"Researchers have modified a standard glue gun to 3D print a bone-like material directly onto fractures," [1]reports LiveScience , "paving the way for its use in operating rooms."

> The device, which has so far been tested in rabbits, would be particularly useful for fixing irregularly shaped fractures during surgery, the researchers say.

>

> "To my knowledge, there are virtually no previous examples of applying the technology directly as a bone substitute," [2]study co-author Jung Seung Lee, a biomedical engineer at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, told Live Science in an email. "This makes the approach quite unique and sets it apart from conventional methods...."

"Further studies in larger animal models are needed before the technology can be used on humans," the article points out.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [3]fahrbot-bot for sharing the article.



[1] https://www.livescience.com/health/surgery/scientists-develop-glue-gun-that-3d-prints-bone-grafts-directly-onto-fractures

[2] https://www.cell.com/device/fulltext/S2666-9986(25)00186-3

[3] https://www.slashdot.org/~fahrbot-bot

[1]Friday the security researchers at Arctic Wolf Labs wrote :

> In late July 2025, Arctic Wolf Labs began observing [2]a surge of intrusions involving suspicious SonicWall SSL VPN activity. Malicious logins were followed within minutes by port scanning, Impacket SMB activity, and rapid deployment of Akira ransomware. Victims spanned across multiple sectors and organization sizes, suggesting opportunistic mass exploitation.

>

> This campaign has recently escalated, with new infrastructure linked to it observed as late as September 20, 2025.

More [3]from Cybersecurity News :

> SonicWall has linked these malicious logins to [4]CVE-2024-40766 , an improper access control vulnerability disclosed in 2024. The working theory is that threat actors harvested credentials from devices that were previously vulnerable and are now using them in this campaign, even if the devices have since been patched. This explains why fully patched devices have been compromised, a fact that initially led to speculation about a potential zero-day exploit.

>

> Once inside a network, the attackers operate with remarkable speed. The time from initial access to ransomware deployment, known as "dwell time," is often measured in hours, with some intrusions taking as little as 55 minutes, Arctic Wolf said. This extremely short window for response makes early detection critical.

"Threat actors in the present campaign successfully authenticated against accounts with the one-time password (OTP) MFA feature enabled..." [5]notes Artic Wolf Labs :

> The threats described in this campaign demand early detection and a rapid response to avoid catastrophic impact to organizations. To facilitate this process, we recommend monitoring for VPN logins originating from untrusted hosting infrastructure. Equally important is ensuring visibility into internal networks, since lateral movement and ransomware encryption can occur within hours or even minutes of initial access. Monitoring for anomalous SMB activity indicative of Impacket use provides an additional early detection opportunity.

>

> When firewalls are confirmed to be running firmware versions vulnerable to credential access or full configuration export, patching alone is not enough. In such situations, credentials must be reset wherever possible, including MFA-related secrets that might otherwise be thought of as secure, and Active Directory credentials with VPN access. These considerations are best practices that apply regardless of which firewall products are in use.

Thanks to Slashdot reader [6]Mirnotoriety for suggesting this story.



[1] https://arcticwolf.com/resources/blog/smash-and-grab-aggressive-akira-campaign-targets-sonicwall-vpns/

[2] https://arcticwolf.com/resources/blog/arctic-wolf-observes-july-2025-uptick-in-akira-ransomware-activity-targeting-sonicwall-ssl-vpn/

[3] https://cybersecuritynews.com/sonicwall-firewalls-akira-ransomware/

[4] https://cybersecuritynews.com/sonicwall-sonicos-sslvpn-rce-vulnerability-actively-exploited-in-the-wild/

[5] https://arcticwolf.com/resources/blog/smash-and-grab-aggressive-akira-campaign-targets-sonicwall-vpns/

[6] https://www.slashdot.org/~Mirnotoriety

After the nonprofit Ruby Central removed all RubyGems' maintainers from its GitHub repository, André Arko — who helped build Bundler — [1]wrote a new blog post on Thursday "detailing Bundler's relationship with Ruby Central," according to this [2]update from The New Stack .

> "In the last few weeks, Ruby Central has suddenly asserted that they alone own Bundler," he wrote. "That simply isn't true. In order to defend the reputation of the team of maintainers who have given so much time and energy to the project, I have registered my existing trademark on the Bundler project."

