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Phoebe Gates, Bill Gates' youngest daughter, has raised $30 million for the AI shopping app she built in her Stanford dorm room with classmate Sophia Kianni. The app is called Phia and is pitched as a way to simplify price comparison and secondhand shopping. "Its AI-powered search engine -- available as an app and as a browser extension for Chrome and Safari -- pulls listings from more than 40,000 retail and resale sites so users can compare prices, surface real-time deals, and determine whether an item's cost is typical, high or fair," reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The app has reached 750,000 downloads in eight months and is valued at $180 million. From the report: Gates told Elle that when she first floated the idea to her parents, they urged her to keep it as a side project -- advice she followed by enrolling in Stanford's night program after moving to New York and finishing her degree in 2024. "They were like, 'Okay, you can do this as a side thing, but you need to stay in school.' I don't think people would expect that from my family, to be honest," she said. Her father dropped out of Harvard University in 1975 to launch Microsoft. Kianni even paused her degree temporarily "to learn, as quickly as possible, as much as we could about the industry that we would be operating in," she told Vogue. Bill Gates has not invested in the company, though he has publicly supported its mission. 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Google Translate Expands Live Translation To All Earbuds On Android An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google has increasingly moved toward keeping features locked to its hardware products, but the Translate app is bucking that trend. The live translate feature is breaking out of the Google bubble with support for any earbuds you happen to have connected to your Android phone. The app is also getting improved translation quality across dozens of languages and some Duolingo-like learning features. The latest version of Google's live translation is built on Gemini and initially rolled out earlier this year. It supports smooth back-and-forth translations as both on-screen text and audio. Beginning a live translate session in Google Translate used to require Pixel Buds, but that won't be the case going forward. Google says a beta test of expanded headphone support is launching today in the US, Mexico, and India. The audio translation attempts to preserve the tone and cadence of the original speaker, but it's not as capable as the full AI-reproduced voice translations you can do on the latest Pixel phones. Google says this feature should work on any earbuds or headphones, but it's only for Android right now. The feature will expand to iOS in the coming months. [...] The new translation model, which is also available in the search-based translation interface, supports over 70 languages.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - The Data Breach That Hit Two-Thirds of a Country Online retailer Coupang, often called South Korea's Amazon, is dealing with the fallout from a breach that exposed the personal information of more than 33 million accounts -- roughly two-thirds of the country's population -- after a former contractor allegedly used credentials that remained active months after his departure to access customer data through the company's overseas servers. The breach began in June but went undetected until November 18, according to Coupang and investigators. Police have called it South Korea's worst-ever data breach. The compromised information includes names, phone numbers, email addresses and shipping addresses, though the company says login credentials, credit card numbers, and payment details were not affected. Coupang's former CEO Park Dae-jun told a parliamentary hearing that the alleged perpetrator was a Chinese national who had worked on authentication tasks before his contract ended last December. Chief information security officer Brett Matthes testified that the individual had a "privileged role" giving him access to a private encryption key that allowed him to forge tokens to impersonate customers. Legislators say the key remained active after the employee left. The CEO of Coupang's South Korean subsidiary has resigned. Founder and chair Bom Kim has yet to personally apologize but has been summoned to a second parliamentary hearing.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - New Kindle Feature Uses AI To Answer Questions About Books - And Authors Can't Opt Out An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon has quietly added a new AI feature to its Kindle iOS app -- a feature that "lets you ask questions about the book you're reading and receive spoiler-free answers," according to an Amazon announcement. The company says the feature, which is called Ask this Book, serves as "your expert reading assistant, instantly answering questions about plot details, character relationships, and thematic elements without disrupting your reading flow." Publishing industry resource Publishers Lunch noticed Ask this Book earlier this week, and asked Amazon about it. Amazon spokesperson Ale Iraheta told PubLunch, "The feature uses technology, including AI, to provide instant, spoiler-free answers to customers' questions about what they're reading. Ask this Book provides short answers based on factual information about the book which are accessible only to readers who have purchased or borrowed the book and are non-shareable and non-copyable." As PubLunch summed up: "In other words, speaking plainly, it's an in-book chatbot." [...] Perhaps most alarmingly, the Amazon spokesperson said, "To ensure a consistent reading experience, the feature is always on, and there is no option for authors or publishers to opt titles out."