An anonymous reader quotes a report from DealBook: Fifteen years ago, Daniel Ek broke into America's digital-content wars with his streaming music start-up, Spotify, which has turned into a publicly traded company with a $110 billion market value. Now he and his business partner, the Swedish entrepreneur Hjalmar Nilsonne, aim to crack a higher-stakes consumer market: American health care. The pair plan to bring Neko Health, the health tech start-up they founded in 2018, to New York this spring, DealBook is first to report.

Mr. Ek and Mr. Nilsonne hope to capitalize on the growing number of prevention-minded Americans who are hungry to track their biometric data. Whether through wearables like Oura rings or more intensive screenings, consumers are turning to technology to improve their health and help spot the early onset of some big killers, including cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. The United States will be the third market, after Sweden and Britain, for Neko Health, which offers full-body diagnostic scans and is valued at roughly $1.7 billion.

[...] Mr. Nilsonne and Mr. Ek said Neko Health's big aim was to change the health care model, in which spending across much of the developed world skyrockets but longevity gains have stalled. They want to make their noninvasive scans as routine as an annual checkup. The company, which advertises its service as "a health check for your future self," did not say what the U.S. scans would cost. But in Stockholm, an hourlong visit at one of its clinics costs 2,750 Swedish krona (about $300). Prenuvo's and Ezra's most comprehensive scans can cost $3,999.

[...] Neko Health's technology differs from that of many of its U.S. rivals. It does not use M.R.I. or X-rays, instead relying on scores of sensors and cameras and a mix of proprietary and off-the-shelf technologies to measure heart function and circulation, and to photograph and map every inch of a patient's body looking for cancerous lesions. At the moment, the company's biggest challenge is scaling.

[...] Mr. Nilsonne said Neko Health scans have detected the early onset of diseases or serious medical conditions for thousands of its patients. But the medical community is divided on the need for proactive screening technologies. The fear is that mass adoption could spur a wave of false positives and send healthy people to seek follow-up medical advice, overwhelming an already swamped health care system. Mr. Ek and Mr. Nilsonne believe they have built a better solution. And now they're ready to test it in the U.S. market.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Digg is officially back under the ownership of its original founder, Kevin Rose, along with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. "Similar to Reddit, the new Digg offers a website and mobile app where you can browse feeds featuring posts from across a selection of its communities and join other communities that align with your interests," reports TechCrunch. "There, you can post, comment, and upvote (or 'digg') the site's content." From the report: [T]he rise of AI has presented an opportunity to rebuild Digg, Rose and Ohanian believe, leading them to acquire Digg last March through a leveraged buyout by True Ventures, Ohanian's firm Seven Seven Six, Rose and Ohanian themselves, and the venture firm S32. The company has not disclosed its funding. They're betting that AI can help to address some of the messiness and toxicity of today's social media landscape. At the same time, social platforms will need a new set of tools to ensure they're not taken over by AI bots posing as people.

"We obviously don't want to force everyone down some kind of crazy KYC process," said Rose in an interview with TechCrunch, referring to the 'know your customer' verification process used by financial institutions to confirm someone's identity. Instead of simply offering verification checkmarks to designate trust, Digg will try out new technologies, like using zero-knowledge proofs (cryptographic methods that verify information without revealing the underlying data) to verify the people using its platform. It could also do other things, like require that people who join a product-focused community verify they actually own or use the product being discussed there.

As an example, a community for Oura ring owners could verify that everyone who posts has proven they own one of the smart rings. Plus, Rose suggests Digg could use signals acquired from mobile devices to help verify members -- for instance, the app could identify when Digg users attended a meetup in the same location. "I don't think there's going to be any one silver bullet here," said Rose. "It's just going to be us saying ... here's a platter of things that you can add together to create trust."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After nearly two decades of touchscreen dominance, QWERTY smartphones are staging a niche comeback, with Clicks and Unihertz unveiling new physical-keyboard phones at CES 2026. Gizmodo reports: At CES 2026, Clicks, the company behind the Clicks keyboard case and the new Power Keyboard, announced plans to sell the Communicator, a "second phone" with a QWERTY keypad. Clicks pitches the $500 phone, launching later this year, as a device primarily intended for messaging -- sending texts, DMs, Slack messages, whatever. The company didn't have a functional unit -- only a mockup dummy to fondle at the show -- but it looked cool enough, even if it'll be a very niche product. It's a cool idea, but how many people will carry a companion phone to their main phone just to shoot off a few DMs? $500 is a lot to ask for that satisfaction.

