Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this article from IEEE Spectrum:

The world's largest airplane, when it's built, will stretch more than a football field from tip to tail. Sixty percent longer than the biggest existing aircraft, with 12 times as much cargo space as a 747, the behemoth will look like an oil tanker that's sprouted wings — aeronautical engineering at a preposterous scale. ... [ Read it >> ]

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India's IT services industry saw entry-level hiring collapse by 70% between fiscal years 2023 and 2024, as the country's four largest IT exporters reduced fresh graduate recruitment from 225,000 to 60,000. Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys shed a combined 38,000 employees in fiscal 2024, marking the sector's first workforce contraction in decades. ... [ Read it >> ]

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"These are the last days of social media as we know it," argues a humanities lecturer from University College Cork exploring where technology and culture intersect, warning they could be come lingering derelicts "haunted by bots and the echo of once-human chatter..."

"Whatever remains of genuine, human content is increasingly sidelined by algorithmic prioritization, receiving fewer interactions than the engineered content and AI slop optimized solely for clicks... "... [ Read it >> ]

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"Engineers from Ohio State University are developing a new way to power rocket engines," reports Gizmodo, "using liquid uranium for a faster, more efficient form of nuclear propulsion that could deliver round trips to Mars within a single year..."

Nuclear propulsion uses a nuclear reactor to heat a liquid propellant to extremely high temperatures, turning it into a gas that's expelled through a nozzle and used to generate thrust. The newly developed engine concept, called the centrifugal nuclear thermal rocket (CNTR), uses liquid uranium to heat rocket propellant directly. In doing so, the engine promises more efficiency than traditional chemical rockets, as well as other nuclear propulsion engines, according to new research published in Acta Astronautica... ... [ Read it >> ]

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The UK's data-protecting Information Commissioner's Office has issued a warning about what it calls a worrying trend, reports the BBC: "students hacking their own school and college IT systems for fun or as part of dares."

Since 2022, the the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has investigated 215 hacks and breaches originating from inside education settings and says 57% were carried out by children. Other breaches are thought to come from staff, third party IT suppliers and other organisations with access. According to the new data, almost a third of the breaches involved students illegally logging into staff computer systems by guessing passwords or stealing details from teachers. ... [ Read it >> ]

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RestOfWorld.org reports on "a global crisis nobody anticipated when governments started subsidizing electric vehicles..."

"EVs can lose almost half their driving distance when temperatures drop, and the billions spent on improving technology have failed to fix this fundamental limitation."... [ Read it >> ]

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Last year Amazon's robotaxi service Zoox held a training session for 20 Las Vegas firefighters, police officers, and other first responders, reports the Washington Post, calling it "a new ritual for emergency workers across the country, as autonomous vehicles begin to spread beyond the handful of cities that served as initial testing grounds..."... [ Read it >> ]

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"There has never been a successful, widespread malware attack against iPhone," notes Apple's security blog, pointing out that "The only system-level iOS attacks we observe in the wild come from mercenary spyware... historically associated with state actors and [using] exploit chains that cost millions of dollars..." ... [ Read it >> ]

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The oldest person living in Japan is 114 years old, reports the BBC. But "The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has risen to a record high of nearly 100,000, its government has announced."

Setting a new record for the 55th year in a row, the number of centenarians in Japan was 99,763 as of September, the health ministry said on Friday. Of that total, women accounted for an overwhelming 88%... Health minister Takamaro Fukoka congratulated the 87,784 female and 11,979 male centenarians on their longevity and expressed his "gratitude for their many years of contributions to the development of society".... ... [ Read it >> ]

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"When residents of Equatorial Guinea's Annobón island wrote to the government in Malabo in July last year complaining about the dynamite explosions by a Moroccan construction company, they didn't expect the swift end to their internet access..." reports the Associated Press.
... [ Read it >> ]

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America's Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Amazon and Google misled advertisers placing ads on their websites, reports Bloomberg, and specifically whether the two companies "properly disclosed the terms and pricing for ads."

The FTC is seeking details about Amazon's auctions and whether it disclosed "reserve pricing" for some search ads — price floors that advertisers must meet before they can buy an ad, the people said. Separately, the FTC is examining practices by Google, including its internal pricing process and whether it increased the cost of ads in ways that weren't disclosed to advertisers, the people said... ... [ Read it >> ]

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Many coral reefs "have now turned ghostly white," reports CBS News — and "a major culprit is climate change."

