[1]hackingbear writes:

> China's Bytedance has [2]released Seedance 2.0 , an AI video generator which handles up to four types of input at once: images, videos, audio, and text. Users can combine up to nine images, three videos, and three audio files, up to a total of twelve files. Generated videos run between 4 and 15 [ [3]or 60 ] seconds long and automatically come with sound effects or music.

>

> Its performance is unfortunately so good that it has forced the firm [4]to block its facial-to-voice feature after the model reportedly demonstrated the ability to generate highly accurate personal voice characteristics using only facial images, even without user authorization.

>

> In a recent test, Pan Tianhong, founder of tech media outlet MediaStorm, discovered that uploading a personal facial photo caused the model to produce audio nearly identical to his real voice -- without using any voice samples or authorized data. [...]



[1] https://slashdot.org/~hackingbear

[2] https://the-decoder.com/bytedance-shows-impressive-progress-in-ai-video-with-seedance-2-0/

[3] https://technode.com/2026/02/10/bytedance-suspends-seedance-2-0-feature-that-turns-facial-photos-into-personal-voices-over-potential-risks/

[4] https://technode.com/2026/02/10/bytedance-suspends-seedance-2-0-feature-that-turns-facial-photos-into-personal-voices-over-potential-risks/

An anonymous reader shares a report:

> The Trump administration wants some of the world's largest technology companies to publicly commit to a new compact governing the rapid expansion of AI data centers, according to two administration officials granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

>

> A draft of the compact obtained by POLITICO lays out commitments designed to [1]ensure energy-hungry data centers do not raise household electricity prices , strain water supplies or undermine grid reliability, and that the companies driving demand also carry the cost of building new infrastructure.

>

> The proposed pact, which is not final and could be subject to change, is framed as a voluntary agreement between President Donald Trump and major U.S. tech companies and data center developers. It could bind OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta and other AI giants to a broad set of energy, water and community principles. None of these companies immediately responded to a request for comment.



[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/09/trump-administration-eyes-data-center-agreements-amid-energy-price-spikes-00772024

An anonymous reader shares a report:

> In 1966, a beach-ball-size robot bounced across the moon. Once it rolled to a stop, its four petal-like covers opened, exposing a camera that sent back the first picture taken on the surface of another world. This was Luna 9, the Soviet lander that was the earliest spacecraft to safely touchdown on the moon. While it paved the way toward interplanetary exploration, Luna 9's precise whereabouts have remained a mystery ever since.

>

> That may soon change. Two research teams think they might have [1]tracked down the long-lost remains of Luna 9 . But there's a catch: The teams do not agree on the location. "One of them is wrong," said Anatoly Zak, a space journalist and author who runs RussianSpaceWeb.com and reported on the story last week. The dueling finds highlight a strange fact of the early moon race: The precise resting places of a number of spacecraft that crashed or landed on the moon in the run up to NASA's Apollo missions are lost to obscurity. A newer generation of spacecraft may at last resolve these mysteries.

>

> Luna 9 launched to the moon on Jan. 31, 1966. While a number of spacecraft had crashed into the lunar surface at that stage of the moon race, it was among the earliest to try what rocket engineers call a soft landing. Its core unit, a spherical suite of scientific instruments, was about two feet across. That size makes it difficult to spot from orbit. "Luna 9 is a very, very small vehicle," said Mark Robinson, a geologist at the company Intuitive Machines, which has twice landed spacecraft on the moon.



[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/science/luna-9-moon-lander-soviet.html

Google on Tuesday expanded its "Results about you" tool to let users [1]request the removal of Search results containing government-issued ID numbers -- including driver's licenses, passports and Social Security numbers -- adding to the tool's existing ability to flag results that surface phone numbers, email addresses, and home addresses.

The update, announced on Safer Internet Day, is rolling out in the U.S. over the coming days. Google also streamlined its process for reporting non-consensual explicit images on Search, allowing users to select and submit removal requests for multiple images at once rather than reporting them individually.



