Business Articles

Ireland's Data Protection Commission has fined Meta €251 million for a 2018 Facebook security breach affecting 29 million users. Hackers exploited Facebook's View As feature, which lets users see a public view of their profiles.

WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg added a “pineapple is delicious on pizza” checkbox after a court order removed a prior login prompt. The move has sparked criticism over professionalism and leadership in the community.

In a move to enhance domestic electric vehicle (EV) production, the U.S. Department of Energy has finalized a groundbreaking loan of $9.63 billion to the BlueOval SK joint venture, a collaboration between Ford Motor Company and South Korean battery manufacturer SK On. Marking the largest loan ever allocated from the government's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, the funding will facilitate the construction of three state-of-the-art battery manufacturing plants located in Tennessee and Kentucky.

In a landmark settlement with OAIC, Meta has agreed to a $50 million payout for Australians impacted by the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018.

Meta's new software update for Ray-Ban smart glasses adds live AI, live translations, and Shazam integration. Live AI and live translation are early access previews, and voice commands are limited to English, French, and Italian.

American aerospace and defense manufacturer Lockheed Martin has set up a new subsidiary, Astris AI, to help adopt AI solutions in US defense industrial bases and companies with high assurance requirements.

Waymo, Google parent Alphabet's autonomous driving arm, will begin testing self-driving cars in Japan's capital next year, marking the company's first international expansion after operating in the US since 2009.

At present, Starlink is virtually unrivaled when it comes to fast internet via satellite, apart from mobile communications and fiber optics. The EU is now striking back and, together with private satellite operators, is investing 10.6 billion euros in a network called Iris².

Intel laptops of the last few years had bad battery life. At long last though, it seems there is a light at the end of the tunnel: Intel Lunar Lake improves the power efficiency and thus battery life. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is the perfect laptop to exemplify Intel's effiency development throughout the last years.

While no details about the particular processor (or processors) developed so far, Chinese media has just unveiled that Gree Electric is now producing its own chips, six years after announcing its plans in this field. All research, design, and manufacturing efforts were funded without the government's involvement.

OpenAI has released ChatGPT Projects, an organizational tool for your chats and files, similar to Google's NotebookLM. The feature lets you organize all your chats and documents into separate groups for easier management.

Thanks to the changes in licensing requirements announced by the local Department of Communication and Digital Technologies, Starlink could enter South Africa next summer. However, this is not certain yet, although Elon Musk's satellite-based internet service gained political support in the country already.

Xiaomi has indicated that it does indeed plan to release its electric vehicles outside China. Cars such as the SU7 will start out with limited availability in some regions over time, building up to full-scale automotive sales over time. In the meantime, the OEM is believed to be putting the teams that will drive this new project together with gathering speed.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced investigations into fourteen online platforms, including Character.ai, Reddit, Instagram, Discord, and others, over child safety and privacy concerns.

U.S. plans to double tariffs on Chinese solar materials to 50 percent starting 2025, targeting key components like polysilicon and wafers. While aimed at reducing China's market dominance, experts suggest limited impact as U.S. solar imports represent just 0.3 percent of China's total exports.

LG ends Blu-ray player production, following previous exits by Oppo and Samsung. Despite superior video quality over streaming services, declining sales and shifting consumer preferences mark another milestone in physical media's decline, with only Sony and Panasonic remaining as major manufacturers.

Price comparison websites across Europe have banded together to criticize Google's proposed Search changes and want the EU to investigate and impose charges on the company, citing antitrust violations.

According to a report from The Information, Apple has partnered with Broadcom to produce in-house AI server chips. Codenamed 'Baltra,' the chips will be ready for production in 2026.

Google has announced the next generation Gemini 2.0 family of AI models built for "the agentic era." Gemini 2.0 Flash is available in Google AI Studio and Vertex AI.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the country will develop AI with its BRICS partners to "participate on equal terms in the global race."

China's largest EDA software company Empyrean Technology transitions to state control under China Electronics Corporation following US trade restrictions. The move gives the state-owned enterprise majority board control and signals Beijing's strategy to shield key tech firms from foreign pressure through increased state ownership.

Microsoft's AI chief envisions conversational AI replacing traditional web browsers within three to five years while also focusing on reducing AI hallucinations and developing emotionally intelligent AI companions.

TSMC founder Morris Chang criticizes Intel's focus on becoming a contract chipmaker rather than developing AI capabilities, highlighting the challenges faced by the struggling tech giant following CEO Pat Gelsinger's departure and recent setbacks in AI hardware development.

Tesla appears to have made significant progress toward preparing the Optimus robot for mass production. In a newly released video, the android navigates up and down a mulched hill independently - despite currently lacking vision capabilities.

