On Monday, Microsoft came out guns blazing, posting a blog accusing Google of "dishonestly" funding groups conducting allegedly biased studies to discredit Microsoft and mislead antitrust enforcers and the public.

In the blog, Microsoft lawyer Rima Alaily alleged that an astroturf group called the Open Cloud Coalition will launch this week and will appear to be led by "a handful of European cloud providers." In actuality, however, those smaller companies were secretly recruited by Google, which allegedly pays them "to serve as the public face" and "obfuscate" Google's involvement, Microsoft's blog said. In return, Google likely offered the cloud providers cash or discounts to join, Alaily alleged.

The Open Cloud Coalition is just one part of a "pattern of shadowy campaigns" that Google has funded, both "directly and indirectly," to muddy the antitrust waters, Alaily alleged. The only other named example that Alaily gives while documenting this supposed pattern is the US-based Coalition for Fair Software Licensing (CFSL), which Alaily said has attacked Microsoft's cloud computing business in the US, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.

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For his most recent trip to the International Space Station, in lieu of bringing coffee or some other beverage in his "personal drink bag" allotment for the stay, NASA astronaut Don Pettit asked instead for a couple of bags of unflavored gelatin.

This was not for cooking purposes but rather to perform scientific experiments. How many of us would give up coffee for science?

Well, Donald Roy Pettit is not like most of us.

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Dozens of people in Wisconsin have been sickened and at least five needed emergency medical services after inadvertently eating pizza tainted with delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the principal psychoactive compound in cannabis, officials of Public Health Madison & Dane County reported late Friday .

The contamination, which health officials called "unintentional," occurred at Famous Yeti’s Pizza in Stoughton between Tuesday October 22 and Thursday October 24. In a news release, the local health department advised customers to throw away any pizza they had from the restaurant during that time period.

"We want to be sure anyone who has this pizza on hand throws it away so they don't get sick," Bonnie Armstrong, director of Environmental Health at Public Health Madison & Dane County, said in the release. "If you ate the pizza and are experiencing THC-related symptoms, please contact your health care provider or call 911 if your symptoms worsen."

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One of the last major hold-outs against USB-C has majorly loosened its grasp. All the accessories that come with Apple's newest iMac —the Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and Magic Trackpad—ship with USB-C charging and connection ports, rather than the Lightning ports they have featured for nearly a decade.

"These accessories now come with USB-C ports, so users can charge all of their favorite devices with just a single cable," Apple writes in announcing its new M4-powered iMac, in the way that only Apple can, suggesting that something already known to so many is, when brought into Apple's loop, notable and new.

Apple's shift from its own Lightning connector, in use since 2012, to USB-C was sparked by EU policies enacted in 2022 . Apple gradually implemented USB-C on other devices, like its iPad Pro and MacBooks, over time, but the iPhone 15's USB-C port made the "switch" somewhat formal.

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In recent years, materials scientists experimenting with ceramics have started adding an oxidized form of graphene to the mix to produce ceramics that are tougher, more durable, and more resistant to fracture, among other desirable properties. Researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a new method that uses ultrasound to more evenly distribute graphene oxide (GO) in ceramics, according to a new paper published in the journal ACS Omega. And as a bonus, they collaborated with an artist who used the resulting ceramic tiles to create a unique art exhibit at the NUS Museum—a striking merger of science and art.

As reported previously , graphene is the thinnest material yet known, composed of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. That structure gives it many unusual properties that hold great promise for real-world applications: batteries, super capacitors, antennas, water filters, transistors, solar cells, and touchscreens, just to name a few.

In 2021, scientists found that this wonder material might also provide a solution to the fading of colors of many artistic masterpieces. For instance, several of Georgia O'Keeffe's oil paintings housed in the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, have developed tiny pin-sized blisters , almost like acne, for decades. Conservators have found similar deterioration in oil-based masterpieces across all time periods, including works by Rembrandt.

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Today, Apple released iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, macOS Sequoia 15.1, tvOS 18.1, visionOS 2.1, and watchOS 11.1. The iPhone, iPad, and Mac updates are focused on bringing the first AI features the company has marketed as "Apple Intelligence" to users.

Once they update, users with supported devices in supported regions can enter a waitlist to begin using the first wave of Apple Intelligence features, including writing tools, notification summaries, and the "reduce interruptions" focus mode.

In terms of features baked into specific apps, Photos has natural language search, the ability to generate memories (those short gallery sequences set to video) from a text prompt, and a tool to remove certain objects from the background in photos. Mail and Messages get summaries and smart reply (auto-generating contextual responses).

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On Saturday, an Associated Press investigation revealed that OpenAI's Whisper transcription tool creates fabricated text in medical and business settings despite warnings against such use. The AP interviewed more than 12 software engineers, developers, and researchers who found the model regularly invents text that speakers never said, a phenomenon often called a " confabulation " or "hallucination" in the AI field.

Upon its release in 2022, OpenAI claimed that Whisper approached "human level robustness" in audio transcription accuracy. However, a University of Michigan researcher told the AP that Whisper created false text in 80 percent of public meeting transcripts examined. Another developer, unnamed in the AP report, claimed to have found invented content in almost all of his 26,000 test transcriptions.

The fabrications pose particular risks in health care settings. Despite OpenAI's warnings against using Whisper for " high-risk domains ," over 30,000 medical workers now use Whisper-based tools to transcribe patient visits, according to the AP report. The Mankato Clinic in Minnesota and Children's Hospital Los Angeles count among 40 health systems using a Whisper-powered AI copilot service from medical tech company Nabla that is fine-tuned on medical terminology.

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AI is giving scammers a more convincing way to impersonate police, reports show.

Just last week, the Salt Lake City Police Department (SLCPD) warned of an email scam using AI to convincingly clone the voice of Police Chief Mike Brown.

A citizen tipped off cops after receiving a suspicious email that included a video showing the police chief claiming that they "owed the federal government nearly $100,000."

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Google researchers said they uncovered a Kremlin-backed operation targeting recruits for the Ukrainian military with information-stealing malware for Windows and Android devices.

The malware, spread primarily through posts on Telegram, came from a persona on that platform known as "Civil Defense." Posts on the ​​@civildefense_com_ua telegram channel and the accompanying civildefense[.]com.ua website claimed to provide potential conscripts with free software for finding user-sourced locations of Ukrainian military recruiters. In fact, the software, available for both Windows and Android, installed infostealers. Google tracks the Kremlin-aligned threat group as UNC5812.

Dual espionage and influence campaign

"The ultimate aim of the campaign is to have victims navigate to the UNC5812-controlled 'Civil Defense' website, which advertises several different software programs for different operating systems," Google researchers wrote . "When installed, these programs result in the download of various commodity malware families."

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