Half of the world's climate-heating carbon emissions come from the fossil fuels produced by just 36 companies, analysis has revealed. From a report: The researchers said the 2023 data strengthened the case for holding fossil fuel companies to account for their contribution to global heating. Previous versions of the annual report have been used in legal cases against companies and investors.

The report found that the 36 major fossil fuel companies, including Saudi Aramco, Coal India, ExxonMobil, Shell and numerous Chinese companies, produced coal, oil and gas responsible for more than 20bn tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2023. If Saudi Aramco was a country, it would be the fourth biggest polluter in the world after China, the US and India, while ExxonMobil is responsible for about the same emissions as Germany, the world's ninth biggest polluter, according to the data.

Global emissions must fall by 45% by 2030 if the world is to have a good chance of limiting temperature rise to 1.5C, the internationally agreed target. However, emissions are still rising, supercharging the extreme weather that is taking lives and livelihoods across the planet. The International Energy Agency has said new fossil fuel projects started after 2021 are incompatible with reaching net zero emissions by 2050. Most of the 169 companies in the Carbon Majors database increased their emissions in 2023, which was the hottest year on record at the time.

Google is urging officials at President Donald Trump's Justice Department to back away from a push to break up the search engine company, citing national security concerns, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the discussions. From the report: Representatives for the Alphabet unit asked the government in a meeting last week to take a less aggressive stance as the US looks to end what a judge ruled to be an illegal online search monopoly, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the private deliberations. The Biden administration in November had called for Google to sell its Chrome web browser and make other changes to its business including an end to billions of dollars in exclusivity payments to companies including Apple.

Although Google has previously pushed back on the Biden-era plan, the recent discussions may preview aspects of the company's approach to the case as it continues under the Trump administration. A federal judge is set to rule on how Google must change its practices following hearings scheduled for next month. Both sides are due to file their final proposals to the judge on Friday.

The long-running text-based zombie MMO Urban Dead is shutting down on March 14, 2025, after nearly 20 years. The reason: compliance concerns with the UK's Online Safety Act. Games Radar+ reports: "The Online Safety Act comes into force later this month, applying to all social and gaming websites where users interact, and especially those without strong age restrictions," [writes Kevan Davis, the solo British developer behind the game]. "With the possibility of heavy corporate-sized fines even for solo web projects like this one, I've reluctantly concluded that it doesn't look feasible for Urban Dead to be able to continue operating."

"So a full 19 years, 8 months and 11 days after its quarantine began, Urban Dead will be shut down," Davis writes. "No grand finale. No final catastrophe. No helicopter evac. Make your peace or your final stand in whichever part of Malton you called home, and the game will be switched off at noon UTC on 14 March." The original website is still online if you want to play the game before its shutdown later this month.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Linux: Mozilla published today the final build of the Firefox 136 open-source web browser for all supported platforms ahead of the March 4th, 2025, official release date, so it's time to take a look at the new features and changes. Highlights of Firefox 136 include official Linux binary packages for the AArch64 (ARM64) architecture, hardware video decoding for AMD GPUs on Linux systems, a new HTTPS-First behavior for upgrading page loads to HTTPS, and Smartblock Embeds for selectively unblocking certain social media embeds blocked in the ETP Strict and Private Browsing modes.

Firefox 136 is available for download for 32-bit, 64-bit, and AArch64 (ARM64) Linux systems right now from Mozilla's FTP server. As mentioned before, Mozilla plans to officially release Firefox 136 tomorrow, March 4th, 2025, when it will roll out as an OTA (Over-the-Air) update to macOS and Windows users. Here's a list of the general features available in this release:

- Vertical Tabs Layout
- New Browser Layout Section
- PNG Copy Support
- HTTPS-First Behavior
- Smartblock Embeds
- Solo AI Link
- Expanded Data Collection & Use Settings
- Weather Forecast on New Tab Page
- Address Autofill Expansion

A full list of changes can be found here.

An anonymous reader shares a report: YouTube is warning creators about a new phishing scam that attempts to lure victims using an AI-generated video of its CEO Neal Mohan. The fake video has been shared privately with users and claims YouTube is making changes to its monetization policy in an attempt to steal their credentials, according to an announcement on Tuesday.

"YouTube and its employees will never attempt to contact you or share information through a private video," YouTube says. "If a video is shared privately with you claiming to be from YouTube, the video is a phishing scam." In recent weeks, there have been reports floating around Reddit about scams similar to the one described by YouTube.

Apple is stepping up its fight with the British government over a demand to create a "back door" in its most secure cloud storage systems, by filing a legal complaint that it hopes will overturn the order. Financial Times: The iPhone maker has made its appeal to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, an independent judicial body that examines complaints against the UK security services, according to people familiar with the matter. The Silicon Valley company's legal challenge is believed to be the first time that provisions in the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act allowing UK authorities to break encryption have been tested before the court.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal will consider whether the UK's notice to Apple was lawful and, if not, could order it to be quashed. The case could be heard as soon as this month, although it is unclear whether there will be any public disclosure of the hearing. The government is likely to argue the case should be restricted on national security grounds. Apple received a "technical capability notice" under the act in January.

