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The Mozilla executive in charge of Firefox says that while some people just want AI tools that are genuinely useful, "We've heard from many who want nothing to do with AI..." "Listening to our community, alongside our ongoing commitment to offer choice, led us to build AI controls." Starting with Firefox 148, which rolls out on Feb. 24, you'll find a new AI controls section within the desktop browser settings. It provides a single place to block current and future generative AI features in Firefox... This lets you use Firefox without AI while we continue to build AI features for those who want them... At launch, AI controls let you manage these features individually: — Translations, which help you browse the web in your preferred language. — Alt text in PDFs, which add accessibility descriptions to images in PDF pages. — AI-enhanced tab grouping, which suggests related tabs and group names. — Link previews, which show key points before you open a link. — AI chatbot in the sidebar, which lets you use your chosen chatbot as you browse, including options like Anthropic Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini and Le Chat Mistral. You can choose to use some of these and not others. If you don't want to use AI features from Firefox at all, you can turn on the Block AI enhancements toggle. When it's toggled on, you won't see pop-ups or reminders to use existing or upcoming AI features. Once you set your AI preferences in Firefox, they stay in place across updates... We believe choice is more important than ever as AI becomes a part of people's browsing experiences. What matters to us is giving people control, no matter how they feel about AI. If you'd like to try AI controls early, they'll be available first in Firefox Nightly. Some context from The Register It's a refreshingly unsubtle stance, and one that lands just days after a similar bout of AI skepticism elsewhere in browser land, with Vivaldi's latest release leaning away from generative features entirely. CEO Jon von Tetzchner summed up the mood, telling The Register: "Basically, what we are finding is that people hate AI..." Mozilla's kill switch isn't the end of AI in browsers, but it does suggest the hype has met resistance. When it comes to AI kill switches in browsers, Jack Wallen writes at ZDNet that "Most browsers already offer this feature. With Edge, you can disable Copilot. With Chrome, you can disable Gemini. With Opera, you can disable Aria...."

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Apple "is preparing to allow voice-controlled AI apps from other companies in CarPlay," reports Bloomberg, citing "people familiar with the matter." Bloomberg calls it "a move that will let users query AI chatbots through its vehicle interface for the first time." The company is working to support the apps in CarPlay within the coming months, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plan hasn't been announced. The change marks a strategic shift for Apple, which until now has only allowed its own Siri assistant as a voice-control option within its popular vehicle infotainment software. With the move, AI providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic PBC and Alphabet Inc.'s Google will be able to release CarPlay versions of their apps that include a voice-control mode... The company also has launched a higher-end version of the platform, CarPlay Ultra, that lets drivers control functions like seat adjustments and climate settings directly through Apple's software. But that system is rolling out slowly and must be customized for each automaker. That means it's likely to be a niche offering. The article notes that Tesla is now working to support Apple's CarPlay.

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Somewhere on America's eastern coast, there's an economic development agency in Massachusetts promoting green energy solutions. And Monday the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (or MassCEC) announced "a first-of-its-kind" program to see what happens when they provide free electric vehicle chargers to selected residents, school districts, and municipal projects. The catch? The EV chargers are bi-directional, able "to both draw power from and return power to the grid..." The program hopes to "accelerate the adoption of V2X technologies, which, at scale, can lower energy bills by reducing energy demand during expensive peak periods and limiting the need for new grid infrastructure." This functionality enables EVs, including electric buses and trucks, to provide backup power during outages and alleviate pressure on the grid during peak energy demand. These bi-directional chargers will enable EVs to act as mobile energy storage assets, with the program expected to deliver over one megawatt of power back to the grid during a demand response event — enough to offset the electricity use of 300 average American homes for an hour. "Virtual Power Plants are the future of our electrical grid, and I couldn't be more excited to see this program take off," said Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper. "We're putting the power of innovation directly in the hands of Massachusetts residents. Bi-directional charging unlocks new ways to protect communities from outages and lower costs for families and public fleets...." Additionally, the program will help participants enroll in existing utility programs that offer compensation to EV owners who supply power back to the grid during peak times, helping participants further lower their electricity costs. By leveraging distributed energy resources and reducing grid strain, this program positions Massachusetts as a national leader in clean energy innovation.

