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Q1 2025 earnings call: CEO’s remarksQ1 2025 earnings call: CEO’s remarksCEO of Google and Alphabet

GoogleBlog - Thu, 04/24/2025 - 15:45
Read Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai's remarks from the Q1 2025 earnings call.Read Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai's remarks from the Q1 2025 earnings call.
Categories: Technology

India's Delhi Plans To Curb Gasoline Car Sales, Ban Gas-Guzzling Bikes To Shed Polluter Tag

Slashdot.org - Thu, 04/24/2025 - 15:14
India's capital New Delhi plans to limit gasoline and diesel-powered cars a family can buy as well as ban sales of fuel-guzzling motorbikes and scooters, according to a draft policy aimed at cleaning up one of the world's most polluted cities. From a report: The measures represent one of the most drastic steps the city has lined up to tackle pollution, which often forces local authorities to ban some construction, shut schools and disrupt flights in the city of more than 30 million people during the winter season. Under Delhi's new electric vehicle policy, the city government will also waive some local taxes on the purchase of hybrids, putting them on par with concessions given to EVs, while imposing a new levy of 0.5 rupees ($0.0059) on every litre of petrol sales, according to the 74-page draft seen by Reuters. The primary objective "is to unlock the next phase of EV adoption, reduce air pollution and contribute to India's energy independence and net-zero targets," the draft stated.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

11-Year-Old GTA V Dominated Twitch in 2024

Slashdot.org - Thu, 04/24/2025 - 14:35
Grand Theft Auto V topped Twitch viewership charts in 2024 with a staggering 1.4 billion hours watched, according to data released by the streaming platform. The 11-year-old game outperformed all competitors, including League of Legends, which also surpassed the billion-hour mark. Competitive shooters filled the remaining top spots, with Valorant recording 804 million hours, Fortnite exceeding 500 million, and Call of Duty reaching 451 million hours watched. V-Tubers -- streamers using animated avatars instead of showing their faces -- saw viewership increase by 10% year-over-year, accumulating over a billion hours watched collectively.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our new research into zebrafish brains could help us predict brain activity.Our new research into zebrafish brains could help us predict brain activity.

GoogleBlog - Thu, 04/24/2025 - 14:00
AI could one day help neuroscientists predict activity in the human brain, just like language models can predict the next word in a sentence.After more than a decade of …
Categories: Technology

Google AI Fabricates Explanations For Nonexistent Idioms

Slashdot.org - Thu, 04/24/2025 - 13:53
Google's search AI is confidently generating explanations for nonexistent idioms, once again revealing fundamental flaws in large language models. Users discovered that entering any made-up phrase plus "meaning" triggers AI Overviews that present fabricated etymologies with unwarranted authority. When queried about phrases like "a loose dog won't surf," Google's system produces detailed, plausible-sounding explanations rather than acknowledging these expressions don't exist. The system occasionally includes reference links, further enhancing the false impression of legitimacy. Computer scientist Ziang Xiao from Johns Hopkins University attributes this behavior to two key LLM characteristics: prediction-based text generation and people-pleasing tendencies. "The prediction of the next word is based on its vast training data," Xiao explained. "However, in many cases, the next coherent word does not lead us to the right answer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Young Men in US Abandoning College Education at Record Rates

Slashdot.org - Thu, 04/24/2025 - 13:11
Male college enrollment in Lake County, Ohio plummeted by more than 15% over the last decade -- the steepest decline among any large U.S. county. Nationwide, men now constitute virtually the entirety of the 1.2 million student drop in college attendance between 2011 and 2022. Financial concerns dominate decision-making, with even public in-state education costing approximately $25,000 annually. One high school senior secured a $15/hour collision repair job, Bloomberg reports, calculating he'll earn "upwards of a grand every other week" while avoiding student debt. Social media significantly influences these choices. "You see a lot of influencers saying you don't need to go to college, and when people see that, they listen," explained one student from Perry High School.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI Tackles Aging COBOL Systems as Legacy Code Expertise Dwindles

Slashdot.org - Thu, 04/24/2025 - 12:25
US government agencies and Fortune 500 companies are turning to AI to modernize mission-critical systems built on COBOL, a programming language dating back to the late 1950s. The US Social Security Administration plans a three-year, $1 billion AI-assisted upgrade of its legacy COBOL codebase [alternative source], according to Bloomberg. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has repeatedly stressed the need to overhaul government systems running on COBOL. As experienced programmers retire, organizations face growing challenges maintaining these systems that power everything from banking applications to pension disbursements. Engineers now use tools like ChatGPT and IBM's watsonX to interpret COBOL code, create documentation, and translate it to modern languages.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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