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 Google today said eligible college students in the United States can get a free year of Google AI Pro. Google AI Pro is normally priced at $19.99 per month, and it includes 4x higher usage limits in Gemini, access to Gemini Spark, Gemini in Google apps like Gmail and Google Docs, and 5TB of storage space.
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 Apple yesterday updated its App Store fees in the EU to comply with the Digital Markets Act and to put an end to its ongoing conflict with the European Commission. Apple cut the Core Technology Fee and simplified its pricing structure, so apps distributed through alternative marketplaces or through the web will pay less than before.
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 Meta today launched a new ?Meta? AI app for the Mac, which is available in a beta capacity.
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NEW RESOURCES Mashable: Have you been Flocked? This website lets you find out. "A website called Have I Been Flocked? lets you enter your license plate number and check whether it appears […]
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Google's latest foldable sports some welcome upgrades, but its lack of a major design change is disappointing.
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Apple has changed its App Store fee structure in the EU in a move to further satisfy the requirements of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). While critics continue to argue the changes don't go far enough, the European Commission welcomed the changes made and plans to monitor how they're implemented.
The new fee structure
Specifically, Apple introduced a less complex system than it had offered before, with a lower, but universal, 5% Core Technology fee applied on digital transactions in apps distributed outside the App Store. Apple changed its commission structure and eliminated some fees, including initial acquisition and store services fees. It has also expanded the scope of eligibility to operate alternative app marketplaces. The new changes go into effect Oct. 1, and include (verbatim from Apple's statement):
For App Store apps using Apple In-App Purchase, the commission will be 26%. For the vast majority of developers, including those in the App Store Small Business Program, Mini Apps Partner Program, or Video Partner Program, and for auto-renewing subscriptions after their first year, it will be 15%.
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Google has paid $10 million in a bankruptcy auction for a large amount of data from the defunct Spirit Airlines, Bloomberg Law reports.
The purchase includes 100 million emails, 500 million messages, data from Microsoft Teams, as well as information on revenue, flight operations, marketing, personnel, and project management. The material also includes 30 million lines of program code, development data, and various software models and algorithms, as well as pricing data from 7.2 billion competing flights and approximately 7.5 billion passenger transactions.
No personal data will be included in the deal, and according to Google, a third party will review the material and remove any information that could identify individuals. Google said the data will then be used to improve the company's products and AI models.
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NEW RESOURCES Common Dreams: New Database Documents Over 100 Cases of Cops Abusing Flock Surveillance Cameras. "A new database launched Wednesday that details more than 100 cases of alleged abuse by law […]
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 Satechi today launched the ChargeView 240W Desktop Charger, a successor to the 140W ChargeView released last year. The ChargeView 240W can power multiple devices at one time, splitting 240W across six USB-C ports.
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Meta rolled out a new 30-billion-parameter AI model optimized to run on a PC or Mac with a single GPU on Monday, offering a way to run always-on agentic workflows locally rather than relying on the cloud.
The company has dubbed it Muse Glimmer. However, its hardware demands, including a GPU with a minimum of 24GB of VRAM, could make it difficult to justify for deployment at scale.
Although analysts and consultants agree that there is a tremendous enterprise appetite for running models locally, determining whether switching more systems from cloud to local makes fiscal sense is much more complex.
The hardware costs are tricky to calculate even today, with the VRAM needed depending on the particular applications to be run. But the far bigger consideration is that there is no way to determine what RAM costs will look like over the next 12-18 months, and there is an identical lack of visibility into how cloud prices might increase during the same timeframe.
That makes determining the better financial choice impossible.
Agents become capex, not opex
Noah Kenney, principal consultant at Digital 520, noted that since RAM costs have increased "exponentially" over the last 12 months, cloud AI providers are also going to have to increase their prices. Beyond that, IT needs to anticipate logistical is
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New details of how ChatGPT maker OpenAI failed to notice that its models had launched a hacking spree raise questions about the industry's approach to safety.
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DeepSeek invests $20.8 million in Unitree's Shanghai IPO, deepening a partnership to develop AI models and applications for humanoid robots in China.
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Sometimes you can notice the signs of a failing SSD. For instance, the once-quick transfer speed slows to crawl, there are frequent program or system crashes, or file system access errors or SMART errors occur. If you notice these things, especially in combination, there's a good chance your SSD is on its way out. In that case, it's time to prepare for the worst and do the following:
Back up critical files
It goes without saying that the first thing you'll want to do if you think your SSD is on the blink is to back up your critical data. Backups should be done regularly anyway, but even if you're doing that, you'll still want to make a new backup of your critical files at this point to have them ready to go should your SSD suddenly die.
See our roundups of the best Windows backup software and
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