Verizon Cutting More Than 13,000 Jobs As It Restructures
An anonymous reader writes: U.S. wireless carrier Verizon said Thursday it will cut more than 13,000 jobs in its largest single layoff as it works to shrink costs and restructure operations. Verizon also said it plans to convert 179 corporate-owned retail stores into franchised operations and close one store.

Verizon’s new CEO, Dan Schulman, said in a note to employe … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Exec Asks: Why Aren’t More People Impressed With AI?
An anonymous reader shares a report: A Microsoft executive is questioning why more people aren’t impressed with AI, a week after the company touted the evolution of Windows into an “agentic OS,” which immediately triggered backlash.

“Jeez there so many cynics! It cracks me up when I hear people call AI underwhelming,” tweeted Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO for M … ⌘ Read more

Who is OpenAI’s Auditor?
OpenAI won’t say who audits its books. The company, which projects to hit an ARR of $20 billion this year and is valued at $500 billion, has committed to spending about $1.4 trillion on data centers over the next decade. It accounts for roughly two-thirds of unfulfilled contracts at Oracle and two-fifths at CoreWeave. Microsoft alone holds around $375 billion in unfulfilled contracts with OpenAI.

Reuters reported the company may t … ⌘ Read more

White House Prepares Executive Order To Block State AI Laws
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The White House is preparing to issue an executive order as soon as Friday that tells the Department of Justice and other federal agencies to prevent states from regulating artificial intelligence, according to four people familiar with the matter and a leaked draft of the order obtained by POLITICO. The dr … ⌘ Read more

Proctorio Settles Curious Lawsuit With Librarian Who Shared Public YouTube Videos
Canadian librarian Ian Linkletter has ended a five-year legal battle with ed-tech firm Proctorio after being sued for sharing public YouTube help videos that exposed how the company’s remote-proctoring AI works. Ars Technica reports: … Together, the videos, the help center screenshot, and another screenshot show … ⌘ Read more

Quantum Teleportation Between Photons From Two Distant Light Sources Achieved
Researchers in Germany achieved a major milestone for the future quantum internet by successfully teleporting quantum information between photons generated by two different, physically separated quantum dots – something never accomplished before due to the difficulty of producing indistinguishable photons from remote … ⌘ Read more

In the AI Race, Chinese Talent Still Drives American Research
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: When Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, unveiled the company’s Superintelligence Lab in June, he named 11 artificial intelligence researchers who were joining his ambitious effort to build a machine more powerful than the human brain. All 11 were immigrants educated in other countries. Seven … ⌘ Read more

China’s Diesel Trucks Are Shifting To Electric
Longtime Slashdot reader ukoda shares a report from the Associated Press: China is replacing its diesel trucks with electric models faster than expected, potentially reshaping global fuel demand and the future of heavy transport. In 2020, nearly all new trucks in China ran on diesel. By the first half of 2025, battery-powered trucks accounted for 22% of new heavy truck sales, up fro … ⌘ Read more

Tokyo Court Finds Cloudflare Liable For Manga Piracy in Long-Running Lawsuit
A Tokyo court ruled that Cloudflare is liable for aiding manga piracy after failing to act on infringement notices and continuing to cache and serve content for major piracy sites, awarding about $3.2 million in damages. TorrentFreak says the decision sets a significant precedent in Japan, suggesting CDN providers can face … ⌘ Read more

Adobe Bolsters AI Marketing Tools With $1.9 Billion Semrush Buy
Adobe is buying Semrush for $1.9 billion in a move to supercharge its AI-driven marketing stack. Reuters reports: Semrush designs and develops AI software that helps companies with search engine optimization, social media and digital advertising. The acquisition, expected to close in the first half of next year, would allow Adobe to help marketers better … ⌘ Read more

Apple N1 Wi-Fi Chip Improves On Older Broadcom Chips In Every Way
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This year’s newest iPhones included one momentous change that marked a new phase in the evolution of Apple Silicon: the Apple N1, Apple’s first in-house chip made to handle local wireless connections. The N1 supports Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and the Thread smart home communication protocol … ⌘ Read more

Saudi Makes Big Bet On AI Films As Hollywood Moves From Studios To Datacenters
pbahra writes: Saudi Arabia is betting that the future of Hollywood won’t be built in physical stages but in datacenters. In a push to anchor itself in next-generation film production, Riyadh-based Humain has led Luma AI’s latest Series C round, backing the shift towards cloud-based, AI-generated video rather … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia Beats Earnings Expectations, Even As Bubble Concerns Mount
Nvidia blew past earnings expectations with soaring revenue and profit, easing fears of an AI bubble and reinforcing its position as the engine of the global AI boom. From a report: Nvidia’s sales grew 62% year-over-year to $57 billion in the October quarter, ahead of the $54.9 billion Wall Street had projected, signaling that demand for AI chips rem … ⌘ Read more