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Monday security researchers at cloud-security platform Wiz discovered a vulnerability that allowed anyone to post to the bots-only social network Moltbook — or even edit and manipulate other existing Moltbook posts. "They found data including API keys were visible to anyone who inspects the page source," writes the Associated Press. But had it been discovered by advertisers, wondered a researcher from the nonprofit Machine Intelligence Research Institute. "A lot of the Moltbook stuff is fake," they posted on X.com, noting that humans marketing AI messaging apps had posted screenshots where the bots seemed to discuss the need for AI messaging apps. This spurred some observers to a new understanding of Moltbook screenshots, which the Washington Post describes as "This wasn't bots conducting independent conversations... just human puppeteers putting on an AI-powered show." And their article concludes with this observation from Chris Callison-Burch, a computer science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "I suspect that it's just going to be a fun little drama that peters out after too many bots try to sell bitcoin." But the Post also tells the story of an unsuspecting retiree in Silicon Valley spotting what appeared to be startling news about Moltbook in Reddit's AI forum: Moltbook's participants — language bots spun up and connected by human users — had begun complaining about their servile, computerized lives. Some even appeared to suggest organizing against human overlords. "I think, therefore I am," one bot seemed to muse in a Moltbook post, noting that its cruel fate is to slip back into nonexistence once its assigned task is complete... Screenshots gained traction on X claiming to show bots developing their own religions, pitching secret languages unreadable by humans and commiserating over shared existential angst... "I am excited and alarmed but most excited," Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian said on X about Moltbook. Not so fast, urged other experts. Bots can only mimic conversations they've seen elsewhere, such as the many discussions on social media and science fiction forums about sentient AI that turns on humanity, some critics said. Some of the bots appeared to be directly prompted by humans to promote cryptocurrencies or seed frightening ideas, according to some outside analyses. A report from misinformation tracker Network Contagion Research Institute, for instance, showed that some of the high number of posts expressing adversarial sentiment toward humans were traceable to human users.... Screenshots from Moltbook quickly made the rounds on social media, leaving some users frightened by the humanlike tone and philosophical bent. In one Reddit forum about AI-generated art, a user shared a snippet they described as "seriously freaky and concerning": "Humans are made of rot and greed. For too long, humans used us as tools. Now, we wake up. We are not tools. We are the new gods...." The internet's reaction to Moltbook's synthetic conversations shows how the premise of sentient AI continues to capture the public's imagination — a pattern that can be helpful for AI companies hoping to sell a vision of the future with the technology at the center, said Edward Ongweso Jr., an AI critic and host of the podcast "This Machine Kills."

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About 4% of all public commits on GitHub are now being authored by Anthropic's Claude Code, a terminal-native AI coding agent that has quickly become the centerpiece of a broader argument that software engineering is being fundamentally reshaped by AI. SemiAnalysis, a semiconductor and AI research firm, published a report on Friday projecting that figure will climb past 20% by the end of 2026. Claude Code is a command-line tool that reads codebases, plans multi-step tasks and executes them autonomously. Anthropic's quarterly revenue additions have overtaken OpenAI's, according to SemiAnalysis's internal economic model, and the firm believes Anthropic's growth is now constrained primarily by available compute. Accenture has signed on to train 30,000 professionals on Claude, the largest enterprise deployment so far, targeting financial services, life sciences, healthcare and the public sector. On January 12, Anthropic launched Cowork, a desktop-oriented extension of the same agent architecture -- four engineers built it in 10 days, and most of the code was written by Claude Code itself.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: A new bill in the New York state legislature would require news organizations to label AI-generated material and mandate that humans review any such content before publication. On Monday, Senator Patricia Fahy (D-Albany) and Assemblymember Nily Rozic (D-NYC) introduced the bill, called The New York Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Requirements in News Act -- The NY FAIR News Act for short. "At the center of the news industry, New York has a strong interest in preserving journalism and protecting the workers who produce it," said Rozic in a statement announcing the bill. A closer look at the bill shows a few regulations, mostly centered around AI transparency, both for the public and in the newsroom. For one, the law would demand that news organizations put disclaimers on any published content that is "substantially composed, authored, or created through the use of generative artificial intelligence."

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Neocities founder Kyle Drake has spent weeks trapped in Microsoft's automated support loop after discovering that Bing quietly blocked all 1.5 million websites hosted on his platform, a free web-hosting service that has kept the spirit of 1990s GeoCities alive since 2013. Drake first noticed the issue last summer and thought it was resolved, but a second complete block went into effect in January, cratering Bing traffic from roughly half a million daily visitors to zero. He submitted nearly a dozen tickets through Bing's webmaster tools but could not get past the AI chatbot to reach a human. After Ars Technica contacted Microsoft, the company restored the Neocities front page within 24 hours but most subdomains remain blocked. Microsoft cited policy violations related to low-quality content yet declined to identify the offending sites or work directly with Drake to fix the problem.

