Qian Xuesen was a Chinese rocket scientist whose work was central to American military power. His exile had world-altering effects.

His meteoric rise to become New York City’s chief law enforcement officer was later tarnished after he pleaded guilty to federal corruption and tax crimes.

The plight of temporary workers like Kim Hyoung-su, who’s been protesting for months at the top of a tower, has become an issue in Tuesday’s presidential election.

Beijing has intervened significantly in Myanmar’s civil war to protect its substantial investments in the country, handing a setback to resistance forces.

A planned merger of the Japanese and American giants, announced in 2023, has traveled through an election, two presidents and strong union opposition.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Whether it is doing sums or working out what to text your new date, some tasks produce a furrowed brow. Now scientists say they have come up with a device to monitor such effort: an electronic tattoo, stuck to the forehead. The researchers say the device could prove valuable among pilots, healthcare workers and other professions where managing mental workload is crucial to preventing catastrophes. "For this kind of high-demand and high-stake scenario, eventually we hope to have this real-time mental workload decoder that can give people some warning and alert so that they can self-adjust, or they can ask AI or a co-worker to offload some of their work," said Dr Nanshu Lu, an author of the research from the University of Texas at Austin, adding the device may not only help workers avoid serious mistakes but also protect their health. Writing in the journal Device, Lu and colleagues describe how using questionnaires to investigate mental workload is problematic, not least as people are poor at objectively judging cognitive effort and they are usually conducted after a task. Meanwhile, existing electroencephalography (EEG) and electrooculography (EOG) devices, that can be used to assess mental workload by measuring brain waves and eye movements respectively, are wired, bulky and prone to erroneous measurements arising from movements. By contrast, the "e-tattoo" is a lightweight, flexible, wireless device. The black, wiggly path of the e-tattoo is composed of a graphite-based conductive material, and is attached to the forehead using conductive adhesive film. Four square EEG electrodes, positioned on the forehead, each detect a different region of brain activity -- with a reference electrode behind the ear -- while rectangular EOG electrodes, placed vertically and horizontally around the eyes, provide data about eye movements. Each of the stretchable electrodes is coated in an additional conductive material. The e-tattoo, which is bespoke and disposable, is connected to a reusable flexible printed circuit using conductive tape, while a lightweight battery can be clipped to the device. The device is expected to cost less than $200 and be accompanied with an app to alert the user if their mental workload is too high.

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Companies welcomed a court decision striking down President Trump’s tariffs. Then a stay of that ruling left no one breathing easy.

A court ruling invalidating President Trump’s sweeping tariffs was halted hours later, throwing into question the administration’s overall approach to trade.

The world’s richest man created disruption and fear before giving up on revamping government. But his companies will now face less oversight.

Students said the latest move had upended their plans and intensified their fears.

Amazon has launched a new innovation-focused team called ZeroOne, led by Xbox co-creator J Allard, to develop breakthrough consumer products across hardware and software. CNBC reports: The ZeroOne team is spread across Seattle, San Francisco and Sunnyvale, California, and is focused on both hardware and software projects, according to job postings from the past month. The name is a nod to its mission of developing emerging product ideas from conception to launch, or "zero to one." [...] The new group is being led by J Allard, who spent 19 years at Microsoft, most recently as technology chief of consumer products, a role he left in 2010, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was a key architect of the Xbox game console, as well as the Zune, a failed iPod competitor. Allard joined Amazon in September, and the company confirmed at the time that he would be part of the devices and services team under Panos Panay, who left Microsoft for Amazon in 2023 to lead the group. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed Allard oversees ZeroOne but declined to comment further on the group's work. The job postings provide few specific details about what ZeroOne is building, though one listing references working on "conceiving, designing, and bringing to market computer vision techniques for a new smart-home product." Another post for a senior customer insights manager in San Francisco says the job entails owning "the methodology and execution of concept testing and early feedback for ZeroOne programs." "You'll be part of a team that embraces design thinking, rapid experimentation, and building to learn," the description says. "If you're excited about working in small, nimble teams to create entirely new product categories and thrive in the ambiguity of breakthrough innovation, we want to talk to you." Amazon has pulled in staffers from other business units that have experience developing innovative technologies, including its Alexa voice assistant, Luna cloud gaming service and Halo sleep tracker, according to Linkedin profiles of ZeroOne employees. The head of a projection mapping startup called Lightform that Amazon acquired is helping lead the group. While Amazon is expanding this particular corner of its devices group, the company is scaling back other areas of the sprawling devices and services division.

