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Four years ago a small Microsoft Research team started creating an analog optical computer. They used commercially available parts like sensors from smartphone cameras, optical lenses, and micro-LED lights finer than a human hair. "As the light passes through the sensor at different intensities, the analog optical computer can add and multiply numbers," explains a Microsoft blog post. They envision the technology scaling to a computer that for certain problems is 100X faster and 100X more energy efficient - running AI workloads "with a fraction of the energy needed and at much greater speed than the GPUs running today's large language models." The results are described in a paper published in the scientific journal Nature, according to the blog post:At the same time, Microsoft is publicly sharing its "optimization solver" algorithm and the "digital twin" it developed so that researchers from other organizations can investigate this new computing paradigm and propose new problems to solve and new ways to solve them. Francesca Parmigiani, a Microsoft principal research manager who leads the team developing the AOC, explained that the digital twin is a computer-based model that mimics how the real analog optical computer [or "AOC"] behaves; it simulates the same inputs, processes and outputs, but in a digital environment - like a software version of the hardware. This allowed the Microsoft researchers and collaborators to solve optimization problems at a scale that would be useful in real situations. This digital twin will also allow other users to experiment with how problems, either in optimization or in AI, would be mapped and run on the analog optical computer hardware. "To have the kind of success we are dreaming about, we need other researchers to be experimenting and thinking about how this hardware can be used," Parmigiani said. Hitesh Ballani, who directs research on future AI infrastructure at the Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge, U.K. said he believes the AOC could be a game changer. "We have actually delivered on the hard promise that it can make a big difference in two real-world problems in two domains, banking and healthcare," he said. Further, "we opened up a whole new application domain by showing that exactly the same hardware could serve AI models, too." In the healthcare example described in the Nature paper, the researchers used the digital twin to reconstruct MRI scans with a good degree of accuracy. The research indicates that the device could theoretically cut the time it takes to do those scans from 30 minutes to five. In the banking example, the AOC succeeded in resolving a complex optimization test case with a high degree of accuracy... As researchers refine the AOC, adding more and more micro-LEDs, it could eventually have millions or even more than a billion weights. At the same time, it should get smaller and smaller as parts are miniaturized, researchers say.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the BBC:Microsoft's Azure cloud services have been disrupted by undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea, the US tech giant says. Users of Azure - one of the world's leading cloud computing platforms - would experience delays because of problems with internet traffic moving through the Middle East, the company said. Microsoft did not explain what might have caused the damage to the undersea cables, but added that it had been able to reroute traffic through other paths. Over the weekend, there were reports suggesting that undersea cable cuts had affected the United Arab Emirates and some countries in Asia.... On Saturday, NetBlocks, an organisation that monitors internet access, said a series of undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea had affected internet services in several countries, including India and Pakistan. "We do expect higher latency on some traffic that previously traversed through the Middle East," Microsoft said in their status announcement - while stressing that traffic "that does not traverse through the Middle East is not impacted".Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As America's trade talks with China were set to begin last July, a "puzzling" email reached several U.S. government agencies, law firms, and trade groups, reports the Wall Street Journal. It appeared to be from the chair of a U.S. Congressional committee, Representative John Moolenaar, asking recipients to review an alleged draft of upcoming legislation - sent as an attachment. "But why had the chairman sent the message from a nongovernment address...?" "The cybersecurity firm Mandiant determined the spyware would allow the hackers to burrow deep into the targeted organizations if any of the recipients had opened the purported draft legislation, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal."It turned out to be the latest in a series of alleged cyber espionage campaigns linked to Beijing, people familiar with the matter said, timed to potentially deploy spyware against organizations giving input on President Trump's trade negotiations. The FBI and the Capitol Police are investigating the Moolenaar emails, and cyber analysts traced the embedded malware to a hacker group known as APT41 - believed to be a contractor for Beijing's Ministry of State Security... The hacking campaign appeared to be aimed at giving Chinese officials an inside look at the recommendations Trump was receiving from outside groups. It couldn't be determined whether the attackers had successfully breached any of the targets. A Federal Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman declined to provide details but said the bureau was aware of the incident and was "working with our partners to identify and pursue those responsible...." The alleged campaign comes as U.S. law-enforcement officials have been surprised by the prolific and creative nature of China's spying efforts. The FBI revealed last month that a Beijing-linked espionage campaign that hit U.S. telecom companies and swept up Trump's phone calls actually targeted more than 80 countries and reached across the globe... The Moolenaar impersonation comes as several administration officials have recently faced impostors of their own. The State Department warned diplomats around the world in July that an impostor was using AI to imitate Secretary of State Marco Rubio's voice in messages sent to foreign officials. Federal authorities are also investigating an effort to impersonate White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, the Journal reported in May... The FBI issued a warning that month that "malicious actors have impersonated senior U.S. officials" targeting contacts with AI-generated voice messages and texts. And in January, the article points out, all the staffers on Moolenaar's committee "received emails falsely claiming to be from the CEO of Chinese crane manufacturer ZPMC, according to people familiar with the episode." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI Overviews have lowered click-through traffic to Daily Mail sites by as much as 89%, the publisher told a UK government body that regulates competition. So they've joined other top news organizations (including Guardian Media Group and the magazine trade body the Periodical Publishers Association) in asking the regulators "to make Google more transparent and provide traffic statistics from AI Overview and AI Mode to publishers," reports the Guardian:Publishers - already under financial pressure from soaring costs, falling advertising revenues, the decline of print and the wider trend of readers turning away from news - argue that they are effectively being forced by Google to either accept deals, including on how content is used in AI Overview and AI Mode, or "drop out of all search results", according to several sources... In recent years, Google Discover, which feeds users articles and videos tailored to them based on their past online activity, has replaced search as the main source of click-throughs to content. However, David Buttle, founder of the consultancy DJB Strategies, says the service, which is also tied to publishers' overall search deals, does not deliver the quality traffic that most publishers need to drive their long-term strategies. "Google Discover is of zero product importance to Google at all," he says. "It allows Google to funnel more traffic to publishers as traffic from search declines ... Publishers have no choice but to agree or lose their organic search. It also tends to reward clickbaity type content. It pulls in the opposite direction to the kind of relationship publishers want." Meanwhile, publishers are fighting a wider battle with AI companies seeking to plunder their content to train their large language models. The creative industry is intensively lobbying the government to ensure that proposed legislation does not allow AI firms to use copyright-protected work without permission, a move that would stop the "value being scraped" out of the 125bn sector. Some publishers have struck bilateral licensing deals with AI companies - such as the FT, the German media group Axel Springer, the Guardian and the Nordic publisher Schibsted with the ChatGPT maker OpenAI - while others such as the BBC have taken action against AI companies alleging copyright theft. "It is a two-pronged attack on publishers, a sort of pincer movement," says Chris Duncan, a former News UK and Bauer Media senior executive who now runs a media consultancy, Seedelta. "Content is disappearing into AI products without serious remuneration, while AI summaries are being integrated into products so there is no need to click through, effectively taking money from both ends. It is an existential crisis." "At the moment the AI and tech community are showing no signs of supporting publisher revenue," says the chief executive of the UK's Periodical Publishers Association...