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Arkansas Becoming 1st State To Sever Ties With PBS, Effective July 1 joshuark writes: Arkansas is becoming the first state to officially end its public television affiliation with PBS. The Arkansas Educational Television Commission, whose members are all appointed by the governor, voted to disaffiliate from PBS effective July 1, 2026, citing the $2.5 million annual membership dues as "not feasible." The decision was also driven by the loss of a similar amount in federal funding after the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was defunded by Congress. PBS Arkansas is rebranding itself as Arkansas TV and will provide more local content, the agency's Executive Director and CEO Carlton Wing said in a statement. Wing, a former Republican state representative, took the helm of the agency in September. "Public television in Arkansas is not going away," Wing said. "In fact, we invite you to join our vision for an increased focus on local programming, continuing to safeguard Arkansans in times of emergency and supporting our K-12 educators and students." "The commission's decision to drop PBS membership is a blow to Arkansans who will lose free, over the air access to quality PBS programming they know and love," a PBS spokesperson wrote in an email to The Associated Press. The demise of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is a direct result of President Donald Trump's targeting of public media, which he has repeatedly said is spreading political and cultural views antithetical to those the United States should be espousing. Trump denied taking a big should on television viewers.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Amazon Prime Video Pulls AI-Powered Recaps After Fallout Flub An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon Prime Video has pulled its AI-powered video recap of Fallout after viewers noticed that it got key parts of the story wrong. The streaming service began testing Video Recaps last month, and now they're missing from the shows included in the test, including Fallout, The Rig, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Upload, and Bosch. The feature is supposed to use AI to analyze a show's key plot points and sum it all in a bite-sized video, complete with an AI voiceover and clips from the series. But in its season one recap of Fallout, Prime Video incorrectly stated that one of The Ghoul's (Walton Goggins) flashbacks is set in "1950s America" rather than the year 2077, as spotted earlier by Games Radar.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Berlin Approves New Expansion of Police Surveillance Powers Berlin's regional parliament has passed a far-reaching overhaul of its "security" law, giving police new authority to conduct both digital and physical surveillance. From a report: The CDU-SPD coalition, supported by AfD votes, approved the reform of the General Security and Public Order Act (ASOG), changing the limits that once protected Berliners from intrusive policing. Interior Senator Iris Spranger (SPD) argued that the legislation modernizes police work for an era of encrypted communication, terrorism, and cybercrime. But it undermines core civil liberties and reshapes the relationship between citizens and the state. One of the most controversial elements is the expansion of police powers under paragraphs 26a and 26b. These allow investigators to hack into computers and smartphones under the banner of "source telecommunications surveillance" and "online searches." Police may now install state-developed spyware, known as trojans, on personal devices to intercept messages before or after encryption. If the software cannot be deployed remotely, the law authorizes officers to secretly enter a person's home to gain access. This enables police to install surveillance programs directly on hardware without the occupant's knowledge. Berlin had previously resisted such practices, but now joins other federal states that permit physical entry to install digital monitoring tools.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - 'Apple Tax is Dead in the USA' The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has almost entirely upheld a scathing April ruling that found Apple in willful violation of a 2021 injunction meant to open up iOS App Store payments in its long-running legal battle against Epic Games. A three-judge panel affirmed that Apple's 27% fee for developers using outside payment options had a "prohibitive effect" and that the company's design restrictions on external payment links were overly broad. The appeals court also agreed that Apple acted in "bad faith" by rejecting viable, compliant alternatives in internal discussions. One divergence from the lower court: the appeals court ruled that Apple should still be able to charge a "reasonable fee" based on its actual costs to ensure user security and privacy, rather than charging nothing at all. What qualifies as "reasonable" remains to be determined. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney told reporters he believes those fees should be "super super minor," on the order of "tens or hundreds of dollars" every time an iOS app update goes through Apple for review. "The Apple Tax is dead in the USA," he wrote on social media. Sweeney also alleged that a widespread "fear of retaliation" has kept many developers paying Apple's default 30% fees, claiming the company can effectively "ghost" apps by delaying reviews or burying them in search results.