Palantir CEO Alex Karp warns of "coming swarms of autonomous robots" and urges Silicon Valley to support U.S. defense capabilities. In his book, "The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West," Karp argues that America risks losing its military edge to geopolitical rivals who better harness commercial technology.

He calls for the "engineering elite of Silicon Valley" to work with the government on national defense. The message comes as Palantir's stock has surged more than 1,800% since early 2023, pushing its market value above $292 billion -- exceeding traditional defense contractors Lockheed Martin and RTX combined. The company has expanded its military AI work since 2018, when it took over a Pentagon contract after Google employees protested their company's defense work.

"[O]ur intrepid China reporter, Caiwei Chen, has identified a new trend unfolding within China's tech scene: Companies that were dominant in electric vehicles are betting big on translating that success into developing humanoid robots," writes MIT Technology Review's James O'Donnell. "I spoke with her about what she found out and what it might mean for Trump's policies and the rest of the globe..." An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from the report: Your story looks at electric-vehicle makers in China that are starting to work on humanoid robots, but I want to ask about a crazy stat. In China, 53% of vehicles sold are either electric or hybrid, compared with 8% in the US. What explains that?

Price is a huge factor -- there are countless EV brands competing at different price points, making them both affordable and high-quality. Government incentives also play a big role. In Beijing, for example, trading in an old car for an EV gets you 10,000 RMB (about $1,500), and that subsidy was recently doubled. Plus, finding public charging and battery-swapping infrastructure is much less of a hassle than in the US.

You open your story noting that China's recent New Year Gala, watched by billions of people, featured a cast of humanoid robots, dancing and twirling handkerchiefs. We've covered how sometimes humanoid videos can be misleading. What did you think?

I would say I was relatively impressed -- the robots showed good agility and synchronization with the music, though their movements were simpler than human dancers'. The one trick that is supposed to impress the most is the part where they twirl the handkerchief with one finger, toss it into the air, and then catch it perfectly. This is the signature of the Yangko dance, and having performed it once as a child, I can attest to how difficult the trick is even for a human! There was some skepticism on the Chinese internet about how this was achieved and whether they used additional reinforcement like a magnet or a string to secure the handkerchief, and after watching the clip too many times, I tend to agree.

President Trump has already imposed tariffs on China and is planning even more. What could the implications be for China's humanoid sector?

Unitree's H1 and G1 models are already available for purchase and were showcased at CES this year. Large-scale US deployment isn't happening yet, but China's lower production costs make these robots highly competitive. Given that 65% of the humanoid supply chain is in China, I wouldn't be surprised if robotics becomes the next target in the US-China tech war.

In the US, humanoid robots are getting lots of investment, but there are plenty of skeptics who say they're too clunky, finicky, and expensive to serve much use in factory settings. Are attitudes different in China?

Skepticism exists in China too, but I think there's more confidence in deployment, especially in factories. With an aging population and a labor shortage on the horizon, there's also growing interest in medical and caregiving applications for humanoid robots.

DeepSeek revived the conversation about chips and the way the US seeks to control where the best chips end up. How do the chip wars affect humanoid-robot development in China?

Training humanoid robots currently doesn't demand as much computing power as training large language models, since there isn't enough physical movement data to feed into models at scale. But as robots improve, they'll need high-performance chips, and US sanctions will be a limiting factor. Chinese chipmakers are trying to catch up, but it's a challenge.

Google has built an AI laboratory assistant to help scientists accelerate biomedical research [non-paywalled source], as companies race to create specialised applications from the cutting-edge technology. From a report: The US tech group's so-called co-scientist tool helps researchers identify gaps in their knowledge and propose new ideas that could speed up scientific discovery. "What we're trying to do with our project is see whether technology like the AI co-scientist can give these researchers superpowers," said Alan Karthikesalingam, a senior staff clinician scientist at Google.

[...] Early tests of Google's new tool with experts from Stanford University, Imperial College London and Houston Methodist hospital found it was able to generate scientific hypotheses that showed promising results. The tool was able to reach the same conclusions -- for a novel gene transfer mechanism that helps scientists understand the spread of antimicrobial resistance -- as a new breakthrough from researchers at Imperial. Imperial's results were not in the public domain as they were being peer-reviewed in a top scientific journal. This showed that Google's co-scientist tool was able to reach the same hypothesis using AI reasoning in a matter of just days, compared with the years the university team spent researching the problem.

