Alorica — which runs customer-service centers around the world — has introduced an AI translation tool that lets its representatives talk with customers in 200 different languages. But according to the Associated Press, “Alorica isn’t cutting jobs. It’s still hiring aggressively.” The experience at Alorica — and at other companies, including furniture retailer IKEA —… Read More »

This week after striking for over a month, videogame performers reached agreements with 80 games this week, reports the Associated Press. “SAG-AFTRA announced the agreements with the 80 individual video games on Thursday. Performers impacted by the work stoppage can now work on those projects. “The strike against other major video game publishers, including Disney… Read More »

“Solar farms could blanket millions of acres in the United States over the coming decades,” writes the New York Times. But “the sites that capture that energy take up land that wildlife needs to survive and thrive.” “We have to address both challenges at the same exact time,” said Rebecca Hernandez, a professor of ecology… Read More »

A schoolteacher using an interactive whiteboard is surprised by an alert. Their school is in “hard lockdown.” They knew — instantly — something was about to happen, and “got everybody into a corner,” they later told CNN. Classroom doors at the school are always locked, so they then “turned off the lights. And just kind… Read More »

The Wall Street Journal writes that Telegram “has become the premier internet platform to buy everything from hacked data and weapons to illicit drugs and child sexual abuse material, according to current and former law-enforcement officials and cybercrime researchers…” And it’s also being used by identity thieves: There are thousands of channels and groups on… Read More »

“If you’re plugged into KDE social media, you probably see a lot of requests for donations…” writes KDE developer Nate Graham on his personal blog. But “We know that the fraction of people who subscribe to these channels is small, so there’s a huge number of people who may not even know they can donate… Read More »

“China is on track to launch its Tianwen-3 mission to Mars in 2028, two years earlier than previously planned,” writes the South China Morning Post, a change that one space policy research believes “suggests a rising confidence by China in its ability to get the technology right for the complex operation.” On Thursday, Liu Jizhong,… Read More »

Wired interviews America’s foreign policy chief, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, about U.S. digital polices, starting with a new “cybersecurity bureau” created in 2022 (which Wired previously reported includes “a crash course in cybersecurity, telecommunications, privacy, surveillance, and other digital issues.”) Look, what I’ve seen since coming back to the State Department three and a… Read More »

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC: Britain’s competition watchdog on Friday issued a statement of objections over Google’s ad tech practices, which the regulator provisionally found are impacting competition in the U.K. In a statement, the Competition and Markets Authority alleged that the U.S. internet search titan “has harmed competition by using its… Read More »

The Register reports that Google “recently rewrote the firmware for protected virtual machines in its Android Virtualization Framework using the Rust programming language.” And they add that Google “wants you to do the same, assuming you deal with firmware.” A post on Google’s security blog by Android engineers Ivan Lozano and Dominik Maier promises to… Read More »