An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Thinking Machines Lab,a heavily funded startup cofounded by prominent researchers from OpenAI, has revealed its first product -- a tool called Tinker that automates the creation of custom frontier AI models. "We believe [Tinker] will help empower researchers and developers to experiment with models and will make frontier capabilities much more accessible to all people," said Mira Murati, cofounder and CEO of Thinking Machines, in an interview with WIRED ahead of the announcement.

Big companies and academic labs already fine-tune open source AI models to create new variants that are optimized for specific tasks, like solving math problems, drafting legal agreements, or answering medical questions. Typically, this work involves acquiring and managing clusters of GPUs and using various software tools to ensure that large-scale training runs are stable and efficient. Tinker promises to allow more businesses, researchers, and even hobbyists to fine-tune their own AI models by automating much of this work.

Essentially, the team is betting that helping people fine-tune frontier models will be the next big thing in AI. And there's reason to believe they might be right. Thinking Machines Lab is helmed by researchers who played a core role in the creation of ChatGPT. And, compared to similar tools on the market, Tinker is more powerful and user friendly, according to beta testers I spoke with. Murati says that Thinking Machines Lab hopes to demystify the work involved in tuning the world's most powerful AI models and make it possible for more people to explore the outer limits of AI. "We're making what is otherwise a frontier capability accessible to all, and that is completely game-changing," she says. "There are a ton of smart people out there, and we need as many smart people as possible to do frontier AI research." "There's a bunch of secret magic, but we give people full control over the training loop," OpenAI veteran John Schulman says. "We abstract away the distributed training details, but we still give people full control over the data and the algorithms."

"Facebook and Instagram owner Meta is launching paid subscriptions for users who do not want to see adverts in the UK," reports the BBC: The company said it would start notifying users in the coming weeks to let them choose whether to subscribe to its platforms if they wish to use them without seeing ads. EU users of its platforms can already pay a fee starting from €5.99 (£5) a month to see no ads — but subscriptions will start from £2.99 a month for UK users.

"It will give people in the UK a clear choice about whether their data is used for personalised advertising, while preserving the free access and value that the ads-supported internet creates for people, businesses and platforms," Meta said. But UK users will not have an option to not pay and see "less personalised" adverts — a feature Meta added for EU users after regulators raised concerns...

Meta said its own model would see its subscription for no ads cost £2.99 a month on the web or £3.99 a month on iOS and Android apps — with the higher fee to offset cuts taken from transactions by Apple and Google... [Meta] reiterated its critical stance on the EU on Friday, saying its regulations were creating a worse experience for users and businesses unlike the UK's "more pro-growth and pro-innovation regulatory environment".
"Meta said its own model would see its subscription for no ads cost £2.99 a month on the web or £3.99 a month on iOS and Android apps," according to the BBC, "with the higher fee to offset cuts taken from transactions by Apple and Google."

Even users not paying for an ad-free experience have "tools and settings that empower people to control their ads experience," according to Meta's announcement. The include Ad Preferences which influences data used to inform ads including Activity Information from Ad Partners. "We also have tools in our products that explain 'Why am I seeing this ad?' and how people can manage their ad experience. We do not sell personal data to advertisers."

Six months ago California had 48% more public and "shared" private EV chargers than gasoline nozzles. (In March California had 178,000 public and shared private EV chargers, versus about 120,000 gas nozzles.)

Since then they've added 23,000 more public/shared charging ports — and announced this week that there's now 68% more EV charger ports than the number of gasoline nozzles statewide. "Thanks to the state's ever-expanding charger network, 94% of Californians live within 10 minutes of an EV charger," according to the announcement from the state's energy policy agency. And the California Energy Commission staff told CleanTechnica they expect more chargers in the future. "We are watching increased private investment by consortiums like IONNA and OEMs like Rivian, Ford, and others that are actively installing EV charging stations throughout the state."

Clean Technica notes in 2019, the state had roughly 42,000 charging ports and now there are a little over 200,000. (And today there's about 800,000 home EV chargers.)

