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

UC Berkeley Scientists Hail Breakthrough In Decoding Whale Communication
UC Berkeley researchers working with Project CETI discovered that sperm whales produce vowel-like sounds embedded in their click codas, suggesting a far more complex communication system than previously understood. “It was striking just how structured the system was. I’ve never seen anything like that before with other animals,” … ⌘ Read more

We Can Now Track Individual Monarch Butterflies
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: For the first time, scientists are tracking the migration of monarch butterflies across much of North America, actively monitoring individual insects on journeys from as far away as Ontario all the way to their overwintering colonies in central Mexico. This long-sought achievement could provide crucial insights into … ⌘ Read more

Some People Never Forget a Face, and Now We Know Their Secret
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: A new study from researchers in Australia reveals that the people who never forget faces look “smarter, not harder.” In other words, they naturally focus on a person’s most distinguishing facial features. “Their skill isn’t something you can learn like a trick,” explains lead author James Dunn, a … ⌘ Read more

Electric Vehicle Sales Are Booming In South America
Chinese automakers are rapidly expanding across South America, boosted by the new Chinese-built Port of Chancay, aggressive pricing, local partnerships, and growing regional demand. Reuters reports: China has been ramping up sales since the opening last year of the Port of Chancay, north of Lima. The Chinese-built megaport has halved trans-Pacific shipping times just as C … ⌘ Read more

Google Is Collecting Troves of Data From Downgraded Nest Thermostats
Even after disabling remote control and officially ending support for early Nest Learning Thermostats, Google is still receiving detailed sensor and activity data from these devices, including temperature changes, motion, and ambient light. The Verge reports: After digging into the backend, security researcher Cody Kociemba found that the … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Mitigated the Largest Cloud DDoS Ever Recorded, 15.7 Tbps
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Security Affairs: On October 24, 2025, Azure DDoS Protection detected and mitigated a massive multi-vector attack peaking at 15.72 Tbps and 3.64 billion pps, the largest cloud DDoS ever recorded, aimed at a single Australian endpoint. Azure’s global protection network filtered the traffic, keeping servic … ⌘ Read more

An AI Podcasting Machine Is Churning Out 3,000 Episodes a Week
fjo3 shares a report from TheWrap: There are already at least 175,000 AI-generated podcast episodes on platforms like Spotify and Apple. That’s thanks to Inception Point AI, a startup with just eight employees cranking out 3,000 episodes a week covering everything from localized weather reports and pollen trackers to a detailed account of Charlie Kirk’s as … ⌘ Read more

NetChoice Sues Virginia To Block Its One-Hour Social Media Limit For Kids
NetChoice is suing Virginia to block a new law that limits kids under 16 to one hour of daily social media use unless parents approve more time, arguing the rule violates the First Amendment and introduces serious privacy risks through mandatory age-verification. The Verge reports: In addition to restricting access to legal speech … ⌘ Read more

Tech Giants’ Cloud Power Probed As EU Weighs Inclusion In DMA
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Azure, and Alphabet’s Google Cloud risk being dragged into the scope of the European Union’s crackdown on Big Tech as antitrust watchdogs prepare to study the platforms’ market power. The European Commission wants to decide if any of the trio should face a raft of new restri … ⌘ Read more

‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ is Expanding Fast, and That Should Worry Everyone
An anonymous reader shares a report: When Nigel Morris tells you he’s worried about the economy, you listen. As industry observers know, Morris co-founded Capital One and pioneered lending to subprime borrowers, building an empire on understanding exactly how much financial stress the average American can handle. Now, as an early investor … ⌘ Read more

Harvard Has Almost Half a Billion Dollars in Crypto
An anonymous reader shares a report: Harvard is ramping up its holdings in cryptocurrency. The nation’s oldest university reported a $443 million investment in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust in the third quarter. The school now holds 6.8 million shares of the exchange-traded fund, up from 1.9 million in the second quarter.

