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OpenAI launches ChatGPT with Search, taking Google head-on
As traditional web search falters, OpenAI offers an AI-based alternative.
One of the biggest bummers about the modern Internet has been the decline of Google Search. Once an essential part of using the web, it’s now a shadow of its former self, full of SEO-fueled junk and AI-generated spam.
On Thursday, OpenAI announced a new feature of ChatGPT that could potentially replace Google Search for some people: an upgraded web search capability for its AI assistant that provides answers with source attribution during conversations. The feature, officially called “ChatGPT with Search,” makes web search automatic based on user questions, with an option to manually trigger searches through a new web search icon.
OpenAI hopes the new capability will streamline web searching by eliminating the need for multiple searches and link exploration that traditional search engines sometimes require. Users can ask follow-up questions, with ChatGPT considering the context of the entire conversation to provide answers.
Consumers won’t be offered all three years of extended Windows 10 security updates
End users can’t get the same three-year extension as businesses and schools.
Most Windows 10 PCs will stop getting new security updates in October 2025, less than a year from today. For businesses and schools, the company is offering up to three years of extended security updates, with prices that increase steadily year by year to incentivize switching to Windows 11.
But Microsoft announced today that end users would only be able to buy a single year of extended security updates for their Windows 10 PCs at the price of $30 per PC. The company confirmed to us that the second and third years of security updates would be exclusive to businesses and schools.
Microsoft says consumers will be able to enroll in the Windows 10 Extended Security Update (ESU) program “closer to the end of support in 2025.”
Will the new Nintendo Music app lead to more DMCA takedowns from Nintendo?
Subscription music app gives Nintendo new reason to crack down on third-party music uploads.
Last night, Nintendo pulled off a surprise launch of a new Nintendo Music smartphone app, offering many of the company’s staple soundtrack songs as a perk to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. But the new subscription freebie could give Nintendo additional motivation to once again crack down on Internet users who have been collecting and posting Nintendo music online for years now.
The Nintendo Music app includes hundreds of songs from titles to download or stream, ranging from 1985’s Super Mario Bros. to last year’s Pikmin 4. The current music selection is far from comprehensive, but it at least touches on many of Nintendo’s most popular series, including Zelda, Pokemon, Kirby, Fire Emblem, Metroid, and Animal Crossing (plus some popular background music from various Wii Channels). Nintendo promises that more tracks will be “added over time,” mirroring the process Nintendo has used to add to its Nintendo Switch Online classic game downloads.
Nintendo Music users can build their own playlists, of course, or choose from a number of pre-arranged playlists to suit different moods or character themes. The app also syncs with your Nintendo account to highlight music from games you play and offers options to avoid “spoilers” from certain game music or extend songs in lengthy loops.
Generative AI is coming to Google Maps, Google Earth, Waze
Conversational search and hazard reporting and more detailed maps, all thanks to AI.
Google revealed today how it plans to use generative AI to enhance its mapping activities. It’s the latest application of Gemini, the company’s in-house rival to GPT-4, which the company wants to use to improve the experience when searching for something. Google Maps, Google Earth, and Waze will all get feature upgrades thanks to Gemini, although in some cases only with Google’s “trusted testers” at first.
Google Maps
More than 2 billion people use Google Maps every month, according to the company, and in fact, AI is nothing new to Google Maps. “A lot of those features that we’ve introduced over the years have been thanks to AI,” said Chris Phillips,VP and general manager of Geo at Google. “Think of features like Lens and maps. When you’re on a street corner, you can lift up your phone and look, and through your camera view, you can actually see we laid places on top of your view. So you can see a business. Is it open? What are the ratings for it? Is it busy? You can even see businesses that are out of your line of sight,” he explained.
At some point this week, if you use the Android or iOS Google Maps app here in the US, you should start seeing more detailed and contextual search results. Maps will now respond to conversational requests—during a demo, Google asked it what to do on a night out with friends in Boston, with the app returning a set of results curated by Gemini. These included categories of places—speakeasies, for example—with review summaries and answers from users.
If Trump dismantles the NOAA, it will affect wildfires and food prices
Taking away NOAA weather and climate data could raise food prices, among other things.
As the Popo Agie river wends its way down from the glaciers atop Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains toward the city of Lander, it flows into a limestone cave and disappears. The formation, known as the Sinks, spits the river back out at another feature called the Rise a quarter of a mile east, a little more voluminous and a little warmer, with brown and rainbow trout weighing as much as 10 pounds mingling in its now smooth pools. The quarter-mile journey from the Sinks to the Rise takes the river two hours.