>

> He adds that trademarks do not affect copyright, which stays with the original contributors unchanged. "Trademarks only impact one thing: Who is allowed say that what they make is named 'Bundler,'" he wrote. "Ruby Central is welcome to the code, just like everyone else. They are not welcome to the project name that the Bundler maintainers have painstakingly created over the last 15 years."

>

> He is, however, not seeking the trademark for himself, noting that the "idea of Bundler belongs to the Ruby community." "Once there is a Ruby organization that is accountable to the maintainers, and accountable to the community, with openly and democratically elected board members, I commit to transfer my trademark to that organization," he said. "I will not license the trademark, and will instead transfer ownership entirely. Bundler should belong to the community, and I want to make sure that is true for as long as Bundler exists."

The blog It's FOSS [3]also has an update on [4]Spinel , the new worker-owned collective founded by Arko, Samuel Giddins [who Giddins led RubyGems security efforts], and Kasper Timm Hansen (who served served on the Rails core team from 2016 to 2022 and was one of its top contributors):

> These guys aren't newcomers but some of the architects behind Ruby's foundational infrastructure. Their flagship offering is [5]rv ["the Ruby swiss army knife"], a tool that aims to replace the fragmented Ruby tooling ecosystem. It promises to [in the future] handle everything from rvm, rbenv, chruby, bundler, rubygems, and others — all at once while redefining how Ruby development tools should work... Spinel operates on retainer agreements with companies needing Ruby expertise instead of depending on sponsors who can withdraw support or demand control. This model maintains independence while ensuring sustainability for the maintainers.

The Register had [6]reported Thursday :

> Spinel's 'rv' project aims to supplant elements of RubyGems and Bundler with a more modular, version-aware manager. Some in the Ruby community have already accused core Rails figures of positioning Spinel as a threat. For example, Rafael FranÃa of Shopify commented that admins of the new project should not be trusted to avoid "sabotaging rubygems or bundler."



[1] https://andre.arko.net/2025/09/25/bundler-belongs-to-the-ruby-community/

[2] https://thenewstack.io/homebrew-project-lead-brings-data-to-ruby-centrals-debate/

[3] https://news.itsfoss.com/corporate-takeover-of-ruby/

[4] https://spinel.coop/

[5] https://github.com/spinel-coop/rv

[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/25/open_source_to_closed_doors/

An anonymous reader shared [1]this report from Computer Weekly :

> Policing data hosted in Microsoft's hyperscale cloud infrastructure could be processed in more than 100 countries, but the tech giant is obfuscating this information from its customers, Computer Weekly can reveal. According to documents released by the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) under freedom of information (FoI) rules, [2]Microsoft refused to hand over crucial information about its international data flows to the SPA and Police Scotland when asked...

>

> The tech giant also refused to disclose its own risk assessments into the transfer of UK policing data to other jurisdictions, including [3]China and others deemed "hostile" in the DPIA documents . This means Police Scotland and the SPA — which are jointly rolling out Office 365 — are unable to satisfy the law enforcement-specific data protection rules laid out in Part Three of the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA18), which places strict limits on the transfer of policing data outside the UK. The same documents also contain an admission from Microsoft — given while simultaneously refusing to divulge key information about data flows — that it is unable to guarantee the sovereignty of policing data held and processed within its O365 infrastructure. This echoes the statements senior Microsoft representatives made to the French senate in June 2025, in which they [4]admitted the company cannot guarantee the sovereignty of European data stored and processed in its services generally .

>

> The revelation that Microsoft may access customer data from more than 100 countries is a result of the correspondence previously disclosed under Freedom of Information and reported on by Computer Weekly ... All in all, an analysis of Microsoft's distributed documentation — conducted by independent security consultant Owen Sayers and shared with Computer Weekly — suggests that Microsoft personnel or contractors can remotely access the data from 105 different countries, using 148 different sub-processors. Despite technically being public, Sayers highlighted how this information is not transparently laid out for Microsoft customers, and is distributed across different documents contained in non-indexed webpages.... "[A]ny normal amount of due diligence — even if it is conducted by skilled persons will likely fail to see the full scope of offshoring in play," he said...

>

> Microsoft did not contest the accuracy of the remote access location figures cited by Computer Weekly in this story.



[1] https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366632040/Microsoft-hides-key-data-flow-information-in-plain-sight

[2] https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366629871/Microsoft-refuses-to-divulge-data-flows-to-Police-Scotland

[3] https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366629871/Microsoft-refuses-to-divulge-data-flows-to-Police-Scotland

[4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/07/22/microsoft-cant-keep-eu-data-safe-from-us-authorities/

Paris-based AI giant Mistral "is pushing to improve its models," [1]reports the Wall Street Journal , "by looking inside legacy enterprises that hold some of the world's last untapped data reserves...."

