📰 News

🚀 Lego’s Mars Rover Perseverance has 360-degree steering and a swinging arm

Lego has announced a new Lego Technic NASA Mars Rover Perseverance set, priced at $100, which features 360-degree steering and a swinging arm, as well as a pair of additional dials on the back to move the sample arm up, down, left and right for play, an AR app for collecting rock samples, and educational content about the real vehicle and its mission on Mars.

💻 Microsoft announces Windows Copilot, an AI ‘personal assistant’ for Windows 11

Microsoft has announced Windows Copilot, an AI personal assistant integrated into Windows 11, which can summarize content, rewrite it, or even explain it, and is available to open and use from the taskbar across all apps and programs.

💸 CEO of biggest carbon credit certifier to resign after claims offsets worthless

David Antonioli, CEO of carbon credit certifier Verra, has resigned amid concerns that the Washington-based nonprofit approved millions of worthless offsets used by major companies for climate and biodiversity commitments. Earlier this year, a Guardian investigation revealed that Verra rainforest credits used by corporations including Disney, Shell and Gucci were largely worthless, sometimes based on protecting forests that were not threatened and even on forced evictions. Judith Simon, Verra’s president, will step in as interim CEO following Antonioli’s departure on 16 June.

💾 Windows 11 adding native support for winRAR, 7zip, tar, and gzip

Microsoft has announced that Windows 11 will soon have native RAR support, as well as support for other archive formats such as tar, 7-zip, and gz, all of which will be included in a Windows 11 update to improve the performance of archive functionality during compression on Windows.

🔍 Bing is now the default search for ChatGPT

OpenAI's ChatGPT will now use Bing as its default search experience, enabled through a plug-in, allowing for greater interoperability between plug-ins for Bing Chat, Microsoft’s Copilot platform, and ChatGPT after Microsoft's extended partnership with OpenAI earlier this year.

🤖 Microsoft's Azure AI Studio lets developers build their own AI 'copilots'

Microsoft has launched Azure AI Studio, a cloud-hosted tool that lets clients build their own chatbots and other applications by combining machine learning models from its partner OpenAI with their own text or image data to create "AI-powered copilots" that work with proprietary data while adhering to safety and compliance protocols on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service's platform. Microsoft intends to woo high-volume clients with a new feature called Provisioned Throughput SKU, which allows users to reserve and deploy processing capacity on a monthly or yearly basis.

🚸 US surgeon general issues advisory on ‘profound’ risks of child social media use

The US Surgeon General has issued an advisory warning of the “profound risk of harm” posed to children and teenagers by social media use, calling on tech companies, policymakers, and parents to take “immediate action to protect kids now.” The warning came in the absence of robust independent research, with up to 95% of 13- to 17-year-old Americans using a social media platform, and more than a third saying they do so “almost constantly.” The report also highlights how current controls on access by children are failing, with almost 40% of eight- to 12-year-olds regular users despite most sites applying a minimum age requirement of 13.

🚫 Activision shuts down popular fan servers for legacy Call of Duty games

Activision has shut down popular fan servers for legacy Call of Duty games, which fan say is the only safe way to play older games without the threat of hacking, meanwhile official servers see reports of massive hacking and security issues.

🤖 Adobe to integrate AI into Photoshop amid fears of job losses and image faking

Adobe will be incorporating its generative AI product, Firefly, into its Photoshop program, which will allow Photoshop users to add, expand or remove items from images using text prompts, however, Adobe has downplayed fears that the implementation of AI will lead to job losses or mass fakes and intends to position it as a "co-pilot" to speed up the process of content creation.

💸 Meta has no choice but to sell Giphy at $262M loss to Shutterstock

Meta has sold Giphy to Shutterstock for $53 million, which is a loss of $262 million as compared to the purchase price of $315 million in 2020, due to limited interest in GIF platforms and UK regulators forcing the sale.

🤯 Unexpected 3DS update breaks many common homebrew hacking methods

Nintendo has released a firmware update for its defunct 3DS console which breaks several common methods of installing homebrew software, leaving homebrew hackers with limited options for customising the console effectively.

📻 Ford reverses plan to ditch AM radio after congressional attention

Ford has decided to restore AM radio to its place on the dashboard after a bipartisan collection of Senators and Representatives introduced a bill last week to mandate the inclusion of AM radio in all new cars so they can receive messages in the case of an emergency.

🏃 Woman with untreated TB still on the lam three months after arrest warrant

A woman with untreated tuberculosis and a months-old arrest warrant continues to evade the sheriff's department in Tacoma, Washington, drawing local frustration and concern over the public health risk.

🔐 Netflix Begins Password Crackdown in US

Netflix is beginning its password sharing crackdown in the US and other global markets, with subscribers having to remove people from their account or pay $7.99/month for an additional membership for those outside their main household, with changes in dozens of countries over the coming weeks and months, amid some consumer backlash, though the company was assured of its long-term growth and financial health by co-CEO Greg Peters and this comes amid increased competition for users' time and money from other competitors such as HBO Max, Paramount +, and Disney+.

💬 Google to experiment with ads that appear in its AI chatbot in Search

Google plans to experiment with running Search and Shopping ads inside its conversational AI experience in Search, known as the Search Generative Experience (SGE), and will also integrate ads within the AI-powered snapshot and conversational mode. The changes were announced at Google's Marketing Live event for advertisers, where the company also revealed plans to experiment with new ad formats that will be native to SGE and use generative AI to create high-quality, customised ads, as well as the use of generative AI to adapt search ads to users' queries.

💡📚 Articles

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Unlocking the Secrets of Non-Functional Characteristics in System Design: From Performance to Localization

💰 Entities vs Value Objects: The Difference in One Sentence (1 min read)

Unlocking the Secret to Effortless Productivity: Tips That Actually Work!

💻 A comprehensive guide to software integration — Part one (12 min read)

A beginner's guide to choosing the right software integration method

🔑 Permission, responsibility, and empowerment (2 min read)

Mastering Agency & Responsibility in Team Software Development: Creating Systems for Clarity & Empowerment

🔀 Load balancing for beginners (4 min read)

Maximizing Server Performance: The Power of Load Balancers

🧊 Don’t Get Frozen Out: IcePanel, the Coolest App for Enterprise Architects (6 min read)

Don't Get Frozen Out: Introducing IcePanel, the Coolest App for Enterprise Architects. Learn about the importance of having a clear and accurate diagram of a business's technology landscape when implementing technology, and how IcePanel simplifies the complex world of systems, apps, and components. See how incorporating IcePanel into processes builds a transparent and cohesive architecture and a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

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