SFGate adds that more than 50% of the world's coral reefs have been lost, mostly over the past 10 years, according to coral reef scientist Rebecca Albright at the California Academy of Sciences. "If changes aren't made soon, 90% to 99% of the coral reefs that are remaining could be deteriorated by 2050, Albright said..." ... [ Read it >> ]

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TechCrunch reports:

Thanks to a pledge to unbundle its corporate messaging app Teams from its productivity suites, Microsoft has managed to slip unscathed through a major antitrust investigation by the European Commission that could have resulted in massive fines for the tech giant. ... [ Read it >> ]

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One of the worlds in the TRAPPIST-1 system, a mere 40 light-years away, just might be clad in a life-supporting atmosphere," reports ScienceAlert.

"In exciting new JWST observations, the Earth-sized exoplanet TRAPPIST-1e shows hints of a gaseous envelope similar to our own, one that could facilitate liquid water on the surface."... [ Read it >> ]

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"Facebook users who filed a claim in parent company Meta's $725 million settlement related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal may soon get a payment," reports CNN, since "on August 27, the court ordered that settlement benefits be distributed."

It's been over two years since Facebook users were able to file claims in Meta's December 2022 settlement. The class-action lawsuit began after the social media giant said in 2018 that as many as 87 million Facebook users' private information was obtained by data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica... ... [ Read it >> ]

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They stole a woman's phone in Barcelona. Unfortunately, her husband was security consultant/penetration tester Martin Vigo, reports Spain's newspaper El Pais.

"His weeks-long investigation coincided with a massive two-year police operation between 2022 and 2024 in six countries where 17 people were arrested: Spain, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru...."... [ Read it >> ]

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TIOBE attempts to calculate programming language popularity using the number of skilled engineers, courses, and third-party vendors.
And the eight most popular languages in September's rankings haven't changed since last month:

1. Python
2. C++
3. C
4. Java... [ Read it >> ]

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After its six-year journey to Saturn's moon Titan, Dragonfly's rotorcraft lander "will fly like a large drone," explains its web page, spending three years sampling multiple landing sites to characterize Titan's habitability and look for "precursors of the origin of life."

"However, the project has undergone multiple replans impacting cost and schedule, resulting in a life-cycle cost increase of nearly $1 billion and over 2 years of delays," according to an announcement from NASA's Inspector General. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Paramount and Comcast's NBCUniversal are joining Microsoft in telling employees "they could face consequences if they don't return to the office more frequently," reports the Washington Post:

NBCUniversal sent a memo to its employees telling them to return to the office four days a week starting in January [with the option to work remotely on Fridays]. Last week, Paramount told employees to return five days a week, with the first group starting in January. Both Paramount and NBCUniversal said they would offer severance packages to eligible employees who are unwilling or unable to make the switch... Companies have been cracking down on flexible work for the past several years, with Goldman Sachs being one of the first to implement a five-day office policy. Since then, others have joined in including Amazon, AT&T, JPMorgan Chase and the federal government... ... [ Read it >> ]

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Last week Steam and other major storefronts crashed, reports the Guardian, including Nintendo's eShop, PlayStation Store and Microsoft Store. They were all "unable to cope with the demand for Hollow Knight: Silksong, the long-awaited sequel to the critically acclaimed 2017 indie hit Hollow Knight." (which had sold 15 million copies):... [ Read it >> ]

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Finland's second-largest university has announced new research suggesting that heart attacks could be an infectious disease.

[T]he research found that, in coronary artery disease, atherosclerotic plaques containing cholesterol may harbor a gelatinous, asymptomatic biofilm formed by bacteria over years or even decades. Dormant bacteria within the biofilm remain shielded from both the patient's immune system and antibiotics because they cannot penetrate the biofilm matrix. ... [ Read it >> ]

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It was "little more than empty fields" five years ago — but it's now "a vast, heavily guarded complex stretching for 210 hectares (520 acres)," reports the Guardian, "the frontline of a multibillion-dollar criminal fraud industry fuelled by human trafficking and brutal violence."... [ Read it >> ]

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"The United Arab Emirates wants to compete with the U.S. and China in AI," writes Gizmodo, "and a new open source model may be its strongest contender yet.
"An Emirati AI lab called the Institute of Foundation Models (IFM) released K2 Think on Tuesday, a model that researchers say rivals OpenAI's ChatGPT and China's DeepSeek in standard benchmark tests."... [ Read it >> ]

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The Washington Post notes that past research "indicates that exercise helps some cancer survivors avoid recurrence of their disease."

