Google Chrome is adding a read-aloud option to its reading mode, allowing users to have articles read to them like an audiobook. Android Police reports: Google is actively working to bring additional features to its reading mode, and a handy read-aloud option is already on the way for the Chrome browser. As the name suggests, read aloud basically reads out the entire article, as if you're listening to an audiobook, with text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities. Again, a few mainstream browsers and apps like Pocket already have the feature, but Google Chrome is only now rolling it out through the Canary channel.

When you open an article in Chrome Canary's reading mode on the desktop, you will see a new option, as spotted by browser expert Leopeva64. You can use this tiny play button to get the browser to read the article aloud for you. In the video sample shared by the user, you can hear what the narration sounds like -- and it isn't very pleasing. The voice output sounds pretty robotic as it used to be in the early days of TTS conversions, which is especially ironic coming from Google, which has some of the most natural-sounding voice models at its disposal. This clearly indicates that the read-aloud feature is in its early stages of development and will take some time before it becomes ready for prime time.

Denuvo has become the first security partner to be added to the Nintendo Developer Portal. According to Video Games Chronicle, Switch developers can use Denuvo's tools for their games to block users from playing them on PC emulators. From the report: "Even if a game is protected against piracy on its PC version, the version released on Nintendo Switch can be emulated from day one and played on PC, therefore bypassing the strong protections offered on the PC version," the company says. "This can happen with any of the numerous games available on Nintendo Switch. "By blocking unauthorized emulations on PC, studios are able to increase their revenue during the game launch window, which is the most important period for monetization. The Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection will ensure that anyone wishing to play the game has to buy a legitimate copy. As with all other Denuvo solutions, the technology integrates seamlessly into the build toolchain with no impact on the gaming experience. It then allows for the insertion of checks into the code, which blocks gameplay on emulators."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: There have been a lot of Wipeout games released since the 1995 original, including Wipeout HD and the Omega Collection, but only the original has the distinction of having its Windows port source code leaked by (since defunct) archive Forest of Illusion. Dominic Szablewski grabbed that code before it disappeared and set about creating a version that's not just a port. He rewrote the game's rendering, physics, sound, and generally "everything everywhere." He documented the project, put his code on GitHub, and has some version of a justification. "So let's just pretend that the leak was intentional, a rewrite of the source falls under fair use and the whole thing is abandonware anyway," Szablewski writes.

As he digs into the specifics of his work, Szablewski takes the reader on a tour of PSX dev kits and how they handled Z-levels, how to translate yesterday's triangles to today's OpenGL, breaking the 30 FPS cap on a game that explicitly forbade that, and more. He takes the code from 40,699 lines to 7,731 and notably loved an excuse to work in C. "I had an absolute blast cleaning up this mess!" Szablewski's Wipeout rewrite can be compiled for Windows, Linux, Mac, and WASM (Web Assembly). You can even play it in your browser on his server (please be gentle). I spent some time in it this morning, and let me tell you: I am not ready for anti-gravity racing in the year 2052. It was a struggle to even get to fourth place, but those struggles were due entirely to skill, not system. The web version feels buttery smooth, even when you're continually clunking into walls. I had misremembered this game as having a lot more to it, but it's all feel: the trance/prog music, the physics, the controls, and the sense that you're always just slightly out of control.

Microsoft's August 2023 preview updates for Windows 11 and Windows 10, labeled as KB5029351 and KB5029331 respectively, have led to blue screen errors citing an unsupported processor problem. BleepingComputer reports: "Microsoft has received reports of an issue in which users are receiving an 'UNSUPPORTED_PROCESSOR' error message on a blue screen after installing updates released on August 2," Redmond said. The company also added that the problematic cumulative updates "might automatically uninstall to allow Windows to start up as expected." Microsoft is investigating the newly acknowledged known issue to find out whether it stems from a Microsoft-related cause. The company also urged users encountering these BSOD errors to file a report using the Feedback Hub.