[1] https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/remove-explicit-images/

The U.S., whose population the Census Bureau did not expect to start shrinking until 2081, [1]may record its first-ever decline as early as this year because of the Trump administration's accelerating immigration crackdown. Census data released in late January showed US population growth slowed to just 0.5% in the year prior to July 2025 -- the lowest rate since the pandemic -- as net migration fell to 1.3 million from a peak of 2.7 million the year before.

Census experts now expect net migration to drop to only 316,000 in the year prior to July 2026 and say the country is "trending toward negative net migration." A joint study by researchers at the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution estimates that 2026 net immigration could range from a gain of 185,000 to a loss of 925,000. Births exceeded deaths by just 519,000 in the most recent period, a surplus the Congressional Budget Office expects to vanish by 2030. At the low end of the AEI/Brookings range, the overall US population would shrink by more than 400,000 -- something that has never happened since the country began taking censuses in 1790.



[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-30/trump-immigration-crackdown-could-shrink-us-population-for-first-time

Microsoft has begun [1]automatically replacing the original Secure Boot security certificates on Windows devices through regular monthly updates, a necessary move given that the 15-year-old certificates first issued in 2011 are set to expire between late June and October 2026.

Secure Boot, which verifies that only trusted and digitally signed software runs before Windows loads, became a hardware requirement for Windows 11. A new batch of certificates was issued in 2023 and already ships on most PCs built since 2024; nearly all devices shipped in 2025 include them by default. Older hardware is now receiving the updated certificates through Windows Update, starting last month's KB5074109 release for Windows 11. Devices that don't receive the new certificates before expiration will still function but enter what Microsoft calls a "degraded security state," unable to receive future boot-level protections and potentially facing compatibility issues down the line.

Windows 10 users must enroll in Microsoft's paid Extended Security Updates program to get the new certificates. A small number of devices may also need a separate firmware update from their manufacturer before the Windows-delivered certificates can be applied.



[1] https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2026/02/10/refreshing-the-root-of-trust-industry-collaboration-on-secure-boot-certificate-updates/

An anonymous reader shares a report:

> The hundreds of prize payouts were mostly just a few bucks each, part of a promotional campaign by a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange. The total reward pot: 620,000 Korean won, or about $425. Then came a colossal mistake. A staffer for Bithumb, South Korea's No. 2 crypto exchange, didn't distribute 620,000 Korean won. Rather, the prizes, due to an input error, [1]emerged in a different currency: 620,000 bitcoins , valued at more than $40 billion.

>

> That meant a winner who should have received a sum of 2,000 won -- enough to buy a cheap cup of coffee -- reaped, at least momentarily, more than $120 million in bitcoins. Enough recipients sought to sell or withdraw bitcoin that the market sank 17%, before Bithumb halted transactions after roughly 30 minutes. Those affected included investors who had held bitcoin before the botched giveaway. The losses totaled about $685,000, Bithumb says.

>

> The company has since said it has reversed the transactions or had recipients voluntarily return more than 99% of the misdistributed bitcoins. But Bithumb is still trying to convince users who during the brief window of trading managed to offload more than 100 bitcoins, valued at roughly $9 million, to give back the equivalent funds.



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/a-bitcoin-blunder-for-the-ages-40-billion-accidentally-given-away/ar-AA1W37pj

Apple and Google have agreed to a set of commitments to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority that will [1]prevent them from giving preferential treatment to their own apps and require greater transparency around how third-party apps are approved for sale.

The CMA announced the measures on Tuesday, seven months after it declared that the two companies held an "effective duopoly" over the UK's mobile app ecosystem. Both companies also committed to not using data gathered from third-party developers in ways the regulator deems unfair. The CMA granted both app stores "strategic market status" in October 2025, a designation that gave it the authority to demand changes.