But a new study "offers an explanation of how, showing that exercise changes the inner workings of our muscles and cells, although more study is still needed..."... [ Read it >> ]

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"Freelance developers and entire companies are making a business out of fixing shoddy vibe coded software," writes 404 Media, interviewing one of the "dozens of people on Fiverr... now offering services specifically catering to people with shoddy vibe coded projects."

Hamid Siddiqi, who offers to "review, fix your vibe code" on Fiverr, told the 404 Media that "Currently, I work with around 15-20 clients regularly, with additional one-off projects throughout the year. ("Siddiqi said common issues he fixes in vibe coded projects include inconsistent UI/UX design in AI-generated frontends, poorly optimized code that impacts performance, misaligned branding elements, and features that function but feel clunky or unintuitive," as well as work o color schemes, animations, and layouts.) ... [ Read it >> ]

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In 2015 Kim Dotcom answered questions from Slashdot's readers.

Now CBS News reports on "the latest chapter in a protracted 13-year battle by the U.S. government" to extradite Finnish-German millionaire Kim Dotcom from New Zealand:

A New Zealand court has rejected the latest bid by internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom to halt his deportation to the U.S. on charges related to his file-sharing website Megaupload. Dotcom had asked the High Court to review the legality of an official's August 2024 decision that he should be surrendered to the U.S. to face trial on charges of copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering... The Megaupload founder had applied for what in New Zealand is called a judicial review, in which a judge is asked to evaluate whether an official's decision was lawful. A judge on Wednesday dismissed Dotcom's arguments that the decision to deport him was politically motivated and that he would face grossly disproportionate treatment in the U.S... ... [ Read it >> ]

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ScienceDaily reports:
Forever chemicals known as PFAS have turned up in an unexpected place: beer. Researchers tested 23 different beers from across the U.S. and found that 95% contained PFAS, with the highest concentrations showing up in regions with known water contamination. The findings reveal how pollution in municipal water supplies can infiltrate popular products, raising concerns for both consumers and brewers... ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Rainmaker Technology's bid to deploy cloud-seeding flares on small drones is being met by resistance from the airline pilots union, which has urged the Federal Aviation Administration to consider denying the startup's request unless it meets stricter safety guidelines. The FAA's decision will signal how the regulator views weather modification by unmanned aerial systems going forward. Rainmaker's bet on small drones hangs in the balance.... [ Read it >> ]

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Surgeons in London report a surge in severe e-bike-related injuries, putting major strain on NHS trauma units. The BBC mentions a couple e-bike accidents overheard at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. "A 32-year-old, fit and well student... a couple of days ago he fell off an e-bike sustaining a closed left tibial plateau fracture." Another case involved a little girl named Frida: "Six-year-old girl, she was hit by an electric bike, she has a closed tib/fib fracture." From the report: Surgeon Jaison Patel is seeing more and more cases like this. "It's a massive burden on our department and I'm sure it's the same across the whole of London," he tells us. "If we can reduce the number of patients coming in with these sorts of injuries it would be great for the patients obviously, but also takes massive pressure off us in the NHS."... [ Read it >> ]

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Researchers in China have created synthetic magnetic fields within silicon photonic crystals, allowing them to steer and control light on a chip with unprecedented precision. "Beyond immediate applications, the work opens new avenues for studying quantum-inspired phenomena with light," reports Phys.org. "The ability to impose artificial gauge fields in photonic systems could enable devices for optical computing, quantum information, and advanced communication technologies." Slashdot reader alternative_right shares an excerpt from the report: The team achieved this by systematically altering the symmetry of tiny repeating units in silicon photonic crystals. Adjusting the degree of local asymmetry at each point allowed them to 'design' pseudomagnetic fields with tailored spatial patterns, without breaking fundamental time-reversal symmetry. Both theoretical analysis and experiments confirmed that these engineered fields can guide and manipulate light in versatile ways. To demonstrate practical applications, the researchers built two devices commonly used in integrated optics. One was a compact S-shaped waveguide bend that transmitted light with less than 1.83 decibels of signal loss. The other was a power splitter that divided light into two equal paths with low excess loss and minimal imbalance. In a final test, the devices successfully transmitted a high-speed data stream at 140 gigabits per second using a standard telecommunications modulation format, showing that the technique is compatible with existing optical communication systems. The research has been published in Advanced Photonics.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: The company behind the Proton Mail email service, Proton, describes itself as a "neutral and safe haven for your personal data, committed to defending your freedom." But last month, Proton disabled email accounts belonging to journalists reporting on security breaches of various South Korean government computer systems following a complaint by an unspecified cybersecurity agency. After a public outcry, and multiple weeks, the journalists' accounts were eventually reinstated -- but the reporters and editors involved still want answers on how and why Proton decided to shut down the accounts in the first place.... [ Read it >> ]

