Return-to-office (RTO) mandates have caused companies to lose some of their best workers, a study tracking over 3 million workers at 54 “high-tech and financial” firms at the S&P 500 index has found. These companies also have greater challenges finding new talent, the report concluded. The paper, Return-to-Office Mandates and Brain Drain [PDF], comes from researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as Baylor University, The Chinese University of…

T-Mobile today said it opened registration for the “T-Mobile Starlink” beta service that will enable text messaging via satellites in dead zones not covered by cell towers. T-Mobile’s announcement said the service using Starlink’s low-Earth orbit satellites will “provid[e] coverage for the 500,000 square miles of land in the United States not covered by earth-bound cell towers.” Starlink parent SpaceX has so far launched over 300 satellites with direct-to-cell capabilities,…

If you’re looking to buy a TV in 2025, you may be disappointed by the types of advancements TV brands will be prioritizing in the new year. While there’s an audience of enthusiasts interested in developments in tech like OLED, QDEL, and Micro LED, plus other features like transparency and improved audio, that doesn’t appear to be what the industry is focused on. Today’s TV selection has a serious dependency…

A sophisticated and ongoing supply-chain attack operating for the past year has been stealing sensitive login credentials from both malicious and benevolent security personnel by infecting them with Trojanized versions of open source software from GitHub and NPM, researchers said. The campaign, first reported three weeks ago by security firm Checkmarx and again on Friday by Datadog Security Labs, uses multiple avenues to infect the devices of researchers in security…

On Wednesday, a video from OpenAI’s newly launched Sora AI video generator went viral on social media, featuring a gymnast who sprouts extra limbs and briefly loses her head during what appears to be an Olympic-style floor routine. As it turns out, the nonsensical synthesis errors in the video—what we like to call “jabberwockies”—hint at technical details about how AI video generators work and how they might get better in…

Thousands of sites running WordPress remain unpatched against a critical security flaw in a widely used plugin that was being actively exploited in attacks that allow for unauthenticated execution of malicious code, security researchers said. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-11972, is found in Hunk Companion, a plugin that runs on 10,000 sites that use the WordPress content management system. The vulnerability, which carries a severity rating of 9.8 out of…

On Thursday, OpenAI announced that ChatGPT users can now talk to a simulated version of Santa Claus through the app’s voice mode, using AI to bring a North Pole connection to mobile devices, desktop apps, and web browsers during the holiday season. The company added Santa’s voice and personality as a preset option in ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode. Users can access Santa by tapping a snowflake icon next to the…

Like with much of physical media, the onslaught against optical media is ongoing. In the latest hit against physical media fans, LG has discontinued its remaining Blu-ray players. However, this doesn’t spell the end for Blu-rays, which, in at least some categories, are seeing growing interest. LG has no plans to make more Blu-ray players, FlatpanelsHD reported on Wednesday. Its most recent players, the UBK90 and UBK80, came out in…

Citing “years of investment in AI, AR, and VR,” Google is stepping into the augmented reality market once more with Android XR. It’s an operating system that Google says will power future headsets and glasses that “transform how you watch, work, and explore.” The first version you’ll see is Project Moohan, a mixed-reality headset built by Samsung. It will be available for purchase next year, and not much more is…

Russian nation-state hackers have followed an unusual path to gather intel in the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine—appropriating the infrastructure of fellow threat actors and using it to infect electronic devices its adversary’s military personnel are using on the front line. On at least two occasions this year, the Russian hacking group tracked under names including Turla, Waterbug, Snake, and Venomous Bear has used servers and malware used by separate…