us. What if cleaning up one of these problems could also help clean up the other?

A new study led by Ruth Ebenbauer at Aarhus University experiments with this idea by upcycling discarded polystyrene into (part of) a material commonly used in carbon-capture systems.

Adding amines

This material is based on amines—a simple chemical group that conveniently acts like a sponge for CO ₂ . An amine will grab CO ₂ molecules when exposed to them, but let go of the CO ₂ when heated or depressurized, leaving it ready to go again. The first “CO ₂ scrubbers” tried in smokestacks used amines dissolved in water to do this, but solid amines are used in all kinds of carbon-capture systems now because they require less energy. These solid materials—often made into granules similar to the activated carbon in a water filter—have high surface area and high porosity, so the amines can efficiently partner up with CO ₂ molecules.

Read full article

Comments

Dozens of cryptographically verified open source packages from Microsoft were compromised late last week to add advanced credential-stealing code that was triggered when developers opened them in AI coding agents.

In all, multiple researchers said , 73 packages were flagged as malicious when automated systems on GitHub blocked them on the platform. Rather than noting they are malicious—and that developers who used AI agents to work with them should assume their systems are compromised—the Microsoft-owned GitHub said it disabled the packages “due to a violation of GitHub's terms of service.” The text went on to encourage the package owner to contact GitHub.

Devs: Assume compromise and proceed accordingly

It wasn’t until Monday that Microsoft even raised the possibility the packages were infected. In an email, the company stated: “We have temporarily removed some repositories as we investigate potential malicious content.”

Read full article

Comments

Apple has taken the wraps off of its next-generation operating system updates at its Worldwide Developers Conference today, including iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 Golden Gate. And while the long-awaited Siri AI update is the headliner, Apple also emphasized its efforts to optimize its software, improving its performance and reliability.

For starters, the company is continuing to refine the Liquid Glass design language that it introduced last year. A slider in the Settings will allow users fine-grained control over the translucency of the Liquid Glass effect, ranging from maximally transparent and glassy to fully tinted. Last year's redesigned icons are also being re-redesigned with more glass layers, which Apple says will make them sharper and more distinctive.

On macOS, Apple has also changed the way app toolbars and sidebars work, making toolbars more distinct, making the contents of sidebars extend all the way to the edge of the window, and reintroducing color to sidebar icons. Mac windows are also getting a "tighter corner radius," to address complaints about the way window resizing works in macOS 26 Tahoe.

Read full article

Comments

A San Diego police department is facing a lawsuit after jailing a man for a month based on a Flock camera alert that cops allegedly should have known, based on the timestamp, did not depict the car that they were looking for.

Last November, Hugo Parra was arrested on felony charges after San Diego police relied on Flock data and a witness statement to wrongly connect him to an attempted carjacking at gunpoint, the Times of San Diego reported . Cops were looking for a red Alfa Romeo car with tinted windows and a man wearing a gray hoodie, and Parra happened to be wearing a white hoodie while riding in a friend's car that roughly matched the vehicle description.

Although Flock cameras can capture license plate data, cops did not have even a partial plate to help them verify if the car was involved in a violent crime. But the Flock data cops used to justify the arrest actually showed that Parra was five miles away at the time of the crime, Parra's attorney, Alex Coolman, told the Times of San Diego. Rather than arrest him, cops could have used that data, as well as Parra's cellphone location data, to corroborate Parra's statement that he was innocent, Coolman said.

Read full article

Comments

Formula 1 held its annual race on the streets of Monte Carlo this past weekend. The event predates the sport—the first Monaco Grand Prix was held in 1929 on a layout that isn't too different from the one used today.

Over the years, the buildings have changed, crash barriers appeared, the swimming pool section grew, and the cars eventually got too big and fast to race each other properly on the tight confines of a circuit that one world champion described as "riding a bicycle in your living room." But nestled by the Mediterranean, surrounded by super yachts, F1's least-good race is also its most famous and glamorous. After their home Grands Prix, it's the one many drivers most want to win.

Overtaking here is virtually impossible; to see race cars do that around the principality, you'll want to tune into Formula E's visits there. So qualifying on Saturday, which sets the grid order for Sunday's race, was more important than usual. Everyone expected pole to go to one of the two Ferraris. And for the first time this season, the cars wrecked completely flat-out; with no long straights and plenty of braking zones, the cars were not energy-limited for once this season.

Read full article

Comments

A little more than five years ago, a shiny white Falcon 9 rocket made its debut flight, boosting a Cargo Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. Over the next year, it would launch a pair of astronaut missions and a handful of commercial spacecraft.

But since then, this first stage booster, designated B 1067, has mostly flown Starlink missions. It has launched them one after another, always returning safely to a drone ship before undergoing refurbishment and flying again. Sometimes it has flown twice in a single month.

On Monday morning, B 1067 once again took to the skies, launching 29 Starlink Internet satellites into low-Earth orbit from Florida. Upon landing on the A Shortfall of Gravitas drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, the vehicle completed its 35th mission overall, retaining its title as fleet leader for SpaceX.

Read full article

Comments

It's an election year, and that means politicians are putting in extra work to pander to special interest groups they think will help them cross the finish line. If you're looking to be elected in Michigan, there aren't many interests more special than the automotive industry, and a good way to get the industry on your side is by going after the thing it fears the most : China.

Now, if a pair of lawmakers get their way, Chinese-badged vehicles wouldn't just be restricted from sale or import in the US, they'd also be banned from entering the country, even for a simple day trip from Canada or Mexico.

Moves to protect the US auto industry are nothing new, and they're popular across party lines. Former President Biden added an additional 100 percent import tariff on all Chinese-made cars during his term and then had the Department of Commerce draw up new rules —later implemented by the Trump administration—that banned the import of connected cars manufactured by companies owned by or with links to the Chinese government, starting in 2027.

Read full article

Comments