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - China Leads Research in 90% of Crucial Technologies - a Dramatic Shift this Century China is leading research in nearly 90% of the crucial technologies that "significantly enhance, or pose risks to, a country's national interests," according to a technology tracker run by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) -- an independent think-tank. Nature: The ASPI's Critical Technology Tracker evaluated research on 74 current and emerging technologies this year, up from the 64 technologies it analyzed last year. China is ranked number one for research on 66 of the technologies, including nuclear energy, synthetic biology, small satellites, while the United States topped the remaining 8, including quantum computing and geoengineering. The results reflect a drastic reversal. At the beginning of this century, the United States led more than 90% of the assessed technologies, whereas China led less than 5% of them, according to the 2024 edition of the tracker. "China has made incredible progress on science and technology that is reflected in research and development, as well as in publications," says Ilaria Mazzocco, who researches China's industrial policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a non-profit research organization based in Washington DC. Mazzocco says the general trend identified by the ASPI is not a surprise, but it is "remarkable" to see that China is so dominant and advanced in so many fields compared with the United States.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - The Immediate Post-College Transition and its Role in Socioeconomic Earnings Gaps A new study of roughly 80,000 bachelor's degree recipients from a large urban public college system finds that characteristics of a graduate's first job can explain nearly two-thirds of the otherwise-unexplained earnings gap between students from low-income and high-income families five years after graduation. The research [PDF], published as an NBER working paper by economists at Columbia University, tracked graduates from 2010 to 2017 using administrative education data linked to state unemployment insurance records. Low-income students -- defined as those receiving Pell grants throughout their undergraduate enrollment -- earned about 12% less than their high-income peers at the five-year mark. A substantial gap of roughly $4,900 persisted even after the researchers controlled for GPA, college attended, major, and other pre-graduation characteristics. That residual gap fell to about $1,700 once first-job variables entered the equation. Graduates from lower-income families tended to start at employers paying lower average wages and were less likely to have their first job secured before graduation. Just 34% of low-income graduates continued at a pre-graduation employer compared to 40% of their higher-income peers. The firms employing low-income graduates paid average wages that were 18% lower than those employing high-income graduates. The researchers say that while the study cannot establish causation, the patterns suggest that supporting low-income students during their transition from college to the labor market may be a fruitful area for policy intervention.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Washington Post's AI-Generated Podcasts Rife With Errors, Fictional Quotes The Washington Post's top standards editor Thursday decried "frustrating" errors in its new AI-generated personalized podcasts, whose launch has been met with distress by its journalists. From a report: Earlier this week, the Post announced that it was rolling out personalized AI-generated podcasts for users of the paper's mobile app. In a release, the paper said users will be able to choose preferred topics and AI hosts, and could "shape their own briefing, select their topics, set their lengths, pick their hosts and soon even ask questions using our Ask The Post AI technology." But less than 48 hours since the product was released, people within the Post have flagged what four sources described as multiple mistakes in personalized podcasts. The errors have ranged from relatively minor pronunciation gaffes to significant changes to story content, like misattributing or inventing quotes and inserting commentary, such as interpreting a source's quotes as the paper's position on an issue. According to four people familiar with the situation, the errors have alarmed senior newsroom leaders who have acknowledged in an internal Slack channel that the product's output is not living up to the paper's standards. In a message to other WaPo staff shared with Semafor, head of standards Karen Pensiero wrote that the errors have been "frustrating for all of us."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Hollywood Director Found Guilty of Blowing $11 Million Netflix Budget on Crypto and Ferraris Carl Rinsch, the director behind the 2013 Keanu Reeves film "47 Ronin," has been found guilty of defrauding Netflix out of $11 million that was meant to fund a science fiction series called "Conquest," which the streaming company ultimately cancelled in 2021 after Rinsch failed to meet any production milestones. A jury in the Southern District of New York convicted the 48-year-old on seven charges: one count each of wire fraud and money laundering, and five counts of transacting in illicitly obtained property. Prosecutors alleged that Rinsch funneled the $11 million through multiple bank accounts into a personal brokerage account, lost more than half of it on securities within two months, and then began speculating on cryptocurrency. Court records show he also spent $2.4 million on a Ferrari and five Rolls Royces, $3.3 million on furniture and antiques, and $387,000 on a Swiss watch. Netflix has written off $55 million in total and has not recovered any funds. Rinsch faces up to 90 years in prison and is scheduled for sentencing on April 17, 2026.