Author: InfoForTech
A coordinated international operation involving U.S. and Chinese authorities has arrested at least 276 suspects and shut down nine scam centers used for cryptocurrency investment fraud schemes targeting Americans, resulting in millions of dollars in losses. The crackdown was led by the Dubai Police, under the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Ministry of Interior, in partnership with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Chinese Ministry of Public Security. Among those arrested are individuals from Burma and Indonesia, who were apprehended by authorities from Dubai and Thailand. Thet Min Nyi, 27, Wiliang Awang, 23, Andreas Chandra, 29, Lisa Mariam,…
Apple has spent the better part of the last year looking like the most composed player in a room full of people setting their own furniture on fire. While Microsoft was hiking Surface prices to genuinely eye-watering levels and Chinese OEMs were watching their flagship ambitions evaporate under the weight of component costs, Apple held the line — a quiet confidence that felt almost theatrical. It was impressive while it lasted. It just didn’t last long enough. Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring is now calling it: the iPhone 18 lineup will likely cost $100 more than the iPhone 17 generation…
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise stated, any opinions expressed below belong solely to the author. In an unprecedented move, China has blocked Meta’s acquisition of Manus, a Singapore-based AI company. The country argued that its technology was developed on Chinese soil and, as such, it falls under Beijing’s jurisdiction, even if the business no longer has any presence in China (and never offered its services locally). It’s difficult to describe this as a straightforward “block,” however, as the transaction has already been completed: all parties have received their payouts, and Manus’ founders have formally joined the US company. Beijing is effectively trying…
So, what’s not to like? Well, early compatibility problems slowed the initial uptake of Snapdragon X, and the CPU’s integrated graphics performance turned out to be pretty terrible. And to date, powerful onboard AI features just haven’t proven important, as most AI workloads are still being done in the cloud. With the second-generation X2, Qualcomm set out to deliver on the original promise of faster performance.But what exactly does “faster” mean? As with most claims in the PC computing space, it’s all about the benchmarks. On the Zenbook A16, the tests I ran indeed showcased exemplary performance from the X2…
An AI prompt screen, as reimagined by Google Gemini. [Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series by Oren Etzioni about AI usage and best practices. See also “AI Coach or AI Ghostwriter? The Choice Is Yours,” and “How to read with AI.”] A friend asked ChatGPT for input on a professional matter and received a banal, lackluster response. I suggested she try a different approach: ask for 15 different ideas, scan them, pick the two that felt most promising, and then ask ChatGPT to refine. She came back overjoyed. ChatGPT had not gotten smarter, but she became better…
Enterprises are moving fast to embed artificial intelligence into everything from customer interactions to decision-making. The benefits are undeniable: speed, efficiency and scale. The danger isn’t necessarily sudden or dramatic. It’s quieter, more gradual, invisible and easy to justify along the way: It’s the slow loss of agency inside the company. A company loses agency with AI when humans stop setting direction, making judgments and owning outcomes, and instead become passive supervisors of systems that operate with increasing autonomy. No one announces this shift; it happens, one decision at a time. As philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously observed, “We shape our…
Ravie LakshmananMay 03, 2026Vulnerability / Container Security The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday added a recently disclosed security flaw impacting various Linux distributions to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-31431 (CVSS score: 7.8), is a case of local privilege escalation (LPE) flaw that could allow an unprivileged local user to obtain root. The nine-year-old flaw is also tracked as Copy Fail by Theori and Xint. Fixes have been made available in Linux kernel versions 6.18.22, 6.19.12, and 7.0. “Linux Kernel contains an incorrect…
The copy-paste era is dead. Instagram’s new crackdown on content aggregators means that if you don’t create it, you can’t do anything about who sees it. Is your reach about to tank? If you’ve spent any time on Instagram lately, you know the infinite loop problem: you see the same viral meme, the same travel reel, and the same aesthetic sunset carousel five times in ten minutes, just posted by five different curation accounts. Well, Instagram has officially decided to stop playing nice as of yesterday. The latest crackdown from Meta is clear: if you aren’t making it, you aren’t…
Digitalvision/Getty Images Ask.com, the search engine previously known for its butler mascot named Jeeves, has officially shut down. While Ask Jeeves was rebranded to Ask.com in 2006 by its new owner at the time, InterActiveCorp, this latest closure puts an end to the entirety of the company’s search business. “As IAC continues to sharpen its focus, we have made the decision to discontinue our search business, which includes Ask.com,” the statement on the website reads. “After 25 years of answering the world’s questions, Ask.com officially closed on May 1, 2026.”…
I didn’t bring the Pixel 8a to Camiguin to prove a point. I brought it because it’s still my phone, two years after I bought it as a stopgap when my OnePlus 7 Pro died. That’s annoying, because I wasn’t supposed to like this thing for this long. A week on the island gave it chances to fail. I used it for directions, island-hopping photos, Bluetooth music, online payments, and the usual checks when nobody remembers where the booking screenshot went. The Pixel 8a never let me forget it’s a cheaper phone. Charging was slow, and that showed. The more…