A landmark decision by a top UN court has cleared the way for countries to sue each other over climate change, including over historic emissions of planet-warming gases. BBC: But the judge at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands on Wednesday said that untangling who caused which part of climate change could be difficult. The ruling is non-binding but legal experts say it could have wide-ranging consequences. It will be seen as a victory for countries that are very vulnerable to climate change, who came to court after feeling frustrated about lack of global progress in tackling the problem.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta researchers published findings in Nature Wednesday detailing a wristband prototype that controls computers through hand gestures by reading electrical signals from forearm muscles. The device uses surface electromyography to detect signals from alpha motor neurons in the spinal cord that connect to muscle fibers, allowing users to move cursors with wrist turns, open applications with thumb-to-forefinger taps, and write text by tracing letters in the air. The technology, developed at Meta's Reality Labs, trained neural networks on data from 10,000 participants to identify common muscle signal patterns. The wristband works without individual calibration across most users and can detect intended movements before physical motion occurs. Meta demonstrated the device controlling its Orion augmented reality glasses last fall and plans product integration over the next few years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A cyber-espionage campaign exploiting unpatched Microsoft SharePoint vulnerabilities has breached approximately 400 organizations worldwide, including the US National Nuclear Security Administration, according to Netherlands-based cybersecurity firm Eye Security. The figure represents a four-fold increase from 100 organizations cataloged over the weekend, with researchers calling it likely an undercount since not all attack vectors leave detectable artifacts. Microsoft identified three Chinese groups -- state-backed Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon, plus China-based Storm-2603 -- as exploiting the vulnerabilities in on-premises SharePoint servers to steal authentication credentials and execute malicious code remotely. The campaign began July 7 and was first detected July 18 when Eye Security found unusual activity on a customer's server. Victims include the US Energy Department, Education Department, Florida's Department of Revenue, Rhode Island General Assembly, and European and Middle Eastern governments.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Australia is offering visas to Tuvalu citizens each year under a climate migration deal Canberra has billed as "the first agreement of its kind anywhere in the world." From a report: "We received extremely high levels of interest in the ballot with 8,750 registrations, which includes family members of primary registrants," the Australian high commission in Tuvalu said in a statement. The figure is equal to 82 percent of the country's 10,643 population, according to census figures collected in 2022. "With 280 visas offered this program year, it means that many will miss out," the commission said. One of the most climate-threatened corners of the planet, scientists fear Tuvalu will be uninhabitable within the next 80 years. Two of the archipelago's nine coral atolls have already largely disappeared under the waves.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Trump administration on Wednesday unveiled a 23-page "AI Action Plan" [PDF] designed to accelerate American AI development through deregulation and infrastructure expansion while countering Chinese influence in the technology sector. The plan, mandated by President Trump in January with a six-month deadline, establishes three core pillars: innovation acceleration, infrastructure development, and international AI diplomacy. Central provisions include removing federal regulations that hinder AI development and directing agencies to withhold AI-related funding from states with "burdensome" AI regulations. The administration will streamline environmental permitting for data centers and energy infrastructure while expanding use of coal, natural gas, and nuclear power to meet AI's electricity demands. The plan mandates that government-procured large language models be "neutral and unbiased," addressing conservative concerns about perceived liberal bias in AI systems. Trump signed accompanying executive orders requiring the US International Development Finance Corporation and Export-Import Bank to support global deployment of American AI technology. "To win the AI race, the U.S. must lead in innovation, infrastructure, and global partnerships," Sacks stated, emphasizing worker protection and avoiding "Orwellian uses of AI." The initiative represents Trump's campaign promise to position America as the dominant global AI leader while dismantling Biden-era AI safety requirements rescinded on Trump's first day in office.