This week California announced another milestone: that in 2024 nearly 23% of all the state's new truck sales — that's trucks, buses, and vans — were zero-emission vehicles. (The state subsidizes electric trucks — $200 million was requested on the program's first day.) Greenhouse gas emissions in California are down 20% since 2000 — even as the state's GDP increased 78% in that same time period all while becoming the world's fourth largest economy.

The state also continues to set clean energy records. California was powered by two-thirds clean energy in 2023, the latest year for which data is available — the largest economy in the world to achieve this level of clean energy. The state has run on 100% clean electricity for some part of the day almost every day this year.
"Last year, California ran on 100% clean electricity for the equivalent of 51 days," notes another announcement, which points out California has 15,763 MW of battery storage capacity — roughly a third of the amount projected to be needed by 2045.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank on Tuesday announced plans for five new artificial intelligence data centers in the United States to build out their ambitious Stargate project. [...] ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said on Tuesday it will open three new sites with Oracle in Shackelford County, Texas, Dona Ana County, New Mexico and an undisclosed site in the Midwest. Two more data center sites will be built in Lordstown, Ohio and Milam County, Texas by OpenAI, Japan's SoftBank and a SoftBank affiliate.

The new sites, the Oracle-OpenAI site expansion in Abilene, Texas, and the ongoing projects with CoreWeave will bring Stargate's total data center capacity to nearly 7 gigawatts and more than $400 billion in investment over the next three years, OpenAI said. The $500 billion project was intended to generate 10 gigawatts in total data center capacity. "AI can only fulfill its promise if we build the compute to power it," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement. The Tuesday's announcement, expected to create 25,000 onsite jobs, follows Nvidia saying on Monday that it will invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI and supply data center chips. OpenAI and partners plan to use debt financing to lease chips for the Stargate project, people familiar with the matter said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A new dark web portal to recruit spies for the UK was launched last Friday (19th September), as the UK steps up its commitment to national security. Harnessing the anonymity of the dark web for the first time, MI6's new secure messaging platform -- Silent Courier -- enables anyone, anywhere in the world with access to sensitive information relating to terrorism or hostile intelligence activity to securely contact the UK and offer their services. Instructions on how to access the portal will be publicly available on MI6's verified YouTube channel as the UK reaches out to potential new agents in Russia and around the world. MI6 advises individuals accessing its portal to use trustworthy VPNs and devices not linked to themselves, to mitigate risks which exist in some countries.

The announcement was made by the outgoing Chief of MI6, Sir Richard Moore, in Istanbul where he stated that the platform will make it easier for MI6 to recruit agents online. As MI6 establishes its official presence on the dark web to reach new recruits and tackle hostile actors seeking to undermine UK security, Sir Richard said that the UK's intelligence services are "critical to calibrating risk and informing decisions" in navigating threats from hostile actors -- making platforms like these even more important in keeping our country safe. Sir Richard said: "Today we're asking those with sensitive information on global instability, international terrorism or hostile state intelligence activity to contact MI6 securely online. Our virtual door is open to you." Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said: "National security is the first duty of any government and the bedrock of the Prime Minister's Plan for Change. As the world changes, and the threats we're facing multiply, we must ensure the UK is always one step ahead of our adversaries. Our world class intelligence agencies are at the coalface of this challenge, working behind the scenes to keep British people safe. Now we're bolstering their efforts with cutting-edge tech so MI6 can recruit new spies for the UK - in Russia and around the world."

Micro- and nanoplastic particles "infiltrate all systems of the body, including the brain," notes the University of Rhode Island, "where they can accumulate and trigger Alzheimer's-like conditions, according to a new study by researchers in the University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy."

ScienceDaily shares the announcement: After a previous study that showed how microplastics can infiltrate all systems of the body — including the blood-brain barrier, which protects the brain from harmful substances as small as viruses and bacteria — University of Rhode Island pharmacy assistant professor Jaime Ross expanded the study to determine the brain health impacts of the plastic toxins. Her findings indicate that the accumulation of micro- and nanoplastics in the brain can lead to cognitive decline and even Alzheimer's disease, especially in those who carry genetic risk factors.

