An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge's Victoria Song: The original Pixel Watch was late to the game. For years, there had been rumors of a Google smartwatch that never materialized. Then, when it finally arrived, it was a quintessential first-gen device, with thicc bezels, dismal battery life, and a host of quirks that needed ironing out. My DMs were full of people wondering when the watch would be unceremoniously dumped into Google's infamous product graveyard. A part of me wondered if Google was going to spend the next decade playing catch-up. Fast forward to 2025, and I'm holding the Pixel Watch 4 at Google's office in New York City. On the surface (and my wrist), it doesn't look like much has changed. But after fiddling with a few menus, watching some demos, and talking over the updates, it's evident that Google has a clear vision about where smartwatches are going. [...]

Starting with hardware, the Pixel Watch 4 has a new domed "Actua 360" display -- as in, the display itself, not just the glass, is also domed. What this translates to is about 10 percent more visible screen space, 15 percent thinner bezels, and a 50 percent increase in maximum brightness to 3,000 nits. On a table, there's a lineup of the Pixel Watch 2, 3, and 4 with the flashlight app turned on. Side-by-side, the improvements are striking. Material 3 Expressive in Wear OS 6also helps emphasize the Pixel Watch's roundness. (No squircles here, folks.) The widgets have more rounded edges, and each screen has been redesigned to be more glanceable, fitting more complications. It's not Liquid Glass, but there are subtle animations when flitting through menus that call your attention to the Pixel Watch's rain droplet-inspired design. Altogether, it's a design tweak that makes senseandis aesthetically pleasing. Google also says battery life has improved. The 41mm watch gets an estimated 30 hours on a single charge, while the 45mm gets 40 hours. That can stretch up to two days in battery saver mode for the smaller watch and three days for the larger one. I couldn't test that at a hands-on, but I did get to see the improved fast charging in action.

As with theGalaxy Watch 8, Gemini has a big presence on the Pixel Watch 4. It replaces Google Assistant and is capable of more complex queries -- even if none have been able to blow my mind yet. But, in a bid to make interacting with Gemini as smooth as possible, the speaker and haptic engines have also been updated so you can hear and interact more easily. There's also a new raise-to-talk gesture that lets you speak to Gemini without having to use the wake word. The processor has been upgraded to the Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 to enable more on-device AI features, as well, like smart replies. On the Pixel Watch 4, you'll get more smart reply options to texts that refer to the content of your conversations. They're not confined to the default Messages app, either. But the major AI update this time around is a Gemini-powered health coach that's slated to arrive alongside a revamped Fitbit app in October. ... The gist is the health coach will act more like a personal trainer than a Captain Obvious summary generator. If you sleep poorly, it'll adjust workout suggestions. (This is also why Google is also introducing an improved sleep algorithm.) You can tell it that you've been injured, and that too will be taken into consideration when generating weekly fitness plans. [...]

Another big first is the Satellite SOS mode. If you're without your phone and in a remote area with no signal, you can still call emergency services. (So long as you have the LTE version of the watch.) The big thing here is that there's no extra subscription cost. The watch will also feature more accurate dual-frequency GPS -- a nice update given that I've had issues with the Pixel Watch's GPS maps in the past. The Pixel Watch 4 is priced at $349.99 and is available for pre-order now.

Two Harvard dropouts are launching Halo X, a $249 pair of AI-powered smart glasses that continuously listen, record, and transcribe conversations while displaying real-time information to the wearer. "Our goal is to make glasses that make you super intelligent the moment you put them on," said AnhPhu Nguyen, co-founder of Halo. Co-founder Caine Ardayfio said the glasses "give you infinite memory."

"The AI listens to every conversation you have and uses that knowledge to tell you what to say ... kinda like IRL Cluely," Ardayfio told TechCrunch. "If somebody says a complex word or asks you a question, like, 'What's 37 to the third power?' or something like that, then it'll pop up on the glasses." From the report: Ardayfio and Nguyen have raised $1 million to develop the glasses, led by Pillar VC, with support from Soma Capital, Village Global, and Morningside Venture. The glasses will be priced at $249 and will be available for preorder starting Wednesday. Ardayfio called the glasses "the first real step towards vibe thinking."

