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Ofcom has slapped 4chan with a £20,000 ($26,700) fine for failing to comply with the internet and telecommunications regulator’s request for information under the UK’s Online Safety Act of 2023. The regulator has released an update for 11 of the investigations it opened after the first of its online safety codes became enforceable in March this year. Apparently, 4chan has ignored its requests for a copy of its illegal harms risk assessment and to provide information about its qualifying worldwide revenue. This is the first fine Ofcom has handed down under the new law, which was designed to prevent children from accessing harmful content online and which has prompted websites like Reddit and X to put up age verification measures. 

When the regulator launch its probe into 4chan in June, it said it received complaints about illegal content on the anonymous online board. It doesn’t exactly come as a surprise that 4chan refuses to give the regulator information about the risks of illegal content on its website: Back in August, the service filed a lawsuit against Ofcom, arguing that the enforcement of the UK’s Online Safety Act violates Americans’ freedom of speech. “This fine is a clear warning to those who fail to remove illegal content or protect children from harmful material,” said Liz Kendall, the UK Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. The regulator is also imposing an additional penalty of £100 ($133) per day on 4chan until it complies with its requests for information. 

Ofcom has announced the results of other investigations, as well, such as finding “serious compliance concerns” with two file-sharing services that have now deployed an automated tool that can detect and quickly remove uploads with child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Four other file-sharing services that were also under investigation for CSAM chose to geoblock access from UK IP addresses instead, so the regulator closed their cases. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/uk-regulator-fines-4chan-for-ignoring-online-safety-act-demands-045026169.html?src=rss 

Google is tweaking how sponsored results will appear in Search. Going forward, it will group any text ads on the Search page into a “Sponsored results” section that will appear at the top of the screen. The size of the ads is unchanged and Google says there will never be more than four ads in a grouping. Once you scroll past the section with ads, you can click a button to hide all sponsored results. 

According to Google, “the new design helps people navigate the top of the page more easily.” Maybe that’s because people have gotten used to automatically looking farther down the search results to skip the AI Overviews. Google’s announcement even noted that the sponsored tab might appear either above or below its AI-generated summary. What’s another second of scrolling to actually reach information? But lest you scroll too far, Google will also have a “Sponsored results” section at the very bottom of the page that can only be hidden after you’ve seen those hits. 

The new approach is currently rolling out globally on mobile and desktop platforms.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-is-making-search-ads-more-and-less-avoidable-215658127.html?src=rss 

Days ahead of the next Pokémon game release, Centro Leaks is back with another batch of possible leaks about the franchise. The source claims that the same hacker behind last year’s so-called Teraleak has released more information they obtained from datamining files owned by Pokémon developer Game Freak that shows the roadmap for all upcoming projects the company has in the works. And there appear to be quite a few of them.

This type of hacked information may not be an accurate reflection of Game Freak’s actual plans, and any alleged details about the games may not appear in final iterations of the studio’s titles. And even if these files are genuine, some of the planning documents are supposedly from 2020, so hardly the freshest info. With those caveats in mind, here’s an overview of what the datamining revealed.

The leaker claims that the Gen 10 game will be called Pokémon Wind and Waves. Its theme is “infinity” and the project is slated for a 2026 release with a DLC planned for 2027. The datamine also revealed that an early build of the game treated the central area as an MMO-style lobby, where players could see and interact with each other as well as access quest boards. Wind and Waves could also have an MMO raid boss and may give players the ability to explore underwater. A bunch of other details about the plot, characters and mechanics may have been uncovered in the leak.

Other Pokémon projects reportedly in the works at Game Freak include another new Pokémon Legends game set in Galar that’s slated for 2027 and beyond. A multi-region Pokémon remake, internally called Project Seed, may be released in 2028. The datamined leaks suggest this game also seems to be exploring some online multiplayer mechanics as well as letting players walk freely between different regions from past titles, which sure sounds like it could be a full-on Pokémon MMO. And Pokémon Pokopia is also apparently getting DLC.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/another-game-freak-leak-claims-to-show-the-pokemon-roadmap-205503195.html?src=rss 

In a bulletin on Friday, GM announced that it will end its HYDROTEC brand’s work on hydrogen fuel cell development. Instead, GM will focus its R&D efforts on batteries, charging technologies and electric vehicles. The company said it will continue its Fuel Cell System Manufacturing joint venture with Honda, which creates cells for data centers and power generation. 

The post from GM said that due to limited infrastructure and high costs, hydrogen cells simply haven’t taken off for consumer vehicles. Lately, the automotive industry seems to agree. GM’s shift follows a similar move in February from Toyota, which isn’t completely giving up the ghost but instead pivoted its hydrogen cell projects to focus on industrial applications rather than consumer ones.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gm-ends-development-of-hydrogen-fuel-cells-195212217.html?src=rss 

Google’s Nano Banana AI image editor became something of a viral sensation when it launched last month. Now the tool is being integrated into a bunch of pre-existing Google products, like Search, NotebookLM and Photos.

Perhaps the most notable integration here is with NotebookLM. Nano Banana is being used to drastically change up Video Overviews, offering up six new styles like watercolor and anime. It also now generates contextual illustrations based on sources and there’s a new option for micro-videos called Briefs.

For the uninitiated, Video Overviews is a neat little tool available to NotebookLM users that automatically generates explainer videos from documents. It can even whip up a narrated slideshow with visuals. The AI-heavy update starts rolling out to Pro users this week and to all users in “the upcoming weeks.”

Search integration offers new ways to make and edit images while using the official Google app. The company says folks can use a chat prompt to, say, ask the bot to create a stylized version of a pre-existing image. Additionally, photos can be snapped directly from the Lens tool and then edited via the AI. This is rolling out right now in English for US customers, with more countries and languages coming in the near future.

We don’t have any actual information as to what the Photos integration will look like, with Google simply saying it’s bringing Nano Banana to the platform in “the weeks ahead.” The company promises more details soon. Nano Banana is an image editor and Google Photos is a service for storing and organizing photos, so it’ll likely involve editing these stored images in some way.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/googles-nano-banana-ai-image-editing-is-coming-to-search-notebooklm-and-photos-184111046.html?src=rss