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's $3,500 Vision Pro is finding real traction in niche enterprise use, like CAE's pilot training, Lowe's kitchen design visualization, and Dassault's engineering workflows. "Over the last few weeks, I had an opportunity to try out some of those applications, and they are game-changers, albeit within their specific domains," writes Steven Rosenbush via the Wall Street Journal. "Companies should pay attention now to what's going on in these niche markets. Based on what I saw, these systems are having an impact on the way users integrate content development and engineering, which has implications for the way companies approach roles, teams and workflow." From the report: Home-improvement retailer Lowe's has deployed the Vision Pro at five locations in the San Francisco Bay Area and five locations in the Austin, Texas area. Customers use them to visualize how design ideas will look in their actual kitchen. The company plans to scale the effort to 100 of approximately 1,700 stores by the end of the year, eventually ramping up to 400 locations in markets with sufficient scale to justify the investment, Chief Digital and Information Officer Seemantini Godbole told me. [...] Dassault Systemes, the French industrial software company, has long created virtual worlds for commercial use. Scientists, manufacturing experts, product managers and others use its platforms to design and engineer molecules for drug development, as well as data centers, factories, aircraft and electric cars. The 3DExperience platform was launched more than a decade ago, pulling together a range of Dassault brands including 3DExcite on the premise that "everything is going to become an experience," 3DExcite Chief Executive Tom Acland said. In February, Dassault Systemes and Apple announced a collaboration to produce the 3DLive App, which went live February 7. Users include Hyundai, Virgin Galactic and Deutsche Aircraft, he said. [...] Canadian aircraft training company CAE is using Vision Pro to provide pilot training that complements full-motion flight simulator experience required for certification and recurrent checks, according to Chief Technology and Product Officer Emmanuel Levitte. The company has employed mixed reality and immersive training for at least 10 years. The Vision Pro has unlocked new capabilities, he said. The display is as sharp and readable as the controls in a real cockpit, which Levitte found not to be the case with other devices. The haptic feedback and audio quality also contribute to a more realistic training experience, he said. Remote crew members will also be able to be co-located virtually, enabling training that was previously only possible when individuals were physically in the same cockpit, according to Levitte.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Grady Martin writes: Natron Energy has announced the immediate cessation of all operations, including its manufacturing plant in Holland, Michigan, and plans to build a $1.4 billion "gigafactory" in North Carolina. A company representative cited "efforts to raise sufficient new funding [being] unsuccessful" as the rationale for the decision. When previously covered by Slashdot, comments on the merits of sodium-ion included the ability to use aluminum in lieu of heavier, more expensive copper anodes; a charge rate ten times that of lithium-ion; and Earth's abundance of sodium -- though at least one anonymous coward predicted the cancellation of the project.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader sinij shares a report from CBC News: Prime Minister Mark Carney is delaying a plan to force automakers to hit minimum sales levels for electric vehicles. The move is part of a series of measures the government announced Friday to help the sectors most affected by U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs. The EV mandate will be paused as the government conducts a 60-day review of the policy, and will be waived for 2026 models. Sources told CBC News that the review will look at the entire mandate and next steps. "We have an auto sector which, because of the massive change in U.S. policy, is under extreme pressure. We recognize that," Carney said at a news conference in Mississauga, Ont. "They've got enough on their plate right now. So we're taking that off." The government is using the review as part of broader look at all the government's climate measures, he added. [...] Brian Kingston, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, called it "an important first step." "The EV mandate imposes unsustainable costs on auto manufacturers, putting at risk Canadian jobs and investment in this critical sector of the economy," he said in a statement. "A full repeal of the regulation is the most effective way to provide immediate relief to the industry and keep it competitive."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: President Donald Trump said on Thursday his administration would impose tariffs on semiconductor imports from companies not shifting production to the U.S., speaking ahead of a dinner with major technology company CEOs. "Yeah, I have discussed it with the people here. Chips and semiconductors -- we will be putting tariffs on companies that aren't coming in. We will be putting a tariff very shortly," Trump said without giving an exact time or rate. "We will be putting a very substantial tariff, not that high, but fairly substantial tariff with the understanding that if they come into the country, if they are coming in, building, planning to come in, there will not be a tariff," Trump told reporters. "If they are not coming in, there is a tariff," Trump said in his comments on semiconductors. "Like, I would say (Apple CEO) Tim Cook would be in pretty good shape," he added, as Cook sat across the table. Further reading: Trump Basks in Tech Leaders' Spending Vows at White House DinnerRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Mozilla announced today that they will end 32-bit Linux support for Firefox in 2026, with version 144 being the last release and ESR 140 as the fallback option. Phoronix reports: Firefox has continued providing 32-bit Linux binaries even with most other web browsers and operating systems going all-in on x86_64 support. But given that 32-bit Linux support is waning by distributions and the vast majority of distributions aren't even shipping i686 install images anymore, they will be removing 32-bit Linux builds in 2026.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers from Nanjing University and the University of Sydney developed an AI-powered bug-hunting agent that mimics human vulnerability discovery, validating flaws with proof-of-concept exploits. The Register reports: Ziyue Wang (Nanjing) and Liyi Zhou (Sydney) have expanded upon prior work dubbed A1, an AI agent that can develop exploits for cryptocurrency smart contracts, with A2, an AI agent capable of vulnerability discovery and validation in Android apps. They describe A2 in a preprint paper titled "Agentic Discovery and Validation of Android App Vulnerabilities." The authors claim that the A2 system achieves 78.3 percent coverage on the Ghera benchmark, surpassing static analyzers like APKHunt (30.0 percent). And they say that, when they used A2 on 169 production APKs, they found "104 true-positive zero-day vulnerabilities," 57 of which were self-validated via automatically generated proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits. One of these included a medium-severity flaw in an Android app with over 10 million installs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Deadline: Anthropic has agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion into a class action fund as part of a settlement of litigation brought by a group of book authors. The sum, disclosed in a court filing on Friday, "will be the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history, larger than any other copyright class action settlement or any individual copyright case litigated to final judgment," the attorneys for the authors wrote. The settlement also includes a provision that releases Anthropic only for its conduct up the August 25, meaning that new claims could be filed over future conduct, according to the filing. Anthropic also has agreed to destroy the datasets used in its models. The settlement figure amounts to about $3,000 per class work, according to the filing. You can read the terms of Anthropic's copyright settlement here (PDF). A hearing in the case is scheduled for Sept. 8.