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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Gates Foundation opened an external review earlier this year into its engagement with the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the philanthropic group said on Tuesday. The foundation has been mired in controversy due to Chairman Bill Gates' association with Epstein. A release of emails in January by the U.S. Justice Department also showed communication between Epstein and the Gates Foundation's staff. "Early this year, Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman commissioned an external review to assess past foundation engagement with Epstein, and our current policies for vetting and developing new philanthropic partnerships," the foundation said in a statement. "That review is underway, and we expect the board and management will receive an update this summer," it added. The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news earlier on Tuesday, said Suzman told staff in a memo, "this is a challenging time for our organization in many ways, but it also highlights the critical importance of taking the tough actions now." The WSJ also reports that the Gates Foundation will eliminate up to 500 jobs, or about 20% of its staff, by 2030. It said the foundation has a 2026 budget of about $9 billion, but plans to cap operating expenses at $1.25 billion. Further reading: The Bill Gates-Epstein Bombshell - and What Most People Get Wrong

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Google announced two new tensor processing units (TPUs) for the "agentic era," with separate processors dedicated to training and inference. "With the rise of AI agents, we determined the community would benefit from chips individually specialized to the needs of training and serving," Amin Vahdat, a Google senior vice president and chief technologist for AI and infrastructure, said in a blog post. Both chips will become available later this year. CNBC reports: After years of producing chips that can both train artificial intelligence models and handle inference work, Google is separating those tasks into distinct processors, its latest effort to take on Nvidia in AI hardware. [...] None of the tech giants are displacing Nvidia, and Google isn't even comparing the performance of its new chips with those from the AI chip leader. Google did say the training chip enables 2.8 times the performance of the seventh-generation Ironwood TPU, announced in November, for the same price, while performance is 80% better for the inference processor. Nvidia said its upcoming Groq 3 LPU hardware will draw on large quantities of static random-access memory, or SRAM, which is used by Cerebras, an AI chipmaker that filed to go public earlier this month. Google's new inference chip, dubbed TPU 8i, also relies on SRAM. Each chip contains 384 megabytes of SRAM, triple the amount in Ironwood. The architecture is designed "to deliver the massive throughput and low latency needed to concurrently run millions of agents cost-effectively," Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet, wrote in a blog post.

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A satirical but working tool called Malus uses AI to create "clean room" clones of open-source software, aiming to reproduce the same functionality while shedding attribution and copyleft obligations. "It works," Mike Nolan, one of the two people behind Malus, who researches the political economy of open source software and currently works for the United Nations, told 404 Media. "The Stripe charge will provide you the thing, and it was important for us to do that, because we felt that if it was just satire, it would end up like every other piece of research I've done on open source, which ends up being largely dismissed by open source tech workers who felt that they were too special and too unique and too intelligent to ever be the ones on the bad side of the layoffs or the economics of the situation." 404 Media reports: Malus's legal strategy for bypassing copyright is based on a historically pivotal moment for software and copyright law dating back to 1982. Back then, IBM dominated home computing, and competitors like Columbia Data Products wanted to sell products that were compatible with software that IBM customers were already using. Reverse engineering IBM's computer would have infringed on the company's copyright, so Columbia Data Products came up with what we now know as a "clean room" design. It tasked one team with examining IBM's BIOS and creating specifications for what a clone of that system would require. A different "clean" team, one that was never exposed to IBM's code, then created BIOS that met those specifications from scratch. The result was a system that was compatible with IBM's ecosystem but didn't violate its copyright because it did not copy IBM's technical process and counted as original work. This clean room method, which has been validated by case law and dramatized in the first season of Halt and Catch Fire, made computing more open and competitive than it would have been otherwise. But it has taken on new meaning in the age of generative AI. It is now easier than ever to ask AI tools to produce software that is identical in function to existing open source projects, and that, some would argue, are built from scratch and are therefore original work that can bypass existing copyright licenses. Others would say that software produced by large language models is inherently derivative, because like any LLM output, it is trained on the collective output of humans scraped from the internet, including specific open source projects. Malus (pronounced malice), uses AI to do the same thing. "Finally, liberation from open source license obligations," Malus's site says. "Our proprietary AI robots independently recreate any open source project from scratch. The result? Legally distinct code with corporate-friendly licensing. No attribution. No copyleft. No problems." Copyleft is a type of copyright license that ensures reproductions or applications of the software keep it free to share and modify.

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The rail authority is holding two open houses seeking insight from locals on their travel patterns and any ideas they may have for service improvements.

The city's annual housing report reflects high hopes and less follow-through.

Maine lawmakers have passed a bill that would temporarily bar many new data centers; Gov. Janet Mills has not yet signed it.