Nvidia has confirmed on its forums that the RTX 50 series GPUs no longer support 32-bit PhysX. Tom's Hardware reports: As far as we know, there are no 64-bit games with integrated PhysX technology, thus terminating the tech entirely on RTX 50 series GPUs and newer. RTX 40 series and older will still be able to run 32-bit CUDA applications and thus PhysX, but regardless, the technology is now officially retired, starting with Blackwell. [...]

The only way now to run PhysX on RTX 50 series GPUs (or newer) is to install a secondary RTX 40 series or older graphics card and slave it to PhysX duty in the Nvidia control panel. As far as we are aware, Nvidia has not disabled this sort of functionality. But the writing is on the wall for PhysX, and we doubt there will be any future games that attempt to use the API.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: HP will acquire assets from Humane, the maker of a wearable Ai Pin introduced in late 2023, for $116 million. The deal will include the majority of Humane's employees in addition to its software platform and intellectual property, the company said Tuesday. It will not include Humane's Ai pin device business, which will be wound down, an HP spokesperson said. Humane's team, including founders Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, will form a new division at HP to help integrate artificial intelligence into the company's personal computers, printers and connected conference rooms, said Tuan Tran, who leads HP's AI initiatives. Chaudhri and Bongiorno were design and software engineers at Apple before founding the startup. [...]

Tran said he was particularly impressed with aspects of Humane's design, such as the ability to orchestrate AI models running both on-device and in the cloud. The deal is expected to close at the end of the month, HP said. "There will be a time and place for pure AI devices," Tran said. "But there is going to be AI in all our devices -- that's how we can help our business customers be more productive."

An anonymous reader shares a report: U.S. personal injury law firm Morgan & Morgan sent an urgent email this month to its more than 1,000 lawyers: Artificial intelligence can invent fake case law, and using made-up information in a court filing could get you fired. A federal judge in Wyoming had just threatened to sanction two lawyers at the firm who included fictitious case citations in a lawsuit against Walmart. One of the lawyers admitted in court filings last week that he used an AI program that "hallucinated" the cases and apologized for what he called an inadvertent mistake.

AI's penchant for generating legal fiction in case filings has led courts around the country to question or discipline lawyers in at least seven cases over the last two years, and created a new high-tech headache for litigants and judges, Reuters found. The Walmart case stands out because it involves a well-known law firm and a big corporate defendant. But examples like it have cropped up in all kinds of lawsuits since chatbots like ChatGPT ushered in the AI era, highlighting a new litigation risk.

A new report released by Cisco finds that 97% of CEOs surveyed are planning AI integration. Similarly, 92% of companies recently surveyed by McKinsey plan to invest more in generative AI over the next three years. Fortune: To that end, many companies are seeking tech-savvy finance talent, according to a new report by software company Datarails. The researchers analyzed 6,000 job listings within the CFO's office -- CFO, controller, financial planning and analysis (FP&A), and accountant -- advertised on job search websites including LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed, Job2Careers, and ZipRecruiter.

Of the 1,000 job listings for CFOs in January 2025, 27% included AI in the job description. This compares to 8% mentions of AI in 1,000 CFO job listings at the same time last year. Take, for example, Peaks Healthcare Consulting which required a CFO candidate to "continuously learn and integrate AI to improve financial processes and decision making," Datarails notes in the report. Regarding FP&A professionals, in January 2025, 35% of analyst roles mentioned AI competency as a requirement, compared to 14% in January 2024, according to the report.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has updated its business registry information with key changes to personnel and operational scope, signaling a shift towards monetizing its cost-efficient-yet-powerful large language models. From a report: The Hangzhou-based firm's updated business scope includes "internet information services," according to business registry service Tianyancha. The move is the first sign of DeepSeek's desire to monetise its popular technology, according to Zhang Yi, founder and chief analyst at consultancy iiMedia.

With eyes on developing a business model, DeepSeek intends to shift away from being purely focused on research and development, Zhang added. "The move reflects that for a company like DeepSeek, which managed to accumulate technology and develop a product, monetisation is becoming a necessary next step," Zhang said. DeepSeek's previous business scope said it engages in engineering and AI software development, among others, hinting at a more research-driven approach.