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A first-of-its-kind global research expedition has extracted freshwater samples from beneath the Atlantic Ocean floor off Cape Cod, documenting a massive aquifer stretching from New Jersey to Maine. The three-month Expedition 501, funded at $25 million by the National Science Foundation and European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling, drilled up to 1,289 feet into the seabed at sites 20-30 miles offshore. Samples registered salinity as low as 1 part per thousand -- meeting U.S. freshwater standards -- with some readings even lower. Scientists collected nearly 50,000 liters for laboratory analysis to determine whether the water originates from ancient glacial melt or current terrestrial groundwater systems. The UN projects global freshwater demand will exceed supply by 40% within five years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is giving away Microsoft 365 Personal subscriptions to all US college students. From a report: This subscription gives students free access to Microsoft's Office apps and the Copilot AI assistant integration for a year, after which the students are eligible for a 50 percent discount to continue the subscription. While most students have access to education versions of Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, Microsoft's offer is for student's own personal Microsoft accounts, and is available to claim until October 31st. Microsoft 365 Personal is usually $99.99 a year, or $9.99 a month, and includes 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Networks of pipes and heat exchangers can transfer excess heat from buildings into nearby bodies of water -- but as the world warms, the cooling potential of some water courses is now diminishing, Wired reports. Paris's district cooling network, which pipes Seine river water to cool 800 buildings including the Louvre Museum, faces diminishing returns as climate change warms water temperatures. The system achieves coefficients of performance between 4 and 15 -- significantly higher than conventional air conditioning -- by transferring building heat through heat exchangers to the river. The Seine briefly exceeded 27C this summer, approaching the 30C regulatory limit for returned water. The network currently spans 100 kilometers of pipes and will expand to 245 kilometers by 2042 to serve 3,000 buildings. Similar installations operate in Toronto using lake water from 83-meter depths and at Cornell University drawing 4C water from Lake Cayuga at 76 meters. Rotterdam and other cities are developing comparable systems as cooling demand rises.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Can AI help "smooth over" discussion on abortion, racism, immigration, or Israel-Palestine? Columbia University sure hopes so. The Verge has learned that the university recently began testing Sway, an AI debate program currently in beta. Developed by two researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Sway matches up students with opposing views to chat one-on-one about hot-button issues and "facilitates better discussions between them," according to the tool's website. Nicholas DiBella, a postdoctoral scholar at CMU who helped develop Sway, told The Verge that about 3,000 students from more than 30 colleges and universities have used the tool. One of those may soon be Columbia. News of the potential partnership comes after more than two years of escalating tensions at Columbia between students, administrators, and the federal government. The university has spent years at the center of controversy after controversy: expulsions of pro-Palestinian student protesters, a string of police raids, and demands from the federal government. People at Columbia's Teachers College are testing Sway in order to potentially integrate it into the conflict resolution curriculum and "bridge-building initiatives at Columbia," DiBella said. He said there's also been interest from other teams at Columbia in using Sway for the fall 2026 semester and onward. Simon Cullen, an assistant professor at CMU and the other developer behind Sway, told The Verge that the company is also in touch with Columbia University Life.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic is blocking its services from Chinese-controlled companies, saying it's taking steps to prevent a US adversary from advancing in AI and threatening American national security. From a report: The San Francisco-based startup is widening existing restrictions on "authoritarian" regimes to cover any company that's majority-owned by entities from countries such as China. That includes their overseas operations, it said in a statement. Foreign-based subsidiaries could be used to access its technology and further military applications, the startup added. Anthropic's Dario Amodei has publicly advocated technological sanctions on China, particularly after DeepSeek stunned Silicon Valley with an advanced model this year. While Anthropic didn't name any companies, Chinese big tech firms from Alibaba to ByteDance have joined DeepSeek in an intensifying race to build AI services that can rival the likes of OpenAI in the US. Chinese entities "could use our capabilities to develop applications and services that ultimately serve adversarial military and intelligence services and broader authoritarian objectives," Anthropic said in its Friday post.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Much of the world favors protecting 30% of the world's land and water for nature by 2030, according to new research that has found overwhelming public support for the goal across eight countries on five continents. The Guardian: Nearly 200 nations agreed in 2022 to set aside 30% of the world's land and 30% of marine areas for nature. But just 17.6% of the world's land and 8.6% of the seas are now under global protection, and more than 100 nations are less than halfway to meeting the target, which was established under the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Governments will need to implement swift changes if they are to achieve the target within the next five years. But setting aside more space for nature can be a political pitfall. Often it can mean restricting people's access to land, halting resource extraction and relocating human settlements. These issues, along with possible effects on economic growth, are often cited by countries as barriers to expanding protecting areas. Research published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, however, suggests that more than 80% of the public across eight sampled countries support the policy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton has warned that AI will concentrate wealth among a small elite while impoverishing most workers. The computer scientist, who pioneered neural network research in the 1980s, told Financial Times that rich people will use AI to replace workers, creating massive unemployment and profit increases. Hinton, who left Google in 2023 after selling his AI startup for $44 million a decade earlier, dismissed universal basic income as insufficient to address human dignity concerns from job losses. The 77-year-old physicist predicts superintelligent AI will arrive within five to twenty years. He blamed capitalism rather than AI technology itself for the coming economic disruption, stating the system ensures AI will primarily benefit the wealthy rather than solve grand problems like hunger or poverty.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's Google was hit with a $3.45 billion EU antitrust fine on Friday for anti-competitive practices in its lucrative adtech business, marking its fourth penalty in its decade long fight with EU competition regulators. From a report: The move by the European Commission was triggered by a complaint from the European Publishers Council and comes amid a threat by U.S. President Donald Trump to retaliate against the European Union for any push against Big Tech. The EU competition enforcer had originally planned to hand out the fine on Monday but opposition from EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic on concerns about the impact on U.S. tariffs on European cars derailed EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera's plan. The Commission said Google favored its own online display technology services to the detriment of rivals and online publishers and that it abused its market power since 2014 until today.