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US EV sales hit a record 146,332 in August, grabbing nearly 10% of all new car sales, according to Kelley Blue Book. That's the highest yet and up from 9.1% in July. Electrek reports: With the federal EV tax credit set to expire on September 30, analysts say Q3 2025 is shaping up to be the strongest quarter for EV sales in US history. The current record holder is Q4 2024, when 365,824 EVs were sold.... [ Read it >> ]

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Newfoundland and Labrador's 10-year Education Accord report (PDF) intended to guide school reform has been found to contain at least 15 fabricated citations, including references to non-existent films and journals. Academics suggest the fake sources may have been generated by AI. "There are sources in this report that I cannot find in the MUN Library, in the other libraries I subscribe to, in Google searches. Whether that's AI, I don't know, but fabricating sources is a telltale sign of artificial intelligence," said Aaron Tucker, an assistant professor at Memorial whose current research focuses on the history of AI in Canada. "The fabrication of sources at least begs the question: did this come from generative AI?" CBC News reports: In one case, the report references a 2008 movie from the National Film Board called Schoolyard Games. The film doesn't exist, according to a spokesperson for the board. But the exact citation used in the report can be found in a University of Victoria style guide -- a document that clearly lists fake references designed as templates for researchers writing a bibliography. "Many citations in this guide are fictitious," reads the first page of the document.... [ Read it >> ]

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A former Memphis disc manufacturing employee has been sentenced to nearly five years in prison after stealing pre-release Blu-rays from his employer and leaking them online. While he received 21 months for copyright infringement, a concurrent firearm charge extended his total prison term to 57 months. TorrentFreak reports: In February, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted 37-year-old Steven Hale from Tennessee, a former employee of a disc manufacturing and distribution company in Memphis. While working at the unnamed company between 2021 and 2022, Hale allegedly stole numerous "pre-release" DVD and Blu-ray discs from his employer. These stolen discs contained many high-profile movie titles including "Spider-Man: No Way Home." In addition to the copyright infringement charge, Hale was also indicted for a firearm offense. When raiding his premises, law enforcement found a gun in a car that was registered in his name, which, for a felon, is a separate criminal offense.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from France24: Fueled in part by anger over flashy lifestyles flaunted by elites, young anti-corruption demonstrators mainly in their 20s rallied on Monday. The loose grouping, largely viewed as members of "Gen Z", flooded the capital Kathmandu to demand an end to a ban on Facebook, YouTube and other popular sites. The rallies ended in chaos and tragedy, with at least 19 protesters killed in a police crackdown on Monday. The apps were restored, but protests widened in anger.... [ Read it >> ]

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Intel's long-time Xeon chief architect Ronak Singhal is leaving the company after nearly 30 years, marking yet another high-profile departure amid Intel's leadership churn and intensifying competition from AMD and Arm-based cloud CPUs. The Register reports: The Carnegie Mellon alum holds degrees in electrical and computer engineering, along with at least 30 patents involving CPUs. Singhal joined Intel in 1997 after spending the previous summer as an intern at Cyrix. After a year in Intel's Rotation Engineers Program, he spent the remainder of his tenure helping to develop some of the chipmaker's most consequential and, at times, controversial processors. Most notably, Singhal oversaw the core development of Intel's 22nm Haswell and 14nm Broadwell processor architectures. His innovations aren't limited to the datacenter either, with his architectural contributions playing a significant role in the success of Intel's Core and Atom processor families as well. [...]... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft and OpenAI have signed a non-binding deal to restructure their partnership, paving the way for OpenAI to shift into a conventional for-profit model and potentially go public. Reuters reports: Details on the new commercial arrangements were not disclosed, but the companies said they were working to finalize terms of a definitive agreement. [...] Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 and another $10 billion at the beginning of 2023. Under their previous agreement, Microsoft had exclusive rights to sell OpenAI's software tools through its Azure cloud computing platform and had preferred access to the startup's technology.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For millions of Spotify users, the "Wrapped" feature -- which crunches the numbers on their annual listening habits -- is a highlight of every year's end, ever since it debuted in 2015. NPR once broke down exactly why our brains find the feature so "irresistible," while Cosmopolitan last year declared that sharing Wrapped screenshots of top artists and songs had by now become "the ultimate status symbol" for tens of millions of music fans. It's no surprise then that, after a decade, some Spotify users who are especially eager to see Wrapped evolve are no longer willing to wait to see if Spotify will ever deliver the more creative streaming insights they crave.... [ Read it >> ]