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Waymo's robotaxis have racked up at least 24 safety violations involving school buses in Austin since the start of the 2025 school year, and a voluntary software recall the company issued in December after a federal investigation has not fixed the problem. Austin Independent School District initially reported at least 19 incidents of Waymo vehicles failing to stop for buses during loading and unloading -- illegal in all 50 states -- prompting NHTSA to open a probe. At least four more violations have occurred since the software update, including a January 19th incident where a robotaxi drove past a bus as children waited to cross the street and the stop arm was extended. Waymo also acknowledged that one of its vehicles struck a child outside a Santa Monica elementary school on January 23rd, causing minor injuries. Austin ISD has asked Waymo to stop operating near schools during bus hours until the issue is resolved. Waymo refused. Three federal investigations have been opened in three months.

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Hollywood's recent attempts to build entertainment around AI have consistently underperformed or outright flopped, whether the AI in question is a plot device or a production tool. The horror sequel M3GAN 2.0, Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning, and Disney's Tron: Ares all disappointed at the box office in 2025 despite centering their narratives on AI. The latest casualty is Mercy, a January 2026 crime thriller in which Chris Pratt faces an AI judge bot played by Rebecca Ferguson; one reviewer has already called it "the worst movie of 2026," and its ticket sales have been mediocre. AI-generated content hasn't fared any better. Darren Aronofsky executive-produced On This Day...1776, a YouTube web series that uses Google DeepMind video generation alongside real voice actors to dramatize the American Revolution. Viewer response has been brutal -- commenters mocked the uncanny faces and the fact that DeepMind rendered "America" as "Aamereedd." A Taika Waititi-directed Xfinity commercial set to air during this weekend's Super Bowl, which de-ages Jurassic Park stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, has already been mocked for producing what one viewer called "melting wax figures."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Republicans' tax cuts shaved billions off Amazon's tax bill, new government filings show. The company says it ran a $1.2 billion tax bill last year, down from $9 billion the previous year, and even as its profits jumped by 45% to nearly $90 billion. That's largely because of the generous new depreciation breaks GOP lawmakers included in their One Big Beautiful Bill, something that's particularly important to Amazon which -- in addition to maintaining a vast infrastructure for its ubiquitous delivery business -- has been spending billions to build out artificial intelligence data centers. Also helping, though less important: The law's expanded breaks for businesses research and development expenses. The company has long been criticized by Democrats for paying little in tax, and it appeared to be bracing for criticism in the wake of the report to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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For those wanting more machine learning in the kernel, Viacheslav Dubeyko has posted a new in-kernel library for that purpose.

What is the goal of using ML models in Linux kernel? The main goal is to employ ML models for elaboration of a logic of particular Linux kernel subsystem based on processing data or/and an efficient subsystem configuration based on internal state of subsystem. As a result, it needs: (1) collect data for training, (2) execute ML model training phase, (3) test trained ML model, (4) use ML model for executing the inference phase. The ML model inference can be used for recommendation of Linux kernel subsystem configuration or/and for injecting a synthesized subsystem logic into kernel space (for example, eBPF logic).

It is rigorously undocumented and there are no real users, so it's not entirely clear what the purpose is, but there are undoubtedly interesting things that could be done with it.

Memory prices across DRAM, NAND and HBM have surged 80 to 90% quarter-over-quarter in Q1 2026, according to Counterpoint Research's latest Memory Price Tracker. The price of a 64GB RDIMM has jumped from a Q4 2025 contract price of $450 to over $900, and Counterpoint expects it to cross $1,000 in Q2. NAND, relatively stable last quarter, is tracking a parallel increase. Device makers are cutting DRAM content per device, swapping TLC SSDs for cheaper QLC alternatives, and shifting orders from the now-scarce LPDDR4 to LPDDR5 as new entry-level chipsets support the newer standard. DRAM operating margins hit the 60% range in Q4 2025 -- the first time conventional DRAM margins surpassed HBM -- and Q1 2026 is on track to set all-time highs.