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple today announced AppleCare One, a insurance subscription service that covers multiple products under a single plan for $19.99 per month. The service protects up to three devices, with additional products costing $5.99 monthly each. AppleCare One provides identical coverage to AppleCare Plus, including battery protection, unlimited accidental damage repairs, and priority support. The service accepts products up to four years old, compared to AppleCare Plus's 60-day enrollment window, though Apple requires older devices to be in "good condition" and may conduct diagnostic testing. Headphones must be less than one year old for eligibility. Theft and Loss coverage comes standard for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. The service goes live tomorrow.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A record-breaking heat wave across Western Europe in June and July has triggered a political battle over air conditioning installation, with right-wing parties demanding widespread adoption while government officials warn of environmental consequences. More than 1,000 French schools closed partially or completely due to lack of air conditioning during the heat wave. Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally party proposed a major campaign to install air conditioning in schools, hospitals and other institutions. UK Conservatives urged London's Labour mayor to eliminate restrictions on air conditioning in new housing, while Spain's Vox party highlighted air-conditioning breakdowns to criticize establishment parties. French Energy Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher countered that large-scale air conditioning would heat streets with exhaust, worsening heat waves. Europe is the fastest-warming continent, heating twice the global average since the 1980s. One study predicts air conditioning will increase Italy's annual power demand by 10% by 2050.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: During his latest trip to Washington, OpenAI's chief executive, Sam Altman, painted a sweeping vision of an AI-dominated future in which entire job categories disappear, presidents follow ChatGPT's recommendations and hostile nations wield artificial intelligence as a weapon of mass destruction, all while positioning his company as the indispensable architect of humanity's technological destiny. Speaking at the Capital Framework for Large Banks conference at the Federal Reserve board of governors, Altman told the crowd that certain job categories would be completely eliminated by AI advancement. "Some areas, again, I think just like totally, totally gone," he said, singling out customer support roles. "That's a category where I just say, you know what, when you call customer support, you're on target and AI, and that's fine." The OpenAI founder described the transformation of customer service as already complete, telling the Federal Reserve vice-chair for supervision, Michelle Bowman: "Now you call one of these things and AI answers. It's like a super-smart, capable person. There's no phone tree, there's no transfers. It can do everything that any customer support agent at that company could do. It does not make mistakes. It's very quick. You call once, the thing just happens, it's done." The OpenAI founder then turned to healthcare, making the suggestion that AI's diagnostic capabilities had surpassed human doctors, but wouldn't go so far as to accept the superior performer as the sole purveyor of healthcare. "ChatGPT today, by the way, most of the time, can give you better -- it's like, a better diagnostician than most doctors in the world," he said. "Yet people still go to doctors, and I am not, like, maybe I'm a dinosaur here, but I really do not want to, like, entrust my medical fate to ChatGPT with no human doctor in the loop." [...] At the fireside chat, he said one of his biggest worries was over AI's rapidly advancing destructive capabilities, with one scenario that kept him up at night being a hostile nation using these weapons to attack the US financial system. And despite being in awe of advances in voice cloning, Altman warned the crowd about how that same benefit could enable sophisticated fraud and identity theft, considering that "there are still some financial institutions that will accept the voiceprint as authentication".

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The United Kingdom's government is planning to ban public sector and critical infrastructure organizations from paying ransoms after ransomware attacks. From a report: The list of entities that would have to follow the new proposed legislation includes local councils, schools, and the publicly funded National Health Service (NHS). "Ransomware is estimated to cost the UK economy millions of pounds each year, with recent high-profile ransomware attacks highlighting the severe operational, financial, and even life-threatening risks. The ban would target the business model that fuels cyber criminals' activities and makes the vital services the public rely on a less attractive target for ransomware groups," the UK government said. "We're determined to smash the cyber criminal business model and protect the services we all rely on as we deliver our Plan for Change. By working in partnership with industry to advance these measures, we are sending a clear signal that the UK is united in the fight against ransomware," Security Minister Dan Jarvis added.