The early 2000s capacitor plague is probably not just a stolen recipe

It’s a widely known problem with roots in urban legend: Devices with motherboards failing in the early 2000s with a sudden pop, a gruesome spill, or sometimes a burst of flames. And it was allegedly all due to one guy who didn’t copy a stolen formula correctly. The “capacitor plague” of the early 2000s was real and fairly widespread among devices, even if the majority of those devices didn’t go…

March 20, 2025
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Study finds AI-generated meme captions funnier than human ones on average

A new study examining meme creation found that AI-generated meme captions on existing famous meme images scored higher on average for humor, creativity, and “shareability” than those made by people. Even so, people still created the most exceptional individual examples. The research, which will be presented at the 2025 International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, reveals a nuanced picture of how AI and humans perform differently in humor creation tasks….

March 19, 2025
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HP avoids monetary damages over bricked printers in class-action settlement

A United States District Court for the Northern District of California judge has signed off on a settlement agreement between HP and its customers who sued the company for issuing firmware updates that prevented their printers from working with non-HP ink and toner. In December 2020, Mobile Emergency Housing Corp. and a company called Performance Automotive & Tire Center filed a class-action complaint against HP [PDF], alleging that the company…

March 19, 2025
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Apple and Google in the hot seat as European regulators ignore Trump warnings

The European Commission is not backing down from efforts to rein in Big Tech. In a series of press releases today, the European Union’s executive arm has announced actions against both Apple and Google. Regulators have announced that Apple will be required to open up support for non-Apple accessories on the iPhone, but it may be too late for Google to make changes. The commission says the search giant has…

March 19, 2025
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Nvidia announces DGX desktop “personal AI supercomputers”

During Tuesday’s Nvidia GTX keynote, CEO Jensen Huang unveiled two “personal AI supercomputers” called DGX Spark and DGX Station, both powered by the Grace Blackwell platform. In a way, they are a new type of AI PC architecture specifically built for running neural networks, and five major PC manufacturers will build the supercomputers. These desktop systems, first previewed as “Project DIGITS” in January, aim to bring AI capabilities to developers,…

March 18, 2025
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Nvidia announces “Rubin Ultra” and “Feynman” AI chips for 2027 and 2028

On Tuesday at Nvidia’s GTC 2025 conference in San Jose, California, CEO Jensen Huang revealed several new AI-accelerating GPUs the company plans to release over the coming months and years. He also revealed more specifications about previously announced chips. The centerpiece announcement was Vera Rubin, first teased at Computex 2024 and now scheduled for release in the second half of 2026. This GPU, named after a famous astronomer, will feature…

March 18, 2025
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“Awful”: Roku tests autoplaying ads loading before the home screen

Owners of smart TVs and streaming sticks running Roku OS are already subject to video advertisements on the home screen. Now, Roku is testing what it might look like if it took things a step further and forced people to watch a video ad play before getting to the Roku OS home screen. Reports of Roku customers seeing video ads automatically play before they could view the OS’ home screen…

March 17, 2025
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Sobering revenue stats of 70K mobile apps show why devs beg for subscriptions

If you’re frustrated by some of your favorite apps pestering you to sign up for a subscription, some new data may help you empathize with their developers more. According to revenue data from “over 75,000” mobile apps, the vast majority have a hard time making $1,000 per month. The data is detailed in RevenueCat’s 2025 State of Subscription Apps report. RevenueCat makes a mobile app subscription tool kit and gathered…

March 17, 2025
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Large enterprises scramble after supply-chain attack spills their secrets

Open source software used by more than 23,000 organizations, some of them in large enterprises, was compromised with credential-stealing code after attackers gained unauthorized access to a maintainer account, in the latest open source supply-chain attack to roil the Internet. The corrupted package, tj-actions/changed-files, is part of tj-actions, a collection of files that’s used by more than 23,000 organizations. Tj-actions is one of many GitHub Actions, a form of platform…

March 17, 2025
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2025 iPad Air hands-on: Why mess with a good thing?

There’s not much new in Apple’s latest refresh of the iPad Air, so there’s not much to say about it, but it’s worth taking a brief look regardless. In almost every way, this is identical to the previous generation. There are only two differences to go over: the bump from the M2 chip to the slightly faster M3, and a redesign of the Magic Keyboard peripheral. If you want more…

March 14, 2025
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