Ross' latest study, published recently in the journal Environmental Research Communications, examined mice that had been genetically modified to include the naturally occurring gene APOE4, a strong indicator of Alzheimer's risk making people 3.5 times more likely to develop the disease than those who carry the APOE3 variant of the gene that is passed from parents to offspring... Ross and her team exposed two groups of mice — one with the APOE4 variant and one with APOE3 — to micro- and nanoplastics in their drinking water over a period of three weeks. The tiny particles from polystyrene — among the most abundant plastics in the world, found in Styrofoam take-out containers, plastic cups and more — infiltrated the mice' organs, including the brain, as expected...

Ross' team then ran the mice through a series of tests to examine their cognitive ability, beginning with an open-field test, in which researchers put a mouse in a chamber and allow it to explore at will for 90 minutes. Ordinarily, a mouse will hug the walls, naturally attempting to hide from potential predators. However, after microplastic exposure, the APOE4 mice — especially the male mice — tended to wander more in the middle of the chamber and spend time in open space, leaving themselves vulnerable to predators...

The results are concerning enough to warrant further study into the cognitive decline caused by exposure to micro- and nanoplastics, which are among the most prominent environmental toxins to which people are routinely exposed... Ross is continuing to expand her research into the topic and encourages others to do so, in the hope of leading to better regulation of the toxins.

Nvidia has agreed to invest $5 billion in its struggling rival Intel [non-paywalled source] as part of a deal to develop new chips for PCs and data centres, the latest reordering of the tech industry spurred by AI. From a report: The deal comes a month after the US government agreed to take a 10 per cent stake in Intel, as Donald Trump's administration looks to secure the future of American chip manufacturing.

However, the pair's announcement makes no reference to Nvidia using Intel's foundry to produce its chips. Intel, which has struggled to gain a foothold in the booming AI server market, lost its crown as the world's most valuable chipmaker to Nvidia in 2020. On Thursday Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, hailed a "historic collaboration" and "a fusion of two world-class platforms," combining its graphics processing units, which dominate the market for AI infrastructure, with Intel's general-purpose chips. Further reading: Intel Weighed $20 Billion Nvidia Takeover in 2005.

Sony has quietly introduced a revised PlayStation 5 Digital Edition that reduces internal storage from 1TB to 825GB while maintaining the same 499 Euro ($590) price point. The CFI-2116 revision has appeared on Amazon listings across Italy, Germany, Spain and France without official announcement from Sony.

The storage downgrade returns the console to its original 825GB capacity last seen in the launch PlayStation 5 before the Slim models increased storage to 1TB. Users lose approximately 175 of usable space in the new revision. Amazon Germany lists October 23 as the delivery date for units already available for purchase. The change affects only the Digital Edition while the disc version remains unchanged at 1TB. The revision follows Sony's September price increase of $50 across PlayStation 5 models citing economic conditions.

OpenAI is rolling out stricter safety measures for ChatGPT after lawsuits linked the chatbot to multiple suicides. "ChatGPT will now attempt to guess a user's age, and in some cases might require users to share an ID in order to verify that they are at least 18 years old," reports 404 Media. "We know this is a privacy compromise for adults but believe it is a worthy tradeoff," the company said in its announcement. "I don't expect that everyone will agree with these tradeoffs, but given the conflict it is important to explain our decisionmaking," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on X. From the report: OpenAI introduced parental controls to ChatGPT earlier in September, but has now introduced new, more strict and invasive security measures. In addition to attempting to guess or verify a user's age, ChatGPT will now also apply different rules to teens who are using the chatbot. "For example, ChatGPT will be trained not to do the above-mentioned flirtatious talk if asked, or engage in discussions about suicide of self-harm even in a creative writing setting," the announcement said. "And, if an under-18 user is having suicidal ideation, we will attempt to contact the users' parents and if unable, will contact the authorities in case of imminent harm."

