Google's rapid adoption of AI has seen the Gemini "sparkle" icon become an omnipresent element in almost every Google product. It's there to summarize your email, add items to your calendar, and more—if you trust it to do those things. Gemini is also integrated with Google Drive, where it's gaining a new feature that could make it genuinely useful: Google's AI bot will soon be able to watch videos stored in your Drive so you don't have to.

Gemini is already accessible in Drive, with the ability to summarize documents or folders, gather and analyze data, and expand on the topics covered in your documents. Google says the next step is plugging videos into Gemini, saving you from wasting time scrubbing through a file just to find something of interest.

Using a chatbot to analyze and manipulate text doesn't always make sense—after all, it's not hard to skim an email or short document. It can take longer to interact with a chatbot, which might not add any useful insights. Video is different because watching is a linear process in which you are presented with information at the pace the video creator sets. You can change playback speed or rewind to catch something you missed, but that's more arduous than reading something at your own pace. So Gemini's video support in Drive could save you real time.

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An accused movie pirate who stole more than 1,000 Blu-ray discs and DVDs while working for a DVD manufacturing company struck a plea deal this week to lower his sentence after the FBI claimed the man's piracy cost movie studios millions.

Steven Hale no longer works for the DVD company. He was arrested in March, accused of "bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying" and ripping pre-release copies of movies he could only access because his former employer was used by major movie studios. As alleged by the feds, his game was beating studios to releases to achieve the greatest possible financial gains from online leaks.

Among the popular movies that Hale is believed to have leaked between 2021 and 2022 was Spider-Man: No Way Home, which the FBI alleged was copied "tens of millions of times" at an estimated loss of "tens of millions of dollars" for just one studio on one movie. Other movies Hale ripped included animated hits like Encanto and Sing 2, as well as anticipated sequels like The Matrix: Resurrections and Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

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Most people are familiar with conventional cubical six-sided dice, but there are also polyhedral versions like the 20-sided dice used in ancient Rome and to play Dungeons and Dragons. Researchers have figured out how to design dice with even more exotic shapes, like a kitten, a dragon, or an armadillo. And they are "fair" dice: Experiments with 3D-printed versions produced results that closely matched predicted random outcomes, according to a forthcoming paper currently in press at the journal ACM Transactions on Graphics.

Dice are examples of so-called "rigid bodies," broadly defined as shapes that move as one solid piece, with no need for bending or twisting. Such shapes "are of scientific interest because they model so many of the phenomena we encounter in our daily lives: anything from the way your dishes roll around on the floor when you drop them, to how the gears in your watch push on each other, to how a satellite tumbles around under the pull of gravity," co-author Keenan Crane of Carnegie-Mellon University told Ars. "So there's an intense focus on developing computational methods for understanding and predicting how rigid bodies are going to behave."

Crane and his co-authors—including lead author and CMU graduate student Hossein Baktash, as well as co-authors from Nvidia Research and Adobe Research—wanted to explore where and how a rigid body will land when tossed. They chose dice as the best (and most fun) context in which to explore that question.

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The ability to study ancient DNA has revolutionized our ability to understand our own species' past. It has clarified our relationship with Neanderthals and revealed the existence of Denisovans. But even in the most favorable environments, DNA degrades over time, setting a limit on how far back we can hope to resolve questions about our ancestors. And most of the species we've had trouble understanding lived in Africa, where the conditions are far less favorable for DNA's survival.

But a large international team has now found another way to get some information about the genetics out of far older remains. They've extracted fragments of enamel proteins from the teeth of fossils of the species Paranthropus robustus and used them to test whether the remains truly belonged to one species, despite dramatic differences in size. Because one of the proteins is male-specific, they also found the size of the individual wasn't necessarily related to its sex.

A complicated species

Remains that have been classified as Paranthropus show up in the fossil record nearly 3 million years ago and persist for roughly a million years. That means it overlapped both with australopithecines and early members of the Homo genus. Four different species have been assigned to this genus, but the situation is complicated. It shares a lot of similarities with some species of Australopithecus, raising the possibility of interbreeding. There's also a lot of variation within remains identified as Paranthropus, notably in the size of individuals. Some have suggested that this might be due to male/female differences in this species (termed "sexual dimorphism"), but that has been difficult to test.

