Following backlash over Discord's global rollout of strict age-verification checks, users are flocking to rival platform TeamSpeak and overwhelming its servers. According to PC Gamer, the Discord alternative said its hosting capacity has been maxed out in a number of regions including the U.S. From the report: [A]s I saw for myself while testing out free Discord alternatives, it's hard to deny the appeal of TeamSpeak. It's quick and easy to make an account, join or start a group chat, or join a massive, game-based community voice server, and at no point does TeamSpeak cheekily ask if it can scan your wizened visage.

During my testing, I was able to dive into 18+ group chats without tripping over an age gate. However, there's no guarantee TeamSpeak won't have to deploy its own age verification mechanism in the future. In the UK at least, the Online Safety Act makes those sorts of checks a legal obligation, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently stating "No social media platform should get a free pass when it comes to protecting our kids."

Besides all of that, if you'd rather not chat to randoms who also happen to have an unhealthy obsession with Arc Raiders, you'll likely need to pay an admittedly small subscription fee to rent your own ten-person community voice server. By that point, you're handing over card details and essentially fulfilling an age assurance check anyway. If you'd rather limit how much info your chat platform of choice has about you, there are arguably better options out there.

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According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (paywalled), Apple is reportedly developing AI-powered smart glasses, a wearable pendant, and camera-equipped AirPods that connect to the iPhone and use "visual context" to let Siri perform real-world actions. The Verge reports: Apple is reportedly aiming to start production of its smart glasses in December, ahead of a 2027 launch. The new device will compete directly with Meta's lineup of smart glasses and is rumored to feature speakers, microphones, and a high-resolution camera for taking photos and videos, in addition to another lens designed to enable AI-powered features.

The glasses won't have a built-in display, but they will allow users to make phone calls, interact with Siri, play music, and "take actions based on surroundings," such as asking about the ingredients in a meal, according to Bloomberg. Apple's smart glasses could also help users identify what they're seeing, reference landmarks when offering directions, and remind wearers to complete a task in specific situations, Bloomberg reports.

The company is reportedly planning to develop the frames for the smart glasses in-house, instead of partnering with a third-party company like Meta does with Ray-Ban and Oakley. Prototypes of the glasses use a cable to connect to a battery pack and an iPhone, but Bloomberg reports that "newer versions have the components embedded in the frame." Apple reportedly wants to make its smart glasses stand out by offering a high-quality build and advanced camera technology. The company is still working on AI-powered smart glasses with a display, though their launch "remains many years away," Bloomberg says.

Apple's plans for AI hardware don't end there, as the company is expected to build upon its Google Gemini-powered Siri upgrade with an AirTag-sized AI pendant that people can either wear as a necklace or a pin. This device would "essentially serve as an always-on camera" for the iPhone and has a microphone for prompting Siri, Bloomberg reports. The pendant, which The Information first reported on last month, is rumored to come with a built-in chip, but will mainly rely on the iPhone's processing power. The device could arrive as early as next year, according to Bloomberg.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: David Greene had never heard of NotebookLM, Google's buzzy artificial intelligence tool that spins up podcasts on demand, until a former colleague emailed him to ask if he'd lent it his voice. "So... I'm probably the 148th person to ask this, but did you license your voice to Google?" the former co-worker asked in a fall 2024 email. "It sounds very much like you!"

Greene, a public radio veteran who has hosted NPR's "Morning Edition" and KCRW's political podcast "Left, Right & Center," looked up the tool, listening to the two virtual co-hosts -- one male and one female -- engage in light banter. "I was, like, completely freaked out," Greene said. "It's this eerie moment where you feel like you're listening to yourself." Greene felt the male voice sounded just like him -- from the cadence and intonation to the occasional "uhhs" and "likes" that Greene had worked over the years to minimize but never eliminated. He said he played it for his wife and her eyes popped.

As emails and texts rolled in from friends, family members and co-workers, asking if the AI podcast voice was his, Greene became convinced he'd been ripped off. Now he's suing Google, alleging that it violated his rights by building a product that replicated his voice without payment or permission, giving users the power to make it say things Greene would never say. Google told The Washington Post in a statement on Thursday that NotebookLM's male podcast voice has nothing to do with Greene. Now a Santa Clara County, California, court may be asked to determine whether the resemblance is uncanny enough that ordinary people hearing the voice would assume it's his -- and if so, what to do about it. Greene's lawsuit cites an unnamed AI forensic firm that used its software to compare the artificial voice to Greene's. It gave a confidence rating of 53-60% that Greene's voice was used to train the model, which it considers "relatively high" confidence.