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For the first time ever, a CCTV camera in Myanmar captured real-time footage of a supershear strike-slip earthquake moving at 3.7 miles per second. According to seismologists at Japan's Kyoto University, the analysis has "led to new findings based on real-time visual evidence of tectonic motion," reports Popular Science. From the report: The magnitude 7.7 event took place on March 28 along the Sagaing Fault with an epicenter near Myanmar's second-largest city, Mandalay. Although the initial rupture process lasted barely 80 seconds, it and numerous aftershocks were ultimately responsible for 5,456 confirmed deaths and over 11,000 injuries. Later evaluations indicated the quake was the second deadliest in modern history, as well as the most powerful to hit Myanmar in over a century. According to a separate group's paper published in the same journal, the southern portion of the rupture occurred at an astonishing 3.7 miles per second -- fast enough to qualify as "supershear velocity." Amid the catastrophe, an outdoor CCTV camera about 74.5 miles south of the epicenter recorded a visceral illustration of its power. Over just a few moments, what at first looks like a single chunk of the ground appears to suddenly divide and horizontally shift past one another in opposite directions. Completely by accident, the camera recorded a direct look of a strike-slip fault, something previously analyzed by remote seismic instruments. To researchers at Kyoto University, the clip wasn't just a jaw-dropping scene -- it was an opportunity to study a strike-slip fault using visual data. You can watch the footage on YouTube.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Conspiracy theorists drastically overestimate how many people share their beliefs, according to a study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Researchers conducted eight studies involving over 4,000 US adults and found that while participants believed conspiracy claims just 12% of the time, believers thought they were in the majority 93% of the time. The study examined beliefs about claims such as the Apollo Moon landings being faked and Princess Diana's death not being an accident. In one example, 8% of participants believed the Sandy Hook shooting was a false flag operation, but that group estimated 61% of people agreed with them. "It might be one of the biggest false consensus effects that's been observed," said co-author Gordon Pennycook, a psychologist at Cornell University. The findings suggest overconfidence serves as a primary driver of conspiracy beliefs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Government funding for a program that hunts for threats on America's critical infrastructure networks expired on Sunday, preventing Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from analyzing activity that could indicate a cyberattack, the program director told Congress on Tuesday. From a report: Nate Gleason leads a team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) focused on nation-state threats against critical infrastructure, and this includes the CyberSentry Program. It's a public-private partnership, managed by CISA, that looks for malicious activity on IT and operational technology (OT) networks in America's energy, water, healthcare, and other critical facilities. This includes threats along the lines of China's Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon intrusions -- network activity that may look like, or even start as, espionage, but ultimately enables the digital invaders to backdoor critical orgs and deploy cyber weapons to aid in a kinetic war.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Using brain scans from a very large database, British researchers determined that during the pandemic years of 2021 and 2022, people's brains showed signs of aging, including shrinkage, according to the report published in Nature Communications. People who got infected with the virus also showed deficits in certain cognitive abilities, such as processing speed and mental flexibility. The aging effect "was most pronounced in males and those from more socioeconomically deprived backgrounds," said the study's first author, Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad, a neuroimaging researcher at the University of Nottingham, via email. "It highlights that brain health is not shaped solely by illness, but also by broader life experiences." Overall, the researchers found a 5.5-month acceleration in aging associated with the pandemic. On average, the difference in brain aging between men and women was small, about 2.5 months. "We don't yet know exactly why, but this fits with other research suggesting that men may be more affected by certain types of stress or health challenges," Mohammadi-Nejad said. [...] The study wasn't designed to pinpoint specific causes. "But it is likely that the cumulative experience of the pandemic -- including psychological stress, social isolation, disruptions in daily life, reduced activity and wellness -- contributed to the observed changes," Mohammadi-Nejad said. "In this sense, the pandemic period itself appears to have left a mark on our brains, even in the absence of infection." "The most intriguing finding in this study is that only those who were infected with SARS-CoV-2 showed any cognitive deficits, despite structural aging," said Jacqueline Becker, a clinical neuropsychologist and assistant professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "This speaks a little to the effects of the virus itself." The study may shed light on conditions like long Covid and chronic fatigue, though it's still unclear whether the observed brain changes in uninfected individuals will lead to noticeable effects on brain function.