SanDisk aims to produce petabyte-scale SSDs through its new UltraQLC platform, though the company has not specified a release timeline. The technology, it said, combines SanDisk's BICS 8 QLC 3D NAND with a proprietary 64-channel controller featuring hardware accelerators that offload storage functions from firmware to reduce latency and improve reliability.

The initial UltraQLC drives will use 2Tb NAND chips to reach 128TB capacities, with future iterations targeting 256TB, 512TB, and eventually 1PB as higher-density NAND becomes available. The controller dynamically adjusts power based on workload and employs an advanced bus multiplexer to handle increased data loads from high-density QLC stacks, the company said.

Mexico has threatened legal action against Google after the tech company refused to fully restore the name Gulf of Mexico on its mapping service, escalating a dispute sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump's move to rename the body of water. Google Maps currently displays the water body as Gulf of America within U.S. territory, Gulf of Mexico within Mexican borders, and Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America) elsewhere, according to a letter from Google vice president Cris Turner to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Mexico argues the policy violates its sovereignty since the U.S. controls only 46% of the gulf, while Mexico and Cuba control 49% and 5% respectively. The historic name Gulf of Mexico, dating to 1607, is recognized by the United Nations. The dispute has strained U.S.-Mexico relations, with the White House barring Associated Press reporters from events over the news agency's naming policy.

A tech enthusiast has successfully transplanted the internal components of an iPhone SE 3 into the body of a Nokia Lumia 1020 Windows Phone, according to a post on Reddit's r/hackintosh forum. The modification preserves all key functions of the iPhone SE 3, including its 12-megapixel camera, 5G capabilities, and Touch ID sensor, which has been relocated to the back of the device. The project retains the Lumia 1020's distinctive design while upgrading its outdated microUSB port to Apple's Lightning connector.

The creator adapted the Lumia's original camera shutter button to work as a secondary volume control that can trigger photos in the iPhone's camera app. The only significant feature lost in the conversion was the headphone jack.

Ten years after publishing his influential book on data privacy, security expert Bruce Schneier warns that surveillance has only intensified, with both government agencies and corporations collecting more personal information than ever before. "Nothing has changed since 2015," Schneier told The Register in an interview. "The NSA and their counterparts around the world are still engaging in bulk surveillance to the extent of their abilities."

The widespread adoption of cloud services, Internet-of-Things devices, and smartphones has made it nearly impossible for individuals to protect their privacy, said Schneier. Even Apple, which markets itself as privacy-focused, faces limitations when its Chinese business interests are at stake. While some regulation has emerged, including Europe's General Data Protection Regulation and various U.S. state laws, Schneier argues these measures fail to address the core issue of surveillance capitalism's entrenchment as a business model.

The rise of AI poses new challenges, potentially undermining recent privacy gains like end-to-end encryption. As AI assistants require cloud computing power to process personal data, users may have to surrender more information to tech companies. Despite the grim short-term outlook, Schneier remains cautiously optimistic about privacy's long-term future, predicting that current surveillance practices will eventually be viewed as unethical as sweatshops are today. However, he acknowledges this transformation could take 50 years or more.

Nicholas Carr wrote The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. But his new book looks at how social media and digital communication technologies "are changing us individually and collectively," writes the Los Angeles Review of Books.

The book's title? Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart . But if these systems are indeed tearing us apart, the reasons are neither obvious nor simple. Carr suggests that this isn't really about the evil behavior of our tech overlords but about how we have "been telling ourselves lies about communication — and about ourselves.... Well before the net came along," says Carr, "[the] evidence was telling us that flooding the public square with more information from more sources was not going to open people's minds or engender more thoughtful discussions. It wasn't even going to make people better informed...."

At root, we're the problem. Our minds don't simply distill useful knowledge from a mass of raw data. They use shortcuts, rules of thumb, heuristic hacks — which is how we were able to think fast enough to survive on the savage savanna. We pay heed, for example, to what we experience most often. "Repetition is, in the human mind, a proxy for facticity," says Carr. "What's true is what comes out of the machine most often...." Reality can't compete with the internet's steady diet of novelty and shallow, ephemeral rewards. The ease of the user interface, congenial even to babies, creates no opportunity for what writer Antón Barba-Kay calls "disciplined acculturation."