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Last week, Google introduced Veo 3, its newest video generation model that can create 8-second clips with synchronized sound effects and audio dialog—a first for the company's AI tools. The model, which generates videos at 720p resolution (based on text descriptions called "prompts" or still image inputs), represents what may be the most capable consumer video generator to date, bringing video synthesis close to a point where it is becoming very difficult to distinguish between "authentic" and AI-generated media.

Google also launched Flow, an online AI filmmaking tool that combines Veo 3 with the company's Imagen 4 image generator and Gemini language model, allowing creators to describe scenes in natural language and manage characters, locations, and visual styles in a web interface.

Both tools are now available to US subscribers of Google AI Ultra, a plan that costs $250 a month and comes with 12,500 credits. Veo 3 videos cost 150 credits per generation, allowing 83 videos on that plan before you run out. Extra credits are available for the price of 1 cent per credit in blocks of $25, $50, or $200. That comes out to about $1.50 per video generation. But is the price worth it? We ran some tests with various prompts to see what this technology is truly capable of.

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Nintendo's Switch 2 has a small handful of new releases in its launch lineup, but for the first few months after its release, the main thing you'll be able to play on it will be your existing library of Switch games. And while Nintendo has promised reasonably comprehensive backward compatibility, the company is still working through the process of testing over 15,000 third-party Switch games with the new console.

With a week to go until launch, Nintendo has updated its compatibility support page with the results of nearly two months of extra testing. Of the "over 15,000" third-party Switch games, Nintendo says roughly two-thirds of them either have "no issues" or have problems that will be resolved quickly at or after launch. On the original version of this support page, Nintendo had only performed its basic compatibility testing on roughly 20 percent of all third-party Switch games.

Nintendo says that nearly all of the roughly 5,000 remaining Switch games will launch just fine on the Switch 2 but that "further tests" are "in progress." The support page doesn't say when Nintendo will provide its next update.

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Donald Trump can't impose whatever tariffs he wants on a whim, a federal court ruled Wednesday, issuing an opinion that analysts say has only stoked more trade chaos.

The ruling permanently blocked some of the most controversial tariffs and reportedly scrambled Trump's ongoing trade talks with many countries pressured into negotiations by the threat of those tariffs, CNN reported.

The blocked tariffs—which the court found were implemented unconstitutionally under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—included tariffs the administration said were designed to stop drug and human trafficking, as well as retaliatory tariffs placed on all countries that were supposed to put an end to persistent US trade deficits.

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Discord is further distancing itself from its ad-free beginnings by offering users a new virtual currency for clicking on in-platform advertisements.

Acoording to a blog post this week by Peter Sellis, Discord’s SVP of product, a “small group” of Discord users around the globe can now earn "Orbs" through Play Quests, which Discord announced in March 2024 and let users earn in-game rewards by getting people to watch a stream of them playing a sponsored game. With enough Orbs, Discord users can purchase items in Discord's shop, including customization options for their profiles and credits for Nitro, a subscription add-on that offers features like 500MB uploads and HD resolution streaming.

The goal is to fuel Discord’s advertising business by making clicking on ads more appealing. Advertisers also benefit by associating their ads with the ability to get desirable rewards.

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Elon Musk said he is leaving the Trump administration, attributing his departure not to any disagreement with Trump but rather to the legal limit on the number of days a special government employee may serve each year.

"As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending," Musk wrote on X. "The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government."

Musk's "off-boarding will begin tonight," a White House official told Reuters on Wednesday. Under US law, special government employees in the executive branch are limited to serving 130 days in a 365-day period. They are subject to more lenient ethics rules than other federal employees and officials.

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The Department of Health and Human Services—under the control of anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—has canceled millions of dollars in federal funding awarded to Moderna to produce an mRNA vaccine against influenza viruses with pandemic potential, including the H5N1 bird flu currently sweeping US poultry and dairy cows.