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Panasonic's market value has remained flat at approximately $25 billion over the past decade while rivals Hitachi, Sony and NEC have increased their valuations sixfold during the same period. The Osaka-based conglomerate announced a restructuring plan in May 2025 to eliminate 10,000 positions and streamline operations across its six operating companies and hundreds of product lines. The company generates $57 billion in annual revenue and maintains dominant positions in several markets. Financial Times reports: Within Panasonic's six operating companies and hundreds of product lines are industrial technology gems. The company supplies 70 per cent of the world's in-flight entertainment systems, its facial recognition technology is being used to measure brain health, and its EV battery plants are among the world's most efficient, according to auto industry insiders.Panasonic chief said in January that AI-driven hardware and software solutions would constitute 30% of revenues by 2035, compared to approximately 10% currently. But Goldman Sachs analyst Ryo Harada wrote recently that investors are seeking a growth strategy beyond the announced reforms.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google's CEO Sundar Pichai stood smiling in a leafy-green California garden in September 2020 and declared that the tech behemoth was entering the "most ambitious decade yet" in its climate action. "Today, I'm proud to announce that we intend to be the first major company to operate carbon free -- 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year," he said, in a video announcement at the time. Pichai added that he knew the "road ahead would not be easy," but Google "aimed to prove that a carbon-free future is both possible and achievable fast enough to prevent the most dangerous impacts of climate change." Five years on, just how hard Google's "energy journey" would become is clear. In June, Google's Sustainability website proudly boasted a headline pledge to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030. By July, that had all changed. An investigation by Canada's National Observer has found that Google's net-zero pledge has quietly been scrubbed, demoted from having its own section on the site to an entry in the appendices of the company's sustainability report.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Uber's Indian arm has started using its app to offer rideshare and delivery drivers the chance to make money by classifying data used by AI systems. From a report: Megha Yethadka, global head of Uber AI Solutions, revealed the new gigs in a Thursday LinkedIn post in which she said drivers sometimes have downtime during the day or might want to make some extra cash after hours. Yethadka said the work can involve reviewing photos, counting objects, classifying text, recording audio, or digitizing receipts. She said the gigs are "Powering our enterprise customers worldwide for their gen AI models or consumer applications." "Until now, these tasks were completed by independent contractors outside the app," Yethadka wrote. "The early results are very promising, and we're eager to scale this further." In an accompanying video, she mentioned "worldwide" expansion for the offering. Prabhjeet Singh, Uber's president for India and South Asia, said the gigs are available in 12 cities and that "tens of thousands of drivers" are already performing what Uber calls "digital tasks."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A UK government trial of Microsoft's M365 Copilot found no clear productivity gains despite user satisfaction with tasks like summarizing meetings and writing emails. While the tool sped up some routine work, it actually slowed down more complex tasks like Excel analysis and PowerPoint creation, often producing lower-quality results. The Register reports: The Department for Business and Trade received 1,000 licenses for use between October and December 2024, with the majority of these allocated to volunteers and 30 percent to randomly selected participants. Some 300 of these people consented to their data being analyzed. An evaluation of time savings, quality assurance, and productivity was then calculated in the assessment (PDF). Overall, 72 percent of users were satisfied or very satisfied with their digital assistant and voiced disappointment when the test ended. However, the reality of productivity gains was more nuanced than Microsoft's marketing materials might suggest. Around two-thirds of the employees in the trial used M365 at least once a week, and 30 percent used it at least once a day -- which doesn't sound like great value for money. [...] According to the M365 Copilot monitoring dashboard made available in the trial, an average of 72 M365 Copilot actions were taken per user. "Based on there being 63 working days during the pilot, this is an average of 1.14 M365 Copilot actions taken per user per day," the study says. Word, Teams, and Outlook were the most used, and Loop and OneNote usage rates were described as "very low," less than 1 percent and 3 percent per day, respectively. "PowerPoint and Excel were slightly more popular; both experienced peak activity of 7 percent of license holders using M365 Copilot in a single day within those applications," the study states. The three most popular tasks involved transcribing or summarizing a meeting, writing an email, and summarizing written comms. These also had the highest satisfaction levels, we're told. Participants were asked to record the time taken for each task with M365 Copilot compared to colleagues not involved in the trial. The assessment report adds: "Observed task sessions showed that M365 Copilot users produced summaries of reports and wrote emails faster and to a higher quality and accuracy than non-users. Time savings observed for writing emails were extremely small. "However, M365 Copilot users completed Excel data analysis more slowly and to a worse quality and accuracy than non-users, conflicting time savings reported in the diary study for data analysis. PowerPoint slides [were] over 7 minutes faster on average, but to a worse quality and accuracy than non-users." This means corrective action was required. A cross-section of participants was asked questions in an interview -- qualitative findings -- and they claimed routine admin tasks could be carried out with greater efficiency with M365 Copilot, letting them "redirect time towards tasks seen as more strategic or of higher value, while others reported using these time savings to attend training sessions or take a lunchtime walk." Nevertheless, M365 Copilot did not necessarily make them more productive, the assessment found. This is something Microsoft has worked on with customers to quantify the benefits and justify the greater expense of a license for M365 Copilot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon's Project Kuiper has landed its first airline deal with JetBlue and plans to offer satellite-powered in-flight Wi-Fi starting in 2027. The Verge reports: Yesterday, Amazon's Panos Panay showed off a speed test using an "enterprise-grade customer terminal" (aka, dish) to achieve a download speed of just over a gigabit. Fine, but we'll have to wait to see how it performs once individuals using consumer dishes at scale. Amazon says the first customers will start using the service this year, ahead of a broader rollout in 2026. Project Kuiper-powered Wi-Fi will be available on "select" aircraft initially. Amazon says its satellites will provide lower latency and "more reliable service" for passengers, as they orbit between 367 and 391 miles above Earth -- far closer than the geostationary satellites that orbit around 22,369 miles above the planet. Amazon has also struck a deal with Airbus to build Project Kuiper's satellite internet service into its aircraft.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Fine-particulate air pollution can drive devastating forms of dementia by triggering the formation of toxic clumps of protein that destroy nerve cells as they spread through the brain, research suggests. Exposure to the airborne particles causes proteins in the brain to misfold into the clumps, which are hallmarks of Lewy body dementia, the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer's disease. The finding has "profound implications" for preventing the neurodegenerative disorder, which affects millions worldwide, with scientists calling for a concerted effort to improve air quality by cutting emissions from industrial activity and vehicle exhausts, improving wildfire management and reducing wood burning in homes. The researchers began by analyzing hospital records of the 56.5 million US Medicare patients. They looked at those who were admitted for the first time between 2000 and 2014 with the protein damage. Armed with the patients' zip codes, the scientists estimated their long-term exposure to PM2.5 pollution, airborne particles that are smaller than 2.5 thousandths of a millimeter. These can be inhaled deep into the lungs and are found in the bloodstream, brain and other organs. They found that long-term exposure to PM2.5 raised the risk of Lewy body dementia, but had less of an impact on rates of another neurodegenerative brain disease that is not driven by the toxic proteins. Lewy bodies are made from a protein called alpha-synuclein. The protein is crucial for healthy brain functioning, but can misfold in various ways to produce different kinds of harmful Lewy bodies. These can kill nerve cells and cause devastating disease by spreading through the brain. To see if air pollution could trigger Lewy bodies, the team exposed mice to PM2.5 pollution every other day for 10 months. Some were normal mice, but others were genetically modified to prevent them making alpha-synuclein. The results were striking: in normal mice, nerve cells died off, leading to brain shrinkage and cognitive decline. The genetically modified mice were largely unaffected. Further work in mice showed that PM2.5 pollution drove the formation of aggressive, resilient and toxic clumps of alpha-synuclein clumps that looked very similar to Lewy bodies in humans. Although the work is in mice, the findings are considered compelling evidence. The work has been published in the journal Science.