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Major Automakers Say China Poses 'Clear and Present Threat' To US Auto Industry Major automakers have urged Washington to prevent Chinese government-backed automakers and battery manufacturers from opening U.S. manufacturing plants, warning the industry's future is at stake. From a report: The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents General Motors, Ford, Toyota Motor, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Stellantis and other major automakers, sounded the alarm and said Congress and the Trump administration needed to act. "China poses a clear and present threat to the auto industry in the U.S.," the group wrote in a statement for a U.S. House hearing on Chinese vehicles. The group also said lawmakers should maintain the U.S. Commerce Department's prohibition on importing information and communications technology and services from China that effectively bars the import of vehicles from Chinese manufacturers. "No amount of investment by automakers and battery manufacturers operating inside the U.S. can counter a China that is enabled by subsidies to chronically oversupply around the world. This is a recipe for dumping that Congress and the Trump Administration must prevent from happening inside the U.S.," the auto industry group said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Reddit Launches High Court Challenge To Australia's Under-16s Social Media Ban An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Reddit has filed a challenge against Australia's under-16s social media ban in the high court, lodging its case two days after implementing age restrictions on its website. The company said in a Reddit post on Friday that while it agreed with protecting people under 16, the law "has the unfortunate effect of forcing intrusive and potentially insecure verification processes on adults as well as minors, isolating teens from the ability to engage in age-appropriate community experiences." Reddit said there was an "illogical patchwork" of platforms included in the ban. "As the Australian Human Rights Commission put it, 'There are less restrictive alternatives available that could achieve the aim of protecting children and young people from online harms, but without having such a significant negative impact on other human rights.'" Reddit argued it was a forum primarily for adults without the traditional social media features the government has "taken issue with." Reddit was challenging the law on the grounds it infringed on the implied freedom of political communication. It was also seeking to challenge whether Reddit could be considered an age-restricted social media platform under the legislation. It said it was not seeking to challenge the law to avoid compliance, and had implemented age-assurance measures since Wednesday. The company said the vast majority of Redditors were adults, and advertising wasn't targeted to children under 18. The Apple app store age rating for Reddit is 17+. "Despite the best intentions, this law is missing the mark on actually protecting young people online," Reddit said. "So, while we will comply with this law, we have a responsibility to share our perspective and see that it is reviewed by the courts."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - SEC Gives DTCC OK to Tokenize Stocks In Move To Blockchain The SEC has granted the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., or DTCC, a no-action letter allowing it to custody and recognize tokenized stocks, ETFs, and Treasuries on approved blockchains for three years. "Although this program is a pilot subject to various operational limitations, it marks a significant incremental step in moving markets onchain," SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said in a statement. Bloomberg reports: With the permission, DTCC will also extend their record-keeping to the blockchain, Michael Winnike, global head of strategy and market solutions at DTCC Clearing & Securities Services, said in an interview. "It's the same legal entitlement, the same stock that you would hold in your account from the DTCC in traditional form," Winnike said. [...] The SEC's authorization of tokenization services only applies to a specific set of securities that trade often. The approval includes the Russell 1000 index which represents the 1,000 largest publicly traded US companies, as well as exchange-traded funds that track major indices and US Treasury bills, bonds and notes, Winnike said. "This allows us both to create value for the markets, while staying in a pre-defined pool of highly-liquid securities to start," said Winnike. The firm's ultimate aspiration is to add its entire depository, which represents $100 trillion in securities, to the blockchain, a move that would require further expansion of the no-action relief from the SEC, he said. Winnike said the tokenization service will help bridge the traditional and digital worlds in part because the new technology will have the same legal entitlements and controls as traditional markets, including freezing or forced transfers if assets are stolen. "This enables participants to adopt and integrate, because they know there is a trusted party that can recover their securities as needed" and can address potential errors, he said. The new blockchain service will also allow investors to move assets all the time, not just Monday through Friday when traditional markets are open. "That creates a lot of new utility," Winnike said. "It brings the two ecosystems together."
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