Google says its “Lens” image search can now help people understand what is going on with their skin. The tool is intended as a smart image search: users can take pictures and use them to search for whatever is in them. It has previously suggested it is useful for finding the details of the clothes that make up an outfit, for instance, or looking up certain items of food. But ens can also be used for looking up skin conditions or other unusual things on the body, the company suggested. It warns that the tool is “informational only and not a diagnosis” and urges users to consult authorities for advice. But it suggested that it could be a useful way of starting to look up certain things on the body that might be otherwise hard to put into words. “Describing an odd mole or rash on your skin can be hard to do with words alone,” Google said. “This feature also works if you’re not sure how to describe something else on your body, like a bump on your lip, a line on your nails or hair loss on your head.” The feature was described in a more wide-ranging Google blog that focused on other more obvious uses, such as pointing the camera at a “cool building or landmark” or to translate street signs or menus. Google said the feature was new within lens, but did not specify when it had been released. The company has tried to use artificial intelligence to help with skin conditions before. In 2021, it released a new tool called “DermAssist”. Google says it sees “billions of skin-related searches each year”. DermAssist was built to assist with those, though it too includes a disclaimer indicating it is only intended “for informational purposes” and not for a medical diagnosis. Since that DermAssist feature is more specifically focused on helping with medical conditions, it is subject to more stringent regulation. As such, Google has still only made it available in a “limited release” and asks people to sign up to be part of that testing on its website. DermAssist required users to answer a few questions and upload three photos. Lens on the other hand simply appears to use Google’s algorithms to match one picture with similar images of skin conditions, and give some indication of what that condition might be. Read More Google ad revenue from anti-abortion campaigns and ‘fake’ clinics topped $10m: report EU makes major statement on the future of Google Elon Musk refuses to pay Twitter’s Google bill, leaving site in peril

Several U.S. government agencies have been hit in a global hacking campaign that exploited a vulnerability in widely

The world’s oceans were the warmest on record in April and May, a development that could mean more

There are about 150,000 public electric vehicle chargers of various sorts in the United States, according to a recent report by S&P Global Mobility. If you think that sounds like a lot, you have no idea what's on the way.

Most of Reddit has now gone “dark” in protest against the management of the online forum. The controversy began when Reddit announced that it would start charging for access to its API, the technology that allows other developers access to its data. Some of those developers immediately announced that the pricing was so high that it would make their apps unsustainable – and one, widely-respected client Apollo, has since said it will have to shut down. That set off outrage across Reddit. While that initially focused on the decision to start charging for access to its data, it has since grown, with many users suggesting that they are generally dissatisfied with the way the site is being managed. What has happened to Reddit? On June 12, many of the world’s biggest subreddits went “dark”. That meant setting their privacy settings to private, so that only anyone who is already a member can see them. For anyone who tries to visit those forums and is not a member – which includes most of those on Reddit, including many of its biggest – they will see a message that it has gone private and is therefore not available. In a widely circulated message explaining the outage, users explained that it was intended as a protest. Some will return on 14 June, after 48 hours of darkness, it says, but others might opt to never come back again if the problem is not addressed. That is because “many moderators aren’t able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app” the message reads. “This isn’t something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love.” Why did Reddit change its policy? All of this began because Reddit announced that it would start charging for access to its API. Many of its users – including Christian Selig, the developer of the Apollo app that is at the centre of much of the controversy – say that this is reasonable. Reddit’s data is used by sites such as Google and to train artificial intelligence systems, for instance. And at the moment, Reddit is not paid for that usage, despite the fact that it costs the company (which is not profitable) to host that data. But it was the pricing and the way it was rolled out that caused such controversy. Mr Selig said that the pricing would cost his app $2 million per month, which is much more than storing the user data is thought to cost Reddit, and he and others were given only 30 days to respond. Which Reddit forums are part of the blackout? Almost all of them. The latest numbers suggest that 7259, out of 7806, of the site’s subreddits are currently unavailable to the public. Of the seven subreddits that have more than 30 million subscribers, all but one – r/pics – have been made private. A full, live list that shows both the subreddits that are down and the overall impact of the protest can be found on this tracking page. How can this happen? Reddit is unusual among social networks in that it depends heavily on its users, who administer the forums and moderate the content that appear on them. That saves it a lot of money – Meta, for instance, spends vast sums on ensuring that problematic content does not appear on Facebook and Instagram – and means that those users feel as if they should be listened to when it comes to such issues. It also means that they are able to take decisions that the management of Reddit might not like them to, including turning those subreddits private. Some 30,000 moderators are thought to be running the subreddits that are involved in the protest, and working together has given them considerable power to grind the site to a halt. Read More Reddit is in chaos – and it’s CEO has finally responded Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely Reddit down amid major protest Popular Reddit app Apollo shuts down as site’s users revolt against it Millions of Reddit users face a blackout over pricing revolt Scientists reveal the ‘violent, catastrophic’ origin of Geminids meteor shower

The current outrage at Reddit will “pass”, its chief executive has said, as the site continues to deal with one of its most significant protests ever. In recent days, many of the site’s largest forums have gone “dark”, as moderators set them to private, meaning they cannot be seen by the world. The changes also meant that Reddit became overwhelmed and stopped working for a brief period on Monday. That was a response to a move by Reddit to start charging for access to its data, which meant that third-party apps for viewing the forum became unsustainable. Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman said that the protest was a “challenge” and “we have our work cut out for us”. Staff have been working around the clock to deal with technical problems and engage with the moderators who run those forums, he said in a memo that was first reported by The Verge. He also said that the company has “not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor”. “There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen,” he wrote. “Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward.” He suggested that while two biggest third-party apps had announced they would be shutting down, along with some others. But he said that others were still in “conversations” with the company. Mr Huffman also advised staff that they should be “mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public”. “Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.” He also claimed that “starting last night, about a thousand subreddits have gone private”. That is far below third-party estimates, which suggest that the vast majority of the thousands of the site’s forums have gone dark. Reddit’s chief executive has been at the heart of the fallout over the changes at the site. He conducted an ask me anything session on the site, intended on quelling protest – but which was met with widespread criticism from the site’s users and moderators. Unlike other social networks such as Facebook, Reddit relies on unpaid moderators to check the content and administer the posts on its forums. As such, those moderators are able to make changes to the forums as they wish. Read More Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely Reddit down amid major protest Reddit just went ‘dark’, and the site is in chaos

The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced legislation on Thursday that would give news organizations the power to jointly bargain against Meta, Google and other online platforms for a greater share of online advertising revenue.

Deepfakes are a bit like virus mutations, in that the "best," or even "most effective"

TikTok is planning to pour “billions of dollars” in Southeast Asia over the next few years, aiming to drive growth in one of its biggest markets amid heightened scrutiny in the U.S. The company’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, made the announcement Thursday during a speech at a TikTok forum in the Indonesian capital Jakarta

Elon Musk has hired a 14-year-old “wonder kid” to work as a software engineer at SpaceX. Kairan Quazi will join the billionaire’s firm after graduating from Santa Clara University in California later this month, where he is set to receive a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science and Engineering. The teenager has already completed an internship at Intel and will work on SpaceX’s Starlink team, which is building the world’s largest satellite internet network. “I will be joining the coolest company on the planet as a software engineer on the Starlink engineering team,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post last week. “One of the rare companies that did not use my age as an arbitrary and outdated proxy for maturity and ability.” His LinkedIn profile has since been removed as the business networking site requires users to be at least 16 years old. In an Instagram post responding to the ban, Quazi said his removal from the platform was “illogical, primitive nonsense” that amounted to discrimination. “I can be qualified enough to land one of the most coveted engineering jobs in the world but not qualified enough to have access to a professional social media platform?” he wrote. “LinkedIn showing everyone how regressive some tech company policies are.” A LinkedIn spokesperson told The Independent: “We appreciate his enthusiasm to join LinkedIn and applaud his incredible success, however we have an age limit in place of 16 years of age and that extends to all members.” Quazi will become the youngest graduate in the US college’s 172-year history, having jumped from third grade to the community college Las Positas College when he was just nine years old. Local media has described him as a genius and a “wonder kid” for his academic achievements, with IQ tests suggesting he is in the 99.9th percentile of the general population. “I think my college years have been the happiest years of my life because I had a lot of autonomy, really, to share my journey,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “I think one of the things I really want to do with telling my story is hopefully have leaders in influential positions challenge their biases and misconceptions. Hopefully, I can open the door to more people like me.” Read More Man locked out of smart home for a week after delivery driver accuses him of being racist Twitter to be evicted from Colorado office Elon Musk to launch biggest ever rocket after dramatic failure Elon Musk eyes ‘highly habitable’ planet that’s ‘practically next door’

The Geminids meteor shower began in a “violent catastrophe”, scientists have found. Every winter, the world is delighted by the meteor shower, which brings some of the most intense display of ‘shooting stars’. But that spectacle has been rivalled by its mystery. The Geminids are unusual in that most meteor showers are created when a comet leaves behind a tail of ice and dust – but the Geminids come from an asteroid, which do not usually leave behind a tail. Asteroids are chunks of rock and metal flying around in space. The Geminids appear to originate with one called 3200 Phaethon, which for an unexplained reason is affected by the Sun and leaves behind a stream across the night sky. “What’s really weird is that we know that 3200 Phaethon is an asteroid, but as it flies by the Sun, it seems to have some kind of temperature-driven activity,” said Jamey Szalay, research scholar at the Princeton University space physics laboratory and co-author on the paper. “Most asteroids don’t do that.” Attempts to solve that mystery have struggled in part because the meteor shower has only been observed from Earth. Now, however, researchers using Nasa’s Parker Solar Probe have been better able to examine the the Geminids. They suggest that a violent, catastrophic event gave rise to the meteor shower. That could have been a high-speed collision with another object in space, for instance, or a gaseous explosion. Some researchers have previously suggested that 3200 Phaethon might really be a comet, and that it lost its snow to leave behind just a rocky core that looks like an asteroid. But the new study makes clear that the origins of the meteor shower are much more dramatic than that. In an attempt to understand the meteor shower, researchers simulated three possible formation scenarios and then compared them with models based on observations from the Parker Solar Probe. That included a less violent scenario, a more violent one, and another that was in line with a comet. When they compared those scenarios with the actual observations, they found that the violent one was the most similar. That suggests that it was the result a collision or similar dramatic event. Researchers still do not know for sure what happened. But the new study helps narrow down the possibilities – as well as shedding more light on such events in space. The findings are published in a new article, ‘Formation, Structure, and Detectability of the Geminids Meteoroid Stream’, published in Planetary Science. Read More Watch live as astronauts step out of ISS for latest spacewalk Major finding boosts hope for finding alien life in our solar system Astronomers find rare planet circling two stars like Star Wars’s Tatooine

Cyclone Biparjoy made a landfall on Thursday as India and Pakistan evacuated more than a hundred thousand people