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A 24,000-square-foot lease that the AI giant Anthropic has signed in Cambridge’s Kendall Square gives the Boston area a much-needed win in the region's bid to attract a bigger piece of the fast-growing industry.

Record fuel costs have accelerated US inflation, squeezing Americans’ finances.

Comedian Garrett Millerick has created an AI avatar based on his own material. Is it any good?

A medical report published earlier this week says a boy in the U.K. developed erythema ab igne, or "toasted skin syndrome," after resting a laptop on his abdomen for up to eight hours a day, often while it was charging. "The marks were described as being in a patch about 15 centimeters (six inches) wide, made of flat, reddish-brown 'interlacing lines forming irregular circles and a lace-like morphology,'" reports Ars Technica. From the report: Based on the appearance, the doctors started reconsidering some sort of bruising and started asking him more questions. This is when he mentioned that he was homeschooled and used a laptop for his schoolwork. He said he typically did his work by resting his laptop on his abdomen while he worked, sometimes for up to eight hours a day, and often while the laptop was charging. Then they understood what it was. The doctors diagnosed the boy with erythema ab igne (EAI), which translates from Latin as "redness from fire" and is also sometimes called "toasted skin syndrome." This is a skin condition caused by repeated, prolonged exposure to low-grade heat -- heat not hot enough to cause actual burns. It's most often seen in adults, and common causes include using heating pads or hot water bottles for chronic pain or sitting too close to space heaters. Some people also develop it from certain occupational hazards, like glassblowing and metal work. EAI produces a lace-like rash, just like the boy's. It's unclear how EAI develops exactly. But researchers hypothesize that chronic heat exposure leads to damage to superficial blood vessels and the release of red blood cells, forming the tell-tale red reticulated pattern. While the boy's condition looked ominous, the good news is that EAI is generally benign and reversible -- once you remove the heat source. For severe or long-term conditions, some pigmentation and scarring can remain. But the boy's parents checked back in over several months, reporting that the rash faded and then completely resolved. Hopefully, he also got some sort of laptop stand.

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When going abroad, the right plugs are essential to keep your gadgets charged. These are my favorite travel adapters and chargers that I’ve tested myself.

The agricultural machine manufacturer has a subscription service that lets owners repair their own equipment. Why is barely anybody using it?

“Coffee” made with functional mushrooms like lion’s mane and chaga is all the rage. We tried the most popular brands to find which were the most palatable.

The goals of the organization include keeping AI talent in the state, but also doubling the number of "unicorn" companies (valued at $1 billion) over the next five years.

Samsung is resting on its laurels with the midrange S26 FE, with an unwelcome price bump and only a new processor to show for it.

The revelations in Anthropic's threat intelligence report come after a former top researcher at the company warned of the risks of AI to humanity.

Larry Gennari shares new books that reveal why AI is still in dial-up phase and when employees became "disposable."

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: August was the joint-hottest month ever recorded, tying with July 2023, according to the EU's climate service. The record was driven by a combination of climate change and the rising influence of El Nino, pushing heat into the atmosphere across the Pacific. Temperatures for the month were 1.65C above pre-industrial levels -- surpassing the critical 1.5C threshold agreed by countries to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. While a single month above 1.5C does not mean it has been permanently crossed, it shows a trend towards breaching that limit. The month also capped western Europe's warmest summer, with high temperatures pushing the season past the deadly heat of 2003.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Rising global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels are transforming the world's forests, wetlands and tundra to the point they are releasing emissions that could further worsen global heating by as much as 30%, a new study has found. As the world heats up, permafrost in the high latitudes is thawing, fiercer wildfires are burning in drying forests and wetlands and lakes are warming. All of these changes are themselves causing the release of planet-heating methane and carbon dioxide locked in trees and soils, therefore worsening the climate crisis, the paper states. While scientists have long known of these "feedback loops" that amplify the impact of direct pollution from burning coal, oil and gas, the emissions from natural sources are largely unaccounted for in climate projections. This additional heating is however significant, researchers found, with emissions from natural sources set to amplify global heating by 20% to 30% by the end of this century. This would add an estimated 0.2C to 0.4C to the global average temperature by this time, depending on the overall action taken by countries to combat the climate crisis. [...] This latest paper makes clear that action by countries to cut fossil fuel pollution will still lessen the amount of additional emissions that come from landscapes. Under the most optimistic climate scenario where emissions are cut quickly, natural sources will add 0.2C of warming, the paper found. Under a worse case higher emissions scenario, 0.4C will likely be added. Current policies put in place by governments are likely to see the global temperature rise to 2.6C above pre-industrial times, according to Climate Action Tracker. This will likely cause severe disruption and hardship to billions of people through sea level rise, crop losses and other consequences. "This hidden multiplier is missing from the models guiding climate policy, so those models are likely underestimating how much warming is coming -- and overestimating how much carbon we can still afford to emit," said Sam Abernethy, a scientist at Spark Climate Solutions who led the research, published in Environmental Research Letters. The disruption of the worldâ(TM)s carbon cycles is now being seen in "real time," said Rob Jackson, a Stanford University scientist and study co-author. "The results are a wake-up call, and itâ(TM)s imperative that they be included in the next generation of climate policies," he added. "Failure to do so will make meeting the worldâ(TM)s climate goals less and less likely."

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Europe has some promising battery tech, but can it make up ground lost to Chinese battery giants?

Apple's new Audio Intelligence features for the Apple Watch Series 12 are drawing privacy concerns because they can process nearby conversations without explicit consent from everyone involved. "Live Rewind lets you instantly see the last 15 seconds of a conversation as text," Apple explains in its technical summary (PDF). "Siri Recap summarizes conversations throughout your day and produces high-level Apple Intelligence-generated notes so you can stay present in the moment and catch up later." The Register reports: The latest Apple Watch comes with Audio Intelligence, a set of AI audio processing capabilities tuned for the company's S11 chip. Its features include: Sound Recognition, Music Recognition with Shazam, Live Rewind, and Siri Recap. [...] With the double-press of the Digital Crown -- as Apple grandly refers to the button on its Watch -- Live Rewind takes in an audio stream from the Watch microphone, processes it in a Secure Exclave on the S11 chip, and routes the data to the user's nearby iPhone, which runs a speech-to-text algorithm on the 15-second audio segment. The resulting text is saved and the audio is discarded. The wearer's Watch emits an audible tone, even in silent mode, to alert those in the vicinity and provides a visual cue for those able to see the face of the device. Nonetheless, bystanders alerted to the recording -- to the extent they recognize the meaning of the tone -- have not consented to being recorded, which is a legal requirement in 11 US states that have all-party consent laws. Apple characterizes its implementation of brief eavesdropping as respectful of personal privacy. It makes that claim in a section titled, "How Live Rewind respects those around you," citing the audible chime and visual on-screen animation. Siri Recap, meanwhile, "summarizes conversations throughout your day and produces high-level Apple Intelligence-generated notes so you can stay present in the moment and catch up later." This too, Apple describes as an act of respect. "By design, Siri Recap does not create a recording, does not produce a verbatim transcript, and does not identify and attribute speakers," Apple's technical documentation explains. "The output is a brief, high-level summary, comparable to notes a person might write after a conversation. There is no audible signal because no raw audio is retained, and there is no way to reconstruct the original audio from a Siri Recap or share raw audio with anyone."

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