Category: News and Views

Here’s the latest sign the job market is cooling | CNN Business

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The “Great Stay” deepened in November as the number of people who quit their jobs that month dropped to under 3.1 million, a level not seen since the height of the pandemic.

The latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey report, which was released Tuesday, also showed that hiring activity remained at a decade-low, a further indication that a much cooler labor market is at hand.

Despite continued signs of a broader slowdown, Tuesday’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that layoff activity held fairly steady in November. Additionally, the number of job openings increased to 8.1 million, its highest level since May.

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Viral disease HMPV is on the rise among kids in China — what is it? | Live Science

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A viral infection called human metapneumovirus (HMPV) is on the rise among children in China, according to Chinese state media.

The virus can cause upper respiratory tract infections — like colds — as well as serious lung infections and, according to state media, it’s now one of the top four most common viral infections among hospital visitors in China.

“HMPV has been recognized as a significant problem in the at-risk population across the world since the turn of the century when it was first discovered,” Andrew Easton, a virology professor at the University of Warwick in the U.K. who studies pneumoviruses, told Live Science in an email. “That risk has not changed significantly over the last almost 25 years.”

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EPA allows California to ban sales of new gas cars by 2035 | Fast Company

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday granted two requests from California to enforce strict standards for vehicle emissions, including a rule aimed at banning sales of new gasoline-powered cars in the state by 2035. The incoming Trump administration is likely to try to reverse the action.

The California rule is stricter than a federal rule adopted this year that tightens emissions standards but does not require sales of electric vehicles.

EPA said its review found that opponents of the two waivers did not meet their legal burden to show how either the EV rule or a separate measure on heavy-duty vehicles was inconsistent with the federal Clean Air Act.

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Congo accuses Apple of using conflict minerals | Fast Company

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The Democratic Republic of Congo has filed criminal complaints against Apple subsidiaries in France and Belgium, accusing the tech firm of using conflict minerals in its supply chain, lawyers for the Congolese government told Reuters.

Congo is a major source of tin, tantalum and tungsten, so-called 3T minerals used in computers and mobile phones. But some artisanal mines are run by armed groups involved in massacres of civilians, mass rapes, looting and other crimes, according to U.N. experts and human rights groups.

Apple does not directly source primary minerals and says it audits suppliers, publishes findings and funds bodies that seek to improve mineral traceability.

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Bid farewell to this small but helpful Windows 11 feature | Digital Trends

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As Microsoft mentions in a December 12 blog post, Windows 11 users will soon no longer receive future updates for the suggested actions menu. The helpful feature would offer you related actions when you copy items like dates or phone numbers with actions to create an event or make a call.

Microsoft first introduced the feature in a Windows 11 2022 update. It made the suggested actions menu appear and gave contextual information based on the copied data. Microsoft describes the feature as follows: “Suggested actions that appear when you copy a phone number or future date in Windows 11 are deprecated and will be removed in a future Windows 11 update.”

The feature’s end of support may be due to the decrease in usage and the upcoming release of the Click To Do features, which offer similar usability. However, it’s important to remember that Click To Do is only for Copilot+ PCs, so those with an older Windows 11 computer are left out of the cool kids’ club.

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General Motors pulls plug on Cruise robotaxi project | BBC

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General Motors has announced that it will stop funding the development of the Cruise self-driving taxi.

The company says it will now “refocus autonomous driving development on personal vehicles”.

GM also pointed to the increasingly competitive robotaxi market as a reason for the move.

In October, Tesla boss Elon Musk unveiled the electric car giant’s long-awaited robotaxi, the Cybercab, at the Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California.

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Coffee prices at record high after bad weather | BBC 

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Coffee drinkers may soon see their morning treat get more expensive, as the price of coffee on international commodity markets has hit its highest level on record.

On Tuesday, the price for Arabica beans, which account for most global production, topped $3.44 a pound (0.45kg), having jumped more than 80% this year. The cost of Robusta beans, meanwhile, hit a fresh high in September.

It comes as coffee traders expect crops to shrink after the world’s two largest producers, Brazil and Vietnam, were hit by bad weather and the drink’s popularity continues to grow.

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A test for AGI is closer to being solved — but it may be flawed | TechCrunch

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A well-known test for artificial general intelligence (AGI) is closer to being solved. But the tests’s creators say this points to flaws in the test’s design, rather than a bonafide research breakthrough.

In 2019, Francois Chollet, a leading figure in the AI world, introduced the ARC-AGI benchmark, short for “Abstract and Reasoning Corpus for Artificial General Intelligence.” Designed to evaluate whether an AI system can efficiently acquire new skills outside the data it was trained on, ARC-AGI, Francois claims, remains the only AI test to measure progress towards general intelligence (although others have been proposed.)

Until this year, the best-performing AI could only solve just under a third of the tasks in ARC-AGI. Chollet blamed the industry’s focus on large language models (LLMs), which he believes aren’t capable of actual “reasoning.”

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Amazon forms a new AI agent-focused lab led by Adept co-founder | TechCrunch

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Amazon says that it’s establishing a new R&D lab in San Francisco, the Amazon AGI SF Lab, to focus on building “foundational” capabilities for AI agents.

The Amazon AGI SF Lab, which will be led by David Luan, the co-founder of AI startup Adept, will seek to build agents that can “take actions in the digital and physical worlds,” and “handle complex workflows” using computers, web browsers, and code interpreters.

“Our work will build on that of Amazon’s broader AGI team,” reads a post jointly written by Luan and Pieter Abbeel, a robotics research lead who joined Amazon by way of the company’s “license and hire” deal with Covariant. An Amazon spokesperson tells TechCrunch that Abbeel will be working “closely” with Luan and the AGI SF Lab going forward.

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OpenAI one step closer to the Pentagon thanks to partnership with defense startup | Mashable

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OpenAI has entered into its first major defense partnership, a deal that could see the AI giant making its way into the Pentagon.

The joint venture was recently announced by billion-dollar Anduril Industries, a defense startup owned by Oculus VR co-founder Palmer Lucky that sells sentry towers, communications jammers, military drones, and autonomous submarines. The “strategic partnership” will incorporate OpenAI’s AI models into Anduril systems to “rapidly synthesize time-sensitive data, reduce the burden on human operators, and improve situational awareness.” Anduril already supplies anti-drone tech to the U.S. government. It was recently chosen to develop and test unmanned fighter jets and awarded a $100 million contract with the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office.

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