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Mac users beware: AI-powered malware threats are on the rise

FOX News

Yurts founder and CEO Ben Van Roo breaks down concerns over DeepSeek on'The Will Cain Show.' Apple devices are believed to be pretty secure, and that's what the company will tell you. You might have seen the tagline "Privacy. However, the tech landscape is changing, and even Apple products aren't beyond cybercriminals' reach. A new report suggests Mac users will need to be more vigilant this year because AI advancements are helping hackers breach even the most secure systems. I have consistently reported on how Mac malware is targeting users, and experts now believe this will only get worse.


Russian drones hit Ukraine power plant, leaving residents in the cold

Al Jazeera

Russian drone strikes have damaged a thermal power plant in Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine overnight, leaving 46,000 consumers without heating as temperatures plunge below freezing, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said. "This was done deliberately to leave people without heat in sub-zero temperatures and create a humanitarian catastrophe," Shmyhal said on the Telegram messenger app. Russia attacked Ukraine with 143 drones overnight, but the Ukrainian military said it shot down 95 of them, while 46 did not reach their targets, likely thanks to the use of electromagnetic countermeasures that disrupt drone attacks. At least one person was injured in the overnight attacks which also damaged houses in the Kyiv region, Ukrainian officials said. The temperature in Mykolaiv is expected to fall to minus 7 degrees Celsius (19.4 Fahrenheit) on Sunday night.


Elon Musk's mass government cuts could make private companies millions

The Guardian

The world's richest man, Elon Musk, has vowed to oversee a radical hollowing out of government agencies, asserting this week that some should be "deleted entirely" as he defunds public programs and lays off federal workers. While the immense cuts are framed as a means of removing waste, they may also become a boon to private companies โ€“ including Musk's own businesses โ€“ that the government increasingly relies on for many of its key initiatives. Musk and his allies in the "department of government efficiency" (Doge), the unofficial committee acting as the operations arm of his cost-cutting efforts, have targeted a range of major government departments. They have moved to close the United States Agency for International Development, slashed the Department of Education and taken over the General Services Administration that controls federal IT structures. Doge staffers have also gained access to the treasury department, as well as set their sights on the Department of Defense, energy department, Environmental Protection Agency and at least a dozen others.


Crash victims honoured at basketball matches

BBC News

Four students killed in a car crash were honoured at a university as basketball matches resumed for the first time since the incident. Makyle Bayley, 22, Eva Darold-Tchikaya, 21, Anthony "TJ" Hibbert, 24 and Daljang Wol, 22, died when a car crashed into a building on Magdalen Street, Colchester on 1 February. Mr Hibbert and Mr Wol played for the Essex Rebels, who dedicated Saturday's fixtures to the victims and held an applause in their memory. University of Essex director of sport Dave Parry said: "We've lost four really loved members of our university and sporting community, who gave so much to their friends and others." Mr Bayley was a member of the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) basketball team, while Ms Darold-Tchikaya was a member of the Essex Blades dance club and other societies.Dawid Wojtowicz/BBCSaturday's basketball fixtures at the University of Essex were dedicated to the victimsDawid Wojtowicz/BBCIt was the first time matches had been played there since the incident Last week, more than 1,000 people including students, staff and relatives of the victims attended a gathering.


DeepSeek drives 1.3 trillion China stock rally as funds pile in

The Japan Times

DeepSeek's breakthrough in artificial intelligence is helping drive a rotation of stock funds back into China from India. Hedge funds have been piling into Chinese equities at the fastest pace in months as bullishness on the DeepSeek-driven technology rally adds to hopes for more economic stimulus. In contrast, India is suffering a record exodus of cash on concerns over waning macro growth, slowing corporate earnings and expensive stock valuations. China's onshore and offshore equity markets have added more than 1.3 trillion in total value in just the past month amid such reallocations, while India's market has shrunk by more than 720 billion. The MSCI China Index is on track to outperform its Indian counterpart for a third-straight month, the longest such streak in two years.


One year on: Did Russia's democratic opposition die with Navalny?

BBC News

Navalny's widow has moral authority but nowhere near his political skills. "All theseโ€ฆ liberal figures have extremely low approval ratings," says academic Tatiana Stanovaya. Instead, she detects a consolidation of support for the Kremlin which she links to a surge in Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia. "People see that we are very vulnerable and they have to choose the strongest player to rely on," the analyst explains. "It's not because they like Putin or consider him a positive hero. It's because he can protect Russia in a very hostile environment."


Perplexity has its own 'Deep Research' tool now too

Engadget

In a blog post on Friday, Perplexity introduced a new tool called Deep Research that it says can conduct "in-depth research and analysis" to deliver detailed reports in response to your questions, and it's free for limited use. It comes just a couple of weeks after OpenAI announced its own Deep Research feature for ChatGPT Pro usersโ€ฆ which itself followed Google's December announcement of Deep Research for Gemini. Perplexity's tool is available only on the web to start, but it will hit the iOS, Android and Mac apps soon too. Deep Research lets you generate in-depth research reports on any topic. Perplexity says its Deep Research "excels at a range of expert-level tasks -- from finance and marketing to product research" and takes about 2-4 minutes to come up with an answer, during which it "performs dozens of searches, reads hundreds of sources, and reasons through the material."


America must win AI race against 'great competitor' China, Condoleezza Rice warns

FOX News

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice weighed in on the global artificial intelligence race, warning the United States must remain the "technological leader" against the "great competitor" -- China. "The United States is currently the technological leader, and we have to keep it that way. We absolutely have to win this race so that a democracy wins the race for these frontier technologies, not an authoritarian state -- and China, of course, is the great competitor here," Rice said Friday on "The Story." Earlier this week, Vice President JD Vance laid out the Trump administration's vision for the future of artificial intelligence during the AI Action Summit in Paris. During his remarks, Vance emphasized deregulation, private-sector innovations, safety and security as well as global cooperation while touting U.S. success in AI growth.


If the AI Roundheads go to war with tech royalty, don't bet against them John Naughton

The Guardian

There's a moment in the 1967 film The Graduate that has become renowned. At a party thrown by his parents to celebrate his graduation, Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) is approached by Mr McGuire, an elderly bore who wants to say "just one word" to him: "plastics". "Exactly how do you mean?", asks the hapless Ben. "There's a great future in plastics," says McGuire. "Think about it." Listening last week to the spending plans of the techlords who run Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta leads one to wonder if something analogous might have happened to them on their graduation nights. Except that in their cases, the magic word would have been "AI".


YouTube Shorts is getting a tool for adding AI-generated video to your posts

Mashable

It's about to get easier to add AI-generated video into your short-form posts. YouTube announced that Shorts will integrate Veo 2 -- Google DeepMind's newest video mode -- which will allow users to generate and add AI clips into their videos. The new feature will be a part of Shorts' Dream Screen, which already lets users add AI-generated backgrounds to their posts. Wrote Youtube in a blog post announcing the news: "Need a specific scene but don't have the right footage? Want to turn your imagination into reality and tell a unique story?