An electronic eye implant has restored reading ability to patients blinded by geographic atrophy, a form of dry age-related macular degeneration. Results published Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that 84% of trial participants regained the ability to read letters, numbers, and words after receiving the Prima device.

The microchip measures two millimetres by two millimetres and is implanted beneath the center of the retina. Patients wear augmented reality glasses containing a camera that projects images onto the chip. The device converts light into electrical pulses transmitted to the brain.

Frank Holz, the study's lead author and chair of ophthalmology at the University Hospital of Bonn, called the implant "a paradigm shift in treating late-stage age-related macular degeneration." Mahi Muqit, a consultant at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, said the trial enabled "meaningful central vision restoration, which has never been done before." The procedure takes less than two hours and requires intensive rehabilitation. Science Corporation, which manufactures the device, has applied for clinical authorization in the United States and Europe.

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China says it has uncovered what it describes as irrefutable evidence of American government cyber attacks targeting the National Time Service Center. The Ministry of State Security said the National Security Agency exploited vulnerabilities in employees' mobile phones beginning March 25, 2022, and later used stolen login credentials to access the center's computers starting April 18, 2023.

The facility in Xi'an provides high-precision timekeeping service for the government, civil society, and various industries. It also supplies data used to calculate international standard time. Chinese authorities said investigators found that private servers worldwide were employed to conceal the attacks' origin. The accusations emerge against a backdrop of mutual cyber-espionage claims between Washington and Beijing. Western governments and companies have repeatedly blamed Chinese hackers for intrusions in recent years.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/1731258/china-accuses-nsa-of-hacking-national-timekeeping-agency?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The Sims is in a period of transition -- and as part of that, the ongoing mobile version will be shutting down in a few months. From a report: EA announced that today's update for The Sims Mobile will be its last, and that on January 20th, 2026 the game "will no longer be accessible to play and will be sunset." The mobile iteration of the franchise first launched in 2018, and has seen more than 50 updates since then. EA says that starting today players will no longer be able to spend real money in the game, and that it will be delisted on both iOS and Android tomorrow before the servers shut down completely next year, making it entirely unplayable.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/188252/the-sims-mobile-is-shutting-down-next-year?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: "Hoisted by their own GPTards." That's how Meta's Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun described the blowback after OpenAI researchers did a victory lap over GPT-5's supposed math breakthroughs. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis added, "this is embarrassing." The Decoder reports that in a since-deleted tweet, OpenAI VP Kevin Weil declared that "GPT-5 found solutions to 10 (!) previously unsolved Erdos problems and made progress on 11 others." ("Erdos problems" are famous conjectures posed by mathematician Paul Erdos.)

However, mathematician Thomas Bloom, who maintains the Erdos Problems website, said Weil's post was "a dramatic misrepresentation" -- while these problems were indeed listed as "open" on Bloom's website, he said that only means, "I personally am unaware of a paper which solves it." In other words, it's not accurate to claim GPT-5 was able to solve previously unsolved problems. Instead, Bloom wrote, "GPT-5 found references, which solved these problems, that I personally was unaware of."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/1827201/openais-embarrassing-math?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Google plans to let Pixel smartphone enthusiasts test out the company's next handset ahead of its public introduction. From a report: Google has invited members of its "Superfans" group to apply to test future Pixel hardware, asking entrants to profess their knowledge and passion for the brand in hopes of being able to beta test forthcoming products.

Consumer tech companies often let small groups of customers try out unreleased products under strict secrecy to gather feedback during development. But it's incredibly rare for a company of Google's size to do it with something as high-profile as the Pixel lineup.

The search giant will select 15 people from the pool of entrants, and winners must all sign a non-disclosure agreement to receive devices, according to official rules for the contest reviewed by Bloomberg News. "The Trusted Tester program is an opportunity to provide feedback and help shape a Pixel phone currently in development," the document reads.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/1925216/google-to-let-superfans-test-in-development-pixel-phones?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says his company has lost all access to China's market after U.S. export restrictions eliminated what was once a 95% share. Speaking in an interview with Citadel Securities, Huang questioned the wisdom of policies that cost America one of the world's largest markets.

The Biden Administration imposed rules in 2022 to restrict exports of Nvidia's most advanced AI chips to China. The Trump Administration blocked additional chip sales in April and later granted export licenses for certain Nvidia and AMD chips in exchange for 15% of revenues. Chinese regulators responded by telling domestic tech companies to avoid Nvidia chips designed to meet U.S. export requirements. Beijing also placed strict limits on exports of rare earths. Huang noted that about half the world's AI researchers are in China and called it a mistake not to have them build AI on American technology.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/1934203/nvidia-ceo-says-company-went-from-95-to-0-market-share-in-china?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

A Court of Accounts report written before Sunday's theft of crown jewels from the Louvre revealed the museum's security systems were outdated and inadequate [non-paywalled source]. The report noted a lack of basic CCTV equipment across multiple wings. Cameras had mainly been installed only when rooms were refurbished due to repeated postponements of scheduled modernization. In the Denon wing where the Apollo Gallery was targeted, a third of rooms had no CCTV cameras. Three-quarters of rooms in the Richelieu wing and nearly two-thirds in the Sully wing lacked cameras.

The thieves were caught on camera at one point but were masked and impossible to identify, according to Paris public prosecutor Laure Beccuau. The alarm system activated when thieves cut open display cases, but they threatened staff who left the area. Culture minister Rachida Dati confirmed new CCTV cameras would be installed. President Macron had earmarked $186.30 million to upgrade the Louvre's security systems under a renaissance plan launched in June.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/1957202/louvre-museum-security-outdated-and-inadequate-at-time-of-heist?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A hacking group that recently doxed hundreds of government officials, including from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has now built dossiers on tens of thousands of U.S. government officials, including NSA employees, a member of the group told 404 Media. The member said the group did this by digging through its caches of stolen Salesforce customer data. The person provided 404 Media with samples of this information, which 404 Media was able to corroborate.