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The premiers of Manitoba and Saskatchewan declared states of emergency in each province as out-of-control fires threatened communities.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An accused movie pirate who stole more than 1,000 Blu-ray discs and DVDs while working for a DVD manufacturing company struck a plea deal (PDF) this week to lower his sentence after the FBI claimed the man's piracy cost movie studios millions. Steven Hale no longer works for the DVD company. He was arrested in March, accused of "bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying" and ripping pre-release copies of movies he could only access because his former employer was used by major movie studios. As alleged by the feds, his game was beating studios to releases to achieve the greatest possible financial gains from online leaks. Among the popular movies that Hale is believed to have leaked between 2021 and 2022 was Spider-Man: No Way Home, which the FBI alleged was copied "tens of millions of times" at an estimated loss of "tens of millions of dollars" for just one studio on one movie. Other movies Hale ripped included animated hits like Encanto and Sing 2, as well as anticipated sequels like The Matrix: Resurrections and Venom: Let There Be Carnage. The cops first caught wind of Hale's scheme in March 2022. They seized about 1,160 Blu-rays and DVDs in what TorrentFreak noted were the days just "after the Spider-Man movie leaked online." It's unclear why it took close to three years before Hale's arrest, but TorrentFreak suggested that Hale's case is perhaps part of a bigger investigation into the Spider-Man leaks. A plea deal for Hale significantly reduced the estimated damages from his piracy case to under $40,000 and led to the dismissal of two charges, though he still faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for one remaining copyright infringement charge. His final sentence and restitution amount will be decided at a court hearing in Tennessee at the end of August.

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Trumpism can be seen as a giant attempt to amputate the highest aspirations of the human spirit and to reduce us to our most primitive, atavistic tendencies.

Employees of federal agencies continue to wrestle with the shocks of Elon Musk’s drive to purge the government of diversity programs and slash employment even as the billionaire leaves Washington.

Critics say President Trump has used the vast pardon powers of the presidency not to settle accounts, as President Biden did, but to burn the ledger.

Google's Gemini AI can now analyze and summarize video files stored in Google Drive, letting users ask questions about content like meeting takeaways or product updates without watching the footage. The Verge reports: The Gemini in Drive feature provides a familiar chatbot interface that can provide quick summaries describing the footage or pull specific information. For example, users can ask Gemini to list action items mentioned in recorded meetings or highlight the biggest updates and new products in an announcement video, saving time spent on manually combing through and taking notes. The feature requires captions to be enabled for videos, and can be accessed using either Google Drive's overlay previewer or a new browser tab window. It's available in English for Google Workspace and Google One AI Premium users, and anyone who has previously purchased Gemini Business or Enterprise add-ons, though it may take a few weeks to fully roll out. You can learn more about the update in Google's blog post.

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After video of the incident went viral, showing a face and body covered in ice, the local sporting authority said it had banned the paraglider from the sport for six months.

A Texas jury ruled that Intel may hold a license to patents owned by VLSI Technology through its agreement with Finjan Inc., both controlled by Fortress Investment Group -- potentially nullifying over $3 billion in previous patent infringement verdicts against Intel. Reuters reports: VLSI has sued Intel in multiple U.S. courts for allegedly infringing several patents covering semiconductor technology. A jury in Waco, Texas awarded VLSI $2.18 billion in their first trial in 2021, which a U.S. appeals court has since overturned and sent back for new proceedings. An Austin, Texas jury determined that VLSI was entitled to nearly $949 million from Intel in a separate patent infringement trial in 2022. Intel has argued in that case that the verdicts should be thrown out based on a 2012 agreement that gave it a license to patents owned by Finjan and other companies "under common control" with it. U.S. District Judge Alan Albright held the latest jury trial in Austin to determine whether Finjan and VLSI were under the "common control" of Fortress. VLSI said it was not subject to the Finjan agreement, and that the company did not even exist until four years after it was signed.

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He was the last of three generations spanning nearly the entire history of the United States: When his grandfather was born, George Washington had just become president.