> Mistral's approach will be to form partnerships with enterprises to further train existing models on their own proprietary data, a phenomenon known as post-training... [At Dutch chip-equipment company ASML], Mistral embeds its own solutions architects, applied AI engineers and applied scientists into the enterprise to work on improving models with the company's data. [While Mistral sells some models under a commercial license], this co-creation strategy allows Mistral to make money off the services side of its business and afford to give away its open source AI free of charge, while improving model performance for the customer with more industry context...

>

> This kind of hand-holding approach is necessary for most companies to tackle AI successfully, said Arthur Mensch [co-founder and chief executive of Mistral]. "The very high-tech companies [and] a couple of banks are able to do it on their own. But when it comes to getting some [return on investment] from use cases, in general, they fail," he said. Mensch attributes that in part to a mismatch between expectations and reality. "The curse of AI is that it looks like magic. So you can very quickly make something that looks amazing to your boss," but it doesn't scale or work more broadly, he said. In other cases, enterprises simply might not know what to focus on. For example, it is a mistake to think equipping all employees with a chatbot will create meaningful gains on the bottom line, he said. Mensch said to fully take advantage of AI, companies will have to [2]rethink organizational structures . With information flowing more easily, they could require fewer middle managers, for example.

>

> There is a lot of work yet to do, Mensch said, but in a large sense, the future of AI development now lies inside the enterprise itself. "This is a pattern that we've seen with many of our customers: At some point, the capabilities of the frontier model can only be increased if we partner," he said.



[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-mistral-the-future-of-ai-development-will-happen-inside-the-enterprise-8c2dd99f?mod=RSSMSN

[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-is-turning-traditional-corporate-org-charts-upside-down-b140b50b?mod=article_inline

"Today's AIs are book smart," [1]reports the Wall Street Journal . "Everything they know they learned from available language, images and videos. To evolve further, they have to get street smart."

And that requires "world models," which are "gaining momentum in frontier research and could allow technology to take on new roles in our lives."

> The key is enabling AI to learn from their environments and faithfully represent an abstract version of them in their "heads," the way humans and animals do. To do it, developers need to train AIs by using simulations of the world. Think of it like learning to drive by playing "Gran Turismo" or learning to fly from "Microsoft Flight Simulator." These world models include all the things required to plan, take actions and make predictions about the future, including physics and time... There's an almost unanimous belief among AI pioneers that world models are crucial to creating next-generation AI. And many say they will be critical to someday creating better-than-human "artificial general intelligence," or AGI. Stanford University professor and AI "godmother" Fei-Fei Li has raised $230 million to launch world-model startup World Labs...

>

> Google DeepMind researchers set out to create a system that could generate real-world simulations with an unprecedented level of fidelity. The result, Genie 3 — which is still in research preview and not publicly available — can generate photo-realistic, open-world virtual landscapes from nothing more than a text prompt. You can think of Genie 3 as a way to quickly generate what's essentially an open-world videogame that can be as faithful to the real world as you like. It's a virtual space in which a baby AI can endlessly play, make mistakes and learn what it needs to do to achieve its goals, just as a baby animal or human does in the real world. That experimentation process is called reinforcement learning. Genie 3 is part of a system that could help train the AI that someday pilots robots, self-driving cars and other "embodied" AIs, says project co-lead Jack Parker-Holder. And the environments could be filled with people and obstacles: An AI could learn how to interact with humans by observing them moving around in that virtual space, he adds.

"It isn't clear whether all these bets will lead to the superintelligence that corporate leaders predict," the article concedes.

"But in the short term, world models could make AIs better at tasks at which they currently falter, especially in [2]spatial reasoning ."



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-virtual-worlds-where-ai-is-making-its-next-big-leap/ar-AA1NnWbB

[2] https://towardsdatascience.com/language-models-and-spatial-reasoning-whats-good-what-is-still-terrible-and-what-is-improving-175d2099eb4c/

It's [1]the world's largest companies by revenue . But Walmart's executives have a blunt message, [2]reports the Wall Street Journal : "Artificial intelligence will wipe out jobs and reshape its workforce."

> "It's very clear that AI is going to change literally every job," Chief Executive Doug McMillon said this week in one of the most pointed assessments to date from a big-company CEO on AI's likely impact on employment... "Maybe there's a job in the world that AI won't change, but I haven't thought of it."