The two Ivy League dropouts, who have since moved into their own version of the Hacker Hostel in the San Francisco Bay Area, recently caused a stir after developing a facial-recognition app for Meta's smart Ray-Ban glasses to prove that the tech could be used to dox people. As a potential early competitor to Meta's smart glasses, Ardayfio said Meta, given its history of security and privacy scandals, had to rein in its product in ways that Halo can ultimately capitalize on. [...]

For now, Halo X glasses only have a display and a microphone, but no camera, although the two are exploring the possibility of adding it to a future model. Users still need to have their smartphones handy to help power the glasses and get "real time info prompts and answers to questions," per Nguyen. The glasses, which are manufactured by another company that the startup didn't name, are tethered to an accompanying app on the owner's phone, where the glasses essentially outsource the computing since they don't have enough power to do it on the device itself. Under the hood, the smart glasses use Google's Gemini and Perplexity as its chatbot engine, according to the two co-founders. Gemini is better for math and reasoning, whereas they use Perplexity to scrape the internet, they said.

Google announced Gemini for Home, a new AI-powered voice assistant that will replace Google Assistant on Nest smart speakers and displays starting in October. Powered by Gemini's advanced reasoning and conversational capabilities, it promises more natural interactions, complex task handling, and features like Gemini Live for back-and-forth conversations. The Verge reports: According to a blog post by Anish Kattukaran, chief product officer of Google Home and Nest, using Gemini for Home will "feel fundamentally new." He says the new voice assistant leverages the "advanced reasoning, inference and search capabilities" of Google's AI models, along with adaptations for the home that allow for more natural interactions to complete more complex tasks. In short, it should be an assistant that can better understand context, nuance, and intention -- a complete change from its predecessor.

For example, Kattukaran says Gemini for Home can accurately respond to requests like "turn off the lights everywhere except my bedroom," "play that song from this year's summer blockbuster about race cars," or "set a timer for perfectly blanched broccoli." It will also create lists, calendar entries, and reminders more easily than before, he says.

Another big upgrade is that Gemini Live will be part of Gemini for Home, bringing more conversational back-and-forth voice interactions to Google Home without needing to repeatedly say "Hey Google." Kattukaran says this will allow for more detailed and personalized help -- from cooking ("I have spinach, eggs, cream cheese, and smoked salmon in the fridge. Help me make a delicious meal") to brainstorming how to buy a new car or figuring out how to fix your dishwasher, as well as more creative tasks like generating bedtime stories. [...] Google hasn't announced pricing for the paid tier of Gemini for Home, but Gemini Live, with its more advanced capabilities, is a likely candidate for a premium plan.

Google announced its Pixel 10 smartphone lineup today, introducing the Tensor G5 processor and Qi2 magnetic wireless charging across four models priced from $799 to $1,799. The base Pixel 10 adds a 5x telephoto lens for the first time at $799. The Pixel 10 Pro maintains its $999 starting price in a 6.3-inch size while the Pro XL starts at $1,199 for the 6.8-inch variant.

The $1,799 Pixel 10 Pro Fold becomes the first foldable phone to achieve IP68 water and dust resistance through a redesigned gearless hinge. All models feature 3,000-nit peak brightness displays, Android 16, and Google's Material 3 Expressive interface redesign. The Tensor G5 enables on-device AI features including Magic Cue for contextual information retrieval and Camera Coach for photography guidance. Pro models gain 100x hybrid zoom capabilities through computational photography. Preorders begin today for August 28 availability, except the Pro Fold which ships October 9.

Google's AI Overviews has returned fraudulent customer service phone numbers in multiple reported incidents.

A Reddit user reported their friend received a fake number when searching "Swiggy [an Indian food delivery firm] customer care number," leading to attempted screen-sharing and money request scams. Facebook user Alex Rivlin encountered scammers after searching "royal caribbean customer service phone number 24 hours usa." The fraudulent representative requested credit card information before Rivlin detected the scam. Google said it is "aware" of the issue and has "taken action" against identified numbers. The company stated it is working to "improve results."