The European Union's Digital Services Act has gone into effect today, requiring tech giants to comply with sweeping legislation that holds online platforms accountable for the content posted to them. The Verge reports: The overarching goal of the DSA is to foster safer online environments. Under the new rules, online platforms must implement ways to prevent and remove posts containing illegal goods, services, or content while simultaneously giving users the means to report this type of content. Additionally, the DSA bans targeted advertising based on a person's sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, or political beliefs and puts restrictions on targeting ads to children. It also requires online platforms to provide more transparency on how their algorithms work.

The DSA carves out additional rules for what it considers "very large online platforms," forcing them to give users the right to opt out of recommendation systems and profiling, share key data with researchers and authorities, cooperate with crisis response requirements, and perform external and independent auditing. The EU considers very large online platforms (or very large online search engines) as those with over 45 million monthly users in the EU. So far, the EU has designed 19 platforms and search engines that fall into that category [...]. The EU will require each of these platforms to update their user numbers at least every six months. If a platform has less than 45 million monthly users for an entire year, they'll be removed from the list.

Online platforms that don't comply with the DSA's rules could see fines of up to 6 percent of their global turnover. According to the EU Commission, the Digital Services Coordinator and the Commission will have the power to "require immediate actions where necessary to address very serious harms." A platform continually refusing to comply could result in a temporary suspension in the EU.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A federal judge yesterday granted Google's motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which claims that Google intentionally used Gmail's spam filter to suppress Republicans' fundraising emails. An order (PDF) dismissing the lawsuit was issued yesterday by US District Judge Daniel Calabretta. The RNC is seeking "recovery for donations it allegedly lost as a result of its emails not being delivered to its supporters' inboxes," Calabretta noted. But Google correctly argued that the lawsuit claims are barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the judge wrote. The RNC lawsuit was filed in October 2022 in US District Court for the Eastern District of California.

"While it is a close case, the Court concludes that... the RNC has not sufficiently pled that Google acted in bad faith in filtering the RNC's messages into Gmail users' spam folders, and that doing so was protected by Section 230. On the merits, the Court concludes that each of the RNC's claims fail as a matter of law for the reasons described below," he wrote. Calabretta, a Biden appointee, called it "concerning that Gmail's spam filter has a disparate impact on the emails of one political party, and that Google is aware of and has not yet been able to correct this bias." But he noted that "other large email providers have exhibited some sort of political bias" and that if Google did not filter spam, it would harm its users by subjecting them "to harmful malware or harassing messages. On the whole, Google's spam filter, though in this instance imperfect, is not morally blameworthy."

The RNC was given leave to amend another claim that alleged intentional interference with prospective economic relations under California law. The judge dismissed the claim as follows: "The RNC argues that Google's conduct was independently wrongful because '(1) it is political discrimination against the RNC, (2) it is dishonest to Google's users and the public, and (3) Google repeatedly lied about it.' As established above, political discrimination is not prohibited by California anti-discrimination laws and so Google's alleged discrimination would not be unlawful. The latter two reasons do not provide a 'determinable legal standard' under which the Court could find the conduct wrongful; they rest on a 'nebulous' theory of wrongfulness which other courts have rejected." The RNC "has failed to establish that Defendant's alleged interference constituted a separate, independently 'wrongful act' that would be an appropriate predicate offense" but "will be granted leave to amend this claim to establish that Defendant's conduct was unlawful by some legal measure," Calabretta wrote. Google said in a statement: "We welcome the Court's finding that there are no plausible allegations that Gmail's spam filters discriminate for political purposes. We will continue investing in spam-filtering technologies that protect people from unwanted emails while still allowing senders to reach the inboxes of users who want their messages."

Private equity firm Veritas Capital has made an offer to buy Canadian software company BlackBerry, Reuters reported Friday, citing a person familiar with the matter. From the report: BlackBerry had said in May it would conduct a review of strategic alternatives, which could includes the possible separation of one or more of its businesses. Founded in 1984, the company currently makes software for cars and cybersecurity. It became popular for its ubiquitous business smartphones, toted by executives, politicians and legions of fans in the early 2000s. It pulled the plug on its smartphones business last year and has since been trying to sell its legacy patents related to its mobile devices.