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Olof Kyros Gustafsson, former CEO of Escobar, pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering charges related to the company's phone scam operation. The Department of Justice says Gustafsson took orders for phones branded with Pablo Escobar's likeness but failed to deliver products, instead transferring customer money for personal use. When customers sought refunds, Gustafsson fraudulently referred payment processors to certificates of ownership as proof of delivery. The phones were Samsung devices with gold stickers. Gustafsson faces up to 20 years in prison and $1.3 million in restitution at his December 5th sentencing.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers from La Sapienza University in Rome have developed "WhoFi," a system that uses the way a person's body distorts Wi-Fi signals to re-identify them across different locations -- even if they're not carrying a phone. By training a deep neural network on these subtle signal distortions, the researchers claim WhoFi is able to achieve up to 95.5% accuracy. The Register reports: "The core insight is that as a Wi-Fi signal propagates through an environment, its waveform is altered by the presence and physical characteristics of objects and people along its path," the authors state in their paper. "These alterations, captured in the form of Channel State Information (CSI), contain rich biometric information." CSI in the context of Wi-Fi devices refers to information about the amplitude and phase of electromagnetic transmissions. These measurements, the researchers say, interact with the human body in a way that results in person-specific distortions. When processed by a deep neural network, the result is a unique data signature. Researchers proposed a similar technique, dubbed EyeFi, in 2020, and asserted it was accurate about 75 percent of the time. The Rome-based researchers who proposed WhoFi claim their technique makes accurate matches on the public NTU-Fi dataset up to 95.5 percent of the time when the deep neural network uses the transformer encoding architecture. "The encouraging results achieved confirm the viability of Wi-Fi signals as a robust and privacy-preserving biometric modality, and position this study as a meaningful step forward in the development of signal-based Re-ID systems," the authors say.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is acquiring Bee, a startup that makes a $49.99 AI-powered wearable that passively listens to conversations and generates personalized summaries and suggestions. "You can also give the device permission to access your emails, contacts, location, reminders, photos, and calendar events to help inform its AI-generated insights, as well as create a searchable history of your activities," adds The Verge. From the report: When asked about Amazon's plans to apply the same privacy measures offered by Bee, such as its policy against storing audio, Amazon spokesperson Alexandra Miller says the company "cares deeply" about customer privacy and security, adding that the company will work with Bee to give users "even greater control over" their devices when the deal closes. "We've been strong stewards of customer data since our founding, and have never been in the business of selling our customers' personal information to others," Miller says. "We design our products to protect our customers' privacy and security and to make it easy for them to be in control of their experience -- and this approach would of course apply to Bee." Miller also says the terms of the deal are "confidential," and all Bee employees have "received offers to join Amazon."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: At the 2025 RISC-V Summit in China, Nvidia announced that its CUDA software platform will be made compatible with the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) on the CPU side of things. The news was confirmed during a presentation during a RISC-V event. This is a major step in enabling the RISC-V ISA-based CPUs in performance demanding applications. The announcement makes it clear that RISC-V can now serve as the main processor for CUDA-based systems, a role traditionally filled by x86 or Arm cores. While nobody even barely expects RISC-V in hyperscale datacenters any time soon, RISC-V can be used on CUDA-enabled edge devices, such as Nvidia's Jetson modules. However, it looks like Nvidia does indeed expect RISC-V to be in the datacenter. Nvidia's profile on RISC-V seems to be quite high as the keynote at the RISC-V Summit China was delivered by Frans Sijsterman, who appears to be Vice President of Hardware Engineering at Nvidia. The presentation outlined how CUDA components will now run on RISC-V. A diagram shown at the session illustrated a typical configuration: the GPU handles parallel workloads, while a RISC-V CPU executes CUDA system drivers, application logic, and the operating system. This setup enables the CPU to orchestrate GPU computations fully within the CUDA environment. Given Nvidia's current focus, the workloads must be AI-related, yet the company did not confirm this. However, there is more. Also featured in the diagram was a DPU handling networking tasks, rounding out a system consisting of GPU compute, CPU orchestration, and data movement. This configuration clearly suggests Nvidia's vision to build heterogeneous compute platforms where RISC-V CPU can be central to managing workloads while Nvidia's GPUs, DPUs, and networking chips handle the rest. Yet again, there is more. Even with this low-profile announcement, Nvidia essentially bridges proprietary CUDA stack to an open architecture, one that seems to develop fast in China. Yet, being unable to ship flagship GB200 and GB300 offerings to China, the company has to find ways to keep its CUDA thriving.