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a landmark collaboration across 22 labs, neuroscientists have created the first brain-wide map of decision-making in mice, tracking over 620,000 neurons across nearly 280 brain regions. They found that decision-making is distributed much more broadly than previously thought, involving not just "cognitive" centers but also regions linked to movement. From a report: The task was deceptively simple task. Mice sat in front of a screen that intermittently displayed a black-and-white striped circle for a brief amount of time on either the left or right side. A mouse could earn a sip of sugar water if they quickly moved the circle toward the center of the screen by operating a tiny steering wheel in the same direction, often doing so within one second. On some trials, the circle was faint, requiring the animal to rely on past experience to make a guess, which allowed researchers to study how expectations influence future decisions. While the mice performed the task, researchers recorded brain activity using high-density electrodes that allowed them to monitor hundreds of neurons across many regions simultaneously. The work was divided across the participating labs, so that each lab mapped a particular region of the mouse brain. The pooled dataset covers 620,000 neurons recorded from 139 mice in 12 labs, encompassing nearly the entire brain. The resulting map revealed that decision-making activity is distributed across the brain, including in areas traditionally associated with movement rather than cognition. The findings have been published in two papers in the journal Nature.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An Indiana bankruptcy lawyer named Mark Zuckerberg is suing Meta after his Facebook page was repeatedly shut down for "impersonating" CEO Mark Zuckerberg, despite being his real legal name. TechCrunch reports: Mark Zuckerberg the lawyer uses a commercial Facebook page to advertise his legal practice and communicate with potential clients. But his page has been disabled five times in the last eight years, since Meta's moderation systems flag his account as falsely impersonating Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the platform. Mark Zuckerberg is not impersonating Mark Zuckerberg, because he, too, is Mark Zuckerberg. In his legal complaint, Mark Zuckerberg points out that he has been practicing law since Mark Zuckerberg was just three years old. "It's not funny," Mark Zuckerberg, the lawyer, said to Indianapolis' 13WTHR. "Not when they take my money. This really pissed me off." Mark Zuckerberg has spent over $11,000 to advertise his page on Mark Zuckerberg's Meta platforms, but when Mark Zuckerberg's account is disabled for allegedly impersonating Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg still has to pay for these advertisements. Zuckerberg created a website, iammarkzuckerberg.com, chronicling how his life has been shaped by being named Mark Zuckerberg. The lawsuit can be found here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Warner Bros. Discovery has filed a major copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, accusing the AI image generator of exploiting its movies and TV shows to train models and generate near-identical reproductions of iconic characters like Batman, Bugs Bunny, and Rick and Morty. From The Hollywood Reporter: The company "brazenly dispenses Warner Bros. Discovery's intellectual property" by letting subscribers produce images and videos of iconic copyrighted characters, alleges the complaint, filed on Thursday in California federal court. "The heart of what we do is develop stories and characters to entertain our audiences, bringing to life the vision and passion of our creative partners," said a Warner Bros. Discovery spokesperson in a statement. "Midjourney is blatantly and purposefully infringing copyrighted works, and we filed this suit to protect our content, our partners, and our investments." For years, AI companies have been training their technology on data scraped across the internet without compensating creators. It's led to lawsuits from authors, record labels, news organizations, artists and studios, which contend that some AI tools erode demand for their content. Warner Bros. Discovery joins Disney and Universal, which earlier this year teamed up to sue Midjourney. By their thinking, the AI company is a free-rider plagiarizing their movies and TV shows. In the lawsuit, Warner Bros. Discovery points to Midjourney generating images of iconic copyrighted characters. At the forefront are heroes who're at the center of DC Studios' movies and TV shows, like Superman, Wonder Woman and The Joker; others are Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and Scooby-Doo characters who've become ubiquitous household names; more are Cartoon Network characters, including those from Rick and Morty, who've emerged as something of cultural touchstones in recent years. [...] The lawsuit argues Midjourney's ability to return copyrighted characters is a "clear draw for subscribers," diverting consumers away from purchasing Warner Bros. Discovery-approved posters, wall art and prints, among other products that must now compete against the service. [...] Warner Bros. Discovery seeks Midjourney's profits attributable to the alleged infringement or, alternatively, $150,000 per infringed work, which could leave the AI company on the hook for massive damages. The thrust of the studios' lawsuits will likely be decided by one question: Are AI companies covered by fair use, the legal doctrine in intellectual property law that allows creators to build upon copyrighted works without a license? The lawsuit can be found here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Science: According to a new medical survey, scrolling on your smartphone while using the toilet may dramatically increase your risk of hemorrhoids. The evidence is laid out in a study published on September 3 in the journal PLOS One. [...] Over the past 20 years, one single device has unequivocally lengthened the amount of time most people spend sitting. "We're still uncovering the many ways smartphones and our modern way of life impact our health," Harvard Medical School gastroenterologist and study co-author Trisha Pasricha said in a statement. "It's possible that how and where we use them -- such as while in the bathroom -- can have unintended consequences." To test this theory, Pasricha and colleagues oversaw a study of 125 adults who recently received a colonoscopy screening. The patients were surveyed on both their daily lifestyles and toilet traditions, while endoscopists subsequently evaluated them for hemorrhoids. Of those volunteers, 66 percent reported passing time in the bathroom while smartphone scrolling. After factoring in potential hemorrhoid influences like age, exercise habits, and fiber intake, the researchers determined that those who relied on this screentime had a 46 percent higher risk of hemorrhoid problems than non-users. "It's incredibly easy to lose track of time when we're scrolling on our smartphones -- popular apps are designed entirely for that purpose," added Pasricha. The survey's results made this abundantly clear: 37 percent of smartphone users spent over five minutes at a time on the toilet, while barely seven percent of non-users reported the same. In general, people opted for reading the news and checking their social media while in the bathroom. [...] Pasricha cautioned against drawing any definitive conclusions just yet, noting the preliminary study's comparatively small sample size. The team intends to investigate the issue further, possibly by tracking patients over longer periods of time, while also experimenting with ways to limit smartphone use. "We need to study this further, but it's a safe suggestion to leave the smartphone outside the bathroom when you need to have a bowel movement," said Pasricha. "If it's taking longer, ask yourself why. Was it because having a bowel movement was really so difficult, or was it because my focus was elsewhere?