computers

22 Apr 2026

Slashdot

Google Unveils Two New AI Chips For the 'Agentic Era'

Google announced two new tensor processing units (TPUs) for the "agentic era," with separate processors dedicated to training and inference. "With the rise of AI agents, we determined the community would benefit from chips individually specialized to the needs of training and serving," Amin Vahdat, a Google senior vice president and chief technologist for AI and infrastructure, said in a blog post. Both chips will become available later this year. CNBC reports: After years of producing chips that can both train artificial intelligence models and handle inference work, Google is separating those tasks into distinct processors, its latest effort to take on Nvidia in AI hardware. [...] None of the tech giants are displacing Nvidia, and Google isn't even comparing the performance of its new chips with those from the AI chip leader. Google did say the training chip enables 2.8 times the performance of the seventh-generation Ironwood TPU, announced in November, for the same price, while performance is 80% better for the inference processor. Nvidia said its upcoming Groq 3 LPU hardware will draw on large quantities of static random-access memory, or SRAM, which is used by Cerebras, an AI chipmaker that filed to go public earlier this month. Google's new inference chip, dubbed TPU 8i, also relies on SRAM. Each chip contains 384 megabytes of SRAM, triple the amount in Ironwood. The architecture is designed "to deliver the massive throughput and low latency needed to concurrently run millions of agents cost-effectively," Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet, wrote in a blog post.

Ars Technica

Google unveils two new TPUs designed for the "agentic era"

Google's new generation of Tensor AI chips is actually two chips, one for inference and one for training.

22 Apr 2026 5:10pm GMT

Slashdot

AI Tool Rips Off Open Source Software Without Violating Copyright

A satirical but working tool called Malus uses AI to create "clean room" clones of open-source software, aiming to reproduce the same functionality while shedding attribution and copyleft obligations. "It works," Mike Nolan, one of the two people behind Malus, who researches the political economy of open source software and currently works for the United Nations, told 404 Media. "The Stripe charge will provide you the thing, and it was important for us to do that, because we felt that if it was just satire, it would end up like every other piece of research I've done on open source, which ends up being largely dismissed by open source tech workers who felt that they were too special and too unique and too intelligent to ever be the ones on the bad side of the layoffs or the economics of the situation." 404 Media reports: Malus's legal strategy for bypassing copyright is based on a historically pivotal moment for software and copyright law dating back to 1982. Back then, IBM dominated home computing, and competitors like Columbia Data Products wanted to sell products that were compatible with software that IBM customers were already using. Reverse engineering IBM's computer would have infringed on the company's copyright, so Columbia Data Products came up with what we now know as a "clean room" design. It tasked one team with examining IBM's BIOS and creating specifications for what a clone of that system would require. A different "clean" team, one that was never exposed to IBM's code, then created BIOS that met those specifications from scratch. The result was a system that was compatible with IBM's ecosystem but didn't violate its copyright because it did not copy IBM's technical process and counted as original work. This clean room method, which has been validated by case law and dramatized in the first season of Halt and Catch Fire, made computing more open and competitive than it would have been otherwise. But it has taken on new meaning in the age of generative AI. It is now easier than ever to ask AI tools to produce software that is identical in function to existing open source projects, and that, some would argue, are built from scratch and are therefore original work that can bypass existing copyright licenses. Others would say that software produced by large language models is inherently derivative, because like any LLM output, it is trained on the collective output of humans scraped from the internet, including specific open source projects. Malus (pronounced malice), uses AI to do the same thing. "Finally, liberation from open source license obligations," Malus's site says. "Our proprietary AI robots independently recreate any open source project from scratch. The result? Legally distinct code with corporate-friendly licensing. No attribution. No copyleft. No problems." Copyleft is a type of copyright license that ensures reproductions or applications of the software keep it free to share and modify.

Ars Technica

Tabloid reports linking 10 missing and dead scientists spur FBI probe

FBI suspects foreign spies may be targeting scientists with access to government secrets.

22 Apr 2026 4:46pm GMT

Slashdot

China's CATL Reveals 621-Mile EV Battery, Under-7-Minute Charging

CATL unveiled a new wave of EV battery tech, "including a lighter battery pack rated for a 1,000-km (621-mile) driving range and an upgraded fast-charging battery that can go from 10 percent to 98 percent in under seven minutes," reports Interesting Engineering. From the report: The launches were made during a 90-minute event in Beijing ahead of the Beijing Auto Show, where automakers are expected to showcase next-generation EVs and connected technologies. CATL said its latest Qilin battery -- a high-energy-density pack often paired with nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cells for long range and improved space efficiency -- can deliver a 1,000-km (621-mile) driving range. It is designed to deliver long range while reducing battery pack weight. The company said the product is aimed at automakers facing tighter efficiency rules in China and other markets. It also rolled out an upgraded Shenxing battery -- CATL's fast-charging lithium iron phosphate (LFP) pack -- that targets one of the biggest barriers to EV adoption: charging time. CATL said the pack can recharge from 10 percent to 98 percent in less than seven minutes. The new Shenxing battery marks a significant improvement over CATL's previous version, which charged from 5 percent to 80 percent in 15 minutes, according to Financial Times. [...] The company also announced plans to begin mass delivery of sodium-ion batteries in the fourth quarter. Sodium-ion technology is seen as a lower-cost alternative that could reduce dependence on lithium, cobalt, and nickel.

Ars Technica

Physicists think they've solved the muon mystery

Results dash hopes for a fifth force but provide very precise proof of Standard Model and QFT.

22 Apr 2026 3:40pm GMT

20 Apr 2026

OSnews

Some tech company to replace its CEO

I need to post about this because if I don't, people will get mad. Cook will continue on as Apple CEO through the summer, with Ternus set to join Apple's Board of Directors and take over as CEO on September 1, 2026. Cook is going to transition to chairman of the board at Apple, and he will "assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world." ↫ Juli Clover at MacRumors This concludes OSNews' coverage of Keeping Up With the Yacht Class, but rest assured, every other tech site will be milking this for weeks to come. You will still be worrying about how to pay for your next tank of gas.

20 Apr 2026 10:04pm GMT

Google to punish back button hijacking

Have you ever tried clicking the back button in your browser, only to realise the website you're on somehow doesn't allow that? Out of all the millions of annoyances on the web, Google has decided to finally address this one: they're going to punish the search rankings of websites that use this back button hijacking. Pages that are engaging in back button hijacking may be subject to manual spam actions or automated demotions, which can impact the site's performance in Google Search results. To give site owners time to make any needed changes, we're publishing this policy two months in advance of enforcement on June 15, 2026. ↫ Google Search Central It's always uncomfortable when Google unilaterally takes actions such as these, since rarely do Google's interests align with our own as users. This is in such rare case, though, and I can't wait to see this insipid practice relegated to the dustbin of history.

20 Apr 2026 9:37pm GMT

LXQt 2.4.0 released

LXQt, the desktop environment which is effectively to KDE what Xfce is to GNOME, has released version 2.4.0. Quite a few changes in this release are further refinements and fixes related to LXQt's adoption of Wayland, but there are also a ton of small fixes, improvements, and small new features that have nothing to do with Wayland at all. There are also a few layout cleanups to make some dialogs and panels look a bit tidier and nicer. Note that LXQt supports both X11 and Wayland equally, and the choice of which to use is up to you. If you're using LXQt, you've already seen a few of these changes in point releases of its components, so not everything listed in the release notes might be news to you.

20 Apr 2026 7:55pm GMT