Last July, the Biden administration's HHS awarded Moderna $176 million to "accelerate the development of mRNA-based pandemic influenza vaccines." In the administration's final days in January, HHS awarded the vaccine maker an additional $590 million to support "late-stage development and licensure of pre-pandemic mRNA-based vaccines." The funding would also go to the development of five additional subtypes of pandemic influenza.

On Wednesday, as news broke that the Trump administration was reneging on the contract, Moderna reported positive results from an early trial of a vaccine targeting H5 influenza viruses. In a preliminary trial of 300 healthy adults, the vaccine candidate appeared safe and boosted antibody levels against the virus by 44.5-fold.

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There may never be an iOS 19 or a macOS 16, according to reporting from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. At its Worldwide Developers Conference next month, Apple reportedly plans to shift toward version numbers based on years rather than the current numbering system. This is intended to unify the company's current maze of version numbers; instead of iOS 19, iPadOS 19, macOS 16, tvOS 19, watchOS 11, and visionOS 3, we'll get iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, and visionOS 26.

The last time Apple changed its version numbering convention for any of its operating systems was back in 2020, when it shifted from "macOS X" to macOS 11. Note that the numbering will be based not on the year of the software's release but on the year after; this makes a certain amount of sense since iOS 26 would be Apple's most-current version of iOS for roughly nine months of 2026 and just three months of 2025.

The update to the version numbering system will be accompanied by what Gurman describes as "fresh user interfaces across the operating systems," a visual overhaul that will bring Apple's iPhone, Mac, watch, and TV software more in line with some of the design conventions introduced in Apple's visionOS software in 2024. Among the changes and additions will be another crack at "Mac-like" multitasking for the iPad.

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The Trump administration has told US companies that offer software used to design semiconductors to stop selling their services to Chinese groups, in the latest attempt to make it harder for China to develop advanced chips.

Several people familiar with the move said the US Department of Commerce had told so-called electronic design automation groups—which include Cadence, Synopsys, and Siemens EDA—to stop supplying their technology to China.

The Bureau of Industry and Security, the arm of the US commerce department that oversees export controls, issued the directive to the companies via letters, according to the people. It was unclear if every US EDA company had received a letter.

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A Chinese spacecraft built to collect specimens from an unexplored asteroid and return them to Earth successfully launched Wednesday from a military-run spaceport in the country's mountainous interior.

Liftoff aboard a Long March 3B rocket at 1:31 pm EDT (17:31 UTC) from the Xichang launch base kicked off the second mission in a series of Chinese probes to explore the Solar System. This mission, designated Tianwen-2, follows the Tianwen-1 mission, which became the first Chinese spacecraft to land on Mars in 2021.

Chinese officials confirmed the 2.1-metric ton Tianwen-2 spacecraft unfurled its fan-shaped solar arrays shortly after launch, marking an auspicious start to a decadelong tour of the Solar System.

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Thousands of home and small office routers manufactured by Asus are being infected with a stealthy backdoor that can survive reboots and firmware updates in an attack by a nation-state or another well-resourced threat actor, researchers said.

The unknown attackers gain access to the devices by exploiting now-patched vulnerabilities, some of which have never been tracked through the internationally recognized CVE system. After gaining unauthorized administrative control of the devices, the threat actor installs a public encryption key for access to the device through SSH. From then on, anyone with the private key can automatically log in to the device with administrative system rights.

Durable control

“‍The attacker’s access survives both reboots and firmware updates, giving them durable control over affected devices,” researchers from security firm GreyNoise reported Wednesday. “The attacker maintains long-term access without dropping malware or leaving obvious traces by chaining authentication bypasses, exploiting a known vulnerability, and abusing legitimate configuration features.”

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An otherwise-healthy 52-year-old office worker showed up to a hospital emergency department in Buenos Aires with an unshakable fever he developed the week before. Besides the high temperature, he seemed fine. So, after testing negative for COVID-19, doctors sent him home with supportive care. But the fever didn't go away.

In the week that followed, things got worse. He developed nausea, stomach pain, and diarrhea. He also started having trouble breathing. He then went back to the hospital.