OpenAI's post explains that it is struggling to manage an inherent problem with large language models that 404 Media has tracked for several years. ChatGPT used to be a far more restricted chatbot that would refuse to engage users on a wide variety of issues the company deemed dangerous or inappropriate. Competition from other models, especially locally hosted and so-called "uncensored" models, and a political shift to the right which sees many forms of content moderation as censorship, has caused OpenAI to loosen those restrictions.

"We want users to be able to use our tools in the way that they want, within very broad bounds of safety," Open AI said in its announcement. The position it seemed to have landed on given these recent stories about teen suicide, is that it wants to "'Treat our adult users like adults' is how we talk about this internally, extending freedom as far as possible without causing harm or undermining anyone else's freedom."

Microsoft will invest $30 billion in the U.K. through 2028 to expand AI infrastructure and operations, including building the country's largest supercomputer with 23,000 GPUs in partnership with Nscale. CNBC reports: On a call with reporters on Tuesday, Microsoft President Brad Smith said his stance on the U.K. has warmed over the years. He previously criticized the country over its attempt in 2023 to block the tech giant's $69 billion acquisition of video game developer Activision-Blizzard. The deal was cleared by the U.K.s competition regulator later that year.

"I haven't always been optimistic every single day about the business climate in the U.K.," Smith said. However, he added, "I am very encouraged by the steps that the government has taken over the last few years." "Just a few years ago, this kind of investment would have been inconceivable because of the regulatory climate then and because there just wasn't the need or demand for this kind of large AI investment," Smith said. Microsoft's announcement comes as President Donald Trump embarks on a state visit to Britain where he's expected to sign a new deal with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer "to unlock investment and collaboration in AI, Quantum, and Nuclear technologies," the government said in a statement late Tuesday.

"Engineers from Ohio State University are developing a new way to power rocket engines," reports Gizmodo, "using liquid uranium for a faster, more efficient form of nuclear propulsion that could deliver round trips to Mars within a single year..." Nuclear propulsion uses a nuclear reactor to heat a liquid propellant to extremely high temperatures, turning it into a gas that's expelled through a nozzle and used to generate thrust. The newly developed engine concept, called the centrifugal nuclear thermal rocket (CNTR), uses liquid uranium to heat rocket propellant directly. In doing so, the engine promises more efficiency than traditional chemical rockets, as well as other nuclear propulsion engines, according to new research published in Acta Astronautica...

Traditional chemical engines produce about 450 seconds of thrust from a given amount of propellant, a measure known as specific impulse. Nuclear propulsion engines can reach around 900 seconds, with the CNTR possibly pushing that number even higher. "You could have a safe one-way trip to Mars in six months, for example, as opposed to doing the same mission in a year," Spencer Christian, a PhD student at Ohio State and leader of CNTR's prototype construction, said in a statement.

CNTR promises faster routes, but it could also use different types of propellant, like ammonia, methane, hydrazine, or propane, that can be found in asteroids or other objects in space.
"Some potential hurdles include ensuring that the methods used for startup, operation and shutdown avoid instabilities," according to the researchers' announcement, as well as "envisioning ways to minimize the loss of uranium fuel and accommodate potential engine failures."

But "This team's CNTR concept is expected to reach design readiness within the next five years..."

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

The Commission on Friday okayed Microsoft's concessions to address the EU's competition concerns over the company including Teams along with the rest of its Office productivity suite for free, concluding a multi-year investigation that was sparked by complaints from rival office messaging app Slack in 2020. Microsoft has promised that for the next seven years, it will provide Microsoft 365 and Office 365 without Teams at a lower price and will let customers choose whether they want to pay more to add the collaboration app to the suites...

