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The head of the National Cyber Security Centre says frontier AI tools can be a force for good - if kept out of the wrong hands.

In a pair of letters, Jay's town manager and 3 county commissioners argued that it would kill a major economic opportunity for the community.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Framework has been selling and shipping its modular, repairable, upgradable Laptop 13 for five years now, and in that time, it has released six distinct versions of its system board, each using fresh versions of Intel and AMD processors (seven versions, if you count this RISC-V one). The laptop around those components has gradually gotten better, too. Over the years, Framework has added higher-resolution screens in both matte and glossy finishes, a slightly larger battery, and other tweaked components that refine the original design. But so far, all of those parts have been totally interchangeable, and the fundamentals of the Laptop 13 design haven't changed much. That changes today with the Framework Laptop 13 Pro, which, despite its name, is less an offshoot of the original Laptop 13 and closer to a ground-up redesign. It includes new Core Ultra Series 3 chips (codenamed Panther Lake), Framework's first touchscreen, a new black aluminum color option, a larger battery, and other significant changes. And while it sacrifices some component compatibility with the original Laptop 13, displays and motherboards remain interchangeable, so Framework Laptop owners can buy the new Core Ultra board and owners of older Framework Laptop boards can pop one into a Pro to benefit from the new battery and screen. At 1.4kg (about 3 pounds), the Laptop 13 Pro is slightly heavier than the Laptop 13's 1.3kg, but it still stacks up well against the 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro (1.55kg, or 3.4 pounds). The Framework Laptop Pro will start at $1,199 for a DIY edition with a Core Ultra 5 325 processor, and no RAM, SSD, or operating system. A prebuilt version with Ubuntu Linux installed will start at $1,499, and Windows 11 will cost another $100 on top of that. A Core Ultra X7 358H version starts at $1,599 for a DIY edition, and a "limited batch" Core Ultra X9 388H version starts at $1,799. A bare motherboard with the Core Ultra 5 325 starts at $449, while a Core Ultra X7 358H board will cost $799. Pre-orders are available now, and begin shipping in June.

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How to say goodbye and pay tribute to a loved one - with a hologram.

Firms like Bank of America, Citi, Wells Fargo, and others are reporting strong profits while reducing head count and automating more work. "All of them credited A.I. to some degree ... in areas ranging from the so-called back office, where tens of thousands of employees fill out paperwork to comply with various laws and regulations, to the front office, where seven-figure salaried professionals put together complicated financial transactions for corporate clients," reports the New York Times. From the report: Less than four months ago, Bank of America's chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, volunteered in a TV interview what he would say to his 210,000 employees about the chance of artificial intelligence replacing human work. "You don't have to worry," he said. "It's not a threat to their jobs." Last week, after Bank of America reported $8.6 billion in profit for the first quarter -- $1.6 billion more than the same period a year earlier -- Mr. Moynihan struck a different tone. The bank's bottom line, he said, was helped by shedding 1,000 jobs through attrition by "eliminating work and applying technology," which he repeatedly specified was artificial intelligence. He predicted more of that in the months and years to come. "A.I. gives us places to go we haven't gone," Mr. Moynihan said. The veneer of Wall Street's longstanding assertion -- that A.I. will enhance human work, not replace it -- is rapidly peeling away, as evidenced by the current quarterly earnings season. JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo racked up $47 billion in collective profits, up 18 percent, while shedding 15,000 employees. All of them credited A.I. to some degree with helping cut jobs and automate work in areas ranging from the so-called back office, where tens of thousands of employees fill out paperwork to comply with various laws and regulations, to the front office, where seven-figure salaried professionals put together complicated financial transactions for corporate clients. Unlike executives in Silicon Valley, few major financial figures are stating outright that A.I. is eliminating jobs. Citi, for example, has pledged to shrink its work force by 20,000 people through what one executive described to financial analysts last week as the company's "productivity and efficiency journey." The bank is paying for A.I. software from Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, to automatically read legal documents, approve account openings, send invoices for trades and organize sensitive customer data, among other tasks, according to public statements by bank executives and two people familiar with Citi's systems. Among the recent job cuts at Citi were scores of employees who were part of the bank's "A.I. Champions and Accelerators" program, according to the two people, who were not permitted by the bank to speak publicly. The program involves Citi employees who perform their day jobs while also working to persuade their colleagues to adopt A.I. technologies.

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The company announced its new Framework Laptop 13 Pro, along with updates to its 16-inch model.

Reuters reports that Meta plans to start collecting U.S.-based employees' mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and occasional screen snapshots to train AI agents that can better learn how humans use computers. The tool, called Model Capability Initiative (MCI), will reportedly "not be used for performance assessments or any other purpose besides model training and that safeguards were in place to protect 'sensitive content.'" From the report: Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth told employees in a separate memo shared on Monday that the company would step up internal data collection as part of those "AI for Work" efforts, now re-branded as Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA). "The vision we are building towards is one where our agents primarily do the work and our role is to direct, review and help them improve," Bosworth said. The aim, he added, was for agents to "automatically see where we felt the need to intervene so they can be better next time." Bosworth did not explicitly spell out how those agents would be trained, but said Meta would be "rigorous" about "building up data and evals for all the types of interactions we have as we go about our work." Meta spokesperson Andy Stone acknowledged that the MCI data would be among the inputs. [...] "If we're building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people "actually use them -- things like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus," said Stone.