As well as NSA officials, the person sent 404 Media personal data on officials from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), members of the Air Force, and several other agencies.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/204219/hackers-say-they-have-personal-data-of-thousands-of-nsa-and-other-government-officials?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Anthropic has added web and mobile interfaces for Claude Code, its immensely popular command-line interface (CLI) agentic AI coding tool. The web interface appears to be well-baked at launch, but the mobile version is limited to iOS and is in an earlier stage of development. The web version of Claude Code can be given access to a GitHub repository. Once that's done, developers can give it general marching orders like "add real-time inventory tracking to the dashboard."

As with the CLI version, it gets to work, with updates along the way approximating where it's at and what it's doing. The web interface supports the recently implemented Claude Code capability to take suggestions or requested changes while it's in the middle of working on a task. (Previously, if you saw it doing something wrong or missing something, you often had to cancel and start over.) Developers can run multiple sessions at once and switch between them as needed; they're listed in a left-side panel in the interface.

Alongside this web and mobile rollout, Anthropic has also introduced a new sandboxing runtime to Claude Code that, along with other things, aims to make the experience both more secure and lower friction. In the past, Claude Code worked by asking permission before making most changes and steps along the way. Now, it can instead be given permissions for specific file system folders and network servers. That means fewer approval steps, but it's also more secure overall against prompt injection and other risks. You can learn more about "Claude Code on the web" through the company's blog and official YouTube channel.

Note: the new features are available in beta as a research preview, and they are available to Claude users with Pro or Max subscriptions.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/2059211/claude-code-gets-a-web-version?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Kohler has launched the Dekoda, a $599 smart toilet camera that analyzes users' waste to track hydration, gut health, and detect potential issues like blood. "It also comes with a rechargeable battery, a USB connection, and a fingerprint sensor to identify who's using the toilet," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The Dekoda is currently available for preorder, with shipments scheduled to begin on October 21. In addition to the hardware purchase fee, customers will need to pay between $70 and $156 per year for a subscription. If you're uneasy about the privacy implications of putting a camera right below your private parts, the company says, "Dekoda's sensors see down into your toilet and nowhere else." It also notes that the resulting data is secured via end-to-end encryption.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/212258/kohler-unveils-a-camera-for-your-toilet?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has issued criminal subpoenas to Roblox, calling it a "breeding ground for predators" and accusing the platform of profiting while failing to protect children. NBC News reports: The subpoenas will allow prosecutors to gather more information about the alleged criminal activity on the platform, including evidence related to suspected predators and victims, according to Uthmeier. The concerns prompted Roblox to invest heavily in protecting younger users on its platform by tightening messaging rules for children under 13, intensive content moderation and AI-powered monitoring.

In an emailed statement to Reuters, Roblox said it prohibits sharing images and videos in chat, uses filters designed to block the exchange of personal information, and is working to implement age estimation for all users accessing chat features. "While no system is perfect, our trained teams and automated tools continuously monitor communications to detect and remove harmful content," a Roblox spokesperson said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/219228/florida-issues-criminal-subpoenas-to-roblox-over-child-safety?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

U.S. Grandmaster and beloved chess commentator Daniel Naroditsky has tragically passed away at the age of 29. "The news has sent shockwaves around the chess community, which is grieving the loss of one of the most beloved and influential voices," reports Chess.com. From the report: The devastating news was first shared by Naroditsky's club, Charlotte Chess Center, on Monday, and confirmed by Chess.com with multiple sources: "It is with great sadness that we share the unexpected passing of Daniel Naroditsky. Daniel was a talented chess player, educator, and cherished member of the chess community. He was also a loving son, brother, and loyal friend. We ask for privacy for Daniel's family during this extremely difficult time. Let us honor Daniel by remembering his passion for chess and the inspiration he brought to us all."

Naroditsky, who was three weeks away from turning 30, has long been known as one of United States' most talented players. He achieved his grandmaster title at the age of 18 in 2013, and placed fifth among the highest-ranked juniors in 2015. His last FIDE-rating is 2619, which places him among the top 150 in the world, or the 17th highest-ranked in the United States. He has a peak rating of 2647 from 2017. He leaves a legacy that spans strong over-the-board competition and highly popular chess instruction and commentary on streaming platforms.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/2126230/chess-influencer-and-grandmaster-daniel-naroditsky-dies-at-29?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: With the fourth betas of iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, and macOS 26.1, Apple has introduced a new setting that's designed to allow users to customize the look of Liquid Glass. The toggle lets users select from a clear look for Liquid Glass, or a tinted look. Clear is the current Liquid Glass design, which is more transparent and shows the background underneath buttons, bars, and menus, while tinted increases the opacity of Liquid Glass and adds more contrast.

Apple says that the new toggle was added because during the beta testing period over the summer, user feedback suggested that some people would prefer to have a more opaque option for Liquid Glass. The added setting provides additional customization in iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, and macOS Tahoe 26.1. Increasing opacity and adding contrast applies to Liquid Glass throughout the operating system, including in apps and Lock Screen notifications.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/2113254/ios-261-beta-4-lets-users-control-liquid-glass-transparency-with-new-toggle?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Foreign hackers breached the National Nuclear Security Administration's Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC) by exploiting unpatched Microsoft SharePoint vulnerabilities. The intrusion happened in August and is possibly linked to either Chinese state actors or Russian cybercriminals. CSO Online notes that "roughly 80% of the non-nuclear parts in the nation's nuclear stockpile originate from KCNSC," making it "one of the most sensitive facilities in the federal weapons complex." From the report: The breach targeted a plant that produces the vast majority of critical non-nuclear components for US nuclear weapons under the NNSA, a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy (DOE) that oversees the design, production, and maintenance of the nation's nuclear weapons. Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies (FM&T) manages the Kansas City campus under contract to the NNSA. [...] The attackers exploited two recently disclosed Microsoft SharePoint vulnerabilities -- CVE-2025-53770, a spoofing flaw, and CVE-2025-49704, a remote code execution (RCE) bug -- both affecting on-premises servers. Microsoft issued fixes for the vulnerabilities on July 19.