Microsoft is voluntarily offering some versions of both its productivity suites without Teams at a 50% lower price compared to versions that bundle the app, worldwide. And Microsoft dodged punitive measures and a big fine, as the Commission's penalties for breaching competition rules can reach up to 10% of annual global revenue — which, considering the tech giant last year recorded $245 billion in revenue, would have been truckloads of money.
The article adds one more interesting detail. "The Commission has also managed to get Microsoft to agree to open up its APIs to enable interoperability for key features between its suite and third-party messaging and collaboration tools, as well as let them export their data out of teams for the next five years..." The Commission's official announcement says this will "open up the market for other providers of communication and collaboration tools in Europe."

And Microsoft will also allow customers with long-term licenses the option of switching to a suite switch without Teams...

After its six-year journey to Saturn's moon Titan, Dragonfly's rotorcraft lander "will fly like a large drone," explains its web page, spending three years sampling multiple landing sites to characterize Titan's habitability and look for "precursors of the origin of life." "However, the project has undergone multiple replans impacting cost and schedule, resulting in a life-cycle cost increase of nearly $1 billion and over 2 years of delays," according to an announcement from NASA's Inspector General.

From the Inspector General's report: The cost increase and schedule delay were largely the result of NASA directing [Johns Hopkins University] Applied Physics Laboratory to conduct four replans between June 2019 and July 2023 early in Dragonfly's development. Justifications for these replans included the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain issues, changes to accommodate a heavy-lift launch vehicle, projected funding challenges, and inflation."
But its higher-than-expected life-cycle cost over $3 billion "will continue to absorb an increasing proportion of the Planetary Science Division's total budget," meaning Dragonfly's increased cost (and "additional budget constraints") have "contributed to a gap of at least 12 years in New Frontiers [planetary science] mission launches, and will jeopardize future priorities outlined in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's (National Academies) decadal surveys."

Yet a NASA press release notes the mission "has cleared several key design, development and testing milestones and remains on track toward launch in July 2028." Its software-defined radio has been completed, and the part of the spectrometer which analyzes Titan's chemical components for "potentially biologically relevant" compounds (as well as structural and thermal testing of the lander's insulation).

"The mission is scheduled to launch in July 2028 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch vehicle from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for spotting this news on the space/science blog "Behind the Black".

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

[PFAS] have been found in surface water, groundwater and municipal water supplies across the U.S. and the world. Although breweries typically have water filtration and treatment systems, they are not designed to remove PFAS... [T]he researchers call for greater awareness among brewers, consumers and regulators to limit overall PFAS exposure. These results also highlight the possible need for water treatment upgrades at brewing facilities as PFAS regulations in drinking water change or updates to municipal water system treatment are implemented.
"I hope these findings inspire water treatment strategies and policies that help reduce the likelihood of PFAS in future pours," research lead Jennifer Hoponick Redmon said in a May announcement about their research.

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

Proton, which offers secure and end-to-end encrypted email along with an ultra-private VPN and cloud storage, announced on July 23 that it is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland due to the proposed law. The company is investing more than $117 million in the European Union, the announcement said, and plans to help develop a "sovereign EuroStack for the future of our home continent." Switzerland is not a member of the EU. Proton said the decision was prompted by the Swiss government's attempt to "introduce mass surveillance."

Apple's new Watch lineup introduces blood pressure monitoring, sleep scoring, and upgraded hardware across the Series 11 ($399), Ultra 3 ($799), and SE 3 ($249). Ars Technica reports: The Apple Watch 11 is supposed to be able to alert users about "possible hypertension" by using data from an optical heart rate sensor "to analyze how a user's blood vessels respond to the beats of the heart," per its announcement. According to Apple's presentation, the smartwatch will look for chronic hypertension over 30-day periods. Apple's presentation noted that the Watch Series 11 won't be able to identify all hypertension, but the company said that it expects to notify over 1 million people with undiagnosed hypertension during the feature's first year of availability. The feature is based on machine-learning and training data built from multiple studies examining over 100,000 people combined, Apple noted. Apple said it expects the blood pressure monitoring feature to receive Food and Drug Administration clearance soon and to get approval in 150 regions this month.

The new watch will use a 5G modem and also introduce a feature that provides wearers with a "sleep score" that's based on the duration of their sleep, the consistency of their bedtime, how often they awaken from their sleep, and how much time they spend in each sleep stage. The Watch will analyze those factors every night and then provide a breakdown of how each score is calculated. The feature is based on an algorithm tested with 5 million nights of sleep data, Apple said. Other updates include the use of INX glass with ceramic coating that's supposed to make the Watch Series 11 two times more scratch-resistant than its predecessor. The Apple Watch Ultra 3 also debuted with hypertension notifications and sleep scoring, but comes equipped with a brighter edge-viewable OLED display, stronger radios with 5G and satellite support, and a larger 42-hour battery. It starts at $799.

Meanwhile, the budget-friendly SE 3 adds the new S10 chip with always-on display, faster charging, and expanded health tracking -- including sleep scores, apnea alerts, and temperature monitoring. It starts at $249.

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".

Cybersecurity company ESET thought they'd discovered the first AI-powered ransomware in the wild, which they'd dubbed "PromptLock". But it turned out to be the work of university security researchers...

"Unlike conventional malware, the prototype only requires natural language prompts embedded in the binary," the researchers write in a research paper, calling it "Ransomware 3.0: Self-Composing and LLM-Orchestrated." Their prototype "uses the gpt-oss:20b model from OpenAI locally" (using the Ollama API) to "generate malicious Lua scripts on the fly." Tom's Hardware said that would help PromptLock evade detection: If they had to call an API on [OpenAI's] servers every time they generate one of these scripts, the jig would be up. The pitfalls of vibe coding don't really apply, either, since the scripts are running on someone else's system.
The whole thing was actually an experiment by researchers at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering. So "While it is the first to be AI-powered," the school said in an announcement, "the ransomware prototype is a proof-of-concept that is non-functional outside of the contained lab environment."

An NYU spokesperson told Tom's Hardware a Ransomware 3.0 sample was uploaded to malware-analsys platform VirusTotal, and then picked up by the ESET researchers by mistake: But the malware does work: NYU said "a simulation malicious AI system developed by the Tandon team carried out all four phases of ransomware attacks — mapping systems, identifying valuable files, stealing or encrypting data, and generating ransom notes — across personal computers, enterprise servers, and industrial control systems." Is that worrisome? Absolutely. But there's a significant difference between academic researchers demonstrating a proof-of-concept and legitimate hackers using that same technique in real-world attacks. Now the study will likely inspire the ne'er-do-wells to adopt similar approaches, especially since it seems to be remarkably affordable.

"The economic implications reveal how AI could reshape ransomware operations," the NYU researchers said. "Traditional campaigns require skilled development teams, custom malware creation, and substantial infrastructure investments. The prototype consumed approximately 23,000 AI tokens per complete attack execution, equivalent to roughly $0.70 using commercial API services running flagship models."

As if that weren't enough, the researchers said that "open-source AI models eliminate these costs entirely," so ransomware operators won't even have to shell out the 70 cents needed to work with commercial LLM service providers...
"The study serves as an early warning to help defenders prepare countermeasures," NYU said in an announcement, "before bad actors adopt these AI-powered techniques."

ESET posted on Mastodon that "Nonetheless, our findings remain valid — the discovered samples represent the first known case of AI-powered ransomware."

And the ESET researcher who'd mistakenly thought the ransomware was "in the wild" had warned that looking ahead, ransomware "will likely become more sophisticated, faster spreading, and harder to detect.... This makes cybersecurity awareness, regular backups, and stronger digital hygiene more important than ever."

BMW unveiled its new iX3 — with nearly 500 miles of rangeand ultra-fast charging. The EV news site Electrek reports: To maximize range, BMW gave it a clean, aerodynamic design with very few lines... The BMW iX3 offers an impressive WLTP range of up to nearly 500 miles (800 km). On the EPA scale, it's expected to deliver around 400 miles of range.

Based on an 800V architecture, the BMW iX3 can deliver charging speeds of up to 400 kW. According to BMW, that means it can add over 230 miles (370 km) in just 10 minutes.
It's also BMW's first EV with bidirectional charging, according to the article.

But MotorTrend calls it "BMW's Biggest Reinvention Since the '60s." The decision to move forward in every aspect — design, architecture, technology, software, and manufacturing — was made five years ago... The new Neue Klasse architecture will start out with EVs only, but aspects of this new vision will be adopted by 40 vehicles — SUVs, sedans, coupes, maybe even a supercar — with an assortment of powertrains by the end of 2027. In other words, Neue Klasse will touch and influence everything BMW does going forward... The design philosophy for the Neue Klasse vehicles is that they should look like they skipped an entire generation.
From BMW's announcement for the iX3: Physical controls are on hand, including for the windscreen wipers, turn signal indicators, exterior mirrors, volume control, gear selector, parking brake, hazard warning lights, rear window heating and defrost function. Other functions have been optimised for use by touch and voice command or via the multifunction steering wheel... [MotorTrends notes "you must use the screen to adjust the air vents."]

The BMW Panoramic Vision projects information across the full width of the windscreen, from A-pillar to A-pillar. The content in the centre and on the front passenger side can be adapted to personal tastes and requirements. Key driving information appears in the driver's field of vision. And above the BMW Panoramic Vision, the BMW 3D Head-Up Display (if specified) can now also show integrated navigation and automated driving displays on the road with spatial depth. The free-cut-design Central Display with matrix backlight technology is located in an ergonomically ideal position next to the steering wheel. On the driver's side, vertically arranged widgets enable fast and direct access to particularly frequently used functions using QuickSelect tech. The new multifunction steering wheel serves as the primary physical control point. Its button panels help the driver and vehicle to work together symbiotically using illuminations, a relief-like surface and haptic feedback.
Some details from MotorTrends: There's an avatar for the intelligent personal assistant, activated by saying, "Hey, BMW." The BMW roundel morphs into a blue circle with big, expressive eyes and eyebrows. It looks like an amiable alien that turns to face the person addressing it, and it's programmed to wink, blush, and more, as well as to not stare too long at anyone. The assistant is quick to respond, using Alexa tech and a male or female voice to provide directions, answer questions, and perform functions.
MotorTrends adds that the iX3 "is BMW's first software-defined vehicle, meaning it can use over-the-air updates to fix problems and add features and functions, keeping it fresh over its lifetime with software that BMW developed itself."

BMW's announcement also notes "the latest systems for automated driving optimise symbiotic human-vehicle interaction..." Whenever the driver wants to accelerate, brake or steer, their inputs merge seamlessly and intuitively with AI-enabled software... The functionality offered by the City Assistant includes traffic light detection, where the car automatically stops and then moves off again.

"A U.S.-based nuclear fusion developer wants to deploy a reactor in Japan in the late 2030s or early 2040s," reports Bloomberg, "in line with the Asian country's broader plans to adopt the potent, low-carbon energy source." Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which last week announced it raised $863 million from investors including Nvidia, has been in dialogue with Japanese government officials on the use of its technology, CEO Bob Mumgaard said in an interview in Tokyo on Wednesday... Several countries are eyeing the technology for its climate and energy security benefits but only some, like China, the U.S., Russia and South Korea have managed to crack the basics. Japan revised its national strategy in June to support fusion deployment and build a demonstration plant in the 2030s.
The article notes that Commonwealth "does not currently have any reactors in operation" — but that Mitsubishi this week invested in the company, in collaboration with a consortium of 12 Japanese companies. From Mitsubishi's announcement: The Japanese Consortium will acquire technical and commercial expertise in policy, regulatory, and the development, construction, operation, and maintenance of ARC [power plant] from CFS's commercialization projects in the United States. In addition, each consortium company will bring together its know-how and expertise and aspire to expedite the commercialization and industrialization of fusion energy power generation in Japan.