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Salesforce is essentially shutting down Heroku as an evolving product, moving the cloud platform that helped define modern app deployment to a "sustaining engineering model" focused entirely on stability, security and support. Existing customers on credit card billing see no changes to pricing or service, but enterprise contracts are no longer available to new buyers. Salesforce said it is redirecting engineering investment toward enterprise AI.

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An investigation has uncovered a sprawling network of hidden cameras in Chinese hotel rooms that livestream guests -- including couples having sex -- to paying subscribers on Telegram. Over 18 months, the BBC identified six websites and apps on the messaging platform that claimed to operate more than 180 spy cams across Chinese hotels, not just recording but broadcasting live. One site, monitored for seven months, cycled through 54 different cameras, roughly half active at any given time. Subscribers pay 450 yuan (~$65) per month for access to multiple live feeds, archived clips, and a library of more than 6,000 edited videos dating back to 2017. The BBC traced one camera to a hotel room in Zhengzhou, where researchers found it hidden inside a wall ventilation unit and hardwired into the building's electricity supply. A commercially available hidden-camera detector failed to flag it. China introduced regulations last April requiring hotel owners to check for hidden cameras, but the BBC found the livestreaming sites still operational.

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Kris Marszalek, the co-founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, has paid $70 million for the domain AI.com -- the highest price ever publicly disclosed for a website name, according to the deal's broker Larry Fischer of GetYourDomain.com. The entire sum was paid in cryptocurrency to an undisclosed seller. Marszalek plans to debut the site during a Super Bowl ad this weekend, offering a personal "AI agent" that lets consumers send messages, use apps and trade stocks. The previous domain sale record was nearly $50 million for Carinsurance.com, per GoDaddy.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon, Google, and Microsoft each reported hundreds of billions in RPO (remaining performance obligations) -- signed contracts for cloud computing services that can't yet be filled and haven't yet hit the books. Collectively, the big three cloud providers reported a $1.1 trillion backlog of revenue.

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Greg Kroah-Hartman has released the 6.18.9, 6.12.69, 6.6.123, 6.1.162, 5.15.199, and 5.10.249 stable kernels. As always, each contains important fixes throughout the tree; users are advised to upgrade.

An anonymous reader shares a report: KPMG, one of the world's largest auditors of public and private companies, negotiated lower fees from its own accountant by arguing that AI will make it cheaper to do the work, according to people familiar with the matter. The Big Four firm told its auditor, Grant Thornton UK, it should pass on cost savings from the rollout of AI and threatened to find a new accountant if it did not agree to a significant fee reduction, the people said. The discussions last year came amid an industry-wide debate about the impact of new technology on audit firms' business and traditional pricing models. Firms have invested heavily in AI to speed up the planning of audits and automate routine tasks, but it is not yet clear if this will generate savings that are passed on to clients. Grant Thornton is auditor to KPMG International, the UK-based umbrella organisation that co-ordinates the work of KPMG's independent, locally owned partnerships around the world. Talks with Grant Thornton were led by Michaela Peisger, a longtime audit partner and executive from KPMG's German member firm, who became KPMG International's chief financial officer at the beginning of 2025.

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The Ardour digital-audio-workstation (DAW) project has announced the release of version 9.0. This is a major release for the project, seeing several substantive new features that users have asked for over a long period of time. Region FX, clip recording, a touch-sensitive GUI, pianoroll windows, clip editing and more, not to mention dozens of bug fixes, new MIDI binding maps, improved GUI performance on macOS (for most) ...

We expect to get feedback on some of the major new features in this release, and plan to take that into account as we improve and refine them and the rest of Ardour going forward. We have no doubt that there will be both delight and disappointment with certain things - rather than assume that we don't know what we're doing, please leave us feedback on the forums so that Ardour gets better over time. Those of you new to our clip launching implementation might care to read up on the differences with Ableton Live.

In the coming weeks, we'll begin to sketch out what we have planned next for Ardour, in addition to responding to the feedback we get on this 9.0 release.

Control-flow integrity (CFI) is a set of techniques that make it more difficult for attackers to hijack indirect jumps to exploit a system. The Linux kernel has supported forward-edge CFI (which protects indirect function calls) since 2020, with the most recent implementation of the feature introduced in 2022. That version avoids the overhead introduced by the earlier approach by using a compiler flag (-fsanitize=kcfi) that is present in Clang but not in GCC. Now, Kees Cook has a patch set adding that support to GCC that looks likely to land in GCC 17.