New social features further Plex’s evolution from media server business

New social features further Plex’s evolution from media server business

fivenewscrypto    juin 04, 2026   

Plex is adding new social features to the platform.

As of today, users can make and share "personalized lists on Plex of any movie, show or episode," the company said in an announcement. Later this year, users will be able to import lists from other streaming services and react to other people's lists.

This month, Plex will also launch a community forum that will allow people to "post and comment directly on any movie, show, season, or episode." Later this year, Plex will introduce "Match Scores" based on a viewer's history and past ratings to predict how much they'll like a show or movie, Plex said.

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Autonomous vehicles were supposed to cut traffic—what if they don't?

Autonomous vehicles were supposed to cut traffic—what if they don't?

fivenewscrypto    juin 04, 2026   

The age of robotaxis, long the preserve of science fiction, is now a reality, at least in a handful of American cities. It took just over a decade to get from the DARPA Grand Challenges to the start of Waymo's commercial service in California, albeit initially with a safety driver on board.

Proponents of the technology, which has attracted at least $100 billion in investment, say robotaxis will be safer than human-driven vehicles. And last year, Waymo's data showed its cars were involved in many fewer crashes than human drivers, with much lower insurance claims, although recent issues with school buses and flooded roads show the technology isn't perfect.

But safety isn't the only selling point: Autonomous vehicles are said to cut traffic. But data from Waymo's reports to the California Public Utilities Commission shows that, at least in that regard, robotaxis are no better than ride-hailing services like Lyft and Uber.

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Microsoft plans Linux tools and an RTX Spark desktop for Windows developers

Microsoft plans Linux tools and an RTX Spark desktop for Windows developers

fivenewscrypto    juin 04, 2026   

Microsoft's Build developer conference kicked off today, and as with almost everything the company has done in the last few years, Microsoft's opening keynote focused overwhelmingly on AI and other closely related technologies. There's Microsoft Scout, an OpenClaw-based "Autopilot" agent that can hook into Microsoft 365 data to perform tasks for users; several new AI models; an expanded preview of "Codename MDASH," which is a "multi-model agentic scanning system" meant to detect and fix software vulnerabilities.

A few of those announcements stood out to us as particularly interesting, either for esoteric technical reasons or because they seem like they may have some utility for those who aren't spending their every waking moment using generative AI tools. (Microsoft's recent efforts to make its flagship operating system faster, more reliable, more useful, and less annoying didn't really come up, but there have been plenty of other announcements on that front lately.)

On the hardware front, we didn't get any updates for existing Surface devices (not counting yesterday's Surface Laptop Ultra announcement), but we did get something new: the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is "a compact developer PC" built around Nvidia's new RTX Spark chip with up to 128GB of built-in memory.

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Microsoft's Project Solara is an Android OS designed for agents instead of apps

Microsoft's Project Solara is an Android OS designed for agents instead of apps

fivenewscrypto    juin 04, 2026   

Microsoft has been deeply committed to the growth of generative AI technology in recent years through its now-fragmented partnership with OpenAI. At Build 2026, the company remains all-in on AI, and it's looking toward the future with a new software platform. The new Android-based OS is called Project Solara, and Microsoft says Solara is designed to run agents instead of apps.

Project Solara is not something you'll have to worry about killing your apps anytime soon. It's limited to a few pieces of concept hardware and software that are awaiting the magical agents of the future. The vision is for Solara to run on myriad specialized devices with interfaces generated on the spot, and it's all powered by the explosive intelligence of models that Microsoft and others insist will soon exist.

According to Microsoft, Solara is a chip-to-cloud platform intended to free agents from reliance on single interfaces. Much of Microsoft's messaging around AI is speculative and self-serving, but the company rightly points out that new computing form factors have always required specialization, and that process is complex and expensive. The shift to mobile computing, for example, tripped Microsoft up multiple times as it fell behind on app availability, security, and long-term support.

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Amazon-owned Ring should pay Americans for scanning their faces, lawsuit says

Amazon-owned Ring should pay Americans for scanning their faces, lawsuit says

fivenewscrypto    juin 04, 2026   

A lawsuit against Amazon is seeking financial damages for millions of Americans whose faces may have been recorded by Ring cameras since the Familiar Faces feature was rolled out late last year.

Plaintiff Charles Sigwalt yesterday filed a class action suit that aims to represent all people in the US "who had their facial recognition data collected, retained, and otherwise used by the Familiar Faces feature created and implemented by Defendant." The lawsuit will seek "far" more than $5 million, but the $5 million figure was given in the complaint because US district courts have jurisdiction for civil actions seeking at least that amount.

"Here, there are millions of Americans who have walked by Ring cameras which have activated the Familiar Faces feature... the damages in this action far exceed $5,000,000.00 when calculating the statutory damages that may be owed to each Class member in addition to the actual damages caused by the aggregate loss of value of biometric information," the lawsuit said.

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If I had a hammer... it might actually be a rhino tooth

If I had a hammer... it might actually be a rhino tooth

fivenewscrypto    juin 04, 2026   

One way archaeologists learn how ancient people, including Neanderthals, did things is to attempt to do those things themselves, a process called experimental archaeology. Normally, that involves making stone tools, butchering deer, or distilling birch tar. But in a new study, it meant doing very destructive things to teeth from one of the world’s most carefully protected animals.

That's because the archeologists suspected that Neanderthals once used rhino teeth as tools. By using the teeth to make stone tools, the researchers demonstrated that Neanderthals probably did the same thing, adding to what we know about the wide range of items in their toolkits.

We need to hit some rhino teeth with rocks for science

Some Neanderthal archaeological sites in Europe and Asia seem to have many more rhinoceros teeth lying around than you’d expect. We know Neanderthals hunted a now-extinct species of rhinoceros in Europe and eastern Asia, but the people who had inhabited these sites looked like they had been collecting rhino teeth for some reason.

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Feds failing in bid to take a supercomputer from a climate research center

Feds failing in bid to take a supercomputer from a climate research center

fivenewscrypto    juin 04, 2026   

In December, the Trump administration abruptly announced it would shut down the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a Boulder, Colorado-based facility that helps researchers perform studies of weather, climate, atmospheric chemistry, and more. The news came as a shock, given that the government had never identified serious deficiencies in the management of NCAR and its associated supercomputing center in Wyoming.

Nevertheless, the government ordered the University Consortium for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), which manages NCAR on behalf of the National Science Foundation, to help it prepare to transfer the Wyoming facility to a different operator. UCAR sued the government and, on Monday, won a preliminary injunction that places the transfer of the facility on hold.

Is that your final decision?

NCAR is what is termed a "Federally-Funded Research and Development Center" meant to support researchers in the academic community. Rather than having its own research agenda, it provides facilities, equipment, and expertise to support projects that are too large or complex for researchers to pursue on their own. NCAR has been around since the early 1960s and has become a critical resource for the global atmospheric science community.

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