"If I was David Greene I would be upset, not just because they stole my voice," but because they used it to make the podcasting equivalent of AI "slop," said Mike Pesca, host of "The Gist" podcast and a former colleague of Greene's at NPR. "They have banter, but it's very surface-level, un-insightful banter, and they're always saying, 'Yeah, that's so interesting.' It's really bad, because what do we as show hosts have except our taste in commentary and pointing our audience to that which is interesting?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This program will execute XOR encrypted ciphertext (Python code) when provided the right passphrase or key, in memory. In this example, the encrypted code outputs, “Hello, lets go to google.com.” to the terminal. It then creates a connection to Google.com and retrieves the homepage using urllib3.request.

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PM Modi tells citizens AI will lift them up, not take their jobs

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

handwritten on negative sleeve, "March-April, 1984"

National Park Service also sued for removing rainbow Pride flag from Stonewall national monument in New York

Conservation and historical organizations sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over National Park Service policies that the groups say erase history and science from America’s national parks.

A lawsuit filed in Boston says orders by Donald Trump and interior secretary Doug Burgum have forced park service staff to remove or censor exhibits that share factually accurate and relevant US history and scientific knowledge, including about slavery and climate change.

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US family who were 100th to be granted residency under investor scheme say they want to give back to ‘amazing’ New Zealand

Wealthy Americans are dominating applications for New Zealand’s “golden visa”, driven by a love for the country’s natural beauty and entrepreneurial spirit, as well a desire to escape Trump’s administration.

New rules for the Active Investor Plus visa came into effect in April 2025, lowering investment thresholds, removing English-language requirements and cutting the amount of time applicants must spend in the country to establish residency from three years to three weeks. Successful applicants can only purchase homes in New Zealand worth more than $5m.

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Ukrainian president says he hopes Trump’s recent remarks are ‘just his tactics and not the decision’ as negotiators meet in Switzerland. What we know on day 1,456

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From the heart of Beijing to far-flung Manila, Panama, Moscow and New York, communities around the globe ring in the lunar new year

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Independent experts appointed by human rights council speak of ‘grave’ nature regarding scale of atrocities against women and girls

Millions of files related to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein suggest the existence of a “global criminal enterprise” that carried out acts meeting the legal threshold of crimes against humanity, a panel of independent experts appointed by the United Nations human rights council has said.

The experts said crimes outlined in documents released by the US justice department were committed against a backdrop of supremacist beliefs, racism, corruption and extreme misogyny. The crimes, they said, showed a commodification and dehumanisation of women and girls.

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• Curlers wear diamond-printed trousers to honour ‘Team Ulsrud’

• Norwegian Olympic Curling Team’s Pants page has 360,000 followers

Norway’s men’s curling team delighted supporters at the Olympics on Tuesday by reviving the famous red, white and blue-patterned trousers that became a sensation 16 years ago when they were worn by Thomas Ulsrud’s team.

The eye-catching pants, originally part of a sponsorship deal with sportswear company Loudmouth Golf, turned heads and captured hearts at Vancouver 2010, when Ulsrud’s Norwegian rink became the talk of the Winter Games.

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Group was skiing in snow-hit Sierra Nevadas, while winter storm brings heavy rain and floods to other parts of state

Six skiers have been found after a group of 16 went missing this morning as heavy snowfall blanketed California, prompting avalanche warnings in the Sierra Nevada mountains, closing coastal roads and causing flooding in Los Angeles.

The 10 remaining skiers are still missing, according to the sheriff’s office in Nevada county, California. The group was in the Castle Peak area, where an avalanche was reported around 11.30am.

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Make your own experts comic! Built by lensdeer, a delightful web app to generate your own expert versions of the classic xkcd 2501 comic.

A deep dive into ASCII rendering — in a detailed piece of technical writing, Alex Harri covers the story of how to best convert images to ASCII, bringing out the shape of the letters as well as how many pixels are lit in the letters, and showing how to add contrasting edges. It's a good introduction to image processing and a fun and accessible bit of hobby programming.

kasa51 has added a photo to the pool: