Steve Ballmer wanted Microsoft’s Cortana AI to be called “Bingo” so it would be more Microsoft-branded. From a report: That’s according to former Microsoft product manager Sandeep Paruchuri, who recounted the story of how Microsoft’s AI assistant got its name to writer Alice Newton Rex as part of a deep Read more…
Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun and Airbus Americas CEO Jeffrey Knittel have urged the Biden administration to delay planned deployment of new 5G wireless services, saying it could harm aviation safety. From a report: The executives in a joint letter seen by Reuters asked U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to Read more…
Already declining US population growth dipped to its lowest rate since the nation’s founding during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. From a report: That’s because the coronavirus curtailed immigration, delayed pregnancies, and killed hundreds of thousands of US residents. Figures released Tuesday by the US Census Bureau show Read more…
Fresh off relinquishing the chief executive reins of Twitter, Bitcoin enthusiast Jack Dorsey has taken to the service he co-founded to voice his displeasure with so-called Web3 technology and the involvement of venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz. From a report: Web3, the still hazy term for blockchain-based, decentralized systems Read more…
Researchers at the biotechnology startup Cortical Labs have created “mini-brains” consisting of 800,000 to one million living human brain cells in a petri dish, New Scientist reports. The cells are placed on top of a microelectrode array that analyzes the neural activity… To teach the mini-brains the game, the team Read more…
Wildlife officials in Florida are preparing to feed manatees in the wild, an unprecedented response to the animals’ mass starvation caused by the loss of seagrasses they normally eat. From a report: So far this year, 1,056 manatees have died in Florida, nearly double the average for the same period Read more…
The Log4Shell exploit “exposes how a vulnerability in a seemingly simple bit of infrastructure code can threaten the security of banks, tech companies, governments, and pretty much any other kind of organization,” writes VentureBeat. But the incident also raises some questions: Should large deep-pocketed companies besides Google, which always seems Read more…