The digital currency amounts to a little less than … ⌘ Read more

Is Video Watching Bad for Kids? The Effect of Video Watching on Children’s Skills
Abstract of a paper on NBER: This paper documents video consumption among school-aged children in the U.S. and explores its impact on human capital development. Video watching is common across all segments of society, yet surprisingly little is known about its developmental consequences. With a bunching identificat … ⌘ Read more

Iran Begins Cloud Seeding To Induce Rain Amid Historic Drought
Authorities in Iran have sprayed clouds with chemicals to induce rain, in an attempt to combat the country’s worst drought in decades. From a report: Known as cloud-seeding, the process was conducted over the Urmia lake basin on Saturday, Iran’s official news agency Irna reported. Urmia is Iran’s largest lake, but has largely dried out leaving a vast … ⌘ Read more

AI Use in ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 7’ Draws Fire From US Lawmaker
An anonymous reader shares a report: The use of AI in the latest Call of Duty has prompted a US lawmaker to call for regulations to prevent artificial intelligence from taking jobs away from human workers. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who represents a large swathe of Silicon Valley, took aim at Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 after buyers noticed the pop … ⌘ Read more

Take-Two CEO Says Consoles Aren’t Going Away, But Gaming is Moving Toward PCs
Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two Interactive, which operates publishing labels including GTA-maker Rockstar Games and 2K, said on Monday that although gaming consoles are not going away, the industry is moving toward PCs in the next decade. From a report: “I think it’s moving towards PC and business is moving towards open … ⌘ Read more

UK Cyber Ransom Ban Risks Collapse of Essential Services
The UK government has been warned that its plan to ban operators of critical national infrastructure from paying ransoms to hackers is unlikely to stop cyber attacks and could result in essential services collapsing. From a report: The proposal, announced by the Home Office in July, is designed to deter cyber criminals by making it clear any attempt to blackmail … ⌘ Read more

Global Web Freedoms Tumble
Global internet freedom declined for a 15th consecutive year, according to Freedom House’s annual report. Semafor: “Always grim reading,” this year’s is particularly sobering, Tech Policy Press noted, with the lowest-ever portion of users living in countries categorized as “free.” Conditions declined in 27 of the 72 countries assessed, with those in Kenya – where anti-corruption protests were quelled, in part, by a seve … ⌘ Read more

Why Hotel-Room Cancellations Disappeared
Hotel cancellation policies have transformed over the past seven years. Travelers once could cancel reservations up until the day before check-in without penalty. That flexibility has largely vanished.

The shift began around 2018 when third-party travel-booking sites deployed “cancel-rebook” strategies, the Atlantic writes. These platforms would monitor hotel rates after securing initial reservati … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic CEO Says He’s ‘Deeply Uncomfortable’ With Unelected Tech Elites Shaping AI
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says he’s uneasy about how much power a handful of tech leaders – including himself – have over the future of artificial intelligence. From a report: “I think I’m deeply uncomfortable with these decisions being made by a few companies, by a few people,” Amodei told Anderson Cooper … ⌘ Read more

Florida Bill Would Require Cursive Instruction in Elementary Schools
An anonymous reader shares a report: Elementary-school students would have to learn how to write in cursive, under a bill set to be vetted by a House committee next week. Sen. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, filed a similar proposal (SB 444) on Monday. The House Student Academic Success Subcommittee is set to review the measure (HB 127) on Nov. … ⌘ Read more

Bezos Returns To CEO Role With AI Startup Project Prometheus
Jeff Bezos has founded an AI startup called Project Prometheus and will serve as its co-chief executive. This is his first formal operational role since stepping down as chief executive of Amazon in July 2021. The company has raised $6.2 billion in funding, The New York Times reports, partly from Bezos. The funding makes Project Prometheus one of the most wel … ⌘ Read more

How Should the Linux Kernel Handle AI-Generated Contributions?
Linux kernel maintainers “are grappling with how to integrate AI-generated contributions without compromising the project’s integrity,” reports WebProNews:

The latest push comes from a proposal by Sasha Levin, a prominent kernel developer at NVIDIA, who has outlined guidelines for tool-generated submissions. Posted to the kernel mailing list, these … ⌘ Read more

Bitcoin Erases Year’s Gain as Crypto Bear Market Deepens
655”Just a little more than a month after reaching an all-time high, Bitcoin has erased the more than 30% gain registered since the start of the year…” reports Bloomberg:

The dominant cryptocurrency fell below US$93,714 on Sunday, pushing the price beneath the closing level reached at the end of last year, when financial markets were rallying following Presiden … ⌘ Read more

More Tech Moguls Want to Build Data Centers in Outer Space
“To be clear, the current economics of space-based data centers don’t make sense,” writes the Wall Street Journal.