On July 22, the NNSA confirmed it was one of the organizations hit by attacks enabled by the SharePoint flaws. "On Friday, July 18th, the exploitation of a Microsoft SharePoint zero-day vulnerability began affecting the Department of Energy," a DOE spokesperson said. However, the DOE contended at the time, "The department was minimally impacted due to its widespread use of the Microsoft M365 cloud and very capable cybersecurity systems. A very small number of systems were impacted. All impacted systems are being restored." By early August, federal responders, including personnel from the NSA, were on-site at the Kansas City facility, the source tells CSO.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/2139236/foreign-hackers-breached-a-us-nuclear-weapons-plant-via-sharepoint-flaws?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Investigators recovered the OceanGate Titan sub's underwater camera nearly intact, discovering a SanDisk SD card that survived the 2023 implosion and still contained 12 images and 9 videos. TechSpot reports: Scott Manley, the science communication YouTuber, gamer, astrophysicist, and programmer, posted about the latest find: a hardened SubC-branded Rayfin Mk2 Benthic Camera containing the undamaged SD card. The titanium and synthetic sapphire crystal camera is rated to withstand depths of up to 6,000 meters (19,685 feet) -- the Titan imploded at around 3,300 meters (10,827 feet). The casing is intact, though the lens is shattered and the PCBs are slightly damaged.

Incredibly the SD card inside the camera was undamaged. Tom's Hardware reports that it's almost certainly a SanDisk Extreme Pro 512GB, which costs around $62 on Amazon. The camera's SD card was found to be fully encrypted, divided into a small partition for operating system updates and a larger one for user data. Due to impact damage from the accident, several components of the system-on-module (SOM) board -- including connectors and the microcontroller -- were broken, complicating the data extraction process. [...] After determining the data wasn't encrypted beyond the file system level, they successfully accessed the SD card contents using the manufacturer's proprietary equipment and procedures.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/2155249/62-sandisk-memory-card-found-intact-at-titan-wreck-site?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed Sunday that it is investigating an airliner that was struck by an object in its windscreen, mid-flight, over Utah. "NTSB gathering radar, weather, flight recorder data," the federal agency said on the social media site X. "Windscreen being sent to NTSB laboratories for examination." The strike occurred Thursday, during a United Airlines flight from Denver to Los Angeles. Images shared on social media showed that one of the two large windows at the front of a 737 MAX aircraft was significantly cracked. Related images also reveal a pilot's arm that has been cut multiple times by what appear to be small shards of glass.

The captain of the flight reportedly described the object that hit the plane as "space debris." This has not been confirmed, however. After the impact, the aircraft safely landed at Salt Lake City International Airport after being diverted. Images of the strike showed that an object made a forceful impact near the upper-right part of the window, showing damage to the metal frame. Because aircraft windows are multiple layers thick, with laminate in between, the window pane did not shatter completely. The aircraft was flying above 30,000 feet -- likely around 36,000 feet -- and the cockpit apparently maintained its cabin pressure.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/0015212/mystery-object-from-space-strikes-united-airlines-flight-over-utah?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

SpaceX surpassed the 10,000-satellite milestone for its Starlink constellation after two Falcon 9 launches on Oct. 19 added 56 more satellites to orbit. The company now operates about two-thirds of all active satellites worldwide and continues to break reuse records. Space.com reports: A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 28 Starlink internet satellites lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 3:24 p.m. EDT (1924 GMT; 12:24 p.m. local California time). Those 28 included the 10,000th Starlink spacecraft ever to reach orbit, which a SpaceX employee noted on the company's launch webcast: "From Tintin to 10,000! Go Starlink, go Falcon, go SpaceX!"

It was also the 132nd Falcon 9 liftoff of the year, equaling the mark set by the rocket last year -- and there are still nearly 2.5 months to go in 2025. [...] This launch was the second of the day for SpaceX; less than two hours earlier, another Falcon 9 sent 28 more Starlink satellites up from Florida's Space Coast. That earlier liftoff was the 31st for that Falcon 9's first stage, setting a new reuse record.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/000208/spacex-launches-10000th-starlink-satellite?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Alibaba Cloud claims its new Aegaeon GPU pooling system cuts Nvidia GPU use by 82%, letting 213 H20 accelerators handle workloads that previously required 1,192. The advancements have been detailed in a paper (PDF) at the 2025 ACM Symposium on Operating Systems (SOSP) in Seoul. Tom's Hardware reports: Unlike training-time breakthroughs that chase model quality or speed, Aegaeon is an inference-time scheduler designed to maximize GPU utilization across many models with bursty or unpredictable demand. Instead of pinning one accelerator to one model, Aegaeon virtualizes GPU access at the token level, allowing it to schedule tiny slices of work across a shared pool. This means one H20 could serve several different models simultaneously, with system-wide "goodput" -- a measure of effective output -- rising by as much as nine times compared to older serverless systems.

The system was tested in production over several months, according to the paper, which lists authors from both Peking University and Alibaba's infrastructure division, including CTO Jingren Zhou. During that window, the number of GPUs needed to support dozens of different LLMs -- ranging in size up to 72 billion parameters -- fell from 1,192 to just 213. While the paper does not break down which models contributed most to the savings, reporting by the South China Morning Post says the tests were conducted using Nvidia's H20, one of the few accelerators still legally available to Chinese buyers under current U.S. export controls.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/005243/alibaba-cloud-says-it-cut-nvidia-ai-gpu-use-by-82-with-new-pooling-system?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Lloyds Banking Group claims employees save 46 minutes daily using Microsoft 365 Copilot, based on a survey of 1,000 users among nearly 30,000 deployed licenses. According to Lloyds Banking Group (LBG), the rollout is "helping teams summarize documents, prepare for meetings, and reduce administrative tasks." Almost 5,000 engineers are also using GitHub Copilot. Vic Weigler, chief technology officer at the finance corp, said in a statement: "We converted 11,000 lines of code across 83 files in half the expected time."