>

> Inside Walmart, top executives have started to examine AI's implications for its workforce in nearly every high-level planning meeting. Company leaders say they are tracking which job types decrease, increase and stay steady to gauge where additional training and preparation can help workers. "Our goal is to create the opportunity for everybody to make it to the other side," McMillon said. For now, Walmart executives say the transformation means the size of its global workforce will stay roughly flat even as its revenue climbs. It plans to maintain its head count of around 2.1 million global workers over the next three years, but the mix of those jobs will change significantly, said Donna Morris, Walmart's chief people officer. What the composition will look like remains murky... Already Walmart has built chat bots, which it calls "agents," for customers, suppliers and workers. It is also tracking an expanding share of its supply chain and product trends with AI...

>

> Some changes are already rippling across the workforce. In recent years Walmart [3]has automated many of its warehouses with the help of AI-related technology, triggering some job cuts, executives said. Walmart is also looking to automate some back-of-store tasks. New roles have been established, too. Walmart, for example, created an "agent builder" position last month — an employee who builds AI tools to help merchants. It expects to add people in areas like home delivery or in high-touch customer positions, such as its bakeries. The company has also added more in-store maintenance technicians and truck drivers in recent years.

The article also a comment made by Ford Motor Chief Executive Jim Farley earlier this summer. "Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S."



[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue

[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/walmart-ceo-issues-wake-up-call-ai-is-going-to-change-literally-every-job/ar-AA1NolbK

[3] https://www.wsj.com/business/logistics/inside-walmarts-warehouse-of-the-future-6f17d17a

Electric powertrains allow for "crazy fast acceleration figures," [1]reports Car and Driver , as well as "huge power numbers." And now a Chinese luxury electric car brand owned by BYD Auto "just hit a top speed of 308.4 mph, making it not only the fastest electric car on the planet, but the fastest car. Period."

[2]Engadget reports that the U9 Xtreme "is packed with four motors that produce just under 3,000 horsepower. The electric hypercar also runs on one of the world's first 1,200V platforms, which offers better performance and efficiency, along with some weight reduction." And [3] Car and Driver adds that "Other changes to achieve the speed include dropping the wheel size from 21 to 20 inches, narrowing the front track, and adding wider, semi-slick track tires at the front of the car."

> One small caveat that doesn't lessen the impressiveness of the feat is that while the U9 Xtreme does classify as a production model, it barely does. That's because BYD is planning to limit production of the top-speed version of the U9 to no more than 30 units.

The car hit its "facemelting" top speed [4]during a livestream at Germany's Automotive Testing Papenburg, [5]reports Engadget .

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [6]hackingbear for sharing the news.



[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a68005437/yangwang-u9-xtreme-top-speed-record/

[2] https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/byds-all-electric-hypercar-the-yangwang-u9-extreme-hits-a-record-breaking-308mph-180727354.html

[3] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a68005437/yangwang-u9-xtreme-top-speed-record/

[4] https://youtu.be/SGisz5gLShg

[5] https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/byds-all-electric-hypercar-the-yangwang-u9-extreme-hits-a-record-breaking-308mph-180727354.html

[6] https://www.slashdot.org/~hackingbear

"Researchers have found that the carbon footprint of generative AI-based tools that can turn text prompts into images and videos is far worse than we previously thought," writes Futurism :

> As detailed [1]in a new paper , researchers from the open-source AI platform Hugging Face found that the energy demands of text-to-video generators quadruple when the length of a generated video doubles — indicating that the power required for increasingly sophisticated generations doesn't scale linearly. For instance, a six-second AI video clip consumes four times as much energy as a three-second clip.

>

> "These findings highlight both the structural inefficiency of current video diffusion pipelines and the urgent need for efficiency-oriented design," the researchers concluded in their paper... Fortunately, there are ways to slim down those demands, including intelligent caching, the reusing of existing AI generations, and " [2]pruning ," meaning the sifting out of inefficient examples from training datasets.

The Hugging Face researchers gave their paper a cheeky title. " [3]Video Killed the Energy Budget : Characterizing the Latency and Power Regimes of Open Text-to-Video Mode."



[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.19222

[2] https://www.willowtreeapps.com/craft/dataset-pruning-for-intent-classification

[3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.19222

YouTube's new "Labs" program plans to "offer a glimpse of the AI features it's developing for YouTube Music," [1]reports Ars Technica .