The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025, a new report published by MIT's NANDA initiative, reveals that while generative AI holds promise for enterprises, most initiatives to drive rapid revenue growth are falling flat. Fortune: Despite the rush to integrate powerful new models, about 5% of AI pilot programs achieve rapid revenue acceleration; the vast majority stall, delivering little to no measurable impact on P&L. The research -- based on 150 interviews with leaders, a survey of 350 employees, and an analysis of 300 public AI deployments -- paints a clear divide between success stories and stalled projects.

To unpack these findings, I spoke with Aditya Challapally, the lead author of the report, and a research contributor to project NANDA at MIT. "Some large companies' pilots and younger startups are really excelling with generative AI," Challapally said. Startups led by 19- or 20-year-olds, for example, "have seen revenues jump from zero to $20 million in a year," he said. "It's because they pick one pain point, execute well, and partner smartly with companies who use their tools," he added.

But for 95% of companies in the dataset, generative AI implementation is falling short. The core issue? Not the quality of the AI models, but the "learning gap" for both tools and organizations. While executives often blame regulation or model performance, MIT's research points to flawed enterprise integration. Generic tools like ChatGPT excel for individuals because of their flexibility, but they stall in enterprise use since they don't learn from or adapt to workflows, Challapally explained.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney told the Financial Times that the UK Competition and Markets Authority's December decision to delay mandating alternative app stores on iPhones was a "blunder" that leaves Britain "well behind" other jurisdictions.

The CMA postponed until next year whether to require Apple to allow third-party app stores or sideloading, unlike the EU's Digital Markets Act. Fortnite remains unavailable on UK iOS devices following Epic's years-long dispute over Apple's 30% commission fees. The regulator said it would prioritize forcing Apple and Google to allow alternative payment systems.

OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Go, a $4.57 monthly subscription tier initially available only in India. The service provides, compared to the free tier, extended access to GPT-5, image generation, file uploads, advanced data analysis, longer conversation memory, and custom GPTs at Rs 399 per month. ChatGPT Go excludes features found in the $20 ChatGPT Plus tier including legacy models like 4o, Sora video generation, deep research, agent mode, and connectors. OpenAI said "other countries and regions may be eligible in the future" for ChatGPT Go.

India has emerged as a key market for American technology firms looking for users. In the past 15 years, firms like Amazon, Google, and Meta, alongside venture capitalists and private equity, have poured more than $200 billion into the country, all chasing its vast pool of users and the businesses serving this population. India is the second largest market for OpenAI, startup's chief executive Sam Altman said in a podcast recently. Perplexity partnered with Indian telecoms giant Bharti Airtel last month to provide its premium Pro service to 360 million customers for free for an entire year.

A real estate developer searched Google for a cruise ship company's customer service number, reports the Washington Post, calling the number in Google's AI Overview. "He chatted with a knowledgeable representative and provided his credit card details," the Post's reporter notes — but the next day he "saw fishy credit card charges and realized that he'd been fooled by an impostor for Royal Caribbean customer service."

And the Post's reporter found the same phone number "appearing to impersonate other cruise company hotlines and popping up in Google and ChatGPT" (including Disney and Carnival's Princess line): He'd encountered an apparent AI twist on a classic scam targeting travelers and others searching Google for customer help lines of airlines and other businesses... The rep knew the cost and pickup locations for Royal Caribbean shuttles in Venice. [And "had persuasive explanations" when questioned about paying certain fees and gratuities.] The rep offered to waive the shuttle fees...

Here's how a scam like this typically works: Bad guys write on online review sites, message boards and other websites claiming that a number they control belongs to a company's customer service center. When you search Google, its technology looks for clues to relevant and credible information, including online advice. If scammer-controlled numbers are repeated as truth often enough online, Google may suggest them to people searching for a business.