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Brave Browser now blocks Microsoft Recall by default for Windows 11+ users, preventing the controversial screenshot-logging feature from capturing any Brave tabs -- regardless of whether users are in private mode. Brave cites persistent privacy concerns and potential abuse scenarios as justification. From a blog post: Microsoft has, to their credit, made several security and privacy-positive changes to Recall in response to concerns. Still, the feature is in preview, and Microsoft plans to roll it out more widely soon. What exactly the feature will look like when it's fully released to all Windows 11 users is still up in the air, but the initial tone-deaf announcement does not inspire confidence. Given Brave's focus on privacy-maximizing defaults and what is at stake here (your entire browsing history), we have proactively disabled Recall for all Brave tabs. We think it's vital that your browsing activity on Brave does not accidentally end up in a persistent database, which is especially ripe for abuse in highly-privacy-sensitive cases such as intimate partner violence. Microsoft has said that private browsing windows on browsers will not be saved as snapshots. We've extended that logic to apply to all Brave browser windows. We tell the operating system that every Brave tab is 'private', so Recall never captures it. This is yet another example of how Brave engineers are able to quickly tweak Chromium's privacy functionality to make Brave safer for our users (inexhaustive list here). For more technical details, see the pull request implementing this feature. Brave is the only major Web browser that disables Microsoft Recall by default in all tabs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A six-month international study found that a four-day workweek with no reduction in pay significantly improved employee well-being, job satisfaction, and sleep quality, with burnout dropping most among those who reduced their hours by eight or more. "The results indicate that income-preserving four-day workweeks are an effective organizational intervention for enhancing workers' well-being," the researchers said. The Register reports: The study, reported in Nature Human Behaviour, was designed to test the effects of the four-day workweek with no reduction in pay. It relied on a six-month trial involving 2,896 employees in 141 organizations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, and the US. The researchers compared work and health-related indicators -- including burnout, job satisfaction, and mental and physical health -- before and after the intervention using survey data. A further 285 employees at 12 companies did not participate in the trial and acted as a control. The researchers noted that the study was limited in that companies volunteered to participate, and the sample consisted of smaller companies from English-speaking countries. More extensive government-sponsored trials might help provide a clearer picture, they said. While several factors may explain the effect, one possibility is "increased intrinsic motivation at work," the study said. "Unfortunately, [we] cannot assess [this] due to data limitations." "Despite its limitations, this study has important implications for understanding the future of work, with 4-day workweeks probably being a key component. Scientific advances from this work will inform the development of interventions promoting better organization of paid work and worker well-being. This task has become increasingly important with the rapid expansion of new digital, automation, and artificial general intelligence technologies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is expected to avoid hefty daily fines from the EU by modifying its App Store policies -- allowing developers to direct users to external payment options and adjusting its fee structure. Reuters reports: The company last month said developers will pay a 20% processing fee for purchases made via the App Store, though the fees could go as low as 13% for Apple's small-business program. Developers who send customers outside the App Store for payment will pay a fee between 5% and 15%. They will also be able to use as many links as they wish to send users to outside forms of payment. Apple made the changes after the EU antitrust enforcer handed it a 500 million euro ($586.7 million) fine in April, saying its technical and commercial restrictions prevented app developers from steering users to cheaper deals outside the App Store in breach of the Digital Markets Act. The company was given 60 days to scrap the restraints to comply with the DMA aimed at reining in Big Tech and giving rivals more room to compete. The European Commission is expected to approve the changes in the coming weeks, although the timing could still change, the people said. "All options remain on the table. We are still assessing Apple's proposed changes," the EU watchdog said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.