“But they could in the future, perhaps as soon as a decade or so from now, according to an analysis by Phil Metzger, a research professor at the University of Central Florida and formerly of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Executives Discuss How AI Will Change Windows, Programming – and Society
“Windows is evolving into an agentic OS,” Microsoft’s president of Windows Pavan Davuluri posted on X.com, “connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity and secure work anywhere.”

But former Uber software engineer and engineering manager Gergely Orosz was unimpressed. “Can’t see any re … ⌘ Read more

Chinese Astronauts Return From Their Space Station After Delay Blamed on Space Debris Damage
“Three Chinese astronauts returned from their nation’s space station Friday,” reports the Associated Press, “after more than a week’s delay because the return capsule they had planned to use was damaged, likely from being hit by space debris.”

The team left their Shenzhou-20 spacecraft i … ⌘ Read more

Rust in Android: More Memory Safety, Fewer Revisions, Fewer Rollbacks, Shorter Reviews
Android’s security team published a blog post this week about their experience using Rust. Its title? “Move fast and fix things.”

Last year, we wrote about why a memory safety strategy that focuses on vulnerability prevention in new code quickly yields durable and compounding gains. This year we look … ⌘ Read more

Some Americans Are Trying to Heat Their Homes With Bitcoin Mining
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:

[T]he computing power of crypto mining generates a lot of
heat, most which just ends up vented into the air. According to
digital assets brokerage, K33, the bitcoin mining industry generates about 100 TWh of heat annually — enough to heat all of
Finland.This energy waste within a very energy- … ⌘ Read more

Apple Speeds Planning for Replacing CEO Tim Cook Next Year
From the Business Standard:

Apple has accelerated its succession plans as the company prepares for Chief Executive Tim Cook to potentially step down as early as next year, Financial Times reported. Apple’s board and senior leaders have recently increased their focus on a smooth leadership transition after Cook’s more than 14 years at the helm of the $4 tril … ⌘ Read more

Deaths Linked to Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugs Rose 17% in England in 2024
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian:

The number of deaths linked to superbugs that do not respond to frontline antibiotics increased by 17% in England last year, according to official figures that raise concerns about the ongoing increase in antimicrobial resistance.

The figures, released by the UK H … ⌘ Read more

The Internet Archive Now Captures AI-Generated Content (Including Google’s AI Overviews)
CNN profiled the non-profit Internet Archive today — and included this tidbit about how they archive parts of the internet that are now “tucked in conversations with AI chatbots.”

The rise of artificial intelligence and AI chatbots means the Internet Archive is changing how it records the history of t … ⌘ Read more

Could Firefox Be the Browser That Protects the Privacy of AI Users?
Tech entrepreneur/blogger Anil Dash has been critical of AI browsers like ChatGPT Atlas. (He’s written that Atlas “substitutes its own AI-generated content for the web, but it looks like it’s showing you the web,” while its prompt-based/command-line interface resembles a clunky text adventure, and it’s true purpose seems to be ingesting more … ⌘ Read more

Are Data Centers Raising America’s Electricity Prices?
Residential utility bills in America “rose 6% on average nationwide in August compared with the same period in the previous year,” reports CNBC, citing statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration:

The reasons for price increases are often complex and vary by region. But in at least three states with high concentrations of data centers, electric bills cl … ⌘ Read more

Security Researchers Spot 150,000 Function-less npm Packages in Automated ‘Token Farming’ Scheme
An anonymous reader shared this report from The Register:

Yet another supply chain attack has hit the npm registry in what Amazon describes as “one of the largest package flooding incidents in open source registry history” — but with a twist. Instead of injecting credential-steal … ⌘ Read more