An insider at the bank, a self-professed fan of the technology, listed some of the ways it was being used in their business area. These ranged from the mundane -- drafting and summarizing emails, transcribing meetings, and comparing documents to group standards -- to the eyebrow-raising, such as drafting legal clauses, undertaking due diligence, and creating complex Excel formulas. They told us the next step is creating bots and agents to perform repetitive data-based tasks and rolling out the technology to customer-facing processes. That said, they also noted the AI tools occasionally make mistakes. The "golden rule," is to "never use the output without checking it."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/223252/lloyds-banking-group-claims-microsoft-copilot-saves-staff-46-minutes-a-day?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Amazon executives believe the company can avoid hiring more than 160,000 workers in the United States by 2027 through robotic automation. Internal documents viewed by The New York Times show the automation would save approximately 30 cents on each item the company picks, packs and delivers. The documents reveal that executives told Amazon's board last year they hoped automation would allow the company to flatten its U.S. workforce growth over the next decade.

Amazon expects to sell twice as many products by 2033. That projection translates to more than 600,000 positions Amazon would not need to fill. Amazon opened its most advanced warehouse in Shreveport, Louisiana last year as a template for future facilities. The site uses a thousand robots and employed a quarter fewer workers than it would have without automation. The company plans to replicate this design in approximately 40 facilities by the end of 2027. A facility in Stone Mountain, Georgia currently employs roughly 4,000 workers. After a planned robotic retrofit, internal analyses project it will process 10% more items but need as many as 1,200 fewer employees. The documents show Amazon's robotics team has set a goal to automate 75% of its operations.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/1316207/amazon-plans-to-avoid-hiring-600000-workers-through-automation-by-2033-leaked-documents-show?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Filipino workers in Manila are remotely operating robots that restock convenience store shelves across Tokyo. The partnership represents a new economic model where physical labor can be offshored through telepresence. Around 60 workers at Astro Robotics monitor the machines and intervene when problems occur about 4% of the time. They earn between $250 and $315 per month. Japan faces severe labor shortages but has resisted expanding immigration. Offshoring the work through robots solves this while dramatically reducing costs.

Filipino workers are also training the AI systems designed to eliminate the need for human operators entirely. Tokyo-based Telexistence has collected extensive data from its workers and is providing it to a San Francisco startup building fully autonomous robots. The combination of automation and offshoring creates what one University of Michigan professor called a "double whammy" for workers in developed nations. It also exploits workers in developing countries who build the tools meant to replace them. The market for AI agents is expected to grow eightfold to $43 billion by 2030. Human-only work is forecast to drop 27% over the next five years.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/1328234/japanese-convenience-stores-are-hiring-robots-run-by-workers-in-the-philippines?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

President Trump's $100,000 H-1B visa fee will apply only to new visa applicants outside the country, the government confirmed in new guidance on Monday. From a report: That means that under the new policy, employers won't need to pay the fee for anyone already living in the U.S., such as international students. The new guidance: Under the new guidance published on Monday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the $100,000 fee will apply only to new applicants living outside the country. Employers will need to pay the fee after their prospective employee's visa is approved, allowing them to move to the U.S.

Previously, the White House had said the fee would apply to all new visa applicants, except those who work for companies or industries that have secured a special waiver. In 2024, roughly 54% of the 141,000 new H-1B visas issued went to immigrants who were already in the U.S. on a different visa type, according to government statistics. If that trend holds, the new fee wouldn't apply to over half of the applicants.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/1524225/us-narrows-who-pays-100000-h-1b-visa-fee?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

London police finally understand why 80,000 phones disappeared from the city's streets last year. The answer involves budget cuts [non-paywalled source] that hollowed out British policing in the 2010s, the arrival of electric bikes that made theft easy, and a lucrative black market in China where stolen British phones retain full functionality. The Metropolitan Police discovered an industrial-scale operation in December when officers traced a woman's iPhone to a Heathrow warehouse on Christmas Eve. Boxes labeled as batteries and bound for Hong Kong contained almost 1,000 stolen iPhones. The police arrested two men in their thirties in September as suspected ringleaders of a group that sent up to 40,000 stolen phones to China.

The epidemic took root after Conservative-led austerity measures reduced police numbers and budgets. In 2017 the Metropolitan Police announced it would stop investigating low-level crimes to focus resources on serious violence and sexual offenses. Thieves on rented electric bikes began mounting sidewalks to snatch phones at high speed while wearing balaclavas and hoods. Police data shows only 495 people were charged out of 106,000 phones reported stolen between March 2024 and February 2025. Thieves earn up to $401 per device. The phones sell for up to $5,000 in China because Chinese network providers do not subscribe to the international blacklist for stolen devices.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/1557254/london-became-a-global-hub-for-phone-theft-now-we-know-why?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Apple lashed out at the European Union's attempts to tame the power of Silicon Valley in the most far-reaching legal challenge of the bloc's Big Tech antitrust rules. From a report: The iPhone maker's lawyer Daniel Beard told the General Court in Luxembourg on Tuesday that the Digital Markets Act "imposes hugely onerous and intrusive burdens" at odds with Apple's rights in the EU marketplace.

The DMA came onto the EU's books in 2023 and is designed to clip the wings of the world's largest technology platforms with a slew of dos and don'ts. But over recent months, the law has also drawn the ire of US President Donald Trump and plagued EU-US trade talks. Apple -- seen as the biggest renegade against the EU's crackdown -- challenged the law on three fronts: EU obligations to make rival hardware work with its iPhone, the regulator's decision to drag the hugely profitable App Store under the rules, and a decision to probe whether iMessage should have faced the rules, which it later escaped.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/1634248/apple-attacks-eu-crackdown-in-digital-laws-biggest-court-test?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

OpenAI released ChatGPT Atlas on Tuesday, an AI-powered web browser that CEO Sam Altman described as "smooth" and "quick" during a livestream announcement. The browser is available globally on macOS while versions for Windows, iOS, and Android are expected soon. Atlas includes memory features that personalize the browsing experience and an agent mode that allows ChatGPT to perform tasks such as booking reservations and flights or editing documents.

Users can manage these stored memories through the browser's settings and can open incognito windows. The browser displays a split-screen view by default when users click links from search results. The view shows both the webpage and the ChatGPT transcript simultaneously. Atlas also offers webpage summarization and a feature called "cursor chat" that allows users to select text and have ChatGPT revise it inline.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/1725235/openai-debuts-ai-powered-browser-with-memory-and-agent-features?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

France and Spain are calling on the European Union to stick with plans to ban combustion engine cars in the bloc after 2035, at odds with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ahead of a meeting of leaders in Brussels this week. From a report: The European Commission, the bloc's executive branch, is currently reviewing rules designed to accelerate the automotive sector's green transition. Merz has called on the bloc to give up its 2035 deadline to help Germany's troubled car industry.