Google is a patsy for scammers — and we're the ultimate victims. Google's AI Overviews and OpenAI's ChatGPT may use similar clues as Google's search engine to spit out information gleaned from the web. That makes them new AI patsies for the old impostor number scams.
"I've seen so many versions of similar trickery targeting Google users that I largely blame the company for not doing enough to safeguard its essential gateway to information," the reporter concludes, (adding "So did two experts in Google's inner workings.") The Post is now advising its reader to "be suspicious of phone numbers in Google results or in chatbots."

Reached for comment, a Google spokesman told the Post they'd "taken action" on several impostor numbers identified by the reporter. That spokesman also said Google continues to "work on broader improvements" to "address rarer queries like these." OpenAI said that many of the webpages that ChatGPT referenced with the bogus cruise number appear to have been removed, and that it can take time for its information to update "after abusive content is removed at the source."
Meanwhile, the man with the bogus charges has now canceled his credit card, the Post reports, with the charges being reversed. Reflecting on his experience, he tells the Post's readers "I can't believe that I fell for it. Be careful."

Protected KVM (pKVM), the hypervisor powering the Android Virtualization Framework, has officially achieved SESIP Level 5 certification (in testing by cybersecurity lab Dekra against the TrustCB SESIP scheme).

Google's security blog called the certification "a watershed moment," and a "new benchmark" for both open-source security — and for the future of consumer electronics. "It provides a single, open-source, and exceptionally high-quality firmware base that all device manufacturers can build upon." This makes pKVM the first software security system designed for large-scale deployment in consumer electronics to meet this assurance bar. The implications for the future of secure mobile technology are profound. With this level of security assurance, Android is now positioned to securely support the next generation of high-criticality isolated workloads. This includes vital features, such as on-device AI workloads that can operate on ultra-personalized data, with the highest assurances of privacy and integrity...

Achieving Security Evaluation Standard for IoT Platforms (SESIP) Level 5 is a landmark because it incorporates AVA_VAN.5, the highest level of vulnerability analysis and penetration testing under the ISO 15408 (Common Criteria) standard. A system certified to this level has been evaluated to be resistant to highly skilled, knowledgeable, well-motivated, and well-funded attackers who may have insider knowledge and access. This certification is the cornerstone of the next-generation of Android's multi-layered security strategy. Many of the TEEs (Trusted Execution Environments) used in the industry have not been formally certified or have only achieved lower levels of security assurance... Looking ahead, Android device manufacturers will be required to use isolation technology that meets this same level of security for various security operations that the device relies on. Protected KVM ensures that every user can benefit from a consistent, transparent, and verifiably secure foundation.
"This achievement represents just one important aspect of the immense, multi-year dedication from the Linux and KVM developer communities and multiple engineering teams at Google developing pKVM and AVF," the post concludes.

"We look forward to seeing the open-source community and Android ecosystem continue to build on this foundation, delivering a new era of high-assurance mobile technology for users."

Duolingo's stock peaked at $529.05 on May 16th. Three months later, it's down 38% — with that drop starting shortly after backlash to the CEO's promise to make it an "AI-first" company.

Yet "The backlash against Duolingo going 'AI-first' didn't even matter," TechCrunch wrote August 7th, noting Duolingo's stock price surged almost 30% overnight. That surge vanished within two days — and instead of a 30% surge, Duolingo now shows a 5% drop over the last eight days.

Yahoo Finance blames the turnaround on OpenAI's GPT-5 demo, "which demonstrated, among many other things, its ability to create a language-learning tool from a short prompt." OpenAI researcher Yann Dubois asked the model to create an app to help his partner learn French. And in a few minutes GPT-5 churned out several iterations, with flashcards, a progress tracker, and even a simple snake-style game with a French twist, a mouse and cheese variation to learn new vocab....

[Duolingo's] corporate lawyers, of course, did warn against this in its annual 10-K, albeit in boilerplate language. Tucked into the risk factors section, Duolingo notes, "It is possible that a new product could gain rapid scale at the expense of existing brands through harnessing a new technology (such as generative AI)." Consider this another warning to anyone making software. [The article adds later that "Rapid development and fierce competition can leave firms suddenly behind — perceived as under threat, inferior, or obsolete — from every iteration of OpenAI's models and from the moves of other influential AI players..."]