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The ChatGPT Images 2.0 model is here. Our testing shows it's better at creating more detailed images and rendering text, but it still struggles with languages other than English.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: At Google, leaders are anxious about falling behind in the race to offer AI coding tools, especially as rivals like Anthropic PBC offer more effective and popular tools to businesses, according to people familiar with the matter. The search giant is now working to unite some of its coding initiatives under one banner to speed progress and take advantage of a surge in customer interest. In some corners of Alphabet's Google, particularly AI lab DeepMind, concerns about the company's position are mounting, according to current and former employees and executives, who declined to be named because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. Businesses are just starting to realize that AI coding tools can enable anyone to build products by prompting a chatbot. But Google doesn't have a clear solution for them. Its Gemini model's capabilities are sprinkled across half a dozen different coding products with different branding, indicating how the company's lack of focus and competing internal efforts have hampered success, the people said. Even internally, some Google engineers prefer to use Anthropic's Claude Code, they said. More concerning, the people said, are the engineers who are struggling to adopt AI coding at all. [...] Google's emphasis on its own technology has also complicated the push to catch up. Most employees are banned from using competing tools such as Claude Code or Codex due to security concerns, but Googlers can request exceptions if they can demonstrate they have a business case, one former employee said. Some teams at DeepMind, including those working on the Gemini model, internal applications, and open source models, use Claude Code, according to three former employees. "You want the best people to use the best tool, even inside Google," one of the former employees said. [...] In recent years, DeepMind has tried to tighten control over how its AI breakthroughs are woven into Google products. Last year, Google appointed Kavukcuoglu to a new position as chief AI architect, a role in which he is charged with folding generative AI into Google products. Yet confusion about who is leading the charge on AI coding persists. Along with DeepMind, Google Cloud, Google Core, Google Labs and Android are all pushing AI coding in different ways, one of the people said. [...] Within the Googleplex, there is a philosophical clash between AI researchers who want to move as quickly as possible and more traditional senior engineers who have exacting standards for code quality, former employees say. AI usage is factored into performance reviews, according to a former employee. But engineers who try to use internal AI coding tools often hit capacity constraints due to competition for computing power, the former employee said.

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The winery's Lincolnville tasting room reopens Mother's Day weekend.

Microsoft is cutting the monthly price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, but the tradeoff is that new Call of Duty releases will no longer arrive on the service at launch. Instead, they'll show up about a year later. The Verge reports: After Xbox CEO Asha Sharma admitted last week that "Game Pass has become too expensive for players," Microsoft is dropping the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. Starting today, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate drops from $29.99 to $22.99 a month, and PC Game Pass moves to $13.99, down from $16.49 a month. The price drops are being fueled in part by future of Call of Duty titles no longer joining Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass at launch. "New Call of Duty games will be added to Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass during the following holiday season (about a year later), while existing Call of Duty titles already in the library will continue to be available," says Microsoft.

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With about 1 grow or dispensary for every 200 residents, Bethel has a higher concentration of marijuana businesses than almost anywhere else in the state. The locals aren't sure it will last.

Garces will host pop-up dinners and cooking classes in the Pepperell Mill campus space.

The five new Formula 1 watches are driven by light—and we have a definite favorite.

The IEA says 2025 marked a turning point for global energy, with solar posting the largest growth ever seen for any energy source and helping carbon-free power outpace rising demand. The trend led the agency to declare that the world has entered the "Age of Electricity." Ars Technica reports: The IEA report covers energy use, including the electrical grid, transportation, home heating, and other forms of consumption. As such, it can track how some of those uses are shifting, as electric vehicles displace some gasoline use and heat pumps replace gas and oil heating. It also saw a more global trend: The demand for electricity grew at twice the rate of overall energy demand. All of these went into the conclusion that we're starting the Age of Electricity. In terms of specifics, the IEA saw electric vehicle demand rise by nearly 40 percent, with electric car sales being a quarter of the total of cars sold last year. While that's having a measurable effect on electricity demand, it remains relatively small at the moment. It's almost certain to be contributing to the size of the rise in oil use last year: 0.7 percent. In absolute terms, that's less than half the average rise of the previous decade. [...] When it comes to supplying electrons for those alternatives, the central story is solar power. "The absolute increase of solar PV generation in 2025 is the largest ever observed for any source," the IEA says, "excluding years marked by rebounds from global economic shocks such as COVID-19." In other words, with nothing in particular driving the energy markets in 2025, Solar's growth was unprecedented. On its own, its growth covered a quarter of the rising demand for all forms of energy. If you limit it to electricity, increased solar production covered over two-thirds of the increased demand. Overall, solar generated over 2,700 terawatt-hours last year, more than double its output from three years earlier. It now accounts for over 8 percent of the world's total electricity production. Thirty individual countries installed at least a gigawatt of solar last year, and it is now the single largest grid source by capacity (though other sources still outproduce it at the moment).

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From calculators to simple daily beaters, these are my favorite Casio watches on sale today.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Denver7: Maryland is poised to become the first state in the country to ban "surveillance pricing." The practice refers to companies using a shopper's personal data, such as browsing history, location, or purchasing behavior, to tailor prices to individual customers. The Protection From Predatory Pricing Act, passed this month and sent to the governor for a signature, would prohibit food retailers and third-party delivery services from using the practice. Violations would be treated as deceptive trade practices under state law, with potential fines and lawsuits. While Consumer Reports called the move "encouraging," it warned that the final version contains "loopholes" that don't fully protect consumers. Some of the exemptions noted in the report include "applying the ban only to the use of personal data to set higher prices without establishing a baseline or standard price; exempting pricing tied to loyalty or membership programs, even if prices are higher; and exempting pricing linked to subscriptions or subscription-based services."

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The Parlor launches May 2 with a 4-seat space where customers can order oyster flights.

The popular messaging service told the BBC in a statement it "categorically denies Ofcom's accusations".

How Ternus responds to challenges facing Apple will go a long way to deciding the tech giant's future, writes Zoe Kleinman.