Not only are these technologies designed to leverage our foibles, but we are also changed by them, as Carr points out: "We adapt to technology's contours as we adapt to the land's and the climate's." As a result, by designing technology, we redesign ourselves. "In engineering what we pay attention to, [social media] engineers [...] how we talk, how we see other people, how we experience the world," Carr writes. We become dislocated, abstracted: the self must itself be curated in memeable form. "Looking at screens made me think in screens," writes poet Annelyse Gelman. "Looking at pixels made me think in pixels...."

That's not to say that we can't have better laws and regulations, checks and balances. One suggestion is to restore friction into these systems. One might, for instance, make it harder to unreflectively spread lies by imposing small transactional costs, as has been proposed to ease the pathologies of automated market trading. An option Carr doesn't mention is to require companies to perform safety studies on their products, as we demand of pharmaceutical companies. Such measures have already been proposed for AI. But Carr doubts that increasing friction will make much difference. And placing more controls on social media platforms raises free speech concerns... We can't change or constrain the tech, says Carr, but we can change ourselves. We can choose to reject the hyperreal for the material. We can follow Samuel Johnson's refutation of immaterialism by "kicking the stone," reminding ourselves of what is real.

"Meta is involved in a class action lawsuit alleging copyright infringement, a claim the company disputes..." writes the tech news site Hot Hardware.

But the site adds that newly unsealed court documents "reveal that Meta allegedly used a minimum of 81.7TB of illegally torrented data sourced from shadow libraries to train its AI models." Internal emails further show that Meta employees expressed concerns about this practice. Some employees voiced strong ethical objections, with one noting that using content from sites like LibGen, known for distributing copyrighted material, would be unethical. A research engineer with Meta, Nikolay Bashlykov, also noted that "torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn't feel right," highlighting his discomfort surrounding the practice.

Additionally, the documents suggest that these concerns, including discussions about using data from LibGen, reached CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who may have ultimately approved the activity. Furthermore, the documents showed that despite these misgivings, employees discussed using VPNs to mask Meta's IP address to create anonymity, enabling them to download and share torrented data without it being easily traced back to the company's network.

"Security researchers say the Chinese government-linked hacking group, Salt Typhoon, is continuing to compromise telecommunications providers," reports TechCrunch, "despite the recent sanctions imposed by the U.S. government on the group."

TechRadar reports that the Chinese state-sponsored threat actor is "hitting not just American organizations, but also those from the UK, South Africa, and elsewhere around the world." The latest intrusions were spotted by cybersecurity researchers from Recorded Future, which said the group is targeting internet-exposed web interfaces of Cisco's IOS software that powers different routers and switches. These devices have known vulnerabilities that the threat actors are actively exploiting to gain initial access, root privileges, and more. More than 12,000 Cisco devices were found connected to the wider internet, and exposed to risk, Recorded Future further explained. However, Salt Typhoon is focusing on a "smaller subset" of telecoms and university networks.
"The hackers attempted to exploit vulnerabilities in at least 1,000 Cisco devices," reports NextGov, "allowing them to access higher-level privileges of the hardware and change their configuration settings to allow for persistent access to the networks they're connected on... Over half of the Cisco appliances targeted by Salt Typhoon were located in the U.S., South America and India, with the rest spread across more than 100 countries." Between December and January, the unit, widely known as Salt Typhoon, "possibly targeted" — based on devices that were accessed — offices in the University of California, Los Angeles, California State University, Loyola Marymount University and Utah Tech University, according to a report from cyber threat intelligence firm Recorded Future... The Cisco devices were mainly associated with telecommunications firms, but 13 of them were linked to the universities in the U.S. and some in other nations... "Often involved in cutting-edge research, universities are prime targets for Chinese state-sponsored threat activity groups to acquire valuable research data and intellectual property," said the report, led by the company's Insikt Group, which oversees its threat research.

The cyberspies also compromised Cisco platforms at a U.S.-based affiliate of a prominent United Kingdom telecom operator and a South African provider, both unnamed, the findings added. The hackers also "carried out a reconnaissance of multiple IP addresses" owned by Mytel, a telecom operator based in Myanmar...

"In 2023, Cisco published a security advisory disclosing multiple vulnerabilities in the web UI feature in Cisco IOS XE software," a Cisco spokesperson said in a statement. "We continue to strongly urge customers to follow recommendations outlined in the advisory and upgrade to the available fixed software release."