News

“From a business angle, they're just doubling down as much as they can to try and force people to use AI,” one edtech critic said. “But from a pure learning angle, why?”

"We're knocking on the door of the zeptoverse now." ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

It's Friday, November 6 in Australia and New Zealand, which means customers who preordered a PROLED touchscreen MacBook Pro, OLED iPad mini, M6 ‌MacBook Pro‌, or M6 iMac are now starting to receive their devices. People will soon be sharing photos and first impressions of the new products on the MacRumors forums, Reddit, Instagram, and other platforms, giving us a first look at what real-world users think of the ‌OLED‌ upgrade for the ‌iPad mini‌ and the PROLED and touchscreen update for the ‌MacBook Pro‌. Apple's new high-end ‌MacBook Pro‌ models come with M5 Pro or M5 Max, and the major change is the display. It's touch-enabled and is the first Mac with an ‌OLED‌ display. The design has been updated, so the new machines are thinner and lighter than the mini-LED models, which Apple is still selling. Apple also brought back the glowing Apple logo, and replaced the notch with a Dynamic Island. Pricing on the PROLED ‌MacBook Pro‌ starts at $2,899 for the 14-inch model and $3,399 for the 16-inch model. The ‌OLED‌ ‌iPad mini‌ is Apple's first smaller-screened iPad to get ‌OLED‌, and it's also the most affordable ‌OLED‌ ‌iPad‌. It's almost a millimeter thinner than the prior version and has an Acoustic Display that does away with speaker holes. Without them, the enclosure is sealed, making it the first ‌iPad‌ with a water and dust resistance rating (IP67). It uses Apple's A20 Pro chip. The ‌OLED‌ ‌iPad mini‌ starts at $699. The 14-inch entry-level ‌MacBook Pro‌ and 24-inch ‌iMac‌ got little in the way of updates beyond an M6 chip. The ‌MacBook Pro‌ is priced starting at $1,999, and the ‌iMac‌ starts at $1,499. Australia is the first country where customers can buy one of the new products in an Apple retail location. Online orders of the PROLED ‌MacBook Pro‌ don't ship until late November or early December, so it's possible in-store stock will be limited. The ‌OLED‌ ‌iPad mini‌, 14-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌, and ‌iMac‌ should be readily available. After Australia and New…

Blue Origin has developed a third stage for its New Glenn rocket, which it says will make the launcher even more flexible and capable. The company has also built a new engine, called Northstar.

Spacewalkers Anil Menon and Joshua Kutryk installed the final ISS Roll-Out Solar Array on Thursday (Nov. 5), wrapping up a multiyear effort to boost the station's power generation by 30%.

CesiumAstro Inc., a global leader in space and defense communications systems and satellites, today announced the closing of $730 million in Series D financing, valuing the company at more than […] The post CesiumAstro Secures $730 Million in Janus Henderson-Led Series D at a Valuation Above $4.5 Billion; Unveils Synchronicity Satellite Constellation Following Fully Successful Element-1 Mission appeared first on SpaceNews.

Following this week's midterms where voters resoundingly voiced their opposition to data center expansion, OpenAI today announced new commitments to communities where it is working on data center projects, including that it won't use non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with public officials. Many data center projects have come under scrutiny for relying on NDAs to hide discussions […]

The New York Times Company is in talks"exclusive negotations" to acquire Letterboxd, the social network for film lovers, for around $330 million, The New York Times reports. The Times Company, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and A24 were all recently rumored to be among those interested in buying Letterboxd. The negotiations with the Times Company have included […]

Cloudflare’s third-quarter revenue rose 39% from a year earlier to $782.5M, taking its annualised revenue past $3bn. The company reported the results on Thursday and raised its forecasts for the full year. Co-founder and chief executive Matthew Prince called it “Cloudflare’s best quarter ever”. Revenue grew at its fastest pace in nearly four years. “Our […] This story continues at The Next Web

Despite global iPad shipments dropping 27.5% year-over-year in the third calendar quarter, Apple maintained its lead in the tablet market, according to a new report released today. Here are the details. more…

CesiumAstro has raised $730M in a Series D round that values it at more than $4.5bn. The Austin-based maker of satellites and space communications systems announced the round on Thursday. It also unveiled Synchronicity, a planned network of 737 satellites with AI built in, for commercial, sovereign and defence customers. Asset manager Janus Henderson led […] This story continues at The Next Web

Amazon and Uber are teaming up to make Uber Eats the official restaurant delivery partner for Prime subscribers in the US. The news comes as Uber faces a drastically reshaped competitive landscape with the merging of rivals DoorDash and Instacart. Under the new partnership, Amazon Prime subscribers will get $0 delivery fees on restaurant orders […]

Centre for Public Integrity report says mandatory audit and public register of all automated decision-making needed Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast The federal government is “sleepwalking its way into another robodebt” scandal amid a lack of transparency and legislation around use of algorithms and artificial intelligence in decisions, the chief executive of independent thinktank the Centre for Public Integrity said. Dr Catherine Williams launched the centre’s “Computer Says No” report on Thursday, which examines the use of automated decision-making (ADM) tools by the government and calls for urgent reform. Continue reading...

North Korea is said to be behind the theft from the crypto exchange Binance. How did they pull it off and what will they do with the money? Kalyeena Makortoff and Jean H Lee report It was 8pm last Thursday when the panic alarms went off across the crypto world. Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, had been hacked. The cryptocurrency revolution promised to take power from the fusty old central banks and put it in the hands of the people. But the hack exposed just how vulnerable crypto can be. The Guardian’s banking correspondent, Kayleena Makortoff, tells Helen Pidd how Binance was hacked and how the news has shaken the crypto world. Almost immediately, the finger of blame was pointed squarely in one direction: North Korea. The journalist Jean H Lee explains why one of the poorest and most isolated countries in the world is believed to have pulled off the audacious heist, and what it might do with the money. Archive sources: CBC News, CNN, YouTube Continue reading...

Chains in seven countries say cooling unit temperatures rose overnight in incident similar to hack of French shops Who is hacking Europe’s supermarket fridges and freezers, and why? Supermarket chains in at least seven European countries have said the temperatures of refrigerators and freezers in some of their shops soared overnight to as high as 50C (122F), echoing a cyber-attack last month that caused millions of euros of damage in France. Retailers in Belgium, Estonia, Ireland, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden reported problems with their refrigeration systems on Monday, and several companies confirmed they had been hacked. Continue reading...

Google says one of its Android manufacturing partners secretly built a backdoor in 1.3 million devices and turned them into a botnet. The company says it has now dismantled the backdoor and "cut ties" with the manufacturer, the Shenzhen, China-based Videostrong Technology Co., which has been banned from building or selling certified Android devices or […]

Apple will now let Siri AI perform actions across third-party apps. As part of the iOS 27.3 update rolling out on Tuesday, Apple announced developers can now integrate Siri AI's new features in "all apps," allowing the voice assistant to draw on a user's personal context, process natural language prompts, and use on-screen awareness to […]

The New York Times and a group of other publications have filed lawsuits against the company that makes the Brave web browser over alleged unlawful scraping to train AI and also letting users bypass their paywalls, as reported by Reuters. According to a complaint filed by the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and […]