Ten years ago there was a growing interest in Mandarin, as China's influence and economic heft increased. Now Mandarin-learning is declining in many Western countries. In America, enrolment in university Mandarin courses fell by 21% between 2016 and 2020. An anonymous reader writes, citing an Economist story: That may be because job markets have changed. Translation tools like ChatGPT mean low-level Mandarin skills are not needed anymore. Bilingual Chinese graduates fill most roles that require a higher proficiency. But Western students may also be put off by China's government, which has become more oppressive in the past decade, making living in or working with China seem less appealing.

This shows that China's soft power is weak. But it is also a problem for Western governments, many of which say they need more Mandarin speakers. The CIA, for example, wants to double the number of Mandarin-speakers it employs. As China and its rivals struggle to get along, there is an ever greater need for mutual understanding. Being able to talk to each other might help.

One of the world's biggest scientific publishers has retracted a journal article that claimed to have found no evidence of a climate crisis. From a report: Springer Nature said it had retracted the article, by four Italian physicists, after an internal investigation found the conclusions were "not supported by available evidence or data provided by the authors." Climate sceptic groups widely publicised the article, which appeared in the European Physical Journal Plus in January 2022 -- a journal not known for publishing climate change science.

Nine months later the article was reported uncritically in a page one story in the Australian newspaper and promoted in two segments on Sky News Australia -- a channel that has been described as a global hub for climate science misinformation. The segments were viewed more than 500,000 times on YouTube. The article claimed to have analysed data to find no trend in rainfall extremes, floods, droughts and food productivity. "In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet," the article said.

Several climate scientists told the Guardian and later the news agency AFP that the article had misrepresented some scientific articles, was "selective and biased" and had "cherrypicked" information. After those concerns were raised, Springer Nature announced in October it was investigating the article. In a statement Springer Nature said its editors had launched a "thorough investigation," which included a post-publication review by subject matter experts. The authors of the article also submitted an addendum to their original work during the course of the investigation, the statement said.

AMD on Friday announced its long-awaited middle members of the Radeon RX 7000 series, the Radeon RX 7800 XT and Radeon RX 7700 XT. From a report: Today, the company is finally filling in that gap with the new Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT, both advertised as 1440p graphics cards and available starting at $449 and $499, respectively. Both cards will be available on September 6. And most Radeon RX 6000 and RX 7000 GPUs sold between now and September 30 will come with a free copy of Bethesda's upcoming "Skyrim in space" title, Starfield.

The RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT are based on the same RDNA 3 graphics architecture as the other 7000-series GPUs, which means a more efficient manufacturing process than the RX 6000 series, DisplayPort 2.1 support, and hardware acceleration for encoding with the AV1 video codec, which promises game streamers either higher-quality video at the same bitrate as older codecs or the same quality with a lower bitrate. AMD compared the 7800 XT and 7700 XT favorably to Nvidia's $600 upper-midrange RTX 4070 and the $500 16GB version of the RTX 4060 Ti. The new Radeon cards also support FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) version 3, a new version of AMD's GPU-agnostic AI upscaling technology that also promises extra AI-generated frames a la Nvidia's proprietary DLSS 3 and DLSS Frame Generation feature. But unlike Nvidia, AMD isn't restricting FSR 3 to its latest cards, and users of RX 6000-series cards plus recent Nvidia GeForce and Intel Arc cards will be able to benefit, too, at least when games start supporting it.

Afghanistan's Taliban-led government is working with Huawei to install a wide-ranging surveillance system across the country in an effort to identify and target insurgents or terrorism activities, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing a person familiar with the discussions. From the report: Representatives of the Shenzhen-headquartered tech company met with Interior Ministry officials on Aug. 14, the person said, and a verbal agreement was reached regarding the contract. The Interior Ministry initially posted images and details of the meeting on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. In one post, spokesman Mufti Abdul Mateen Qani said the advanced camera system was being considered "in every province of Afghanistan."