But Ars Technica adds that this future "starts with AI 'hosts' that will chime in while you're listening to music. Yes, really." (YouTube says the AI aims to " [2]deepen your listening experience "...)

> The "Beyond the Beat" host will break in every so often with relevant stories, trivia, and commentary about your musical tastes. YouTube says this feature will appear when you are listening to mixes and radio stations. The experimental feature is intended to be a bit like having a radio host drop some playful banter while cueing up the next song. It sounds a bit like [3]Spotify's AI DJ , but the YouTube AI doesn't create playlists like Spotify's robot...

>

> After joining, the YouTube Music app will get a new button on the Now Playing screen with the familiar Gemini sparkle logo. Tapping that will allow you to snooze the commentary for an hour or the remainder of the day. There is no option to completely disable the AI host in the app, so you'll have to opt out of the test if you decide Beyond the Beat is more trouble than it's worth.

YouTube calls it "a way for users to take our cutting edge AI experiments for a test drive," promises that "a limited number of US-based participants can test early prototypes and experiments and influence the future of YouTube. Sign up [4]at YouTube.com/New ."

Ars Technica believes "This is still generative AI, which comes with the risk of hallucinations and low-quality slop, neither of which belongs in your music. That said, Google's Audio Overviews are often surprisingly good in small doses."



[1] https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/09/youtube-music-is-testing-ai-hosts-that-will-interrupt-your-tunes/

[2] https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/introducing-youtube-labs/

[3] https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-02-22/spotify-debuts-a-new-ai-dj-right-in-your-pocket/

[4] http://youtube.com/New

The heliosphere "plays a major role in why life is possible on our planet," [1]reports CNN , "and how it perhaps once existed on others such as Mars." (Basically solar winds create "a constant flow of charged particles" that form "an enormous bubble that protects the planets in our solar system from cosmic radiation permeating the Milky Way".)

NASA says the heliosphere's boundary is three times the distance between Earth and Pluto. (After leaving the heliosphere NASA's Voyager probes [2]collected key data about the heliosphere.) But now there's a new mission to investigate "how that solar wind interacts with interstellar space at the boundary of the heliosphere," CNN reports — called the [3]Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (or IMAP):

> The spacecraft's 10 instruments will also fill gaps in the existing map of the heliosphere, pieced together from data collected by previous missions, and help further explain how the heliosphere largely shields our solar system from damaging cosmic rays, the most highly energetic particles in the universe. Along with two other space weather missions that lifted off aboard the same rocket on Wednesday, IMAP will help scientists better predict when solar storms unleashed by the sun could affect our planet. When aimed at Earth, harsh radiation from the storms, also known as space weather, can pose risks to astronauts on the International Space Station as well as interfere with communications, the electric power grid, navigation, and radio and satellite operations.

>

> "This next set of missions is the ultimate cosmic carpool," said Dr. Joe Westlake, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division, during a news conference on Sunday. "They will provide unprecedented insight into space weather. Every human on Earth, as well as nearly every system involved in space exploration and human needs, is affected by space weather...." The IBEX, or Interstellar Boundary Explorer, satellite has been mapping the heliosphere since launching in 2008. But IMAP can explore and map the boundaries of the heliosphere like never before because it has instruments with faster imaging that are capable of 30 times higher resolution. Once it reaches an orbit about 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth in about three months, IMAP will also capture observations of the solar wind in real time and measure particles that travel from the sun, study the heliosphere's boundary between 6 billion and 9 billion miles (9.7 billion to 14.5 billion kilometers) away, and even collect data from interstellar space.

Also launching was the [4]SWFO-L1 mission , which CNN says is "intended to act as a solar storm detector, providing early warnings to protect astronauts in low-Earth orbit and satellites that provide critical communications on Earth. It's a tool that will be even more necessary as astronauts venture farther into deep space."

NASA streamed the launch live [5]on YouTube .



[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/24/science/heliosphere-spacex-nasa-imap-launch

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/14/science/voyager-1-thruster-fix

[3] https://science.nasa.gov/mission/imap/

[4] https://science.nasa.gov/mission/swfo-l1/

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNRrfamTT4k

DJI has [1]lost its lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense , failing to remove its designation as a Chinese Military Company. US District Court Judge Paul Friedman ruled the Pentagon has broad discretion to make such designations, finding sufficient evidence that DJI qualifies as a "military-civil fusion contributor" based on its recognition by China's National Development and Reform Commission as a National Enterprise Technology Center. The designation provides DJI substantial government benefits including cash subsidies, special financial support and tax benefits.