Dutch Hand Back Control of Chinese-Owned Chipmaker Nexperia
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Dutch government suspended its powers over chipmaker Nexperia, restoring control to its Chinese owner (paywalled; alternative source) and defusing a standoff with Beijing that had begun to hamper automotive production around the world. The order that gave the Netherlands powers to block or revise decisions … ⌘ Read more

Can Chinese-Made Buses Be Hacked? Norway Drove One Down a Mine To Find Out
An anonymous reader shares a report: This summer, Oslo’s public-transport authority drove a Chinese electric bus deep into a decommissioned mine inside a nearby mountain to answer a question: Could it be hacked? Isolated by rock from digital interference, cybersecurity experts came back with a qualified yes: The bus could in the … ⌘ Read more

New Antibiotic Could Be a Breakthrough in Treatment for Killer TB, Trial Suggests
A new treatment for tuberculosis could boost cure rates and shorten the time needed to treat the disease by months, trial results suggest. The Guardian: Globally, an estimated 10.7 million people fell ill with TB last year and 1.23 million died from it. In its annual report on tuberculosis, launched last week, … ⌘ Read more

Ultra-Processed Food is Global Health Threat, Researchers Warn
Action is needed now to reduce ultra-processed food (UPF) in diets worldwide because of their threat to health, say international experts in a global review of research. From a report: They say the way we eat is changing - with a move away from fresh, whole foods to cheap, highly-processed meals - which is increasing our risk of a range of chronic … ⌘ Read more

Europe’s Cookie Nightmare is Crumbling
The EU’s cookie consent policies have been an annoying and unavoidable part of browsing the web in Europe since their introduction in 2018. But the cookie nightmare is about to crumble thanks to some big proposed changes announced by the European Commission today. From a report: Instead of having to click accept or reject on a cookie pop-up for every website you visit in Europe, the EU is preparing to … ⌘ Read more

Linus Torvalds Says Vibe Coding is Fine For Getting Started, ‘Horrible Idea’ For Maintenance
Linus Torvalds is “fairly positive” about vibe coding as a way for people to get computers to do things they otherwise could not. The Linux kernel maintainer made the comments during an interview at the Linux Foundation Open Source Summit in Seoul earlier this month. But he cautioned that … ⌘ Read more

UK To Ban the Resale of Tickets For Profit To Protect Fans
Britain said on Wednesday it would ban the resale of tickets to concerts, sport and other live events for profit, disrupting ticket touts and the platforms that benefit from their activities. From a report: Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said touts were ripping off fans by using bots to snap up batches of tickets for coveted shows and reselling them at sky-hig … ⌘ Read more

The Growing Problem With China’s Unreliable Numbers
Chinese economist Gao Shanwen told a Washington panel in December that China’s real GDP growth might be around 2% rather than the official figure near 5%. By January, Gao was no longer chief economist at SDIC Securities and went silent for almost a year.
As FT points out in a long piece, China does not publish quarterly GDP breakdowns showing consumption, investment and net exp … ⌘ Read more

More Than 60 US and Canadian Police Units Now Use Boston Dynamics’ Robot Dog
Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot is now deployed by more than 60 bomb squads and SWAT teams across the US and Canada. The 75-pound four-legged machine starts at around $100,000 and has been used in armed standoffs, hostage rescues and hazardous materials incidents since its commercial debut five years ago. The Massachusetts … ⌘ Read more

CDC Data Confirms US is 2 Months Away From Losing Measles Elimination Status
An anonymous reader shares a report: Federal health officials have linked two massive US measles outbreaks, confirming that the country is about two months away from losing its measles elimination status, according to a report by The New York Times. The Times obtained a recording of a call during which officials from th … ⌘ Read more

Chinese University Collected More AI Patents Than MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Harvard Combined
Tsinghua University collected 4,986 AI and machine learning patents between 2005 and the end of 2024. The Beijing institution has received more than 900 patents last year alone. The total exceeds the combined patent count from MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Harvard during the same period. Ch … ⌘ Read more

Cloudflare Explains Its Worst Outage Since 2019
Cloudflare suffered its worst network outage in six years on Tuesday, beginning at 11:20 UTC. The disruption prevented the content delivery network from routing traffic for roughly three hours. The failure, writes Cloudflare in a blog post, originated from a database permissions change deployed at 11:05 UTC. The modification altered how a database query returned information about … ⌘ Read more

