Author: The Tech Guy

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Last week, Nieman Lab revealed that USA Today‘s parent company USA Today Co (formerly Gannett) was partnering with AI surveillance firm Palantir to monetize “actionable intelligence” on its audience. According to USA Today CEO Mike Reed, the goal is to “build a common intelligence layer” on reader data to “monetize those relationships faster and at much greater value.” The largest newspaper’s new partnership with the Peter Thiel-cofounded company, which has long been mired in controversy — from collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement…

I’ve spent a fair bit of time being rude about how Google has handled Nest, with the company that kickstarted smart thermostats seeing a sad decline. Credit where credit’s due, Google has been extremely helpful dealing with a broken thermostat. I use a Nest Thermostat 3rd Gen in a house we rent out because the hardware is robust, the device is mains-powered (so it can’t run out of battery), and it lets me turn the heating on and off depending on whether people are in the house. Getting down to the house a week ago, I walked past the thermostat, only…

As we prepare for the back-to-school season, the question on every student’s mind seems to be whether they need a new tablet to handle this year’s course load. I’m a college lecturer and PhD student, so I’ve been in my fair share of modern classrooms, including learning management systems you or your children most likely have to deal with on a daily basis, like Blackboard and Canvas. Additionally, my nephew is also getting to the age where his tablet time has to become something of an in-depth discussion. I say all of that to note that these four features don’t…

Data analytics solutions provider Metabase has released urgent patches for a critical-severity SQL injection vulnerability that has been exploited in the wild as a zero-day. The security defect allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary SQL queries into the Metabase application database and obtain administrative access. “From there, the attacker could change the application configuration, steal stored credentials for the connected databases, read any data accessible through those connections, and export data,” Metabase’s advisory reads. No CVE identifier has been assigned to the bug, but Metabase warned that it was discovered after a threat actor exploited it as a zero-day…

It is a procurement metric, not a sales metric. There are three separate stacks and the industry deliberately blurs them. Screenshot CoreWeave’s 3.5 GW contracted power and its $99.4B backlog are two different books. How tightly is the second mapped onto the first. They are very tightly, by design, because layer 3 is the collateral for building layer 2. Is the Neocloud Build Pre-committed? Mostly Yes CoreWeave. More than 75% of the over $30B exit-2027 ARR target is already contracted. Management says it has already secured sufficient power capacity to deliver on the 2027 target. What does this mean? The…

Brain implants, like the ones made by Elon Musk’s Neuralink, typically involve open-skull surgery. But a Chinese startup says it can skip that step entirely, threading its device into the brain through a vein in a procedure that reportedly takes as little as ten minutes. According to the South China Morning Post, Shanghai-based StairMed Technology is one of several companies pursuing this approach, as the country pushes to expand its homegrown brain-computer interface (BCI) industry. Faster than Neuralink, on paper Unlike Neuralink’s implant, which requires a surgical robot to open the skull and place ultra-fine electrode threads directly into brain…

Many premium headphones and even earbuds support higher codecs for listening in true hi-res. Of course, you need to be listening from a hi-res audio source, like the top-tier Spotify subscription or from a service like Tidal. But even when you think you’re listening to audio at the highest spec your headphones support, you might not be, when choosing the appropriate service. Your smartphone, if that’s what you’re using, must also support that spec. And in many cases, you need to adjust audio quality in the headphones app to turn it on as well. Related My expensive earbuds sounded average…

Summer holidays are a great time for soaking up the sun, but if your booked trip location is a little hotter than you were expecting this year — dare I say it, slightly too hot — it’s worth making a plan to keep yourself comfortable enough to enjoy the break. Below, I’ve rounded up my keep-cool kit list for tackling too-balmy summer days.To start off, arm yourself with a portable fan. Both Shark and Dyson have come out with stellar options this summer. The Shark ChillPill has a cooling plate and misting function, for a multi-pronged attack on the heat,…

DEF CON — A security researcher has revealed severe, now-resolved security vulnerabilities in the Connective digital identity system, a browser extension used by over two million users in Belgium.  Developed by Nitro Software Belgium, the software is used by eight of Belgium’s ten largest banks and over 60 government agencies to manage digital identity authentication and execute legally binding electronic signatures. James Arnott, security researcher and founder of cybersecurity firm Bay Area Labs, discovered that the software failed to verify which website was attempting to communicate with the user’s computer. Because these checks were missing, any website or embedded online…

Explanation: Each of these pairs of galaxies is different. The two galaxies at the top are likely not interacting, at least presently. However, the top galaxy with the blue stripe, NGC 4650A, is a polar ring galaxy and may be the result of a past galaxy collision. The two galaxies in the middle of the featured image appear like they could be interacting gravitationally — but their relative speeds make this unlikely. Of these two, the larger galaxy, NGC 4650, is a spiral galaxy with a bright bar of stars across its center. The two galaxies at the bottom are…