AmiMoJo shares a report: Europe's biggest battery storage project has entered commercial operation in Scotland [alternative source], promising to soak up surplus wind power and prevent turbines being paid to switch off.

Zenobe said the first phase of its project at Blackhillock, between Inverness and Aberdeen, was now live with capacity to store enough power to supply 200 megawatts of electricity for two hours. It is due to be expanded to 300 megawatts by next year, enough to supply 3.1 million homes, more than every household in Scotland.

The government's Clean Power 2030 action plan sets a target capacity of up to 27 gigawatts of batteries by 2030, a sixfold increase from the 4.5 gigawatts installed today. This huge expansion is seen as critical as Britain builds more renewable wind and solar power, since batteries can store surplus generation for use when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, experts have debated how widely AI language models would impact the world. A few years later, the picture is getting clear. According to new Stanford University-led research examining over 300 million text samples across multiple sectors, AI language models now assist in writing up to a quarter of professional communications across sectors. It's having a large impact, especially in less-educated parts of the United States. "Our study shows the emergence of a new reality in which firms, consumers and even international organizations substantially rely on generative AI for communications," wrote the researchers.

The researchers tracked large language model (LLM) adoption across industries from January 2022 to September 2024 using a dataset that included 687,241 consumer complaints submitted to the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), 537,413 corporate press releases, 304.3 million job postings, and 15,919 United Nations press releases. By using a statistical detection system that tracked word usage patterns, the researchers found that roughly 18 percent of financial consumer complaints (including 30 percent of all complaints from Arkansas), 24 percent of corporate press releases, up to 15 percent of job postings, and 14 percent of UN press releases showed signs of AI assistance during that period of time.

The study also found that while urban areas showed higher adoption overall (18.2 percent versus 10.9 percent in rural areas), regions with lower educational attainment used AI writing tools more frequently (19.9 percent compared to 17.4 percent in higher-education areas). The researchers note that this contradicts typical technology adoption patterns where more educated populations adopt new tools fastest. "In the consumer complaint domain, the geographic and demographic patterns in LLM adoption present an intriguing departure from historical technology diffusion trends where technology adoption has generally been concentrated in urban areas, among higher-income groups, and populations with higher levels of educational attainment." "Arkansas showed the highest adoption rate at 29.2 percent (based on 7,376 complaints), followed by Missouri at 26.9 percent (16,807 complaints) and North Dakota at 24.8 percent (1,025 complaints)," notes Ars. "In contrast, states like West Virginia (2.6 percent), Idaho (3.8 percent), and Vermont (4.8 percent) showed minimal AI writing adoption. Major population centers demonstrated moderate adoption, with California at 17.4 percent (157,056 complaints) and New York at 16.6 percent (104,862 complaints)."

The study was listed on the arXiv preprint server in mid-February.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The United States has suspended its offensive cyber operations against Russia, according to reports, amid efforts by the Trump administration to grant Moscow concessions to end the war in Ukraine. The reported order to halt U.S.-launched hacking operations against Russia was authorized by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to The Record. The new guidance affects operations carried out by U.S. Cyber Command, a division of the Department of Defense focused on hacking and operations in cyberspace, but does not apply to espionage operations conducted by the National Security Agency. The reported order has since been confirmed by The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The order was handed down before Friday's Oval Office meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to the reports. The New York Times said that the instruction came as part of a broader effort to draw Russian President Vladimir Putin into talks about the country's ongoing war in Ukraine. The Guardian also reports that the Trump administration has signaled it no longer views Russian hackers as a cybersecurity threat, and reportedly ordered U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA to no longer report on Russian threats. The newspaper cites a recent memo that set out new priorities for CISA, including threats faced by China and protecting local systems, but the memo did not mention Russia. CISA employees were reportedly informed verbally that they were to pause any work on Russian cyber threats.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Chipmaker TSMC said that it aims to invest "at least" $100 billion in chip manufacturing plants in the U.S. over the next four years as part of an effort to expand the company's network of semiconductor factories. President Donald Trump announced the news during a press conference Monday. TSMC's cash infusion will fund the construction of several new facilities in Arizona, C. C. Wei, chairman and CEO of TSMC, said during the briefing. "We are going to produce many AI chips to support AI progress," Wei said.

TSMC previously pledged to pour $65 billion into U.S.-based fabrication plants and has received up to $6.6 billion in grants from the CHIPS Act, a major Biden administration-era law that sought to boost domestic semiconductor production. The new investment brings TSMC's total investments in the U.S. chip industry to around $165 billion, Trump said in prepared remarks. [...] TSMC, the world's largest contract chip maker, already has several facilities in the U.S., including a factory in Arizona that began mass production late last year. But the company currently reserves its most sophisticated facilities for its home country of Taiwan.

Silicon Valley, the place that did more than any other to pioneer artificial intelligence, is the most exposed to its ability to automate work. That's according to an analysis by researchers at the Brookings Institution, a think tank, which matched the tasks that OpenAI's ChatGPT-4 could do with the jobs that are most common in different US cities. From a report: The result is a sharp departure from previous rounds of automation. Whereas technologies like robotics came for middle-class jobs -- and manufacturing cities such as Detroit -- generative AI is best at the white-collar work that's highly paid and most common in "superstar" cities like San Francisco and Washington, DC.