There's also irony in the wild swings. Part of Duolingo's successful quarter stemmed from the business's efficient use of AI. Gross margins, the company said, outperformed management expectations due to lower AI costs. And AI conversational features have become part of the company's learning tools, helping achieve double-digit subscriber growth... But the enthusiasm for AI, which led to the initial stock bump this week, also led to the clawback. AI giveth and taketh away.
Meanwhile, this week a blog announced it was "able to activate a long-rumored Practice feature" hidden in Google Translate, notes PC Magazine, with the blogger even sharing a screen recording of "AI-led features within Translate" showing its ability to create personalized lessons. "Google's take on Duolingo is effectively ready for release," the Android Authority blog concluded. "Furthermore, the fact that a Telegram user spotted this in their app suggests that Google is already testing this in a limited fashion."

Duolingo's CEO revisited the backlash to his original "AI-first" promise today in a new interview today with the New York Times, emphasizing his hope that AI would only reduce the company's use of contractors. "We've never laid off any full-time employees. We don't plan to...." But: In the next five years, people's jobs will probably change. We're seeing it with many of our engineers. They may not be doing some rote tasks anymore. What will probably happen is that one person will be able to accomplish more, rather than having fewer people.

NYT: How are you managing that transition for employees?

Every Friday morning, we have this thing: It's a bad acronym, f-r-A-I-days. I don't know how to pronounce it. Those mornings, we let each team experiment on how to get more efficient to use A.I.
Yesterday there was also a new announcement from attorneys at Pomerantz LLP, which calls itself "the oldest law firm in the world dedicated to representing the rights of defrauded investors."

The firm announced it was investigating "whether Duolingo and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices."

Matt Asay answered questions from Slashdot readers in 2010 as the then-COO of Canonical. Today he runs developer marketing at Oracle (after holding similar positions at AWS, Adobe, and MongoDB).

And this week Asay contributed an opinion piece to InfoWorld reminding us of open source contributions from companies where "enlightened self-interest underwrites the boring but vital work — CI hardware, security audits, long-term maintenance — that grassroots volunteers struggle to fund." [I]f you look at the Linux 6.15 kernel contributor list (as just one example), the top contributor, as measured by change sets, is Intel... Another example: Take the last year of contributions to Kubernetes. Google (of course), Red Hat, Microsoft, VMware, and AWS all headline the list. Not because it's sexy, but because they make billions of dollars selling Kubernetes services... Some companies (including mine) sell proprietary software, and so it's easy to mentally bucket these vendors with license fees or closed cloud services. That bias makes it easy to ignore empirical contribution data, which indicates open source contributions on a grand scale.
Asay notes Oracle's many contributions to Linux: In the [Linux kernel] 6.1 release cycle, Oracle emerged as the top contributor by lines of code changed across the entire kernel... [I]t's Oracle that patches memory-management structures and shepherds block-device drivers for the Linux we all use. Oracle's kernel work isn't a one-off either. A few releases earlier, the company topped the "core of the kernel" leaderboard in 5.18, and it hasn't slowed down since, helping land the Maple Tree data structure and other performance boosters. Those patches power Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), of course, but they also speed up Ubuntu on your old ThinkPad. Self-interested contributions? Absolutely. Public benefit? Equally absolute.

This isn't just an Oracle thing. When we widen the lens beyond Oracle, the pattern holds. In 2023, I wrote about Amazon's "quiet open source revolution," showing how AWS was suddenly everywhere in GitHub commit logs despite the company's earlier reticence. (Disclosure: I used to run AWS' open source strategy and marketing team.) Back in 2017, I argued that cloud vendors were open sourcing code as on-ramps to proprietary services rather than end-products. Both observations remain true, but they miss a larger point: Motives aside, the code flows and the community benefits.

If you care about outcomes, the motives don't really matter. Or maybe they do: It's far more sustainable to have companies contributing because it helps them deliver revenue than to contribute out of charity. The former is durable; the latter is not.
There's another practical consideration: scale. "Large vendors wield resources that community projects can't match."

Asay closes by urging readers to "Follow the commits" and "embrace mixed motives... the point isn't sainthood; it's sustainable, shared innovation. Every company (and really every developer) contributes out of some form of self-interest. That's the rule, not the exception. Embrace it." Going forward, we should expect to see even more counterintuitive contributor lists. Generative AI is turbocharging code generation, but someone still has to integrate those patches, write tests, and shepherd them upstream. The companies with the most to lose from brittle infrastructure — cloud providers, database vendors, silicon makers — will foot the bill. If history is a guide, they'll do so quietly.

Last month, Python "reached the highest ranking a programming language ever had in the TIOBE index," according to TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen.

"We thought Python couldn't grow any further, but AI code assistants let Python take yet another step forward." According to recent studies of Stanford University (Yegor Denisov-Blanch), AI code assistants such as Microsoft Copilot, Cursor or Google Gemini Code Assist are 20% more effective if used for popular programming languages. The reason for this is obvious: there is more code for these languages available to train the underlying models. This trend is visible in the TIOBE index as well, where we see a consolidation of languages at the top. Why would you start to learn a new obscure language for which no AI assistance is available? This is the modern way of saying that you don't want to learn a new language that is hardly documented and/or has too few libraries that can help you.
TIOBE's "Programming Community Index" attempts to calculate the popularity of languages using the number of skilled engineers, courses, and third-party vendors. It nows gives Python a 26.14% rating, which TechRepublic notes "is well ahead of the next two programming languages on this month's leaderboard: C++ is at 9.18% and C is 9.03%." But the first top six languages haven't changed since last year...

1. Python
2. C++
3. C
4. Java
5. C#
6. JavaScript

Since August of 2024 SQL has dropped from its #7 rank down to #12 (meaning Visual Basic and Go each rise up one rank from their position a year ago, into the #7 and #8 positions).

In the last year Perl has risen from the #25 position to #9, beating out Delphi/Oracle Pascal at #10, and Fortran at #11 (last year's #10). TIOBE CEO Jansen "told TechRepublic in an email that many people were asking why Perl was becoming more popular, but he didn't have a definitive answer. He said he double-checked the underlying data and found the increase to be accurate, though the reason for the shift remains unclear."

New data from Digital Content Next shows Google's AI Overviews are linked to notable drops in publisher referral traffic, with surveyed sites seeing year-over-year declines between 1% and 25%. From a report: Digital Content Next (DCN), which counts the New York Times, Conde Nast and Vox among its approximately 40 member companies, checked in with 19 of them between May and June to see what was happening to their Google search referral traffic. The upshot: Google AI Overviews is indeed harming publisher traffic. Organic search referral traffic from Google is declining broadly, with the majority of DCN member sites -- spanning both news and entertainment -- experiencing traffic losses from Google search between 1% and 25%. Twelve of the respondent companies were news brands, and seven were non-news.

Over eight weeks in May and June 2025, the median Google Search referral was down almost every week, with losses outpacing gains two-to-one. For the seven non-news brands in the survey, the downward slope was steady and unbroken. Across the eight weeks, the median YoY decline in referred traffic from Google Search was -10% overall, -7% for news brands, and -14% for non-news brands, per the results.

Jason Kint, CEO of DCN, stressed that these losses are a direct consequence of Google AI Overviews, as many publishers claimed in their responses. The latest data offers a "ground truth" of what's actually happening, cutting through Google's vague claims about "quality clicks," made in its latest post, he added. "I think all publishers are ignoring Google's post. But this probably helps ground that," added Kint. The findings come shortly after a recent Pew survey of 900 U.S. consumers found that AI summaries are making users less likely to click through to links. The U.K.'s Professional Publishers Association (PPA) also found that AI Overviews and AI Mode are steering users toward zero-click results, reducing visits to source sites, and expanding into Google Discover where sources are relegated to citations. Evidence from members shows click-through rates falling 10-25% year-over-year despite stable rankings, with examples including a lifestyle publisher's CTR dropping from 5.1% to 0.6% and an automotive publisher's CTR falling from 2.75% to 1.71% despite increased visibility.