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel shelled out $16.5 billion on R&D in 2024, outspending Nvidia by 28% and AMD by 156%, with much of the cash going into chip design, fabrication tech, and the upcoming Nova Lake architecture. "When you compare the R&D expenditures to the amount of revenue, though, the story takes on a very different look," notes PC Gamer. "Intel spent 31% of its net revenue, and 26% for AMD, but Nvidia and Samsung got by on just 10% and 4%, respectively." From the report: An analysis of research and development expenditure by TechInsights was reported by Korea JoongAng Daily, but you can get the numbers yourself by pulling up each company's 2024 financial results. For example, AMD declared that it spent $6.456 billion last year (pdf, page 1) on R&D, whereas Nvidia forked out $12.914 billion. It's worth noting that Nvidia's financial statements are numbered one year ahead of the actual period (FY 2026 is 2025 and so on). Anyway, those figures pale in comparison to how much cash Intel burned through in 2024 to research and develop chip, fabrication technologies, software, and all kinds of tech stuffa"a staggering $16.546 billion (pdf, page 25). That's 28% more than Nvidia and a frankly unbelievable 156% more than AMD. The nearest non-US semiconductor firm is Samsung Electronics, which spent a reported $9.5 billion on R&D. That would place third, comfortably ahead of AMD, and it strongly suggests that if you have your own foundries for making chips, you need to spend a lot of cash on finding ways to make better processors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Philips Hue is rolling out MotionAware, a new feature that turns its smart bulbs into motion sensors using radio-frequency (RF) Zigbee signals. The upgrade works with most Hue bulbs made since 2014, but requires the new $99 Bridge Pro hub to enable. The Verge reports: To create a MotionAware motion-sensing zone, you need Hue's new Bridge Pro and at least three Hue devices in a room. It works with all new and most existing mains-powered Hue products via a firmware update. That includes smart bulbs, light strips, and fixtures. Portable devices, such as the Hue Go or Table Lamp, and battery-powered accessories, such as Hue switches, aren't compatible. Neither is Hue's current smart plug. [...] "All of the functionality you get with our physical motion sensors -- including turning on when motion is detected or off when there's been no movement for a certain amount of time -- can be configured on motion-aware motion events," says George Yianni, Hue CTO and founder, in an interview with The Verge. "We've done something that's quite a lot better than what else is out there." MotionAware is occupancy sensing, not presence sensing; it requires movement. Yianni says it's comparable to the passive infrared sensing (PIR) Hue's physical sensors use. This means it can be triggered by pets or other motion. A sensitivity slider in the app helps fine-tune detection. According to Yianni, a key benefit over PIR is that a MotionAware zone can cover a larger area than a single PIR sensor, and it's also not limited to line of sight. MotionAware can't sense light levels, which Hue Motion Sensors can, but you can pair a light sensor to a motion zone to feed it that data. The positioning of the lights will also play a role in determining the effectiveness of the motion sensing. "We recommend that the lights surround an area which will roughly define the detection area in which motion will be detected," says Yianni. "It will sense around the lights and in the broader room thanks to reflections, but detection reliability will depend on lots of factors." Beyond lighting automation, MotionAware can also integrate with Hue Secure, Hue's DIY security platform that includes cameras, contact sensors, and a new video doorbell. Motion detection can trigger lights to flash red, activate Hue's new plug-in chime/siren, and send an alert to your phone with a button to call emergency services. [...] MotionAware is built on RF sensing -- a technology that uses wireless signals to "see" a space and detect disruptions within it. The data is then sent to the Bridge Pro, where AI algorithms are applied to figure out what is causing those disruptions, so the system can act accordingly. This is why it's limited to the Bridge Pro, the V2 bridge isn't powerful enough to run those algorithms, says Yianni.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Managers and supervisors brace yourselves: calling the boss a dickhead is not necessarily a sackable offense, a tribunal has ruled. The ruling came in the case of an office manager who was sacked on the spot when -- during a row -- she called her manager and another director dickheads. Kerrie Herbert has been awarded almost 30,000 pounds in compensation and legal costs after an employment tribunal found she had been unfairly dismissed. The employment judge Sonia Boyes ruled that the scaffolding and brickwork company she worked for had not "acted reasonably in all the circumstances in treating [her] conduct as a sufficient reason to dismiss her." "She made a one-off comment to her line manager about him and a director of the business," Boyes said. "The comment was made during a heated meeting. "Whilst her comment was not acceptable, there is no suggestion that she had made such comments previously. Further ... this one-off comment did not amount to gross misconduct or misconduct so serious to justify summary dismissal." [...] Boyes found that Herbert was summarily fired because of her use of the word "dickheads" and ruled that the company had failed to follow proper disciplinary procedures. She concluded that calling her bosses dickheads was not sufficient to fire Herbert and ordered the firm to pay 15,042.81 pounds in compensation. In her latest judgment she also ruled it had to pay 14,087 pounds towards her legal fees. "If it was anyone else in this position they would have walked years ago due to the goings-on in the office, but it is only because of you two dickheads that I stayed," said Herbert. Swannell retorted: "Don't call me a fucking dickhead or my wife. That's it, you're sacked. Pack your kit and fuck off."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nepal's government said Thursday it is blocking most social media platforms including Facebook, X and YouTube because the companies failed to comply with regulations that required them to register with the government. From a report: Nepal's Minister for Communication and Information Prithvi Subba Gurung said about two dozen social network platforms that are widely used in Nepal were repeatedly given notices to come forward and register their companies officially in the country. The platforms would be blocked immediately, he said. TikTok, Viber and three other social media platforms would be allowed to operate in Nepal because they have registered with the government. Nepal government have been asking the companies to appoint a liaison office or point in the country. It has brought a bill in parliament that aims to ensure that social platforms are properly managed, responsible and accountable.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Germany has already met its 2028 goal for reducing coal-fired power generation, so won't need to order the shutdown of any plants for a second year running, the country's regulator said. From a report: Germany has an interim 2028 target of reducing coal-fired power by 8.7 gigawatts, and as of Sept. 1 it had exceeded this level by about 10%, the Federal Network Agency said on its website on Monday. Almost two thirds of Germany's electricity comes from renewables and excess solar power production has frequently pushed prices below zero, making burning coal less profitable. Yet Europe's largest economy remains heavily dependent on the fossil fuel and is still the European Union's biggest polluter.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI plans to launch a new AI-powered jobs platform next year to help match employers with candidates who have AI skills in a bid to accelerate the technology's deployment across businesses and government agencies. From a report: The ChatGPT maker will also introduce a new certification program in the coming months that will teach workers how to better use AI on the job. OpenAI is working with multiple organizations on the program, including Walmart, the largest private employer in the US. OpenAI said it plans to certify 10 million Americans by 2030. [...] For the jobs platform, OpenAI plans to use AI to help match local governments and companies of all sizes with potential candidates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Adobe is bringing its video editor Premiere to iPhone, promising "pro-level" editing on the go for free. The app will launch later this month, with an Android version also under development. The Premiere app features a familiar multi-track timeline, with support for an unlimited number of video, audio, and text layers. There's automatic captioning, 4K HDR support, and one-tap exporting to TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram -- including automatic resizing that frames content for each platform. The iOS version of Premiere will be free to download and use, though Adobe says there will be charges for additional cloud storage and generative AI credits. Speaking of, it includes support for Adobe's generative sound effects and AI-powered speech enhancement, plus a wider range of AI assets generated through Adobe Firefly. If you'd rather not use AI content, there's a selection of Adobe fonts, along with images, sounds, music, and video assets that are free to use.