CATL unveiled a new wave of EV battery tech, "including a lighter battery pack rated for a 1,000-km (621-mile) driving range and an upgraded fast-charging battery that can go from 10 percent to 98 percent in under seven minutes," reports Interesting Engineering. From the report: The launches were made during a 90-minute event in Beijing ahead of the Beijing Auto Show, where automakers are expected to showcase next-generation EVs and connected technologies. CATL said its latest Qilin battery -- a high-energy-density pack often paired with nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cells for long range and improved space efficiency -- can deliver a 1,000-km (621-mile) driving range. It is designed to deliver long range while reducing battery pack weight. The company said the product is aimed at automakers facing tighter efficiency rules in China and other markets. It also rolled out an upgraded Shenxing battery -- CATL's fast-charging lithium iron phosphate (LFP) pack -- that targets one of the biggest barriers to EV adoption: charging time. CATL said the pack can recharge from 10 percent to 98 percent in less than seven minutes. The new Shenxing battery marks a significant improvement over CATL's previous version, which charged from 5 percent to 80 percent in 15 minutes, according to Financial Times. [...] The company also announced plans to begin mass delivery of sodium-ion batteries in the fourth quarter. Sodium-ion technology is seen as a lower-cost alternative that could reduce dependence on lithium, cobalt, and nickel.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US military's massive $1.5 trillion budget request for the next fiscal year includes what Pentagon officials described as the largest investment in drone warfare and counter-drone technology in US history. The proposed spending on drone and autonomous warfare technologies within the FY2027 budget proposal for the US Department of Defense would surpass most countries' defense budgets and rank among the top 10 in the world for military spending, ahead of countries such as Ukraine, South Korea, and Israel. Specifically, the Pentagon is requesting $53.6 billion to boost US production and procurement of drones, train drone operators, build out a logistics network for sustaining drone deployments, and expand counter-drone systems to defend more US military sites. The funding request is budgeted under the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG), an organization established in late 2025 that would see a massive budget increase after receiving about $226 million in the 2026 fiscal year budget. [...] Another $20.6 billion would help purchase one-way attack drones and drone aircraft developed through the US Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, which is building drone prototypes capable of teaming up with human-piloted fighter jets. Part of this funding would also go toward defensive systems for countering small drones and the US Navy's Boeing MQ-25 drone designed to perform midair refueling of carrier-borne fighter aircraft to extend their strike ranges. Such drone-related spending even rivals the entire budget of the US Marine Corps. But the Pentagon has not said that it is creating a dedicated drone branch of the US military similar to the standalone Space Force. Pentagon officials emphasized that most of the money would go toward procuring drone and autonomous warfare technologies that already exist, and is largely separate from additional funding that would bolster US domestic manufacturing capacity to build such weapon systems. "That $70 billion is all going into existing systems and technologies," said Hurst. "The industrial base support is entirely separate." "The evolution we've seen in the battlefield is this evolution of technologies in the timeframe of weeks, not the typical years we see with our defense production," said Lt. Gen. Steven Whitney, director of force structure, resources, and assessment for the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a Pentagon press briefing. "So it's really critical we work with industry to get that capability fielded."

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New Call of Duty games will be added to the subscription service "about a year" after release, Microsoft said.

Chromebooks have a reputation for being cheap and crappy. But they don't have to be, and these are the Chromebooks that prove it.

Martha Stewart–endorsed Dinnerly is a budget meal kit that doesn’t feel budget anymore, with interesting, far-flung flavors. Just add a little rice.

NASA's Curiosity rover has identified a diverse set of organic molecules on Mars, including a nitrogen-bearing compound similar in structure to DNA precursors. The finding strengthens the case that ancient organic material can survive in the Martian subsurface, though it does not prove past life because the compounds could also come from geology or meteorites. Phys.org reports: The study was led by Amy Williams, Ph.D., a professor of geological sciences at the University of Florida and a scientist on the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rover missions. Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012 to find evidence that ancient Mars had conditions that could support microbial life billions of years ago; the Perseverance rover, which landed in 2021, was sent to look for signs of any ancient life that might have formed. Among the 20-plus chemicals identified by the experiment, Curiosity spotted a nitrogen-bearing molecule with a structure similar to DNA precursors -- a chemical never before spotted on Mars. The rover also identified benzothiophene, a large, double-ringed, sulfurous chemical often delivered to planets by meteorites. "The same stuff that rained down on Mars from meteorites is what rained down on Earth, and it probably provided the building blocks for life as we know it on our planet," Williams said. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

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You may have several recurring subscriptions you've forgotten about. These apps help you keep track of them—and cancel the ones you don't need.

Strong coverage and a long run time make this pool-cleaning robot a compelling alternative to pricier models.

The ebike that doesn’t look like any other ebike is a tremendously fun ride—even for two passengers—if you don’t mind the Cybertruckian design.

Nexamp Inc. raised approximately $180M in equity from two investors. The company has 222 employees in Massachusetts.

Although I'm now more likely to use Greater Portland's public transportation system, I won't be giving up my Subaru.

Federal authorities are now reviewing a string of deaths and disappearances involving scientists tied to sensitive U.S. aerospace and nuclear work, though officials have not established any confirmed link between the cases. The FBI says it "is spearheading the effort to look for connections into the missing and deceased scientists," adding that it "is working with the Department of Energy, Department of War, and with our state ... and local law enforcement partners to find answers." The Republican-led House Oversight Committee also announced an investigation into the reports. CNN reports: A nuclear physicist and MIT professor fatally shot outside his Massachusetts residence. A retired Air Force general missing from his New Mexico home. An aerospace engineer who disappeared during a hike in Los Angeles. These are among at least 10 individuals connected to sensitive US nuclear and aerospace research who have died or disappeared in recent years, prompting concerns whether they are connected and fueling speculation online about the possibility of nefarious activity. [...] The Defense Department said only that it would respond to the committee directly, and the Department of Energy referred questions to the White House. In a post on X, NASA said it is "coordinating and cooperating with the relevant agencies" in relation to the scientists. "At this time, nothing related to NASA indicates a national security threat," NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens said. The cases vary widely in circumstance. Some involve unsolved homicides, while others are missing persons cases with no signs of foul play. In at least two instances, families have pointed to preexisting medical conditions or personal struggles as explanations. Authorities have not established any links between the cases. The White House said last week it is also working with federal agencies to probe any potential links between the deaths and disappearances, with President Donald Trump referring to the matter as "pretty serious stuff." "The United States has thousands of nuclear scientists and nuclear experts," said Rep. James Walkinshaw, a Democrat who also serves on the Oversight Committee. "It's not the kind of nuclear program that potentially a foreign adversary could significantly impact by targeting 10 individuals."

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