Tech Boys

If the lack of background play or downloadable offline content was one of the reasons you were holding off on subscribing to YouTube's most affordable paid subscription plan, then YouTube has some good news for you today. In an announcement on its website, YouTube shared that both the ability to play content in the background and the ability to download content for offline viewing are coming to its $7.99 per month YouTube Premium Lite subscription plan. YouTube's ad-free paid subscription plan, YouTube Premium, has been massively successful for the company.  For $13.99 per month, viewers can have a completely ad-free YouTube experience with YouTube Premium. They also receive subscriber-only features such as background play and content that can be downloaded for offline viewing. YouTube's streaming music service, YouTube Music, is also provided at no additional cost, also completely ad-free. SEE ALSO: YouTube TV will soon offer cheaper bundles, including a new sports ...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will reportedly give Anthropic until Friday to drop certain guardrails for military use, as reported by Axios . The outlet also reported that CEO Dario Amodei met with Hegseth yesterday as the Pentagon ratcheted up pressure on the AI company to give in to its demands. The makers of Claude have reportedly been offered an ultimatum: Either yield to the government's demands to remove limits for certain military applications, or potentially be forced to tailor its AI model to the government's needs under the Defense Production Act. Anthropic, for its part, has said that while it was willing to adopt certain policies for the Pentagon, it would not allow its model to be used for mass surveillance of Americans or for the development of autonomous weapons. Claude is currently the only AI model employed in some of the government's most sensitive work. "The only reason we're still talking to these people is we need them and we need them...

The year’s BAFTAS , the British equivalent of the Oscars, will not be remembered for which movies won, but rather how the BBC handled a shocking moment. During the broadcast, an attendee with Tourette syndrome yelled a racial slur, which could be heard on the tape-delayed broadcast . The first time the N-word was shouted by John Davidson, whose life was the basis for the BAFTA-nominated film I Swear , was at the beginning of the BBC’s broadcast, as Sinners stars Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo presented the first award. Both Jordan and Lindo are Black. Update, Feb. 23, 3 p.m. ET: Davidson released a statement about the events at the BAFTAs, thanking the organizers for inviting him and explaining his tics to the audience. He also stated, "In addition to the announcement by Alan Cumming, the BBC and BAFTA, I can only add that I am, and always have been deeply mortified if anyone considers my involuntary tics to be intentional or to carry any meaning." For his part, Lin...

Anthropic is issuing a call to action against AI "distillation attacks," after accusing three AI companies of misusing its Claude chatbot . On its website, Anthropic claimed that DeepSeek , Moonshot and MiniMax have been conducting "industrial-scale campaigns…to illicitly extract Claude’s capabilities to improve their own models." Distillation in the AI world refers to when less capable models lean on the responses of more powerful ones to train themselves. While distillation isn't a bad thing across the board, Anthropic said that these types of attacks can be used in a more nefarious way. According to Anthropic, these three Chinese AI firms were responsible for more than "16 million exchanges with Claude through approximately 24,000 fraudulent accounts." From Anthropic's perspective, these competing companies were using Claude as a shortcut to develop more advanced AI models, which could also lead to circumventing certain safeguards . Anthropi...

It looks like a March launch is no longer in the cards for Artemis II, NASA's first crewed trip to the moon's vicinity since the final Apollo mission over 50 years ago. While preparations were underway at the Kennedy Space Center for a launch as soon as March 6 , the space agency says it ran into an issue with the flow of helium to its SLS rocket's upper stage this weekend and it now has to roll the rocket from the launch pad back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to figure out what's wrong and fix it. A media briefing is planned for sometime this week to discuss the problem and what's next.  But in a post on X, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman confirmed the rollback will "take the March launch window out of consideration." NASA noted on its blog that the current effort "potentially preserves the April launch window, pending the outcome of data findings, repair efforts, and how the schedule comes to fruition in the coming days and weeks....

Samsung's next flagship devices will offer Perplexity as part of an expansion to support multiple AI agents in Galaxy AI. Perplexity's AI agent will work with apps including Samsung Notes, Clock, Gallery, Reminder and Calendar, according to the announcement . And, some third-party apps will support it, though Samsung hasn't yet said which. The news comes just a few days before Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event , so we can expect to find out more about that integration and how it fits in with Samsung's revamped Bixby very soon.  What we know so far is that the Perplexity agent will respond to the wake phrase, "Hey Plex" (not to be confused with the streaming service Plex). It can also be initiated by quick-access physical controls. In a statement, Samsung's Won-Joon Choi, President, COO and Head of the R&D Office for Samsung's Mobile eXperience Business, said the expansion of Galaxy AI is aimed at giving users more choice and flexibility in gett...

NASA is already walking back its Friday announcement that it will try to launch to the moon in March, after discovering a new problem with the Artemis II rocket.  Officials said they're eyeing Tuesday, Feb. 24, to haul the rocket off the launchpad. During a routine step to restore pressure in the Space Launch System , the team couldn't get helium to flow properly through the rocket. Helium, though not a fuel, is important because it helps protect the engines and keeps the fuel tanks at the right pressure. Though the helium system worked fine during a launch rehearsal that ended Thursday night, engineers are especially troubled knowing a similar pattern cropped up before the Artemis I launch in 2022, which didn't carry astronauts.  The affected part is the rocket's upper stage, which uses super-cold fuels — liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen — to power the mission once it’s in space . Engineers are looking at several possible causes, including a connection point...

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The Stop Killing Games campaign is evolving into more than just a movement. In a YouTube video , the campaign's creator, Ross Scott, explained that organizers are planning to establish two non-governmental organizations, one for the European Union and another for the US. According to Scott, these NGOs would allow for "long-term counter lobbying" when publishers end support for certain video games. "Let me start off by saying I think we're going to win this, namely the problem of publishers destroying video games that you've already paid for," Scott said in the video. According to Scott, the NGOs will work on getting the original Stop Killing Games petition codified into EU law, while also pursuing more watchdog actions, like setting up a system to report publishers for revoking access to purchased video games. The Stop Killing Games campaign started as a reaction to Ubisoft's delisting of The Crew from players' libraries. The controversial ...