The African Union has endorsed the "Correct The Map" campaign, urging governments and global institutions to replace the distorted 16th-century Mercator projection with the Equal Earth map that more accurately represents Africa's true size. Reuters reports: "It might seem to be just a map, but in reality, it is not," AU Commission deputy chairperson Selma Malika Haddadi told Reuters, saying the Mercator fostered a false impression that Africa was "marginal," despite being the world's second-largest continent by area, with 54 nations and over a billion people. Such stereotypes influence media, education and policy, she said. Criticism of the Mercator map is not new, but the 'Correct The Map' campaign led by advocacy groups Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa has revived the debate, urging organizations to adopt the 2018 Equal Earth projection, which tries to reflect countries' true sizes.

"The current size of the map of Africa is wrong," Moky Makura, executive director of Africa No Filter, said. "It's the world's longest misinformation and disinformation campaign, and it just simply has to stop." Fara Ndiaye, co-founder of Speak Up Africa, said the Mercator affected Africans' identity and pride, especially children who might encounter it early in school. "We're actively working on promoting a curriculum where the Equal Earth projection will be the main standard across all (African) classrooms," Ndiaye said, adding she hoped it would also be the one used by global institutions, including Africa-based ones. [...]

The Mercator projection is still widely used, including by schools and tech companies. Google Maps switched from Mercator on desktop to a 3D globe view in 2018, though users can still switch back to the Mercator if they prefer. On the mobile app, however, the Mercator projection remains the default. 'Correct The Map' wants organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations to adopt the Equal Earth map. A World Bank spokesperson said they already use the Winkel-Tripel or Equal Earth for static maps and are phasing out Mercator on web maps.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google has announced a tiny version of its Gemma open model designed to run on local devices. Google says the new Gemma 3 270M can be tuned in a snap and maintains robust performance despite its small footprint. [...] Running an AI model locally has numerous benefits, including enhanced privacy and lower latency. Gemma 3 270M was designed with these kinds of use cases in mind. In testing with a Pixel 9 Pro, the new Gemma was able to run 25 conversations on the Tensor G4 chip and use just 0.75 percent of the device's battery. That makes it by far the most efficient Gemma model.

Developers shouldn't expect the same performance level of a multi-billion-parameter model, but Gemma 3 270M has its uses. Google used the IFEval benchmark, which tests a model's ability to follow instructions, to show that its new model punches above its weight. Gemma 3 270M hits a score of 51.2 percent in this test, which is higher than other lightweight models that have more parameters. The new Gemma falls predictably short of 1 billion-plus models like Llama 3.2, but it gets closer than you might think for having just a fraction of the parameters.

Google claims Gemma 3 270M is good at following instructions out of the box, but it expects developers to fine-tune the model for their specific use cases. Due to the small parameter count, that process is fast and low-cost, too. Google sees the new Gemma being used for tasks like text classification and data analysis, which it can accomplish quickly and without heavy computing requirements. You can download the new Gemma for free, and the model weights are available. There's no separate commercial licensing agreement, so developers can modify, publish, and deploy Gemma 3 270M derivatives in their tools. You can download Gemma 3 270M from Hugging Face and Kaggle in both pre-trained and instruction-tuned versions.

Electricity rates for individuals and small businesses could rise sharply as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other technology companies build data centers and expand into the energy business. Residential electricity bills increased at least $15 monthly for Ohio households starting in June due to data center demands, according to utility data and an independent grid monitor. A Carnegie Mellon University and North Carolina State University analysis projects average U.S. electricity bills will rise 8% by 2030 from data center growth, with Virginia facing potential 25% increases. Virginia regulators estimate residents could pay an additional $276 annually by 2030.

National residential electricity rates have already risen more than 30% since 2020. Tech companies' AI push requires data centers that consumed over 4% of U.S. electricity in 2023, with government analysts projecting consumption reaching 12% within three years. American Electric Power warned Ohio regulators that without new rate structures requiring data centers to pay more upfront costs, residents and small businesses would bear much of the expense for grid upgrades.