CMA head Sarah Cardell called the commitments "important first steps" and said the regulator would "closely monitor" implementation. Technology analyst Paolo Pescatore described the announcement as a "pragmatic first step" but noted some may see it as "addressing the low-hanging fruit." The UK's app economy is the largest in Europe by revenue and number of developers, generating an estimated 1.5% of the country's GDP.



[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c626rng1v63o

The American economy's most valuable companies are now worth trillions of dollars more than their predecessors were a generation ago, yet [1]they employ a fraction of the workers -- and a new analysis by the Wall Street Journal argues that this widening gap between capital and labor is the defining economic story of our time.

Labor received 58% of gross domestic income in 1980; by the third quarter of 2025, that figure had fallen to 51.4%. Corporate profits' share rose from 7% to 11.7% over the same period. Nvidia, the most valuable US company in 2026, is nearly 20 times as valuable as IBM was in 1985 in inflation-adjusted terms and employs roughly a tenth as many people. Since the end of 2019, real average hourly wages have risen 3% while corporate profits have climbed 43%.

Household stock wealth now equals almost 300% of annual disposable income, up from 200% in 2019. Yale economist Pascual Restrepo predicted that AI integration will shrink labor's share of revenue further, just as factory automation did for blue-collar workers in decades past.



[1] https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/capital-labor-wealth-economy-2fcf6c2f

The top private schools in New York City plan to [1]charge more than $70,000 this year for tuition, an amount exceeding that of many elite colleges, as they pass on the costs of soaring expenses including teacher salaries. From a report:

> Spence School, Dalton School and Nightingale-Bamford School on Manhattan's Upper East Side are among at least seven schools where the fees now exceed that threshold, according to school disclosures and Bloomberg reporting

>

> Fees among 15 private schools across the city rose a median of 4.7%, outpacing inflation. Sending a kid to New York private school has always been expensive, but the cost now is so high that even those with well-above-average salaries are feeling squeezed. Prices have risen dramatically in the past decade, up from a median of $39,900 in 2014.



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/nyc-private-school-tuition-breaks-70-000-milestone-for-fall/ar-AA1VYPCb

The software and technology sectors pose one of the all-time great concentration [1]risks to the speculative-grade credit market , according to Deutsche Bank AG analysts. Bloomberg:

> They comprise $597 billion and $681 billion of the speculative-grade credit universe, or about 14% and 16% respectively, analysts led by Steve Caprio wrote in a Monday note. Speculative debt spans high-yield debt, leveraged loans and US private credit.

>

> That's "a meaningful chunk of debt outstanding that risks souring broader sentiment, if software defaults increase," the analysts wrote, with "a potential impact that would rival that of the Energy sector in 2016." Unlike in 2016, pressures would likely first emerge in private credit, business development companies and leveraged loans, with the high-yield market weakening later, the analysts added.

>

> The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence tools risks further weighing down multiples and revenues for software-as-a-service firms, while the US Federal Reserve's hawkish stance since 2022 has pressured cash flows, the analysts wrote. For instance, software payment-in-kind loan usage has risen to 11.3% in BDC portfolios, over 2.5 percentage points higher than the already elevated index average of 8.7%, according to Deutsche. PIK deals typically allow borrowers to pay interest in more debt rather than cash.



[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-09/software-among-all-time-concentration-risks-to-junk-deutsche

If you think your daily doses of espresso or Earl Grey sharpen your mind, you just might be right, new science suggests. The New York Times:

> A [1]large new study provides evidence of cognitive benefits from coffee and tea -- if it's caffeinated and consumed in moderation: [2]two to three cups of coffee or one to two cups of tea daily .

>

> People who drank that amount for decades had lower chances of developing dementia than people who drank little or no caffeine, the researchers reported. They followed 131,821 participants for up to 43 years. "This is a very large, rigorous study conducted long term among men and women that shows that drinking two or three cups of coffee per day is associated with reduced risk of dementia," said Aladdin Shadyab, an associate professor of public health and medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who wasn't involved in the study.