France and Spain "hope that the upcoming review will preserve the 2035 cap and the environmental ambition of the CO2 emissions trajectory that underpins it," a paper presented to climate ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday, and seen by Bloomberg says. "This revision should in no way call into question the zero emissions exhaust target in 2035."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/1759230/france-and-spain-call-on-eu-to-uphold-2035-combustion-engine-ban?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday afternoon, Amazon confirmed that an outage affecting Amazon Web Services' cloud hosting, which had impacted millions across the Internet, had been resolved. Considered the worst outage since last year's CrowdStrike chaos, Amazon's outage caused "global turmoil," Reuters reported. AWS is the world's largest cloud provider and, therefore, the "backbone of much of the Internet," ZDNet noted. Ultimately, more than 28 AWS services were disrupted, causing perhaps billions in damages, one analyst estimated for CNN.

[...] Amazon's problems originated at a US site that is its "oldest and largest for web services" and often "the default region for many AWS services," Reuters noted. The same site has experienced two outages before in 2020 and 2021, but while the tech giant had confirmed that those prior issues had been "fully mitigated," apparently the fixes did not ensure stability into 2025. ZDNet noted that Amazon's first sign of the outage was "increased error rates and latency across numerous key services" tied to its cloud database technology. Although "engineers later identified a Domain Name System (DNS) resolution problem" as the root of these issues and quickly fixed it, "other AWS services began to fail in its wake, leaving the platform still impaired" as more than two dozen AWS services shut down. At the peak of the outage on Monday, Down Detector tracked more than 8 million reports globally from users panicked by the outage, ZDNet reported. Ken Birman, a computer science professor at Cornell University, told Reuters that "software developers need to build better fault tolerance."

"When people cut costs and cut corners to try to get an application up, and then forget that they skipped that last step and didn't really protect against an outage, those companies are the ones who really ought to be scrutinized later."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/1942240/amazons-dns-problem-knocked-out-half-the-web-likely-costing-billions?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"Plasma is a popular desktop (and mobile) environment for GNU/Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems," writes longtime Slashdot reader jrepin. "Among other things, it also powers the desktop mode of the Steam Deck gaming handheld. The KDE community today announced the latest release: Plasma 6.5." From the announcement: This fresh new release is all about fine-tuning, fresh features, and a making everything smooth and sleek for everyone. The new version brings automatic light-to-dark theme switching based on the time of day. You can configure which global themes it switches between. You can also configure whether you want the wallpaper to switch between its light and dark versions based on the color scheme, the time of day, or be always light or dark.

Next up is a "Pinned clipboard items" feature, which lets you save text you use regularly into the clipboard. Breeze-themed windows will now have the same level of roundness in all four corners, even the bottom one. Flatpak Permissions page has been transformed into a general Application Permissions page, where you can configure applications' ability to do things like take screenshots and accept remote control requests. The utility that reads the level of ink or toner from your printer now informs you when it's running low or empty.

For the gamers out there, you can now see more relevant info about game controllers on System Settings' Game Controller page. Artists among you can now configure any rotary dials and touch rings on your drawing tablet. Users sensitive to color can now make use of a grayscale color filter, which desaturates or removes color systemwide.

Plasma 6.5 implements support for an experimental version of the Wayland picture-in-picture protocol that promises to allow apps like Firefox to eventually display proper PiP windows that stay above others automatically. Support for "overlay planes" was added, which can reduce CPU usage and power draw when displaying full-screen content using a compatible GPU. You can read more about these and many other new features in the Plasma 6.5 release announcement and complete changelog.

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Apple's effort to reinvent the iPad by adding a giant foldable screen has hit development hurdles, potentially delaying the planned launch. Bloomberg: The company has been working on the device -- projected to cost around $3,000 -- for several years and had most recently aimed for a 2028 release. But engineering challenges tied to weight, features and display technology have pushed its potential debut to 2029 or later, according to people familiar with the matter.

Apple is working with Samsung Display Co. to develop the roughly 18-inch panel for the device, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the work isn't public. The screen minimizes the crease seen on foldable displays, matching an approach that Apple is also using with its upcoming foldable iPhone. The iPad project is part of a broader push to bring more innovative devices to market. Apple just introduced its first new iPhone design in years -- the ultrathin $999 Air model -- and is working on everything from smart glasses to a tabletop robot device.

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TikTok changed its policies earlier this year on sharing user data with governments as the company negotiated with the Trump Administration to continue operating in the United States. The company added language allowing data sharing with "regulatory authorities, where relevant" beyond law enforcement. Until April 25, 2025, TikTok's website stated the company would notify users before disclosing their data to law enforcement. The policy now says TikTok will inform users only where required by law and changed the timing from before disclosure to if disclosure occurs. The company also softened its language from stating it "rejects data requests from law enforcement authorities" to saying it "may reject" such requests. TikTok declined to answer repeated questions from Forbes about whether it has shared or is sharing private user information with the Department of Homeland Security or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The timing difference prevents users from challenging subpoenas before their data is handed over.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/2125252/tiktoks-new-policies-remove-promise-to-notify-users-before-government-data-disclosure?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

JetBrains released its annual State of the Developer Ecosystem survey in late October, drawing more than twenty-four thousand responses from programmers worldwide. The survey declared that PHP and Ruby are in "long term decline" based on usage trends tracked over five years. Shortly after publication, JetBrains posted a separate statement asserting that "PHP remains a stable, professional, and evolving ecosystem." The company offered no explanation for the apparent contradiction, The Register reports.

The survey's methodology involves weighting responses to account for bias toward JetBrains users and regional distribution factors. The company acknowledges some bias likely remains since its own customers are more inclined to respond. The survey also found that 85% of developers now use AI coding tools.

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The German Koblenz Regional Court has banned the internet service provider 1&1 from marketing its fiber-to-the-curb service as fiber-optic DSL. The court found that the company misled customers because its network uses copper cables for the final stage of connections, sometimes extending up to a mile from the distribution box to subscribers' homes.