The Brookings analysis is of the US, but the same logic would apply anywhere: The more a city's economy is oriented around white-collar knowledge work, the more exposed it is to AI. "Exposure" doesn't necessarily mean automation, stressed Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings and one of the study's authors. It could also mean productivity gains. From the Brookings report: Now, the higher-end workers and regions only mildly exposed to earlier forms of automation look to be most involved (for better or worse) with generative AI and its facility for cognitive, office-type tasks. In that vein, workers in high-skill metro areas such as San Jose, Calif.; San Francisco; Durham, N.C.; New York; and Washington D.C. appear likely to experience heavy involvement with generative AI, while those in less office-oriented metro areas such as Las Vegas; Toledo, Ohio; and Fort Wayne, Ind. appear far less susceptible. For instance, while 43% of workers in San Jose could see generative AI shift half or more of their work tasks, that share is only 31% of workers in Las Vegas.

Britain, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, now suffers from its opposite: profound energy shortages and deep affordability crises [non-paywalled link]. A new report titled "Foundations" identifies the root cause -- "it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere" in the UK.

Housing exemplifies this malaise. Since the 1990s, homeownership among young British workers has halved while housing prices doubled. The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act effectively nationalized development rights, requiring special permission for new construction and establishing restrictive "green belts." Despite Margaret Thatcher's market reforms, British house-building never recovered.

This constrictive policy has stymied potential growth beyond housing, Atlantic reports. Cambridge remains a small city despite biotech breakthroughs that might have transformed it into a major hub. Transit infrastructure languishes -- Leeds is Europe's largest city without a metro system. Energy production has collapsed, with per capita electricity generation now roughly one-third of America's.

Britain faces a self-imposed scarcity crisis. Environmental regulations, while beneficial, created a one-way system where lawsuits easily block development. As co-author Sam Bowman summarized: "Europe has an energy problem; the Anglosphere has a housing problem; Britain has both." The solution requires comprehensive reform-- overhauling the planning system, reducing anti-growth litigation, and encouraging energy production to unlock what the private sector "already wants to do."

U.S. publishers are increasingly abandoning paperback editions of nonfiction books, eliminating a traditional second chance for authors to reach readers with lower-priced versions of their work. New adult nonfiction paperback titles plummeted 42% between 2019 and 2024 [non-paywalled source] to under 40,000, while hardcover titles fell just 9% during the same period, according to Bowker Books in Print.

"It's profoundly demoralizing that a book that might have taken four years to write and was published with such promise is done after five months," Dan Conaway, a senior literary agent with Writers House, told WSJ. The shift reflects changing consumer habits, the rise of digital formats, and market realities where Amazon sometimes prices hardcovers below paperbacks. Barnes & Noble now promotes just one nonfiction paperback monthly.

Job placement rates have declined at all top U.S. business schools [non-paywalled source] since 2021, leaving MBA graduates anxious about their expensive degrees' return on investment. Harvard Business School, which produced Wall Street titans like Bill Ackman and Ray Dalio, saw the percentage of graduates without job offers three months post-graduation rise from 4% in 2021 to 15% currently.

Similar trends are evident at Stanford, Chicago Booth, MIT Sloan, and Wharton, where 7% of 2024 graduates lacked offers within three months of completing their programs. Industry experts cited in a Bloomberg report attribute the downturn to tepid white-collar job growth, declining private-sector wages, and high-profile layoffs at companies including Meta and JPMorgan.

It's a feature-length film "rendered on a free and open-source software platform called Blender," reports Reuters. And it just won the Oscar for best animated feature film, beating movies from major studios like Disney/Pixar and Dreamworks.

In January Blender.org called Flow "the manifestation of Blender's mission, where a small, independent team with a limited budget is able to create a story that moves audiences worldwide, and achieve recognition with over 60 awards, including a Golden Globe for Best Animation and two Oscar nominations." The entire project cost just $3.7 million, reports NPR — though writer/director Gints Zilbalodis tells Blender.org that it took about five and a half years.

"I think a certain level of naivety is necessary when starting a project," Zilbalodis tells Blender. "If I had known how difficult it would be, I might never have started. But because I didn't fully grasp the challenges ahead, I just dove in and figured things out along the way..." Zilbalodis: [A]fter making a few shorts, I realized that I'm not good at drawing, and I switched to 3D because I could model things, and move the camera... After finishing my first feature Away, I decided to switch to Blender [from Maya] in 2019, mainly because of EEVEE... It took a while to learn some of the stuff, but it was actually pretty straightforward. Many of the animators in Flow took less than a week to switch to Blender...

I've never worked in a big studio, so I don't really know exactly how they operate. But I think that if you're working on a smaller indie-scale project, you shouldn't try to copy what big studios do. Instead, you should develop a workflow that best suits you and your smaller team.
You can get a glimpse of their animation style in Flow's official trailer.

NPR says that ultimately Flow's images "possess a kinetic elegance. They have the alluring immersiveness of a video game..."