>

> The findings, published Monday in JAMA, don't prove caffeine causes these beneficial effects, and it's possible other attributes protected caffeine drinkers' brain health. But independent experts said the study adjusted for many other factors, including health conditions, medication, diet, education, socioeconomic status, family history of dementia, body mass index, smoking and mental illness.



[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2844764

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/health/coffee-tea-dementia-risk.html

An anonymous reader writes:

> Linus Torvalds has confirmed the next major kernel series [1]as Linux 7.0 , reports Linux news website 9to5Linux.com: "So there you have it, the Linux 6.x era has ended with today's Linux 6.19 kernel release, and a new one will begin with Linux 7.0, which is expected in mid-April 2026. The merge window for Linux 7.0 will open tomorrow, February 9th, and the first Release Candidate (RC) milestone is expected on February 22nd, 2026."



[1] https://9to5linux.com/linux-7-0-kernel-confirmed-by-linus-torvalds-expected-in-mid-april-2026

An anonymous reader [1]shares a report :

> It turns out that when fewer cars spew exhaust as they drive along, air quality improves. That's the conclusion of [2]a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health that looked at the effect of increased numbers of both EVs and plug-in hybrids on air pollution in California. The Golden State has by far the largest number of plug-in vehicles in the United States, and they've now reached significant numbers to have a positive impact on air quality.

>

> Between 2019 and 2023, for every 200 EVs or plug-in hybrids added, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels dropped 1.1%, according to the study, which used satellite data to track those levels through the unique way NO2 absorbs and reflects sunlight. NO2 can trigger asthma attacks, cause bronchitis, and increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.



[1] https://www.thedrive.com/news/electric-cars-are-making-it-easier-to-breath-study

[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(25)00257-8/fulltext

A [1]new NBER working paper from researchers at the Federal Reserve, Northwestern's Kellogg School and Johns Hopkins finds that Kalshi -- the largest federally regulated prediction market in the U.S., overseen by the CFTC -- produces macroeconomic forecasts that match or beat those of professional forecasters and traditional financial instruments like fed funds futures.

The study compared Kalshi-implied forecasts for the federal funds rate, CPI inflation and unemployment against the New York Fed's Survey of Market Expectations and Bloomberg consensus. Kalshi's modal forecast correctly predicted the federal funds rate on the day before every FOMC meeting since 2022, something neither the survey nor fed funds futures achieved. For headline CPI, Kalshi's median and mode produced a statistically significant improvement over Bloomberg consensus.

Kalshi also fills a gap no other financial market covers: real-time probability distributions for GDP growth, core CPI, unemployment, and payrolls. The paper documented how these distributions shift in response to macro news -- positive CPI surprises moved the mean of the fed funds rate distribution four times more than negative ones. Trading volumes on the platform have grown to nearly 100 million contracts for a single FOMC meeting, supported by liquidity from Susquehanna, Citadel, and Two Sigma.



[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w34702

Anthropic researcher Nicholas Carlini set 16 instances of Claude Opus 4.6 loose on a shared codebase over two weeks to build a C compiler from scratch, and the AI agents [1]produced a 100,000-line Rust-based compiler capable of building a bootable Linux 6.9 kernel on x86, ARM and RISC-V architectures.

The project ran through nearly 2,000 Claude Code sessions and cost about $20,000 in API fees. Each instance operated inside its own Docker container, independently claiming tasks via lock files and pushing completed code to a shared Git repository. No orchestration agent directed traffic. The compiler achieved a 99% pass rate on the GCC torture test suite and can compile major open source projects including PostgreSQL, SQLite, Redis, FFmpeg and Doom. But it lacks a 16-bit x86 backend and calls out to GCC for that step, its assembler and linker remain buggy, and it produces less efficient code than GCC running with all optimizations disabled.

Carlini also invested significant effort building test harnesses and feedback systems to keep the agents productive, and the model hit a practical ceiling at around 100,000 lines as bug fixes and new features frequently broke existing functionality.