This time, doctors found he needed supplemental oxygen. And an X-ray of his chest was worrisome—there were diffuse ground-glass opacities in his lungs. Doctors wondered if he had an unusual case of pneumonia. The man kept getting worse; in fact, he seemed to deteriorate before their eyes. Initially, he received supplemental oxygen through a simple face mask; subsequently, doctors switched to a mask that delivers continuous oxygen. However, his blood oxygen saturation continued to fall.

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Automaker Stellantis and retail and web services behemoth Amazon have decided to put an end to a collaboration on new in-car software. The partnership dates back to 2022, part of a wide-ranging agreement that also saw Stellantis pick Amazon Web Services as its cloud platform for new vehicles and Amazon sign on as the first customer for Ram's fully electric ProMaster EV van.

A key aspect of the Amazon-Stellantis partnership was to be a software platform for new Stellantis vehicles called STLA SmartCockpit. Meant to debut last year, SmartCockpit was supposed to "seamlessly integrate with customers’ digital lives to create personalized, intuitive in-vehicle experiences," using Alexa and other AI agents to provide better in-car entertainment but also navigation, vehicle maintenance, and in-car payments as well.

But 2024 came and went without the launch of SmartCockpit, and now the joint work has wound down, according to Reuters, although not for any particular reason the news organization could discern. Rather, the companies said in a statement that they "will allow each team to focus on solutions that provide value to our shared customers and better align with our evolving strategies."

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In some ways, Getty Images has emerged as one of the most steadfast defenders of artists' rights in AI copyright fights. Starting in 2022, when some of the most sophisticated image generators today first started testing new models offering better compositions, Getty banned AI-generated uploads to its service. And by the next year, Getty released a "socially responsible" image generator to prove it was possible to build a tool while rewarding artists, while suing an AI firm that refused to pay artists.

But in the years since, Getty Images CEO Craig Peters recently told CNBC that the media company has discovered that it's simply way too expensive to fight every AI copyright battle.

According to Peters, Getty has dumped millions into just one copyright fight against Stability AI.

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The Trump administration is backing cable company Cox in a battle that could determine whether Internet service providers are forced to disconnect users accused of piracy.

Cox, which says ISPs shouldn't have to terminate customers based on unproven allegations of copyright infringement, has been seeking Supreme Court review of Sony's victory in the underlying lawsuit. The court asked the US solicitor general to file a brief expressing the views of the United States government. Solicitor General John Sauer, a Trump nominee, filed a brief yesterday.

The Supreme Court "should grant certiorari to address the first question presented in Cox's petition: whether an ISP materially contributes to copyright infringement by continuing to provide Internet access to particular subscribers after receiving notice that copyright infringement has occurred on their accounts," Sauer wrote.

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The next version of Android is expected to hit Pixel phones in June, but it'll take longer for devices from other manufacturers to see the new OS. However, Samsung is making unusually good time this cycle. Owners of the company's Galaxy S25 phones can get an early look at One UI 8 (based on Android 16) in the new open beta program. Samsung promises a lot of upgrades, but it may not feel that way.

Signing up for the beta is a snap—just open the Samsung Members app, and the beta signup should be right on the main landing page. From there, the OTA update should appear on your device within a few minutes. It's pretty hefty at 3.4GB, but the installation is quick, and none of your data should be affected. That said, backups are always advisable when using beta software.

You must be in the US, Germany, Korea, or the UK to join the beta, and US phones must be unlocked or the T-Mobile variants. The software is compatible with the Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra—the new S25 Edge need not apply (for now).

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A federal judge has given Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees access to US Treasury payment systems as long as they meet training and vetting requirements but denied the Trump administration's motion to completely dissolve a preliminary injunction.

US District Judge Jeannette Vargas of the Southern District of New York is overseeing a case filed against President Trump by 19 states led by New York. In February, Vargas issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Treasury Department from granting DOGE access to systems containing personally identifiable information or confidential financial information.

In April, Vargas allowed DOGE employee Ryan Wunderly to access the Treasury Department's Bureau of Fiscal Services (BFS) system, after government declarations said "that Wunderly has undergone the same vetting and security clearance process that applies to any other Treasury Department employee provided with access to BFS payment systems." In an order yesterday, Vargas ruled that four more employees can access the system.

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