Customers who visited the ISP's website and checked connection availability received a notification stating that a "1&1 fiber optic DSL connection" was available, even though fiber optic cables terminate at street-level distribution boxes or building service rooms. The company pairs the copper lines with vectoring technology to boost DSL speeds to 100 megabits per second. The Federation of German Consumer Organizations filed the lawsuit. Ramona Pop, the organization's chairperson, said that anyone who promises fiber optics but delivers only DSL is deceiving customers.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/2138208/isp-deceived-customers-about-fiber-internet-german-court-finds?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

U.S. regulators have opened a new investigation into about 2,000 Waymo self-driving cars after reports that one of the company's robotaxis illegally passed a stopped school bus with flashing lights and children disembarking.

Waymo says it's "already developed and implemented improvements related to stopping for school buses and will land additional software updates in our next software release." The company added "driving safely around children has always been one of Waymo's highest priorities. ... [Waymo] approached the school bus from an angle where the flashing lights and stop sign were not visible and drove slowly around the front of the bus before driving past it, keeping a safe distance from children." Reuters reports: NHTSA opened the investigation after a recent media report aired video of an incident in Georgia in which a Waymo did not remain stationary when approaching a school bus with its red lights flashing and stop arm deployed.
The report said the Waymo vehicle initially stopped then maneuvered around the bus, passing the extended stop arm while students were disembarking.
Waymo's automated driving system surpassed 100 million miles of driving in July and is logging 2 million miles per week, the agency said. "Based on NHTSA's engagement with Waymo on this incident and the accumulation of operational miles, the likelihood of other prior similar incidents is high," the agency said. NHTSA said the vehicle involved was equipped with Waymo's fifth-generation Automated Driving System and was operating without a human safety driver at the time of the incident.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/2244249/us-investigates-waymo-robotaxis-over-safety-around-school-buses?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AI content has proliferated across the Internet over the past few years, but those early confabulations with mutated hands have evolved into synthetic images and videos that can be hard to differentiate from reality. Having helped to create this problem, Google has some responsibility to keep AI video in check on YouTube. To that end, the company has started rolling out its promised likeness detection system for creators. [...] The likeness detection tool, which is similar to the site's copyright detection system, has now expanded beyond the initial small group of testers. YouTube says the first batch of eligible creators have been notified that they can use likeness detection, but interested parties will need to hand Google even more personal information to get protection from AI fakes.

Currently, likeness detection is a beta feature in limited testing, so not all creators will see it as an option in YouTube Studio. When it does appear, it will be tucked into the existing "Content detection" menu. In YouTube's demo video, the setup flow appears to assume the channel has only a single host whose likeness needs protection. That person must verify their identity, which requires a photo of a government ID and a video of their face. It's unclear why YouTube needs this data in addition to the videos people have already posted with their oh-so stealable faces, but rules are rules.

After signing up, YouTube will flag videos from other channels that appear to have the user's face. YouTube's algorithm can't know for sure what is and is not an AI video. So some of the face match results may be false positives from channels that have used a short clip under fair use guidelines. If creators do spot an AI fake, they can add some details and submit a report in a few minutes. If the video includes content copied from the creator's channel that does not adhere to fair use guidelines, YouTube suggests also submitting a copyright removal request. However, just because a person's likeness appears in an AI video does not necessarily mean YouTube will remove it.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/2250229/youtubes-likeness-detection-has-arrived-to-help-stop-ai-doppelgangers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

joshuark shares a report from BleepingComputer: A new malicious campaign is targeting macOS developers with fake Homebrew, LogMeIn, and TradingView platforms that deliver infostealing malware like AMOS (Atomic macOS Stealer) and Odyssey. The campaign employs "ClickFix" techniques where targets are tricked into executing commands in Terminal, infecting themselves with malware. Researchers at threat hunting company Hunt.io identified more than 85 domains impersonating the three platforms in this campaign [...].

When checking some of the domains, BleepingComputer discovered that in some cases the traffic to the sites was driven via Google Ads, indicating that the threat actor promoted them to appear in Google Search results. The malicious sites feature convincing download portals for the fake apps and instruct users to copy a curl command in their Terminal to install them, the researchers say. In other cases, like for TradingView, the malicious commands are presented as a "connection security confirmation step." However, if the user clicks on the 'copy' button, a base64-encoded installation command is delivered to the clipboard instead of the displayed Cloudflare verification ID.

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alternative_right shares a report from the Internet Archive: This October, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine is projected to hit a once-in-a-generation milestone: 1 trillion web pages archived. That's one trillion memories, moments, and movements -- preserved for the public and available to access via the Wayback Machine.

We'll be commemorating this historic achievement on October 22, 2025, with a global event: a party at our San Francisco headquarters and a livestream for friends and supporters around the world. More than a celebration, it's a tribute to what we've built together: a free and open digital library of the web.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/2324239/internet-archive-celebrates-1-trillion-web-pages-archived?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

British Columbia is permanently banning new cryptocurrency mining operations from connecting to its power grid to conserve electricity for industries that generate more jobs and tax revenue. The province is also capping power allocations for AI and data centers, while launching a competitive allocation process in January 2026. CoinDesk reports: The move from the government of Canada's third-most populous province is part of a broader legislative and regulatory overhaul unveiled Monday [...]. "Government will also implement several regulatory and policy changes in fall 2025 that will ... permanently ban new BC Hydro connections to the electricity grid for cryptocurrency mining to preserve the province's electricity supply and avoid the overburdening of the electricity grid," the government said in a post on its website

The province said the restrictions will help prevent grid strain and ensure industrial development is powered by clean electricity. "We're seeing unprecedented demand from traditional and emerging industries," Charlotte Mitha, the president and CEO of power utility BC Hydro, said in the web post. "The province's strategy empowers BC Hydro to manage this growth responsibly, keeping our grid reliable and our energy future clean and affordable." Crypto mining operations often consume large amounts of electricity without creating many local jobs or tax revenue, according to the statement. By contrast, projects like mines or liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities are seen as more beneficial to the economy.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/237254/british-columbia-to-permanently-ban-new-crypto-mining-projects-from-grid?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg called the company's Tumblr acquisition his biggest failure -- but one he hasn't given up on yet. The comments were made at the recent WordCamp Canada 2025 conference, where Mullenweg went live for a Town Hall session to connect with the open source-focused WordPress community.