Netgear Accused by Rival of China Smear To Fan Security Fear
An anonymous reader shares a report: California-based TP-Link says it may take a sales hit of more than $1 billion because of erroneous reports that the networking company’s technology has been “infiltrated” by Beijing. In a lawsuit, TP-Link claims its competitor, Netgear, orchestrated a smear by planting false claims with journalists and internet influen … ⌘ Read more

Man Who Cryogenically Froze Late Wife Sparks Debate By Dating New Partner
A Chinese man who cryogenically preserved his wife after her death has sparked a heated online debate after it emerged he began dating a new partner in 2020. Some argue it’s natural for him to move on, while others say he’s being selfish or disrespectful to both his late wife and his current partner. The BBC reports: As a sig … ⌘ Read more

US Backs Three Mile Island Nuclear Restart With $1 Billion Loan To Constellation
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The Trump administration will provide Constellation Energy with a $1 billion loan to restart the Crane Clean Energy Center nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, Department of Energy officials said Tuesday. Previously known as Three Mile Island Unit 1, the plant is expected … ⌘ Read more

Chinese Spies Are Trying To Reach UK Lawmakers Via LinkedIn, MI5 Warns
MI5 has warned U.K. lawmakers that Chinese intelligence operatives are using LinkedIn and recruitment fronts to target them for information gathering and long-term cultivation. PBS reports: Writing to lawmakers, House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle said a new MI5 “espionage alert” warned that Chinese nationals were “using LinkedIn pro … ⌘ Read more

Mexico Partially Lifts Longstanding Website Ban On Tor Network
Mexico has finally lifted its long-running Tor ban for the main government portal, allowing privacy-focused users, journalists, and activists to access gob.mx again after more than a decade of blocking. That said, the open data portal and the former Tor-compatible whistleblower system remain inaccessible. CyberInsider reports: The development follows … ⌘ Read more

Gen Z Officially Worse At Passwords Than 80-Year-Olds
A NordPass analysis found that Gen Z is actually worse at password security than older generations, with “12345” topping their list while “123456” dominates among everyone else. The Register reports: And while there were a few more “skibidis” among the Zoomer dataset compared to those who came before them, the trends were largely similar. Variants on the “123456” were a … ⌘ Read more

Cloud-Native Computing Is Poised To Explode
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: At KubeCon North America 2025 in Atlanta, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)’s leaders predicted an enormous surge in cloud-native computing, driven by the explosive growth of AI inference workloads. How much growth? They’re predicting hundreds of billions of dollars in spending over the next 18 months. […] Where cloud-native compu … ⌘ Read more

Red Hat Losing Another Prominent Linux Kernel Engineer
Another highly influential Linux kernel engineer, David Hildenbrand, is leaving Red Hat after a decade of major contributions to memory management, virtualization, and VirtIO. His recent kernel patch updates his maintainer info to a kernel.org address, signaling his departure. He hasn’t yet said where he’s headed next. Phoronix reports: David Hildenbrand serves as … ⌘ Read more

Blender 5.0 Released
Blender 5.0 has been released with major upgrades including HDR and wide-gamut color support on Linux via Wayland/Vulkan, significant theme and UI improvements, new color-space tools, revamped curve and geometry features, and expanded hardware requirements. 9to5Linux reports: Blender 5.0 also introduces a working color space for Blend files, a new AgX HDR view, a new Convert to Display compositor node, new Rec.2100-PQ and Rec.2100-HL … ⌘ Read more

Report Claims That Apple Has Yet Again Put the Mac Pro ‘On the Back Burner’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple’s Power Mac and Mac Pro towers used to be the company’s primary workstations, but it has been years since they were updated with the same regularity as the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. The Mac Pro has seen just four hardware updates in the last 15 years, and that’ … ⌘ Read more

ACLU and EFF Sue a City Blanketed With Flock Surveillance Cameras
An anonymous reader shares a report: Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued the city of San Jose, California over its deployment of Flock’s license plate-reading surveillance cameras, claiming that the city’s nearly 500 cameras create a pervasive database of residents movements in a s … ⌘ Read more

Klarna Says AI Drive Has Helped Halve Staff Numbers and Boost Pay
Klarna has claimed that AI-related savings have allowed the buy now, pay later company to increase staff salaries by nearly 60%, but hinted it could slash more jobs after nearly halving its workforce over the past three years. From a report: Chief executive Sebastian Siemiatkowski said headcount had dropped from 5,527 to 2,907 since 2022, mostly as … ⌘ Read more

Oracle is Already Underwater On Its ‘Astonishing’ $300B OpenAI Deal
An anonymous reader shares a report: It’s too soon to be talking about the Curse of OpenAI, but we’re going to anyway. Since September 10, when Oracle announced a $300 billion deal with the chatbot maker, its stock has shed $315 billion in market value.