The posts, which were later deleted, included comments from Abdullah Mukhtar, the deputy minister of the ministry. "We are willing to accept projects that are better in terms of quality and price," he said. "Reports on this meeting are factually incorrect. No plans or agreements were discussed," Huawei said in an emailed statement.

Jay Powell has warned that inflation "remains too high," raising the prospect of further interest rate increases in the world's largest economy should price pressures persist. Financial Times: In a highly anticipated speech on Friday, the chair of the US Federal Reserve at times struck a hawkish tone, pointing to the central bank's readiness to maintain a "restrictive" policy to bring inflation down to its 2 per cent target. "Although inflation has moved down from its peak -- a welcome development -- it remains too high," Powell said at the Fed's annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. "We are prepared to raise rates further if appropriate, and intend to hold policy at a restrictive level until we are confident that inflation is moving sustainably down toward our objective," he added.

But he tempered that message with a pledge to proceed "carefully" as the Fed navigates the final stages of its campaign to stamp out the worst inflation shock in decades. Headline US inflation, according to the consumer price index, was 3.2 per cent for July, well down from its peak of 9.1 per cent, but above June's rate of 3 per cent. Powell said the Fed was now focused not only on the risk of tightening monetary policy too little and allowing inflation to become entrenched but also of raising rates too high. "Doing too much could also do unnecessary harm to the economy," he said.

The federal government is escalating efforts to make cryptocurrency investors comply with tax law, nearly 15 years after people started trading bitcoin. From a report: The Treasury Department proposed new rules Friday with twin goals: making it harder for crypto investors to dodge income taxes when they sell digital assets, and simplifying complicated tax messes for people who are trying to follow the law. When they are fully implemented, the rules will require crypto exchanges such as Coinbase to deal with the Internal Revenue Service in a manner similar to brokers who handle investors' stock and mutual-fund portfolios.

The crypto exchanges will send annual reports on Form 1099s to the IRS and to taxpayers that show the gross proceeds from transactions. That starts in 2026 for tax year 2025. Later, they will start reporting how much customers paid for the assets, known as their cost basis. Capital gains are the difference between sale price and cost basis, and investors face federal taxes of up to 23.8%.

Firefighters are training a robot to scan the horizon for fires. It turns out a lot of things look like smoke. From a report: For years, firefighters in California have relied on a vast network of more than 1,000 mountaintop cameras to detect wildfires. Operators have stared into computer screens around the clock looking for wisps of smoke. This summer, with wildfire season well underway, California's main firefighting agency is trying a new approach: training an artificial intelligence program to do the work. The idea is to harness one of the state's great strengths -- expertise in A.I. -- and deploy it to prevent small fires from becoming the kinds of conflagrations that have killed scores of residents and destroyed thousands of homes in California over the past decade.

Officials involved in the pilot program say they are happy with early results. Around 40 percent of the time, the artificial intelligence software was able to alert firefighters of the presence of smoke before dispatch centers received 911 calls. "It has absolutely improved response times," said Phillip SeLegue, the staff chief of intelligence for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the state's main firefighting agency better known as Cal Fire. In about two dozen cases, Mr. SeLegue said, the A.I. identified fires that the agency never received 911 calls for. The fires were extinguished when they were still small and manageable.

After an exceptionally wet winter, California's fire season has not been as destructive -- so far -- as in previous years. Cal Fire counts 4,792 wildfires so far this year, lower than the five-year average of 5,422 for this time of year. Perhaps more important, the number of acres burned this year has been only one-fifth of the five-year average of 812,068 acres. The A.I. pilot program, which began in late June and covered six of Cal Fire's command centers, will be rolled out to all 21 command centers starting in September. But the program's apparent success comes with caveats. The system can detect fires only visible to the cameras. And at this stage, humans are still needed to make sure the A.I. program is properly identifying smoke. Engineers for the company that created the software, DigitalPath, based in Chico, Calif., are monitoring the system day and night, and manually vetting every incident that the A.I. identifies as fire.