The judge rejected several of the DoD's other claims for insufficient evidence and noted the department confused two different Chinese industrial zones when attempting to prove DJI's factories were in state-sponsored areas. DJI faces a total import ban on new products this December and US customs has already stopped many consumer drone shipments. The company says it is evaluating legal options.



[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/786540/dji-loses-chinese-military-company-lawsuit-dod

Meta is [1]making humanoid robots its next massive "AR-sized bet ," investing billions into a project led by top roboticists. The focus will be less on hardware and more on software dexterity, aiming to license its robotics platform to manufacturers much like Google licenses Android. The Verge reports:

> During a recent conversation at Meta's headquarters, CTO Andrew Bosworth said he stood up a robotics "research effort" earlier this year at the direction of CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The team's existence has been reported on before, but Bosworth hadn't discussed its strategy in-depth until our interview. "I don't think the hardware is the hard part," he told me ahead of Meta's recent Connect conference. "I'm not saying the hardware isn't also hard, but it's not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is the software."

>

> To demonstrate, Bosworth picked up my glass of water from a table between us. "If you know robotics, one of the biggest problems that you have is dexterous manipulation," he said. "These robots, they can stand, they can run, they can do a flip, because the ground is a super stable thing." By contrast, a robot trying to pick up the glass of water would likely "immediately crush it or spill all the water." While Meta is currently building its own humanoid, or "Metabot" as it's called internally, Bosworth envisions the company licensing its software platform to other robot manufacturers. "I don't care about us being the hardware manufacturers," he explained.



[1] https://www.theverge.com/column/786759/humanoid-robots-meta

United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket [1]launched 27 more Project Kuiper satellites for Amazon from Cape Canaveral , bringing the constellation's total to 129 in orbit. By the end of the year, Amazon expects over 200 satellites will be deployed, with commercial service starting in several countries by early 2026. Spaceflight Now reports:

> This is the third batch of production satellites launched by ULA and the fifth overall for the growing low Earth orbit constellation. [...] The 27 Project Kuiper satellites will be deployed at an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth. Control will shift over to the Project Kuiper team at their 24/7 mission operations center in Redmond, Washington. The separation sequence began about 20 minutes after liftoff, concluding about 15 minutes later. From there, they will confirm satellite health, and eventually raise the satellites to their assigned orbit of 392 miles (630 km) above Earth.



[1] https://spaceflightnow.com/2025/09/25/live-coverage-ula-to-launch-fifth-batch-of-amazons-project-kuiper-satellites-from-cape-canaveral/

Doctors report the first successful treatment for Huntington's disease using a new type of gene therapy given during 12 to 18 hours of delicate brain surgery. The BBC reports:

> An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients. It means the decline you would normally expect in one year would take four years after treatment, giving patients decades of "good quality life", Prof Sarah Tabrizi told BBC News. The first symptoms of Huntington's disease tend to appear in your 30s or 40s and is normally fatal within two decades -- opening the possibility that earlier treatment could prevent symptoms from ever emerging. None of the patients who have been treated are being identified, but one was medically retired and has returned to work. Others in the trial are still walking despite being expected to need a wheelchair. Treatment is likely to be very expensive. However, this is a moment of real hope in a disease that hits people in their prime and devastates families. [...]

>

> It starts with a safe virus that has been altered to contain a specially designed sequence of DNA. This is infused deep into the brain using real-time MRI scanning to guide a microcatheter to two brain regions - the caudate nucleus and the putamen. This takes 12 to 18 hours of neurosurgery. The virus then acts like a microscopic postman -- delivering the new piece of DNA inside brain cells, where it becomes active. This turns the neurons into a factory for making the therapy to avert their own death. The cells produce a small fragment of genetic material (called microRNA) that is designed to intercept and disable the instructions (called messenger RNA) being sent from the cells' DNA for building mutant huntingtin. This results in lower levels of mutant huntingtin in the brain. [...]