The exec noted that Tumblr was still on a different technical stack than WordPress -- something he had intended to correct by migrating the back end to WordPress infrastructure. However, that massive undertaking was put on hold earlier this year, as the cost to move Tumblr's half-billion blogs would be difficult given that the blogging platform wasn't profitable and continues to be sustained by the profits of other Automattic products.

The company has tried to trim costs with layoffs and the reallocation of Tumblr resources to more profitable parts of the business, but those efforts have yet to pay off. Mullenweg acknowledged these concerns at his Town Hall session, saying, "I need to switch [Tumblr] over to WordPress, but it's a big lift. It's over 500 million blogs, actually, and, as a business, it's costing so much more to run than it generates in revenue." As a result, Automattic had to prioritize other projects to make Tumblr sustainable, he said. "It's probably my biggest failure or missed opportunity right now, but we're still working on it," he added.

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NASA has reopened SpaceX's $4.4 billion moon lander contract to new bidders like Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin after delays in Starship's development threatened the 2027 Artemis 3 mission. Reuters reports: The move paves the way for rivals such as Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to snatch a high-profile mission to land the first astronauts on the moon in half a century. "I'm in the process of opening that contract up. I think we'll see companies like Blue get involved, and maybe others," the U.S. space agency's acting chief Sean Duffy, who also serves as U.S. Transportation Secretary, told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program.

Duffy's comments follow months of mounting pressure within NASA to speed up its Artemis lunar program and push SpaceX to make greater progress on its Starship lunar lander, while China progresses toward its own goal of sending humans to the moon by 2030.
It represents a major shift in NASA's lunar strategy, starting a new competitive juncture in the program for a crewed moon lander just two years before the scheduled landing date. Blue Origin is widely expected to compete for the mission, while Lockheed Martin has indicated it would convene an industry team to heed NASA's call.

Starship, picked by NASA in 2021 under a contract now worth $4.4 billion, faces a 2027 moon landing deadline that agency advisers estimate could slip years behind schedule, citing competing priorities. Musk sees Starship as crucial to launching larger batches of Starlink satellites to space and eventually ferrying humans to Mars, among other missions. "They do remarkable things, but they're behind schedule," Duffy said of SpaceX's lunar lander work, adding President Donald Trump wants to see the mission take place before his White House term ends in January 2029.

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General Motors is ending production of its Chevy BrightDrop electric delivery vans after sluggish demand and the expiration of key EV tax credits. "This is not a decision we made lightly because of the impact on our employees," GM CEO Mary Barra said during the company's third quarter earnings call Tuesday. "However the commercial electric van market has been developing much slower than expected, and changes to the regulatory framework and fleet incentives has made the business even more challenging." The Verge reports: Brightdrop first launched in 2021 as GM's effort to capture a large portion of the commercial EV market, starting with a pair of electric vans, as well as fleet management software and electric-powered carts for goods delivery. The automaker made deals with Walmart, FedEx, and other major retailers to add the van to their delivery fleets. But after trying to make a go of it as a standalone brand, GM reabsorbed BrightDrop in 2023, and then later assigned it to Chevy in order to tap into the brand's sales and service dealer network.

Now the van will stand as yet another casualty of the expiration of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, which ended on September 30th. In addition to the consumer credit, there was also a $7,500 discount for commercial EVs under 18,000 lbs -- which Brightdrop was eligible for. The van was a range leader, but also was more expensive than its most prominent competitor. Brightdrop's vans started at $74,000, while Ford's E-Transit van with extended battery range sold for $51,600.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/22/0413239/gm-to-end-production-of-electric-chevy-brightdrop-vans?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: A lot of critical financial and government infrastructure runs on Cobol. The more-than-60-year-old mainframe coding language is embedded into payments and transaction rails, even though there are very few Cobol-literate coders available to maintain them. The big argument in favor of sticking with Cobol systems is that they work. The catch is that, whenever they stop working, it is difficult to figure out why. That's not good in a crisis, which is exactly when they're most likely to break. Covid-19 put a lot of strain the US state benefit systems.

The ones that used Cobol for processing unemployment claims failed spectacularly, according to a new working paper from The Atlanta Fed: "States that used an antiquated [unemployment insurance]-benefit system experienced a 2.8 percentage point decline in total credit and debit card consumption relative to card consumption in states with more modern UI benefit systems. [...] Using this estimate in a back-of-the-envelope calculation, I find that the lack of investment in updating UI-benefit systems in COBOL states was associated with a reduction in real GDP of at least $40 billion (in 2019 dollars) lower during this [March 13 2020 to year-end] period

The paper uses Cobol as a proxy for old and inefficient IT, not the direct cause of failure. Claimants faced much longer delays in the 28 states that still used Cobol in 2020, both because of the unprecedented volume of claims and the difficulty updating systems with new eligibility rules, author Michael Navarrete finds. [...] As an aside, one oddity of the data is that Republican-controlled states were more likely to have replaced old IT systems, even though their standard unemployment insurance payments are lower on average. Why? Absolutely no idea, but here are the maps. And, once adjusted for state politics, here's the key finding.

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Early Monday, an Amazon Web Services outage disrupted banks, games, and Peloton classes. Eight Sleep customers faced a different problem. Their internet-enabled mattresses malfunctioned. People woke to beds locked in upright positions, excessive heat, flashing lights, and unexpected alarms. Matteo Franceschetti, the company's chief executive, apologized and said engineers were building an outage-proof mode. By Monday evening, all devices functioned again, though some experienced data processing delays. The mattresses adjust temperature between 55 and 110 degrees and elevate bodies into different positions. They activate soundscapes and vibrational alarms. The advanced models cost over $5,000. A yearly subscription of $199 to $399 is required for temperature controls.

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More than 1,100 public figures have signed a statement calling for a prohibition on the development of superintelligence. The signatories included Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, former chief strategist to President Trump Steve Bannon and Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio. The statement was organized by the Future of Life Institute, led by Anthony Aguirre, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It proposes halting work on superintelligence until there is broad scientific consensus on safety and strong public support.