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tom's Hardware: According to an early Amazon Mexico listing, Logitech is preparing to launch the Signature Slim Solar+, a wireless keyboard in every sense of the word. The Signature Slim Solar+features a solar panel, providing owners with a battery lasting up to 10 years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nature's editorial board argues the UN's upcoming trans fat elimination proposal must specify "industrially produced" fats to avoid unintended consequences for nutrition in poor countries. The board supports a coalition led by the International Livestock Research Institute and African Union requesting precise language, noting natural trans fats occur in milk and dairy products. The editorial extends criticism to the broader ultra-processed foods classification system. While acknowledging the 2009 NOVA scale by University of Sao Paulo's Carlos Monteiro pushed governments toward strong public health policies, Nature says the ultra-processed category problematically groups baby formula with hot dogs. The board calls for improved definitions that balance reining in industrial food production excesses while ensuring adequate calorie access globally.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The total number of GPUs sold for the second quarter of 2025 hit 11.6 million units, while desktop PC CPUs went up to 21.7 million units, according to a Jon Peddie Research report. This is a 27% increase in graphics card shipments and a 21.6% jump in CPU shipments from the last quarter, which is a change from the usual drop in deliveries we've seen in recent years. "AIB prices dropped for midrange and entry-level, while high-end AIB prices increased, and most retail suppliers ran out of stock. This is very unusual for the second quarter," said Jon Peddie Research president Dr. Jon Peddie. "We think it is a continuation of higher prices expected due to the tariffs and buyers trying to get ahead of that." As for the three major GPU manufacturers, Nvidia still has the lead, taking in 94% of the market -- an increase of 2.1% over the previous quarter -- while AMD is at a distant second place with 6%. This is still a much better position than Intel, though, whose market share is so small it did not even register on the chart.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

alternative_right writes: For decades, fragments and unofficial copies of Microsoft's 6502 BASIC have circulated online, mirrored on retrocomputing sites, and preserved in museum archives. Coders have studied the code, rebuilt it, and even run it in modern systems. Today, for the first time, we're opening the hatch and officially releasing the code under an open-source license. Microsoft BASIC began in 1975 as the company's very first product: a BASIC interpreter for the Intel 8080, written by Bill Gates and Paul Allen for the Altair 8800. That codebase was soon adapted to run on other 8-bit CPUs, including the MOS 6502, Motorola 6800, and 6809. The 6502 port was completed in 1976 by Bill Gates and Ric Weiland. In 1977, Commodore licensed it for a flat fee of $25,000, a deal that placed Microsoft BASIC at the heart of Commodore's PET computers and, later, the VIC-20 and Commodore 64. The version we are releasing here -- labeled "1.1" -- contains fixes to the garbage collector identified by Commodore and jointly implemented in 1978 by Commodore engineer John Feagans and Bill Gates, when Feagans traveled to Microsoft's Bellevue offices. This is the version that shipped as the PET's "BASIC V2." It even contains a playful Bill Gates Easter egg, hidden in the labels STORDO and STORD0, which Gates himself confirmed in 2010.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rising adoption of AI technology by firms in the Federal Reserve's New York district has not been much of a job-killer so far, the regional Fed bank said in a blog on Thursday. Reuters: "Businesses reported a notable increase in AI use over the past year, yet very few firms reported AI-induced layoffs," New York Fed economists wrote in the blog. "Indeed, for those already employed, our results indicate AI is more likely to result in retraining than job loss, similar to our findings from last year," and so far the technology does not point to "significant reductions in employment." There has been broad concern that AI could create major headwinds for hiring in the coming years, with the technology hitting highly-paid professional and managerial jobs the hardest. Investors are plowing cash into AI investments at a time when employment has already begun to show some softness, although job market changes related to AI will almost certainly play out over a long time horizon. The New York Fed blog noted that the modest impact on jobs so far may not hold in the future. "Looking ahead, firms anticipate more significant layoffs and scaled-back hiring as they continue to integrate AI into their operations," New York Fed researchers wrote.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI will disrupt the labor market within five to ten years and force Americans to rely on investment returns rather than wages for income, according to Vlad Tenev, chief executive of stock trading firm Robinhood. Tenev told Fortune that "if you can't rely on labor to generate money to make a living, capital becomes more important." The brokerage chief said private companies and government must make investing easier from an early age. He cited the proposed Invest America Act, included in congressional reconciliation legislation, which would provide every newborn with $1,000 in an investment account. Tenev said the policy represents preparation for an economy where "humans comprise less than 1% of the total intelligence" as AI systems advance beyond current capabilities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Atlassian said it has agreed to acquire The Browser Co., a startup that offers a web browser with AI features, for $610 million in cash. CNBC: The companies aim to close the deal in Atlassian's fiscal second quarter, which ends in December. Established in 2019, The Browser Co. has gone up against some of the world's largest companies, including Google, with Chrome, and Apple, which includes Safari on its computers running MacOS. The startup debuted Arc, a customizable browser with a built-in whiteboard and the ability to share groups of tabs, in 2022. The Dia browser, a simpler option that allows people to chat with an AI assistant about multiple browser tabs at once, became available in beta in June. Atlassian co-founder and CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said he sees shortcomings in the most popular browsers for those who do much of their work on computers. Further reading: Atlassian Buying The Browser Company Feels Like a Waste of Money.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Investment research firm Bernstein warned Thursday that India faces a "strategic tech crisis" as US technology giants deploy predatory pricing strategies to lock up the Indian AI market. Perplexity Pro launched free for one year to Airtel's 350 million subscribers while OpenAI introduced a $5 monthly India subscription compared to $20 in the United States. Bernstein analysts described regulatory "double standards" where foreign tech companies receive favorable treatment while domestic companies face what the firm called "crushing rules and government-led 'tech stacks' that make private business unviable." Private AI investment in India totaled $11.29 billion between 2013 and 2024 compared to $471 billion in the United States and $119 billion in China. From the report: When OpenAI, which is reportedly looking to set up a data center in India, announced the plans to launch a new office, it was met with another round of excitement -- "as if Open AI will hire all Indians at hefty salaries," the firm wrote in a note to clients Thursday. Bernstein analysts pour cold water on this excitement, dismissing it as a "repeat of the 90s" and arguing that the hype misses the fundamental power imbalance. "Anyone, we repeat anyone, can build a data center... This is the start of the dominance of US tech in Indian AI environment ensuring Indian entrepreneurs do not get a fighting chance to stay relevant. They will run on the sidelines - piggybacking on the US foundation models or maybe even the Chinese," they wrote.