Category: News and Views

Predictive policing: The risks, and what one city is doing | Fast Company

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The 2002 sci-fi thriller Minority Report depicts a dystopian future where a specialized police unit is tasked with arresting people for crimes they have not yet committed. Directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, the drama revolves around “PreCrime”—a system informed by a trio of psychics, or “precogs,” who anticipate future homicides, allowing police officers to intervene and prevent would-be assailants from claiming their targets’ lives.

The film probes at hefty ethical questions: How can someone be guilty of a crime they haven’t yet committed? And what happens when the system gets it wrong?

While there is no such thing as an all-seeing “precog,” key components of the future that Minority Report envisions have become reality even faster than its creators imagined. For more than a decade, police departments across the globe have been using data-driven systems geared toward predicting when and where crimes might occur and who might commit them.

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Nintendo profits tanked 43% in Q1 but pins hopes on Switch 2 | Fast Company

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Japanese video-game maker Nintendo on Thursday reported a 43% decline in profit for the fiscal year through March, but promised a turnaround as its Switch console upgrade goes on sale in June.

Nintendo Co.’s profit for the fiscal year through March totaled 278.8 billion yen ($1.9 billion), down from 490 billion yen the previous fiscal year.

Annual sales slipped 30% to 1.16 trillion yen ($8 billion) from 1.67 trillion yen, according to the Kyoto-based maker of the Super Mario and Donkey Kong games.

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Gas Prices Hold Steady Amid Declining Oil Costs, AAA Reports | Small Biz Trends

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The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline edged up slightly this week to $3.18, according to AAA. While this time of year often sees seasonal increases in prices due to rising demand, a drop in crude oil prices is helping to stabilize prices at the pump.

AAA attributed the downward pressure on prices to economic concerns and a decision by OPEC+ to increase oil output despite sluggish global demand. The agency noted that “the lower the price of oil, the less drivers pay at the pump.” Compared to this time last year, the national average is nearly 50 cents lower.

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SBA Reminds Pennsylvania Small Businesses of Upcoming Deadline for Drought Relief Loans | Small Biz Trends

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The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is urging small businesses and private nonprofit organizations in Pennsylvania and West Virginia affected by the September 2024 drought to apply for federal disaster loans before the June 2, 2025 deadline.

The assistance comes under a disaster declaration for Greene, Fayette, and Washington counties in Pennsylvania and Marshall, Monongalia, and Wetzel counties in West Virginia. Eligible applicants include small businesses, small agricultural cooperatives, aquaculture enterprises, and private nonprofits (PNPs) that experienced financial losses due to the drought that began on September 24, 2024.

“Through a declaration by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, SBA provides critical financial assistance to help communities recover,” said Chris Stallings, associate administrator of the Office of Disaster Recovery and Resilience at the SBA. “We’re pleased to offer loans to small businesses and private nonprofits impacted by these disasters.”

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Trump eases tariffs on US car makers | BBC News

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US President Donald Trump has signed an order to ease the impact of new tariffs on the auto industry, which had sparked warnings about higher prices and the potential for significant hits to sales and production.

The change will allow carmakers with US factories to reduce the amount they pay in import taxes on foreign parts, using a formula tied to how many cars they sell and the price.

The provision is intended to provide relief to businesses for two years as they rework their supply chains, White House officials said.

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Trump congratulates Canada’s Carney as they agree to meet in ‘near future’ | BBC News

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US President Donald Trump has called Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to congratulate him on his victory in the country’s general election, and the two have agreed to meet in the near future.

The two countries were expected to enter talks about a new economic and security relationship after Monday’s vote.

Trump’s trade tariffs and repeated comments undermining Canada’s sovereignty overshadowed the race, which ended with Carney’s Liberals projected to win a minority government, according to public broadcaster CBC.

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IXI raises $36.5M from Amazon and others to bring autofocus to prescription glasses | TechCrunch

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Blink and you’ll miss it: A startup out of Finland is taking a new look at the market for prescription eyewear. Tapping into innovations in eye-tracking and liquid crystal lens technology, IXI is building low-power glasses that will invisibly and automatically adjust to account for a wearer’s presbyopia (far-sightedness).

Four years into its life, Helsinki-based IXI emerged from stealth on Tuesday, announcing that it’s raised a total of $36.5 million from a list of investors that include the Amazon Alexa fund, to work towards its first commercial product.

London-based VC firm Plural is leading the latest tranche of Series A funding, with participation from Tesi, byFounders, Heartcore, Eurazeo, FOV Ventures, Tiny Supercomputer, and existing investors. The startup’s previous investors, in addition to the Amazon Alexa Fund, include Maki.vc, First Fellow, First Minute Capital, John Lindfors, Illusian (a family office of European founders similar to ICONIQ in the U.S.), and the Bragiel Brothers.

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Government hackers are leading the use of attributed zero-days, Google says | TechCrunch

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Hackers working for governments were responsible for the majority of attributed zero-day exploits used in real-world cyberattacks last year, per new research from Google.

Google’s report said that the number of zero-day exploits — referring to security flaws that were unknown to the software makers at the time hackers abused them — had dropped from 98 exploits in 2023 to 75 exploits in 2024. But the report noted that of the proportion of zero-days that Google could attribute — meaning identifying the hackers who were responsible for exploiting them — at least 23 zero-day exploits were linked to government-backed hackers.

Among those 23 exploits, 10 zero-days were attributed to hackers working directly for governments, including five exploits linked to China and another five to North Korea.

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Roommates’ Side Hustle Makes $1M a Month: ‘No Regrets’ | Entrepreneur

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When did you start your side hustle, and where did you find the inspiration for it? Whiteside: When Ben and I became best friends during our junior year at CU Boulder, one of the things that brought us close was our shared aspiration of building our own thing, not walking a 9-5 path working on someone else’s dream. This shared passion wouldn’t manifest until much later, though.

When I first started dreaming of a hair product company that went beyond styling one’s hair with toxic sh*t, I was working at an ecommerce startup in a marketing and operations role. We were a small team, and the company was struggling hard to establish itself. I learned a ton about problem-solving through the early stages of business, but I had one foot out the door, pulling me toward my calling of being my own entrepreneur.

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AI was used to write the California bar exam. The law community is outraged. | Mashable

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You’ve heard of AI models taking the bar exam, but this time, AI also helped write the questions.

The State Bar of California revealed on Monday that it used AI to develop a portion of its exam questions, according to the LA Times. The AI-generated exam questions were created by an independent psychometrician called ACS Ventures hired by the State Bar. The questions were “developed with the assistance of AI and subsequently reviewed by content validation panels and a subject matter expert in advance of the exam,” announced the State Bar in a statement addressing technical glitches and question errors that test takers had previously complained about.

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