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California's legislature this week approved a bill to let renters opt out of bulk-billing arrangements that force them to pay for Internet service from a specific provider. ArsTechnica: The bill says that by January 1, a landlord must "allow the tenant to opt out of paying for any subscription from a third-party Internet service provider, such as through a bulk-billing arrangement, to provide service for wired Internet, cellular, or satellite service that is offered in connection with the tenancy." If a landlord fails to do so, the tenant "may deduct the cost of the subscription to the third-party Internet service provider from the rent," and the landlord would be prohibited from retaliating. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: European Union countries have shelved plans to approve a new climate change target next week, after pushback from governments including France and Germany over plans to quickly land a deal, three EU diplomats told Reuters on Friday. Countries are discussing a legally-binding target to cut net EU greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040, from 1990 levels - with a share of this covered by buying foreign carbon credits. ... [ Read it >> ]

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US colleges face a prolonged enrollment decline beginning this fall as high school graduating classes shrink for the first time since the Great Recession. The incoming freshman class marks the start of a 13% drop in high school graduates through 2041, falling from 3.9 million to 3.4 million students. The decline stems from reduced birth rates during the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent years. ... [ Read it >> ]

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US retail coffee prices surged 21% year-over-year in August, the largest annual increase since October 1997, according to Thursday's Consumer Price Index. The monthly 4% jump marks the steepest rise in 14 years. Trump administration tariffs on major coffee exporters -- 50% on Brazil, 20% on Vietnam, and 10% on Colombia -- are driving costs higher as 99% of US coffee consumption relies on imports. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Smart glasses development has expanded beyond Meta, Google and Apple to include dozens of manufacturers across three distinct categories, UploadVR reports. HTC launched its Vive Eagle glasses in Taiwan this month at $550, while Solos' AirGo V2 arrives in Q4 2025 for $300.

The market segments into displayless models featuring cameras and AI assistants, heads-up display glasses providing contextual information overlays and true AR glasses capable of spatial object positioning. Chinese manufacturers dominate the sub-$100 segment. Snap plans consumer AR glasses for 2026. Amazon is reportedly developing two HUD models targeting delivery drivers and consumers for mid-2026 release.... [ Read it >> ]

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Keith Rabois, co-founder and newly minted board chair of Opendoor, said remote work and a "bloated" workforce have been a drag on the online real estate platform's culture, as he vowed to slash headcount. CNBC: "There's 1,400 employees at Opendoor. I don't know what most of them do. We don't need more than 200 of them," Rabois told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Friday.... [ Read it >> ]

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A anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft AI launched its first in-house models last month, adding to the already complicated relationship with its OpenAI partner. Now, Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman says the company is making "significant investments" in the compute capacity required to Microsoft's own future frontier models. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Medical researchers at some institutions in Canada, the United States and Italy are using data created by artificial intelligence (AI) from real patient information in their experiments without the need for permission from their institutional ethics boards, Nature has learnt. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Google Tables, a work-tracking tool and competitor to the popular spreadsheet-database hybrid Airtable, is shutting down. TechCrunch: In an email sent to Tables users this week, Google said the app will not be supported after December 16, 2025, and advised that users export or migrate their data to either Google Sheets or AppSheet instead, depending on their needs. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The Swiss government could soon require service providers with more than 5,000 users to collect government-issued identification, retain subscriber data for six months and, in many cases, disable encryption. From a report: The proposal, which is not subject to parliamentary approval, has alarmed privacy and digital-freedoms advocates worldwide because of how it will destroy anonymity online, including for people located outside of Switzerland. A large number of virtual private network (VPN) companies and other privacy-preserving firms are headquartered in the country because it has historically had liberal digital privacy laws alongside its famously discreet banking ecosystem. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: An attempt to ban social media in Nepal ended this week in violent protest with the prime minister ousted, the Parliament in flames and soldiers on the streets of the capital. Now, the very technology the government tried to outlaw is being harnessed to help select the country's next leader, as more than 100,000 citizens are meeting regularly in a virtual chat room to debate the country's future. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The Apache Software Foundation has unveiled a major branding overhaul that retires its three-decade-old feather logo after criticism from Native American activists. In its place is a new oak leaf design to symbolize endurance, resilience, and global reach. Along with the new visual identity, the group will emphasize "The ASF" as its shorthand name while keeping its full legal title intact.... [ Read it >> ]

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