Author: InfoForTech

If you’ve ever spent more time tweaking a design than creating it, Google thinks it has a better solution. The company has launched Google Pics, a new AI-powered design tool that lets you create posters, flyers, presentations, and social media graphics using simple prompts instead of traditional editing tools. Built into Google Workspace and powered by Gemini and Google’s Nano Banana image generator, Pics aims to make professional-looking visuals accessible even if you have no design experience. How Google Pics stacks up against Canva and Adobe Express Google Pics is entering a crowded space. Canva already has Magic Edit and…

The Juno Propulsion team includes, from left, fluid systems engineer Andrew Adams, facility operations engineer Cody Niggemyer, chief technology officer Ari Martinez and CEO Alexis Harroun. (Juno Propulsion Photo) The National Science Foundation has awarded a $1.2 million grant to Tukwila, Wash.-based Juno Propulsion to support the startup’s development of a non-toxic propulsion system for in-space applications. The two-year Phase II project, funded through NSF’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, will be conducted in partnership with the University of Washington and UW Professor Carl Knowlen’s lab. The focus of the funding is to support work on Juno’s Product Development…

A supposed expert institute publishing academic-looking research was actually part of a covert influence operation supported by ChatGPT, according to OpenAI. The company said Tuesday it banned a cluster of accounts originating in Russia that were used to promote the International Burke Institute, a self-described Israel-based expert community. OpenAI’s investigation uncovered copied academic research, misleading author attributions and a “sovereignty index” that portrayed Russia favorably while criticizing Western governments. The operation shows how generative AI can support more than mass-produced social posts. It can also help operators build the surrounding infrastructure — research, branding and coordinated accounts — needed to…

Sonos has a new app. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.The smart speaker company, long a darling of the audio industry, undid much of the goodwill it earned with its multiroom speakers through a bevy of software updates that broke its app in 2024. Almost all app users hated it, citing the loss of features like volume control and accessibility tools meant to help blind people use the wireless speaker system. Sonos eventually owned up to the mistake, considered bringing back the old app again, then booted its CEO and marched its new leaders out to apologize profusely…

Before graduate school, Kumar grew up in Philadelphia, attended the University of Pennsylvania, and worked on several projects at the intersection of technology and mental health or psychology research. Through those experiences, Kumar began to question whether the technology she was helping to develop was having the sustained impact she hoped for. “I had done a number of projects that were ‘tech for good,’” she says. “And I wasn’t seeing that what I was doing had a long-term impact.” Rather than walking away from technology altogether, Kumar began to rethink how it was created. “If we design technology in community-based ways and…

In the United States, building a data center now polls roughly as well as abolishing the police. If current trends continue, server warehouses may soon be less popular with Americans than pizza topped with pineapple and shattered glass.In an August survey from Heatmap Pro and Embold Research, just 15 percent of Americans said they would support a data center being built in their area, while 75 percent expressed opposition. One year earlier, 43 percent of respondents in the same poll had approved of nearby data center development, while just 42 percent opposed it.Data center projects are increasingly unpopular and vulnerable…

Information technology services company CBTS Technology Solutions LLC today launched Forge Agents, a platform that turns a plain-language description of a job into a working artificial intelligence agent and then runs it under enterprise security controls. Midmarket companies are the target buyer. They answer to the same regulators and sit through the same security reviews as large enterprises, CBTS argues, without the engineering bench to satisfy either. Accountability tends to be scattered as well. The company cited a June report from Forrester Research Inc. that found governance responsibility is split across seven or more roles with no single function owning…

Static analysis reads a file’s code and structure without running it, which catches obviously malicious code but misses anything that only reveals itself at runtime. Dynamic analysis runs the file inside an isolated environment and records what it actually does: registry edits, spawned processes, dropped files, and any malicious traffic reaching out to a remote address. Malware built with packing, obfuscation, or delayed execution is specifically designed to pass a static check and only show its real behavior once it’s running, which is exactly what dynamic analysis is built to catch.

Roland just unveiled the FP-40 digital piano, which has built-in Wi-Fi. It’s not uncommon to see pianos that connect via Bluetooth, but Wi-Fi is incredibly rare. I’ve seen some instruments that allow for the inclusion of Wi-Fi adapters, but this one goes a step further. It simply connects to a home network, like any other gadget. The primary use case here is for teaching apps and related software. Pianos with Bluetooth, like the well-regarded Casio PX-S7000, connect to proprietary teaching apps, but Wi-Fi is much faster and should offer a more seamless experience. To that end, Roland is also releasing…

Google Search now automatically expands AI Overviews on query results pages. It’s time for tech leaders and publishers to rethink their digital strategy today. Google just doubled down on its generative AI vision. The search giant now automatically expands AI Overviews at the top of query results, skipping the manual dropdown click entirely. Google previously showed a collapsed summary banner. Users had to tap a button to reveal the full generated answer. The expanded AI panel now greets users immediately, dominating the top fold on both mobile screens and desktop browsers. This change makes total sense from a product design…