But Clicks isn't the only one trying to bring back QWERTY phones. Unihertz, makers of the really tiny Jelly Android phones and also Tank phones with massive battery capacities, also teased a new phone with a physical keyboard. The Titan 2 Elite seems to be a less gimmicky version of the Titan 2, which itself was a BlackBerry Passport knockoff but with a bizarre square screen on the backside.

Look closely, and there are some weird similarities between the Clicks Communicator and the Titan 2 Elite. We don't have dimension specs yet, but the screens seem to have the same rounded corners, and even the hole-punch camera is in the same upper-left corner. The only difference seems to be the keyboards; the Communicator uses individual keys, whereas the Titan 2 Elite's keyboard is more BlackBerry-esque. After digging into the Clicks Communicator's specs, a few other features stood out that Slashdotters might appreciate. There's a dedicated 3.5mm headphone jack, a physical "kill switch" (essentially an alert slider), fingerprint scanner and even a customizable notification LED. The last time we saw a phone with a dedicated notification LED was around 2019!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tol, blokkades, invoerheffingen, accijnzen en afpersing. De geschiedenis ligt vol met handelsbeperkingen, ziet NRC’s huishistoricus Bart Funnekotter.

X, het sociale mediaplatform van Elon Musk, werd de afgelopen weken overspoeld met seksueel getinte AI-afbeeldingen van bekende personen en minderjarigen.

Conventional Voice AI is binary with regards to interruptions. I will employ language taxonomy to establish a state machine which dissociates the turn-taking process in back-channeling from actual floor-taking thus creating a more human-like interaction.

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Koffie blijft duur omdat een reeks structurele problemen samenkomen: mislukte oogsten, klimaatstress, strengere regels en hogere kosten in de hele keten.

De wereldwijde koffiemarkt staat onder druk door extreme weersomstandigheden in grote productielanden als Brazilië en Vietnam, waardoor oogsten terugvallen en de voorraad krap blijft. Klimaatverandering maakt traditionele koffieregio’s onvoorspelbaar, met afwisselend droogte en stortregens die plantages blijvend aantasten.

Tegelijkertijd stijgt de vraag, vooral in opkomende markten zoals China en India, zodat elk tegenvallend seizoen direct doorwerkt in de wereldmarktprijs. De International Coffee Organization meldde al in 2024 dat robusta-bonen het hoogste prijsniveau in bijna dertig jaar bereikten, een signaal dat het niet om een kortstondige uitschieter gaat.

Daar bovenop komen hogere transport- en energiekosten, duurdere arbeid en nieuwe EU-regels tegen ontbossing, die producenten dwingen tot dure herkomst- en ketentracering. Rabobank-analisten waarschuwen dat “de gemiddelde supermarktprijs voor een kilo koffie dit jaar over de 20 euro kan gaan”, zelfs als de oogsten iets herstellen.

De geruststellende gedachte dat prijzen vanzelf weer naar het oude niveau zakken, lijkt daarmee vooral nostalgie voor een tijdperk van goedkope, onderschatte koffie.

Meta-omschrijving Waarom blijft koffie zo duur? Mislukte oogsten, klimaatstress, nieuwe EU-regels en hogere kosten maken een terugkeer naar het ‘oude normaal’ onwaarschijnlijk.

NEW YORK (ANP/AFP) - De Veiligheidsraad van de Verenigde Naties komt donderdagmiddag samen om de situatie in Iran te bespreken. Dat heeft de voorzitter van de raad laten weten.

Volgens persbureau AFP blijkt uit het papierwerk dat de vergadering is aangevraagd door de Verenigde Staten.

De eerste Franse militairen die het land naar Groenland stuurt, zijn vertrokken. Dat heeft president Emmanuel Macron aangekondigd. Hij maakte niet bekend om hoeveel militairen het gaat, maar zei wel dat er meer zullen volgen.

Frankrijk doet mee aan "gezamenlijke oefeningen" die zijn georganiseerd door Denemarken. Zweden en Noorwegen doen daar ook aan mee. Ook het Verenigd Koninkrijk heeft militaire inzet toegezegd voor de 'Arctic Endurance'-oefening. Duitsland liet eerder weten donderdag dertien militairen naar de Groenlandse hoofdstad Nuuk te sturen voor een driedaagse verkenningsmissie.

Groenland maakt deel uit van het Deense koninkrijk, maar moet volgens de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump om veiligheidsredenen bij de Verenigde Staten horen. Bondgenoten van Denemarken hopen de VS daarvan te weerhouden door te laten zien dat zij het strategisch gelegen eiland versterken.

mikeleonardvisualarts posted a photo: