Latest News

TOKYO/NEW YORK -- Japan's currency fell past 158 yen to the dollar on Friday in a quickening sell-off after the Bank of Japan left interest rates unchanged, even as the outlook for an early U.S. rate cut fades.

Hitting the 158 level marks a new 34-year low for the yen, which had been hovering in the mid-155 yen range before the BOJ decision.

Although the yen's slide has prompted speculation that Japanese authorities are poised to intervene with support, the U.S. interest rate outlook suggests there is little Tokyo can do to change the overall direction of exchange rates.

The central bank did not make any changes to its statement on bond purchases. Going into the meeting, some analysts predicted the BOJ might reduce Japanese government bond purchases to stop the yen's depreciation.

Meanwhile, data out Friday showed that U.S. personal consumption expenditures -- the Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation -- rose more than expected in March, tamping down investors' expectations of an early Fed interest rate cut.

"The market was probably disappointed by the lack of detail regarding the BOJ's stance in relation to bond purchases," said Joey Chew, head of Asia FX research at HSBC, although he thinks the central bank's latest outlook report was more hawkish than the previous one in January.

A federal appeals court today reversed a ruling that prevented New York from enforcing a law requiring Internet service providers to sell $15 broadband plans to low-income consumers. The ruling is a loss for six trade groups that represent ISPs, although it isn't clear right now whether the law will be enforced.

New York's Affordable Broadband Act (ABA) was blocked in June 2021 by a US District Court judge who ruled that the state law is rate regulation and preempted by federal law. Today, the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reversed the ruling and vacated the permanent injunction that barred enforcement of the state law.

For consumers who qualify for means-tested government benefits, the state law requires ISPs to offer "broadband at no more than $15 per month for service of 25Mbps, or $20 per month for high-speed service of 200Mbps," the ruling noted. The law allows for price increases every few years and makes exemptions available to ISPs with fewer than 20,000 customers.

"First, the ABA is not field-preempted by the Communications Act of 1934 (as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996), because the Act does not establish a framework of rate regulation that is sufficiently comprehensive to imply that Congress intended to exclude the states from entering the field," a panel of appeals court judges stated in a 2-1 opinion.

At least three women contracted HIV after receiving a trendy skincare treatment in New Mexico, according to a detailed report of the outbreak investigation.

In a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the agency shared details of how several people were likely infected with HIV after being given “vampire facials” at the now-shuttered VIP Spa in Albuquerque.

The first case of HIV linked to the salon was discovered in 2018, prompting the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) to offer free testing to clients of the facility. The middle-aged woman had no history of recent blood transfusions, injectable drug use or sexual contact with an HIV-positive individual, but she did report receiving a vampire facial.

The other reports came from women who had also had vampire facials in 2018. One was diagnosed with early-stage HIV in 2019, and the other last year when she wound up in hospital with severe symptoms.

The “Texas Miracle” loses some of its magic as Oracle announces it’s moving its new HQ out of Austin and Tesla lays off nearly 2,700 workers.

Back in the halcyon days of 2020, a year we all remember fondly, a new flash point opened in the enduring war between Texas and California. Technologists started picking up sticks in Taxifornia and moving to the Lone Star State in greater numbers. The enemy’s chief newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, worried that Silicon Valley’s “monopoly” was over and wondered if Austin was “the future.” Governor Greg Abbott declared Texas was “truly the land of business, jobs, and opportunity.”

In the wave of stories about Austin’s ascension in 2020, there were always two pieces of evidence given top billing. That year the tech goliath Oracle relocated its HQ to Austin, where it had already built a massive campus on the south shore of Town Lake, and Elon Musk began building a gargantuan Cybertruck factory just outside the city. Austin-area authorities helped Oracle secure valuable lakefront real estate and offered Tesla some $60 million in tax abatements, including $50 million from the historically struggling school district in Del Valle. The new facilities were greeted by state officials as evidence that the “Texas Miracle” was alive and well. Abbott proudly proclaimed last year that Austin was “THE destination for the world’s leading tech companies.”

This week saw a major plot twist in that narrative: Oracle declared it was moving its headquarters to Nashville, and Tesla—the largest private employer in the capital city—announced it would be laying off almost 2,700 workers from its Austin plant after a disappointing earnings report. Texas wasn’t really at fault here. Oracle, which makes business software, cited Nashville’s strength as a center of the American health-care industry, though it surely also helps that the company is getting nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in tax breaks and incentives from the city and the state of Tennessee. Tesla, meanwhile, laid off workers across the country after the Cybertruck suffered significant quality issues that put the future of its Austin production facility in doubt. The city’s debut in auto manufacturing is a vehicle that apparently rusts in the rain. The factory complex, which Musk once promised would become an “ecological paradise,” recently took advantage of a new state law to exempt itself from Austin’s environmental regulations.

The search for an accused boat thief came to an odd conclusion in Florida when deputies noticed a blonde in a blue sundress bore a striking resemblance to the guy they were hunting.

Turns out it wasn’t a woman but a he in disguise, and he was wanted in multiple counties, the Glades County Sheriff’s Office said in an April 25 news release.

The discovery, which has become a hot topic on social media, was made around 3 p.m. on Wednesday, April 24, near Lakeport, about a 125-mile drive northwest from Miami.

“Deputies were investigating a recovered stolen boat located at the Old Caloosa Lodge area,” the sheriff’s office said.

The number of homeless people in Japan fell 8.0% as of January from a year earlier to 2,820, the lowest level since data began in 2003, the health ministry said in a survey report Friday.
The improvement was due to the success of related support measures, the ministry said.

Men accounted for 2,575 of the total, while the number of women was 172. The gender was unknown for 73 individuals.

By prefecture, the figure for Osaka was highest, at 856, followed by Tokyo, with 624, and Kanagawa, at 420.

Of the national total, the 23 wards of Tokyo and 20 ordinance-designated large cities accounted for some 80%.

Google has spent the past year dealing with two of the biggest threats in its 25-year history: the rise of generative AI and the growing drumbeat of regulation. AI, in particular, has shaken the company to its core: it’s made big search changes, realigned the Search, Android, and hardware teams around AI, and launched its own Gemini AI model to capitalize on the opportunity.

Google execs cut projects and laid off employees to refocus, and yesterday, it announced its first-ever dividend and a $70 billion share buyback alongside its Q1 2024 earnings.

Investors, at least, are eating it up: Google parent company Alphabet has finally officially hit and maintained a $2 trillion market cap for a whole day of trading after briefly touching $2 trillion in November 2021. Google is the fourth most valuable public company in the world, behind Nvidia ($2.2 trillion), Apple ($2.6 trillion), and Microsoft ($3.0 trillion). Amazon is currently at $1.8 trillion, and Meta is at $1.1 trillion.

Apex Steel Pipe has sponsored this website for many years now and out of there generosity we have managed to stay alive when so many other older websites have not made it. Apex Steel Pipe - we freaking salute you for finding value in this place and lending your support! I would also like to add, Apex has done a major upgrade to their inventory page since they have a bunch of new Carbon Steel Pipe inventory and I wanted to let you guys see it.

Lots of blood, sweat, and tears went into this page but it is almost what it will be but at least now you can see all the new Inventory!

Thank you Apex Steel Pipe for sponsoring our website for all these years! You obviously have good taste!

A normal if windy work day went south for one Japanese bureaucrat when documents containing residents' personal information were blown away in a real-life slapstick mishap.

The official in central Japan's Aichi region was using a trolley to transport a cardboard box filled with documents from one building to another when, to their horror, it toppled over.

Despite frantic efforts by the official to collect reams of paper strewn across the road by the wind, three sheets were lost, Aichi Prefecture said in an apology statement this week.

"More than 10 other officials joined the search" for the missing documents until sunset, prefectural official Akira Kato told AFP on Friday.


Original news:

A Maryland high school athletic director is facing criminal charges after police say he used artificial intelligence to duplicate the voice of Pikesville High School Principal Eric Eiswert, leading the community to believe Eiswert said racist and antisemitic things about teachers and students.

"We now have conclusive evidence that the recording was not authentic," Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough told reporters during a news conference Thursday. "It's been determined the recording was generated through the use of artificial intelligence technology."

Dazhon Darien, 31, was arrested Thursday on charges of stalking, theft, disruption of school operations and retaliation against a witness after a monthslong investigation from the Baltimore County Police Department.

Attempts to contact Darien or Eiswert for comment were not successful.

At 2:30 a.m. Friday at high tide, B.C.’s orphaned orca whale calf, Kwee-sa-hay-is or Brave Little Hunter, swam past the sandbar her mother beached and died, under a bridge, down Little Espinosa Inlet, on to Esperanza near Zeballos.

The calf has been stuck in a shallow lagoon since March 23, when she and her mother swam through a narrow channel connected to the ocean.

When the tide went out, it left her mother who was pregnant, beached on the rocks. The mother died shortly thereafter.

A team of experts has spent weeks trying to coax the orca calf out of the lagoon and successfully fed it, but concerns were running high about how the two-year-old orca was going to leave.

“After most everyone had left to get some sleep the small group who remained stood as witnesses to watch her swim under the bridge and down the inlet,” a press release from the Ehattesaht First Nation said.

Google has been accused of "bundling" YouTube Music, their music streaming service, to their YouTube Premium users. The Korean Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has been conducting an investigation into this matter for over a year.

According to Korean media outlet KBS, the deliberation process to determine sanctions is set to begin soon.

South Korean users who have subscribed to YouTube Premium, a service where users can watch YouTube videos without ads, for 14,900 KRW (~10.82 USD) a month were provided services to 'YouTube Music,' a music streaming service, without additional charges.

The number of YouTube Music users has rapidly increased, reaching up to 7 million people in Korea, even surpassing domestic companies (such as Melon) to become the number one streaming service in the Korean music market.

Since the service was launched, there have been consistent allegations of "bundling" services, and last February, the Korean FTC began its investigation. The core of the investigation is whether YouTube unfairly hindered the business activities of music streaming operators and restricted competition.

Three years later, Hasbro’s self-transforming, dancing, driving, talking, and attacking Optimus Prime finally has a villain to fight. Megatron, the leader of the Decepticons, is about to arrive. For $1,200 — $899 through May 25th — its robot partner Robosen has created what could be the best auto-converting Transformer yet.

Just to make sure you’re getting it: this bot automatically transforms itself into a badass remote-control tank with a gigantic auto-extending cannon that can actually fire projectiles — then stands up and speaks over 270 phrases from original Megatron voice actor Frank Welker while doing all sorts of tricks.

Here, bask in the glory of childhood imagination become real:


Did I mention it responds to loads of voice commands, too?

Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is coming back again — but it’s a bit different this time.

Warner Bros. and Fathom Events are teaming to rerelease the Oscar-winning fantasy blockbusters this summer.

The versions screened will be Jackson’s extended editions (so you might want get the jumbo tub of popcorn), and also the versions that the filmmaker remastered in 2020 for a 4K Ultra HD rerelease. This is the first time the remastered versions will be in theaters.

The films will screen across three days at Fathom Events participating chains, like AMC, Cinemark and Regal.

Throwflame, an Ohio-based flamethrower manufacturer, has released what it says is the first-ever robot dog with a flamethrower attached for remote firestarting.

The Thermonator is a robotic quadruped with the company’s ARC flamethrower mounted on its back. The robot dog features lidar mapping, first-person view (FPV) navigation, obstacle avoidance, and laser sighting to remotely deliver fire, with a 30-foot firing range and a one-hour battery life.

The company says the flamethrowing platform can be used for wildfire management, prescribed agricultural burns, snow and ice removal, or even entertainment special effects.

In a video released by Throwflame, the Thermonator can be seen navigating snowy landscapes, leaf-littered forests and grassy hills, by day and by night.

The highly advanced solar sail boom could one day allow spacecraft to travel without bulky rocket fuel.

NASA hitched a ride aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron Launcher in New Zealand yesterday evening, and is preparing to test a new, highly advanced solar sail design. Now in a sun-synchronous orbit roughly 600-miles above Earth, the agency’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) will in the coming weeks deploy and showcase technology that could one day power deep-space missions without the need for any actual rocket fuel, after launch.

The fundamentals behind solar sails aren’t in question. By capturing the pressure emitted by solar energy, thin sheets can propel a spacecraft at immense speeds, similar to a sailboat. Engineers have already demonstrated the principles before, but NASA’s new project will specifically showcase a promising boom design constructed of flexible composite polymer materials reinforced with carbon fiber.

Although delivered in a toaster-sized package, ACS3 will take less than 30 minutes to unfurl into an 860-square-foot sheet of ultrathin plastic anchored by its four accompanying 23-foot-long booms. These poles, once deployed, function as sailboat booms, and will keep the sheet taut enough to capture solar energy.

But what makes the ACS3 booms so special is how they are stored. Any solar sail’s boom system will need to remain stiff enough through harsh temperature fluctuations, as well as durable enough to last through lengthy mission durations. Scaled-up solar sails, however, will be pretty massive—NASA is currently planning future designs as large as 5,400-square-feet, or roughly the size of a basketball court. These sails will need extremely long boom systems that won’t necessarily fit in a rocket’s cargo hold.

True to his word, billionaire multi-company leader Elon Musk’s startup xAI today made its first large language model (LLM) Grok open source.

The move, which Musk had previously proclaimed would happen this week, now enables any other entrepreneur, programmer, company, or individual to take Grok’s weights — the strength of connections between the model’s artificial “neurons,” or software modules that allow the model to make decisions and accept inputs and provide outputs in the form of text — and other associated documentation and use a copy of the model for whatever they’d like, including for commercial applications.

“We are releasing the base model weights and network architecture of Grok-1, our large language model,” the company announced in a blog post. “Grok-1 is a 314 billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts model trained from scratch by xAI.”

Those interested can download the code for Grok on its Github page or via a torrent link. Hugging Face also added a fast download instance here.

The rape conviction of movie producer Harvey Weinstein has been overturned by New York's highest court.

The New York Court of Appeals, in a scathing 4-3 opinion, overturned Weinstein's conviction on sex crimes against three women, finding the trial judge "erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes."

The court said that testimony "served no material non-propensity purpose" and "portrayed defendant in a highly prejudicial light."

Weinstein spokesperson Juda Engelmayer told ABC News, "We are happily surprised and we are studying the ruling."

Major internet providers once again will have to abide by a set of robust rules of the road, prohibiting them from blocking or throttling traffic, as the FCC today reinstated net neutrality regulations.

The commission voted 3-2 along party lines to adopt the rules, which broadly prohibit Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and other providers from favoring some types of internet traffic over others.

The latest net neutrality rules resemble those adopted in 2015, when the FCC voted to reclassify internet service like a common carrier, or the same regulatory designation given to phone service. The commission, with a majority of Democratic members, sought reclassification as a way to give the FCC the regulatory authority to establish significant net neutrality rules.

But less than three years later, after Donald Trump became president, a Republican-controlled FCC reversed net neutrality, to protest online and outside the FCC offices.

Dean Carter, the project lead on Fallout London, revealed in a short interview with the BBC that Bethesda gave their team of modders no warning before Fallout 4's next-gen update, which he says "has, for a lack of a better term, screwed us over."

Originally, the "DLC-sized" mod that promises to transport Fallout 4 players to post-nuke London chose April 23 for its release because it was a "day that would work well for us, it would be after the series had come out, and also, it had related to when the in-game start date is as well being St George's Day," Carter explains.

But things didn't go as planned. Fallout London was forced to push back its release date after Bethesda announced that a next-gen update for Fallout 4 would arrive on April 25. "I don't want to say 'suspect' because that makes it sound malicious. But if you were a big corporation and there was a fantastic [Fallout TV] series that just came out, you think you'd coalign it and have the big update ready on the same day the series comes out," Carter argues. "I don't think it's malicious, but it seems like a very arbitrary date for them to drop."

The Fallout 4 script extender will be what breaks after the next-gen update, so the Fallout London team will have to just wait and see what happens and then change the framework before making everything compatible. These problems are why Fallout London's release date got pushed back indefinitely.