The institute's biggest recent donor is Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum. Notable tech executives did not sign the statement. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in July that superintelligence was now in sight. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said last month he would be surprised if superintelligence did not arrive by 2030.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/10/22/1448213/more-than-1100-public-figures-call-for-ban-on-ai-superintelligence?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The proliferation of difficult-to-treat bacterial diseases represents a growing threat, according to the World Health Organization's (WHO) Global Antibiotic Resistance Surveillance Report. Wired: The report reveals that, between 2018 and 2023, antibiotic resistance increased by more than 40 percent in monitored pathogen-drug combinations, with an average annual increase of 5-15 percent. According to data reported by more than 100 countries to WHO's Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS), one in six laboratory-confirmed bacteria in 2023 proved resistant to antibiotic treatment, all related to various common diseases globally.

For the first time, this edition of the report includes prevalence estimates of resistance to 22 antibiotics used to treat urinary tract, gastrointestinal, bloodstream, and gonorrheal conditions. The analysis focused on eight common pathogens: Acinetobacter spp, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, non-typhoidal Salmonella spp, Shigella spp, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus pneumoniae. The results show that resistant gram-negative bacteria pose the greatest threat. Of particular note are Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, which are associated with bloodstream infections that can lead to sepsis, organ failure, and death. "More than 40 percent of E. coli and more than 55 percent of K. pneumoniae strains worldwide are now resistant to third-generation cephalosporins, the first-choice treatment for these types of infections," the report warns.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/10/22/1524248/resistant-bacteria-are-advancing-faster-than-antibiotics?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Google announced Wednesday that its quantum computer achieved the first verifiable quantum advantage, running a new algorithm 13,000 times faster than a top supercomputer. The algorithm, called Quantum Echoes, was published in the journal Nature. The results can be replicated on another quantum computer of similar quality, something Google had not demonstrated before. The quantum computer uses a chip called Willow, which was announced in December 2024. Hartmut Neven, head of Google's Quantum AI research lab, called the work a demonstration of the first algorithm with verifiable quantum advantage and a milestone on the software track.

Michel H. Devoret, who won this year's Nobel Prize in Physics and joined Google in 2023, said future quantum computers will run calculations impossible with classical algorithms. Google stopped short of claiming the work would have practical uses on its own. Instead, the company said Quantum Echoes demonstrated a technique that could be applied to other algorithms in drug discovery and materials science.

A second paper published Wednesday on arXiv showed how the method could be applied to nuclear magnetic resonance. The experiment involved a relatively small quantum system that fell short of full practical quantum advantage because it was not able to work faster than a traditional computer. Google exhaustively red-teamed the research, putting some researchers to work trying to disprove its own results.

Prineha Narang, a professor at UCLA, called the advance meaningful. The quantum computer tested two molecules, one with 15 atoms and another with 28 atoms. Results on the quantum computer matched traditional NMR and revealed information not usually available from NMR. Google's research competes against Microsoft, IBM, universities and efforts in China. The Chinese government has committed more than $15.2 billion to quantum research. Previous claims of quantum advantage have been met with skepticism.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: As it rushes to meet its pledge for "100 percent" of trips in electric vehicles by 2030, Uber is offering grants of $4,000 for drivers to swap their gas-guzzlers for zero-tailpipe emission vehicles. The company is also dropping its "Uber Green" branding in favor of the more simple "Uber Electric."

Uber has said it will be completely carbon neutral in North America and Europe by 2030 and in all global markets by 2040. But when it first announced this pledge in 2020, it said it wouldn't directly pay drivers to ditch their gas-burning vehicles in favor of EVs. Now, the company is reversing that decision in the hopes that direct payments can help accelerate EV adoption.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/22/1639229/uber-will-pay-drivers-4000-to-switch-to-evs?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Meta removed a deepfake video from Facebook that falsely depicted Catherine Connolly withdrawing from Ireland's presidential election. The video was posted to an account called RTE News AI and viewed almost 30,000 times over 12 hours before the Irish Independent contacted the platform. The fabricated bulletin featured AI-generated versions of RTE newsreader Sharon Ni Bheolain and political correspondent Paul Cunningham announcing that Connolly had ended her campaign and the election scheduled for Friday would be cancelled.

Connolly responded in a statement that she remained a candidate and called the video a disgraceful attempt to mislead voters. Meta confirmed the account violated its community standards against impersonating people and organizations. Ireland's media regulator Coimisiun na Mean contacted Meta about the incident and reminded the platform of its obligations under the EU Digital Services Act. An Irish Times poll published last Thursday found Connolly leading the race with 38% support.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/22/1724212/meta-allows-deepfake-of-irish-presidential-candidate-to-spread-for-12-hours-before-removal?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Social media platform Reddit sued AI startup Perplexity in New York federal court on Wednesday, accusing it and three other companies of unlawfully scraping its data to train Perplexity's AI-based search engine. Reddit said in the complaint that the data-scraping companies circumvented its data protection measures in order to steal data that Perplexity "desperately needs" to power its "answer engine" system.

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Google and Apple face enforced changes to how they operate their mobile phone platforms, after the UK's competition watchdog ruled the companies require tougher regulatory oversight. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority has conferred "strategic market status" (SMS) on the tech firms after investigating their mobile operating systems, app stores and browsers. It means Apple and Google will be subjected to tailormade guidelines to regulate their behaviour in the mobile market.

The CMA said the two companies have "substantial, entrenched" market power, with UK mobile phone owners using either Google or Apple's platforms and unlikely to switch between them. The regulator flagged the importance of their platforms to the UK economy and said they could be a bottleneck for businesses.

[...] Changes under consideration by the CMA include allowing users to be "steered" out of app stores to make purchases elsewhere, like on a company's own website. App developers have long taken issue with Apple and Google taking a cut from purchases made via apps. The CMA also wants both companies to ensure users have a "genuine choice" over the services they use on their devices, like digital wallets on Apple.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/22/181246/apple-and-google-face-enforced-changes-over-uk-smartphone-dominance?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.