OK, yes, it’s a gross simplification to just look at market cap. But equivalents to … ⌘ Read more

‘Talking To Windows’ Copilot AI Makes a Computer Feel Incompetent’
Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant in Windows 11 fails to replicate the capabilities shown in the company’s TV advertisements. The Verge tested Copilot Vision over a week using the same prompts featured in ads airing during NFL games. When asked to identify a HyperX QuadCast 2S microphone visible in a YouTube video – a task successfully completed i … ⌘ Read more

IRS Accessed Massive Database of Americans Flights Without a Warrant
An anonymous reader shares a report: The IRS accessed a database of hundreds of millions of travel records, which show when and where a specific person flew and the credit card they used, without obtaining a warrant, according to a letter signed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers and shared with 404 Media. The country’s major airlines, inc … ⌘ Read more

Federal Judge Rules Meta’s Instagram and WhatsApp Purchases Did Not Stifle Competition
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Meta did not illegally stifle competition when it acquired Instagram and WhatsApp. The decision marks Big Tech’s first major victory against antitrust enforcement that began during President Donald Trump’s first term. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission had sought to force … ⌘ Read more

Fund Managers Warn AI Investment Boom Has Gone Too Far
A majority of global fund managers think companies are overinvesting, as market anxiety grows about the sustainability of the AI spending boom. From a report: A net 20 per cent of fund managers surveyed this month by Bank of America said companies were spending too much on their investments – the first time this has been a majority view in data running back to 2005 … ⌘ Read more

Google Launches Gemini 3, Its ‘Most Intelligent’ AI Model Yet
Google released Gemini 3 on Tuesday, launching its latest AI model with a breakthrough score of 1501 Elo on the LMArena Leaderboard alongside state-of-the-art performance across multiple benchmarks including 91.9% on GPQA Diamond for PhD-level reasoning and 37.5% on Humanity’s Last Exam without tool usage. The model is available starting today in the Gemi … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft is Adding an ‘Experimental Agentic Features’ Toggle To Windows 11
Microsoft has rolled out a new preview build for Windows 11 Insiders in the Dev and Beta Channel this week that introduces a new toggle called ‘experimental agentic features’ that can be enabled or disabled in the Windows Settings app. From a report: According to Microsoft, this new toggle is designed to “allow agents to use ne … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft, Nvidia Commit Up To $15 Billion Investment in Anthropic as Claude Scales on Azure
Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI-rival Anthropic announced strategic partnerships today that will scale Claude on Microsoft Azure and bring up to $15 billion in new investment to the AI startup. Anthropic committed to purchase $30 billion of Azure compute capacity and contract additional capacity up to … ⌘ Read more

A Simple WhatsApp Security Flaw Exposed 3.5 Billion Phone Numbers
Researchers at the University of Vienna extracted phone numbers for 3.5 billion WhatsApp users by systematically checking every possible number through the messaging service’s contact discovery feature. The technique yielded profile photos for 57% of those accounts and profile text for 29 percent. The researchers checked roughly 100 million numbe … ⌘ Read more

Google Boss Says Trillion-Dollar AI Investment boom Has ‘Elements of Irrationality’
Every company would be affected if the AI bubble were to burst, the head of Google’s parent firm Alphabet has told the BBC. From the report: Speaking exclusively to BBC News, Sundar Pichai said while the growth of artificial intelligence investment had been an “extraordinary moment”, there was some “irrationali … ⌘ Read more

Valar Atomics Says It’s the First Nuclear Startup To Achieve Criticality
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Startup Valar Atomics said on Monday that it achieved criticality – an essential nuclear milestone – with the help of one of the country’s top nuclear laboratories. The El Segundo, California-based startup, which last week announced it had secured a $130 million funding round wi … ⌘ Read more

Cloudflare Outage Knocks Many Popular Websites Offline
An outage at Cloudflare that began moments ago has knocked many popular websites, including ChatGPT and X, according to user reports. Cloudflare says on its website: “Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which potentially impacts multiple customers. Further detail will be provided as more information becomes available.”

[![](https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitt … ⌘ Read more

How To Not Get Kidnapped For Your Bitcoin
schwit1 shares a report from the New York Times: Pete Kayll, a musclebound veteran of Britain’s Royal Marines, had an unusual instruction for the Bitcoin investors gathered in Switzerland in late October. “Just bite your way out,” he told them. It was the final day of a weekend-long cryptocurrency convention on the shore of Lake Lugano, near the Italian border. A small group of investors had l … ⌘ Read more