Igor Babuschkin, co-founder of xAI, has left the company to start Babuschkin Ventures, a VC firm focused on AI safety and humanity-advancing startups. TechCrunch reports: Babuschkin led engineering teams at xAI and helped build the startup into one of Silicon Valley's leading AI model developers just a few years after it was founded. "Today was my last day at xAI, the company that I helped start with Elon Musk in 2023," Babuschkin wrote in the post. "I still remember the day I first met Elon, we talked for hours about AI and what the future might hold. We both felt that a new AI company with a different kind of mission was needed."

Babuschkin is leaving xAI to launch his own venture capital firm, Babuschkin Ventures, which he says will support AI safety research and back startups that "advance humanity and unlock the mysteries of our universe." The xAI co-founder says he was inspired to start the firm after a dinner with Max Tegmark, the founder of the Future of Life Institute, in which they discussed how AI systems could be built safely to encourage the flourishing of future generations. In his post, Babuschkin says his parents immigrated to the U.S. from Russia in pursuit of a better life for their children.

Prior to co-founding xAI, Babuschkin was part of a research team at Google DeepMind that pioneered AlphaStar in 2019, a breakthrough AI system that could defeat top-ranked players at the video game StarCraft. Babuschkin also worked as a researcher at OpenAI in the years before it released ChatGPT. In his post, Babuschkin details some of the challenges he and Musk faced in building up xAI. He notes that industry veterans called xAI's goal of building its Memphis, Tennessee supercomputer in just three months "impossible." [...] Nevertheless, Babuschkin says he's already looking back fondly on his time at xAI, and "feels like a proud parent, driving away after sending their kid away to college." "I learned 2 priceless lessons from Elon: #1 be fearless in rolling up your sleeves to personally dig into technical problems, #2 have a maniacal sense of urgency," said Babuschkin.

Data brokers are required by California law to provide ways for consumers to request their data be deleted. But good luck finding them. From a report: More than 30 of the companies, which collect and sell consumers' personal information, hid their deletion instructions from Google, according to a review by The Markup and CalMatters of hundreds of broker websites. This creates one more obstacle for consumers who want to delete their data.

Many of the pages containing the instructions, listed in an official state registry, use code to tell search engines to remove the page entirely from search results. Popular tools like Google and Bing respect the code by excluding pages when responding to users. Data brokers nationwide must register in California under the state's Consumer Privacy Act, which allows Californians to request that their information be removed, that it not be sold, or that they get access to it. After reviewing the websites of all 499 data brokers registered with the state, we found 35 had code to stop certain pages from showing up in searches.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google is rolling out an update for Gemini that will allow the AI chatbot to "remember" your past conversations without prompting. With the setting turned on, Gemini will automatically recall your "key details and preferences" and use them to personalize its output.

This expands upon an update that Google introduced last year, which lets you ask Gemini to "remember" your personal preferences and interests. Now, Gemini won't need prompting to recall this information. As an example, Google says if you've used Gemini to get ideas for a YouTube channel surrounding Japanese culture in the past, then AI chatbot might suggest creating content about trying Japanese food if you ask it to suggest new video ideas in the future. [...]

Google will turn on this feature by default, but you can disable it by heading to your settings in the Gemini app and selecting Personal Context. From there, toggle off the Your past chats with Gemini option. Google will roll out this feature to its Gemini 2.5 Pro model in "select countries" starting today, before eventually bringing it to more locations and its Gemini 2.5 Flash model. Google will also rename its "Gemini Apps Activity" setting to "Keep Activity," which will use "a sample" of your file and photo uploads to Gemini to "help improve Google services for everyone" starting on September 2nd. If you've disabled the previous setting, the new "Keep Activity" setting will be disabled too.

There's also a new "temporary chats" feature in Gemini to preserve privacy. "Temporary chats won't appear in your recent chats or your Keep Activity setting," notes The Verge. "Gemini also won't use these chats to personalize future conversations, nor will Google use them to train its AI models. Google will only save these conversations for 72 hours."