A robot entered a damaged reactor at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday, beginning a two-week mission to retrieve melted fuel debris for the first time since the 2011 disaster. The operation marks a crucial step in the decades-long process to decommission the plant and address the highly radioactive material inside three damaged reactors.… Read More »
Bruce66423 shares a report: The European Union’s top court ruled against Apple Tuesday in the tech company’s protracted legal battle over contested back taxes in Ireland. The ruling means Apple will be forced to pay Ireland up to $14.4 billion in back taxes and represents the latest setback in Europe for the tech giant. Earlier… Read More »
Oracle missed the tech industry’s move to cloud computing last decade and ended up an also-ran. Now the AI boom has given it another shot. WSJ: The 47-year-old company that made its name on relational database software has emerged as an attractive cloud-computing provider for AI developers such as OpenAI, sending its long-stagnant stock to… Read More »
Sea ice surrounding Antarctica is on the cusp of reaching a record winter low for a second year running, continuing an “outrageous” fall in the amount of Southern Ocean that is freezing over. From a report: The Antarctic region underwent an abrupt transformation in 2023 as the sea ice cover surrounding the continent crashed for… Read More »
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Agence France-Presse: Australia will ban children from using social media with a minimum age limit as high as 16, the prime minister said Tuesday, vowing to get kids off their devices and “onto the footy fields.” Federal legislation to keep children off social media will be introduced this… Read More »
Europe’s top court on Tuesday upheld a 2.4 billion euro ($2.65 billion) fine imposed on Google for abusing its dominant position by favoring its own shopping comparison service. From a report: The fine stems from an antitrust investigation by the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, which concluded in 2017. The commission… Read More »
Americans lost over $5.6 billion to cryptocurrency fraud schemes in 2023, with investment fraud accounting for the majority of losses, according to the FBI (PDF). The Associated Press reports: The FBI received nearly 70,000 complaints in 2023 by victims of financial fraud involving bitcoin, ether and other cryptocurrencies, according to the FBI. The most rampant… Read More »
Most kitchen products use plastics that are practically unrecyclable, yet a trade group representing major brands is pressuring regulators to allow companies to label such items as “recyclable,” even though they are likely to end up in landfills. Experts warn this could worsen the plastic crisis and misleading labels could further deceive consumers about the… Read More »
Vanuatu, Fiji, and Samoa have proposed a change to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to recognize ecocide as a crime, allowing for the prosecution of individuals responsible for significant environmental harm. If successful, the change would recognize ecocide as a crime alongside genocide and war crimes. The Guardian reports: Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa have proposed… Read More »
Scott J Mulligan writes for MIT Technology Review: Roblox plans to roll out a generative AI tool that will let creators make whole 3D scenes just using text prompts, it announced today. Once it’s up and running, developers on the hugely popular online game platform will be able to simply write “Generate a race track… Read More »