[1] https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/sixteen-claude-ai-agents-working-together-created-a-new-c-compiler/

OpenAI has [1]started testing ads inside ChatGPT for logged-in adult users on the Free and Go subscription tiers in the United States, the company said. The Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education tiers remain ad-free. Ads are matched to users based on conversation topics, past chats, and prior ad interactions, and appear clearly labeled as "sponsored" and visually separated from ChatGPT's organic responses.

OpenAI says the ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers, and advertisers receive only aggregate performance data like view and click counts rather than access to individual conversations. Users under 18 do not see ads, and ads are excluded from sensitive topics such as health, mental health, and politics. Free-tier users can opt out of ads in exchange for fewer daily messages.

Further reading : [2]Anthropic Pledges To Keep Claude Ad-free, Calls AI Conversations a 'Space To Think' .



[1] https://openai.com/index/testing-ads-in-chatgpt/

[2] https://slashdot.org/story/26/02/04/1327223/anthropic-pledges-to-keep-claude-ad-free-calls-ai-conversations-a-space-to-think

Deepfake fraud has gone "industrial," an analysis published by AI experts has said. From a report:

> Tools to create tailored, even personalised, scams -- leveraging, for example, deepfake videos of Swedish journalists or the president of Cyprus -- are no longer niche, but [1]inexpensive and easy to deploy at scale , said the analysis from the AI Incident Database.

>

> It catalogued more than a dozen recent examples of "impersonation for profit," including a deepfake video of Western Australia's premier, Robert Cook, hawking an investment scheme, and deepfake doctors promoting skin creams. These examples are part of a trend in which scammers are using widely available AI tools to perpetuate increasingly targeted heists. Last year, a finance officer at a Singaporean multinational paid out nearly $500,000 to scammers during what he believed was a video call with company leadership. UK consumers are estimated to have lost $12.86bn to fraud in the nine months to November 2025.

>

> "Capabilities have suddenly reached that level where fake content can be produced by pretty much anybody," said Simon Mylius, an MIT researcher who works on a project linked to the AI Incident Database. He calculates that "frauds, scams and targeted manipulation" have made up the largest proportion of incidents reported to the database in 11 of the past 12 months. He said: "It's become very accessible to a point where there is really effectively no barrier to entry."



[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/06/deepfake-taking-place-on-an-industrial-scale-study-finds

The romance genre -- long the publishing industry's earliest adopter of technological shifts, from e-books to self-publishing to serial releases -- has become the front line for AI-generated fiction, and the [1]results as you can imagine are messy . Coral Hart, a Cape Town-based novelist previously published by Harlequin and Mills & Boon, produced more than 200 AI-assisted romance novels last year and self-published them on Amazon, where they collectively sold around 50,000 copies. She found Anthropic's Claude delivered the most elegant prose but was terrible at sexy banter; other programs like Grok and NovelAI wrote graphic scenes that felt rushed and mechanical. Chatbots struggled broadly to build the slow-burn sexual tension romance readers crave, she said.

A BookBub survey of more than 1,200 authors found roughly a third were using generative AI for plotting, outlining, or writing, and the majority did not disclose this to readers. Romance accounts for more than 20% of all adult fiction print sales, according to Circana BookScan, and the genre's reliance on familiar tropes and narrative formulas makes it especially susceptible to AI disruption.



[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/business/ai-claude-romance-books.html

Autodesk has [1]sued Google in San Francisco federal court, alleging the search giant infringed its "Flow" trademark by launching competing AI-powered software for movie, TV and video game production in May 2025.

Autodesk says it has used the Flow name since September 2022 and that Google assured it would not commercialize a product under the same name -- then filed a trademark application in Tonga, where filings are not publicly accessible, before seeking U.S. protection.



[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/google-sued-by-autodesk-over-ai-powered-movie-making-software-2026-02-09/