The automotive market, long considered a traditional and slow-moving industry, may be on the brink of transformation. Amazon Autos, the e-commerce giant’s new platform for buying new cars, aims to bring the ease and convenience of online shopping to car purchases. The service is already live in the U.S.

Yelp, the crowd-sourced business reviews service, has launched AI-based features for the platform. The main highlight is Review Insights, which uses an aggregate of user reviews and AI smarts to score businesses.

Introduced earlier this year, the Sora AI model for generating videos from text has moved up to Sora Turbo, which is much faster. Now, it comes as a standalone product available at Sora.com for ChatGPT Plus and Pro users. The videos generated can be up to 1080p in resolution and 20 seconds long (or shorter).

Sharp's P601Q and P721Q projectors are now available on online stores. They feature 4K UHD resolution, laser technology, and up to 7200 ANSI lumens of brightness. Both models come with flexible installation and durability for professional spaces.

The FTC has begun sending out the first wave of refunds to Fortnite players tricked into making unwanted purchases by Epic. Players charged between January 2017 and September 2022 are eligible for refunds.

Lam Research's new collaborative robot Dextro brings automation to semiconductor fab maintenance, offering twice the precision of manual work and innovative cleaning solutions. Already deployed globally, it reduces downtime and errors while improving safety, addressing the industry's skilled worker shortage.

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said Donald Trump could be the "president of this AI generation" during an interview at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York. Frair also believes that Musk will act in the national interest.

Google has reportedly asked the FTC to investigate Microsoft's exclusive access to OpenAI technologies on its cloud platforms. The FTC questioned Google on Microsoft's practices as part of a broader investigation.

Elegoo has secured a new retail partnership by which its products will be available through all of Micro Center's 28 stores across the US. There increasingly well-known 3D printer brand will be able to put five of its most recent releases on those shelves, the high-resolution Mars 5 Ultra and "best-selling" Saturn 4 Ultra included.

CheckMag December 2004: IBM, one of the founding fathers of the personal computing world, announces that its ThinkPad business is being sold to a then little known entity called Lenovo. 20 years later, the combined company is the largest PC manufacturer by volume - a success story is worth analyzing.

PNY touts its latest solid-state drive (SSD) as capable of "Next-Gen Speeds" thanks to its new NVMe PCIe Gen5 x4 interface. The OEM asserts that it is the ideal new PC upgrade for professionals with its TCG Opal 2.0 spec. The CS2150 also supports Microsoft DirectStorage for potentially enhanced loading times in Windows gaming.

China has ordered an antitrust probe into Nvidia, accusing the company of potentially violating the anti-monopoly laws. The main focus is the $6.9 billion acquisition of Israeli networking products company Mellanox Technologies in 2020.

Amazon has established a new AI-agent-focused R&D lab in San Francisco. The lab, led by David Luan, co-founder of AI startup Adept, will build "foundational" capabilities for AI agents.

The companies' Robotics LAB has developed a passive wearable to reduce shoulder strain for industrial personnel who frequently work on overhead items. The lightweight robot can be worn all day long without the need for recharging.

The Sunstone Solar project will generate 1,200 megawatts—enough to power 800,000 homes—while investing millions in local agriculture to ensure sustainable development.

Google Docs will now use Gemini to create formatted documents based on your Workspace files. The feature is currently limited to desktop users and is rolling out gradually.

Apple and Qualcomm have been partners for a long time, but the former appears intent on gradually moving away from Qualcomm as a chip supplier for Apple's iPhones and iPads over the next few years, as Bloomberg reveals in detail. Three Apple modem generations will be gradually implemented from the iPhone SE 2025 onwards and ultimately also in the Pro iPhones.

SpaceX is introducing a new Starlink Mini bundle deal that will allow satellite Internet subscribers to acquire the compact dish at a discount after the December 8 promo deadline.

Since openSUSE Leap Micro 6.1 has arrived, Leap Micro 5.5 has also reached EOL (End of Life). The update comes with a new opensuse-migration-tool, soft-reboot support, 2FA for PAM logins, vhostmd for SAP virtualization, and more. The downloadable images start below 1 GB (preconfigured) and go as high as 2.3 GB (VMware).

Game developers looking to showcase their skills and spread some cheer can participate in this year's Secret Santa game jam. For this jam, devs will create custom games for a random giftee and receive a game in return.

The first robots are making their way into the solar industry - Amazon, for example, is using the new technology to develop a solar park for its data centres. Robots are helping to assemble solar panels, for example, saving on labour and reducing construction times. But automation also brings new challenges.

China's Ministry of Commerce has announced a ban on the export of key minerals used in microchip production to the U.S. The move follows U.S. restrictions on the trade of semiconductor technologies with China.