>

> The data showed that three years after surgery there was an average 75% slowing of the disease based on a measure which combines cognition, motor function and the ability to manage in daily life. The data also shows the treatment is saving brain cells. Levels of neurofilaments in spinal fluid -- a clear sign of brain cells dying -- should have increased by a third if the disease continued to progress, but was actually lower than at the start of the trial.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian:

> The world's oceans have [1]failed a key planetary health check for the first time , primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels, a report has shown. In its latest [2]annual assessment , the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said ocean acidity had crossed a critical threshold for marine life. This makes it the seventh of nine planetary boundaries to be transgressed, prompting scientists to call for a renewed global effort to curb fossil fuels, deforestation and other human-driven pressures that are tilting the Earth out of a habitable equilibrium. The report, which follows earlier warnings about ocean acidity, comes at a time of recordbreaking ocean heat and mass coral bleaching.

>

> Oceans cover 71% of the Earth's surface and play an essential role as a climate stabilizer. The new report calls them an "unsung guardian of planetary health", but says their vital functions are threatened. The 2025 Planetary Health Check noted that since the start of the industrial era, oceans' surface pH has fallen by about 0.1 units, a 30-40% increase in acidity, pushing marine ecosystems beyond safe limits. Cold-water corals, tropical coral reefs and Arctic marine life are especially at risk. This is primarily due to the human-caused climate crisis. When carbon dioxide from oil, coal and gas burning enters the sea, it forms carbonic acid. This reduces the availability of calcium carbonate, which many marine organisms depend upon to grow coral, shells or skeletons.

>

> Near the bottom of the food chain, this directly affects species like oysters, molluscs and clams. Indirectly, it harms salmon, whales and other sea life that eat smaller organisms. Ultimately, this is a risk for human food security and coastal economies. Scientists are concerned that it could also weaken the ocean's role as the planet's most important heat absorber and its capacity to draw down 25-30% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Marine life plays an important role in this process, acting as a "biotic bump" to sequester carbon in the depths. In the report, all of the other six breached boundaries -- climate change, biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, and novel entities -- showed a worsening trend. But the authors said the addition of the only solely ocean-centerd category was a alarming development because of its scale and importance.



[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/24/worlds-oceans-fail-key-health-check-as-acidity-crosses-critical-threshold-for-marine-life

[2] https://www.planetaryhealthcheck.org/

Intel has [1]approached Apple about a possible investment and closer collaboration , following recent multibillion-dollar deals [2]with Nvidia , the U.S. government, and SoftBank to stabilize the struggling chipmaker. Reuters reports:

> The iPhone maker and Intel have also discussed how to work more closely together, the report said, adding that the talks are at an early stage and may not lead to an agreement. Shares of Intel closed 6% higher after the news. [...] Striking lucrative partnerships and persuading outside clients to use Intel's factories remain key to its future. Intel has also reached out to other companies about possible investments and partnerships, according to the Bloomberg News report. The reported investment from Apple would come as another vote of confidence for Intel - Apple had been a longtime customer of Intel before it transitioned to using its own custom-designed silicon chips in 2020.

>

> For Apple, which relies heavily on Intel's rival TSMC to manufacture its chips, the new partnership would allow it to diversify its chipmaking supplier base - a move that would be valuable if geopolitical risks in Taiwan worsen due to China's role in the region. It would also help Apple improve its relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump, by showing that it is investing in the United States - while much of Apple's supply chain remains international, the company has committed about $600 billion to domestic initiatives over the next four years.



[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-approaches-apple-potential-investment-2025-09-24

[2] https://slashdot.org/story/25/09/18/1226210/nvidia-to-invest-5-billion-in-intel

Qualcomm [1]unveiled its Snapdragon X2 Elite and Extreme chips, claiming they're the " [2]fastest and most efficient processors for Windows PCs ." Built on 3nm with up to 18 cores and a 5GHz Arm CPU boost, the chips promise 31% more CPU power, up to 2.3x GPU performance, stronger AI processing, and "multi-day battery life," with devices expected in the first half of 2026. The Verge reports:

> There's also a new 80 TOPS Hexagon NPU, for AI tasks, that offers 37 percent more performance with a 16 percent power consumption improvement, the company claims. Qualcomm's characterizing all of this as a "legendary leap in performance," claiming the Elite Extreme in particular offers "up to 75 percent faster CPU performance" at the same power. But it doesn't say who the competition is, or which chip it was up against, at least not in the press release. And while Qualcomm claims these power savings will lead to "multi-day battery life," that's also what the company said about last year's Snapdragon X Elite.