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Tuesday, Tencent released HunyuanWorld-Voyager, a new open-weights AI model that generates 3D-consistent video sequences from a single image, allowing users to pilot a camera path to "explore" virtual scenes. The model simultaneously generates RGB video and depth information to enable direct 3D reconstruction without the need for traditional modeling techniques. However, it won't be replacing video games anytime soon. The results aren't true 3D models, but they achieve a similar effect: The AI tool generates 2D video frames that maintain spatial consistency as if a camera were moving through a real 3D space. Each generation produces just 49 frames -- roughly two seconds of video -- though multiple clips can be chained together for sequences lasting "several minutes," according to Tencent. Objects stay in the same relative positions when the camera moves around them, and the perspective changes correctly as you would expect in a real 3D environment. While the output is video with depth maps rather than true 3D models, this information can be converted into 3D point clouds for reconstruction purposes. There are some caveats with the tool. It doesn't generate true 3D models (only 2D frames with depth maps) and each run produces just two seconds of footage, with errors compounding during longer or complex camera motions like full 360-degree rotations. Furthermore, because it relies heavily on training data patterns, its ability to generalize is limited and it demands enormous GPU power (60-80GB of memory) to run effectively. On top of that, licensing restricts use in the EU, UK, and South Korea, with large-scale deployments requiring special agreements. Tencent published the model weights on Hugging Face.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A long-term study of over 12,000 adults suggests that artificial sweeteners like aspartame, saccharin, and sugar alcohols may accelerate cognitive decline in middle age, equivalent to about 1.6 years of extra aging. The Guardian reports: Sweeteners' association with cognitive decline is of such concern that consumers should instead use either tagatose, a natural sweetener, or alternatives such as honey or maple syrup, the researchers said. They looked at the impact of seven sweeteners on the health of the study's participants -- 12,772 civil servants in Brazil, with an average age of 52 -- who were followed up for on average eight years. Participants completed questionnaires detailing their food and drink intake over the previous year, and later underwent tests of their cognitive skills such as verbal fluency and word recall. People who consumed the most sweeteners experienced declines in their thinking and memory skills 62% faster than those with the lowest intake, the researchers found. This was "the equivalent of about 1.6 years of aging," the researchers said. Consumption of combined and individual LNCs, particularly aspartame, saccharin, acesulfame K, erythritol, sorbitol and xylitol, was associated with cognitive loss. "Daily consumption of LNCs was associated with accelerated decline in memory, verbal fluency and global cognition," the authors say in their paper, published in the American medical journal Neurology. However, the trend was only observed in participants under the age of 60. That shows that middle-aged adults need to be encouraged to use fewer sweeteners, they added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After 26 years and over 1,000 episodes, Melvyn Bragg is stepping down as presenter of BBC Radio 4's In Our Time, leaving behind a legacy of intellectual curiosity and broadcasting excellence. While he will no longer host the series, he will remain involved with the BBC and is set to launch a new project in 2026. The BBC reports: Over the last quarter of a century, Melvyn has skilfully led conversations about everything from the age of the Universe to 'Zenobia', Queen of the Palmyrene Empire. He has welcomed the company of the brightest and best academics in their fields, sharing their passion and knowledge with a fascinated audience right around the globe. While he will be much missed on In Our Time, Melvyn will continue to be a friend of Radio 4 with more to come to celebrate his extraordinary career, and a new series in 2026 (details to be announced soon). Melvyn Bragg says: "For a program with a wholly misleading title which started from scratch with a six-month contract, it's been quite a ride! I have worked with many extremely talented and helpful people inside the BBC as well as some of the greatest academics around the world. It's been a great privilege and pleasure. I much look forward to continuing to work for the BBC on Radio 4. Thank you for listening." [...] In Our Time will be back on Radio 4 with a new presenter who will be announced in due course.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping were caught on a hot mic discussing organ transplants and immortality at the military parade in Beijing on Wednesday. The two leaders were captured on the stream as they walked with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at Tiananmen Square, with the Russian translator saying: "Biotechnology is continuously developing," according to Reuters. "Human organs can be continuously transplanted. The longer you live, the younger you become, and (you can) even achieve immortality," the translator added. Xi responded by saying that some predict that humans could live up to "150 years old." The Kremlin head later confirmed that the two leaders discussed immortality. "Modern means of healing, and medical means, all kinds of surgical means related to organ replacement, they allow humanity to hope that active life will continue not as it does today. The average age in different countries is different, but nevertheless, life expectancy will increase significantly," Putin told reporters, according to CNN.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Switzerland has launched Apertus, a fully open-source, multilingual LLM trained on 15 trillion tokens and over 1,000 languages. "What distinguishes Apertus from many other generative AI systems is its commitment to complete openness," reports CyberInsider. From the report: Unlike popular proprietary models, where users can only interact via APIs or hosted interfaces, Apertus provides open access to its model weights, training datasets, documentation, and even intermediate checkpoints. The source code and all training materials are released under a permissive open-source license that allows commercial use. Since the full training process is documented and reproducible, researchers and watchdogs can audit the data sources, verify compliance with data protection laws, and inspect how the model was trained. Apertus' development explicitly adhered to Swiss data protection and copyright laws, and incorporated retroactive opt-out mechanisms to respect data source preferences. From a privacy perspective, Apertus represents a compelling shift in the AI landscape. The model only uses publicly available data, filtered to exclude personal information and to honor opt-out signals from content sources. This not only aligns with emerging regulatory frameworks like the EU AI Act, but also provides a tangible example of how AI can be both powerful and privacy-respecting. According to ETH Zurich's Imanol Schlag, technical lead of the project at ETH Zurich, Apertus is "built for the public good" and is a demonstration of how AI can be deployed as a public digital infrastructure, much like utilities or transportation. The model is available via Swisscom's Sovereign Swiss AI Platform. It's also available through Hugging Face and the Public AI Inference Utility.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's September Pixel drop brings the new Material 3 Expressive UI, AI-powered Gboard writing tools, and Bluetooth Auracast upgrades to older Pixel devices, including the Pixel 6 and Pixel Tablet. "Among other tweaks, Google made it possible to add 'Live Effects,' including a few that cover the weather, to your phone's lock screen wallpaper," notes Engadget. "Material 3 Expressive also gives you more control over how the contact cards your phone displays when your friends and family call you look. Even if you're not one to endlessly tweak Android's appearance, as part of the redesign Google has once again reworked the Quick Settings pane in hopes of making it easier to use." On the audio front, Pixel Buds Pro 2 gain intuitive nod-and-shake gesture controls, Adaptive Audio for balanced awareness, and Loud Noise Protection to guard against sudden sound spikes. Voice clarity has also been improved with Gemini Live in noisy environments. A full breakdown of what's new can be found here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.