Scientists first discovered this quirk of the middle fork of the Popo Agie (pronounced puh-po zuh) in 1983 by pouring red dye into the river upstream and waiting for it to resurface. Geologists attribute the river’s mysterious delay to the water passing through exceedingly small crevasses in the rock that slow its flow.
Like many rivers in the arid West, the Popo Agie is an important aquifer. Ranchers, farmers, businesses and recreationists rely on detailed data about it—especially day-to-day streamflow measurements. That’s exactly the type of empirical information collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
300 percent price hikes push disgruntled VMware customers toward Broadcom rivals
Ars speaks with users and partners unhappy with Broadcom’s changes.
After closing a $69 billion deal to buy virtualization technology company VMware a year ago, Broadcom wasted no time ushering in big changes to the ways customers and partners buy and sell VMware offerings—and many of those clients aren’t happy.
To get a deeper look at the impact that rising costs and overhauls like the end of VMware perpetual license sales have had on VMware users, Ars spoke with several companies in the process of quitting the software due to Broadcom’s changes.
Here’s what’s pushing them over the edge.
Microsoft reports big profits amid massive AI investments
Xbox hardware sales dropped 29 percent, but that barely made a dent.
Microsoft reported quarterly earnings that impressed investors and showed how resilient the company is even as it spends heavily on AI.
Some investors have been uneasy about the company’s aggressive spending on AI, while others have demanded it. During this quarter, Microsoft reported that it spent $20 billion on capital expenditures, nearly double what it had spent during the same quarter last year.
However, the company satisfied both groups of investors, as it revealed it has still been doing well in the short term amid those long-term investments. The fiscal quarter, which covered July through September, saw overall sales rise 16 percent year over year to $65.6 billion. Despite all that AI spending, profits were up 11 percent, too.
Slivered onions are likely cause of McDonald’s E. coli outbreak, CDC says
To date, 90 sickened, 27 hospitalized and one dead in the multi-state outbreak.
Slivered onions are the likely source of the multi-state E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounder burgers that continues to grow, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday.
Onions were one of two primary suspects when the CDC announced the outbreak on October 22, with the other being the beef patties used on the burgers. But onions quickly became the leading suspect. The day after the CDC’s announcement, McDonald’s onion supplier, Taylor Farms, recalled peeled and diced yellow onion products and several other fast food chains took onions off the menu as a precaution. (No other restaurants have been linked to the outbreak to date.)
According to the CDC, traceback information and epidemiological data collected since then have all pointed to the onions and, according to McDonald’s, state and federal testing of the beef patties has all come back negative.
Apple silicon Macs will get their ultimate gaming test with Cyberpunk 2077 release
The game will take “full advantage of Apple silicon,” CD Projekt Red says.
Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most graphically demanding and visually impressive games in recent years, will soon get a Mac release, according to developer and publisher CD Projekt Red.
The announcement was published on CD Projekt Red’s blog and also appeared briefly during Apple’s pre-recorded MacBook Pro announcement video. The game will be sold on the Mac App Store, Steam, GOG, and the Epic Game Store when it launches, and it will be labeled the Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, which simply means it also includes Phantom Liberty, the expansion that was released a couple of years after the original game.
Cyberpunk 2027 launched in a rough state in 2020, especially on low-end hardware. Subsequent patches and a significant overhaul with Phantom Liberty largely redeemed it in critics’ eyes—the result of all that post-launch work is the version Mac users will get.
Person accidentally poisoned 46 coworkers with toxin-loaded homemade lunch
Testing found S. aureus in a homemade noodle dish caused the illnesses.
For some, microwaving fish in the employee lunch room is the ultimate work faux pas. But for one (likely mortified) employee of a seafood distribution plant in Maryland, it’s probably causing a mass poisoning with the homemade noodle dish they brought to share for lunch. The dish sickened 46 employees, spurring their employer to hastily release a statement assuring customers that it wasn’t the company’s food that caused the illnesses.
On October 21, first responders and paramedics arrived at the NAFCO Wholesale Fish Distribution Facility in Jessup, where dozens of employees had abruptly fallen ill about three hours after lunch. Helicopter footage of the event captured images of workers around picnic tables outside the plant, some doubled over and with their heads down.
Ultimately, 46 people were sickened, and at least 26 were treated at an area hospital with symptoms of food poisoning, according to The Baltimore Banner. They all recovered.