[1] https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2025/09/new-snapdragon-x2-elite-extreme-and-snapdragon-x2-elite-are-the-

[2] https://www.theverge.com/news/785068/qualcomm-announces-snapdragon-x2-elite-and-extreme-for-windows-pcs

[1]Neon Mobile , now the No. 2 social networking app in Apple's U.S. App Store, [2]pays users up to $30 per day to record their phone calls and sell the data to AI companies. The app [3]claims to only capture one side of a call unless both parties use Neon, but its terms grant sweeping rights over recordings. TechCrunch reports:

> The app, Neon Mobile, pitches itself as a money-making tool offering "hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year" for access to your audio conversations. Neon's website says the company pays 30 cents per minute when you call other Neon users and up to $30 per day maximum for making calls to anyone else. The app also pays for referrals.

>

> According to Neon's terms of service, the company's mobile app can capture users' inbound and outbound phone calls. However, Neon's marketing claims to only record your side of the call unless it's with another Neon user. That data is being sold to "AI companies," the company's terms of service state, "for the purpose of developing, training, testing, and improving machine learning models, artificial intelligence tools and systems, and related technologies."

>

> Despite what Neon's privacy policy says, its terms include a very broad license to its user data, where Neon grants itself a: "...worldwide, exclusive, irrevocable, transferable, royalty-free, fully paid right and license (with the right to sublicense through multiple tiers) to sell, use, host, store, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform (including by means of a digital audio transmission), communicate to the public, reproduce, modify for the purpose of formatting for display, create derivative works as authorized in these Terms, and distribute your Recordings, in whole or in part, in any media formats and through any media channels, in each instance whether now known or hereafter developed." That leaves plenty of wiggle room for Neon to do more with users' data than it claims. The terms also include an extensive section on beta features, which have no warranty and may have all sorts of issues and bugs.

Peter Jackson, cybersecurity and privacy attorney at Greenberg Glusker, told TechCrunch: "Once your voice is over there, it can be used for fraud. Now, this company has your phone number and essentially enough information -- they have recordings of your voice, which could be used to create an impersonation of you and do all sorts of fraud."



[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/neon-money-talks/id6745481255

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/24/neon-the-no-2-social-app-on-the-apple-app-store-pays-users-to-record-their-phone-calls-and-sells-data-to-ai-firms/

[3] https://neonmobile.com/privacypolicy

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica:

> When the COVID-19 pandemic forced kids to stay home, educators flocked to VMware, and thousands of school districts adopted virtualization. The technology became a solution for distance learning during the pandemic and after, when events such as bad weather and illness can prevent children from physically attending school. However, the VMware being sold to K-12 schools today differs from the VMware that existed before and during the pandemic. Now a Broadcom business, the platform features [1]higher prices and a business strategy that [2]favors big spenders . This has [3]created unique problems for educational IT departments juggling restrictive budgets and multiple technology vendors with children's needs.

>

> Ars Technica recently spoke with an IT director at a public school district in Indiana. The director requested anonymity for themself and the district out of concern about potential blowback. The director confirmed that the district has five schools and about 3,000 students. The district started using VMware's vSAN, a software-defined storage offering, and the vSphere virtualization platform in 2019. The Indiana school system bought the VMware offerings through a package that combined them with VxRail, which is hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) hardware that Dell jointly engineered with VMware.

>

> However, like many of VMware customers, the Indiana school district was priced out of VMware after Broadcom's acquisition of the company. The IT director said the district received a quote that was "three to six" times higher than expected. This came as the school district is looking to manage changes in education-related taxes and funding over the next few years. As a result, the district's migration from VMware is taking IT resources from other projects, including ones aimed at improving curriculum. For instance, the Indiana district has been trying to bolster its technology curriculum, the IT director said. One way is through a summer employment program for upperclassmen that teaches how to use real-world IT products, like VMware and Cisco Meraki technologies. The district previously relied on VMware-based virtual machines (VMs) for creating "very easily and accessible" test environments for these students. But the school is no longer able to provide that opportunity, creating a learning "barrier," as the IT director put it.

The IT director told Ars that dealing with a migration could be "catastrophic in that that's too much work for one person," adding: "It could be a chokehold, essentially, to where they're going to be basically forced into switching platforms -- maybe before they were anticipating -- or paying exorbitant prices that have skyrocketed for absolutely no reason. Nothing on the software side has changed. It's the same software. There's no features being added. Nobody's benefiting from the higher prices on the education side."



[1] https://slashdot.org/story/25/05/22/1818256/vmware-price-hikes-between-800-and-1500-since-acquisition-by-broadcom-claim-euro-customers

[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/236216/vmware-reboots-its-partner-program-again-with-new-invite-only-program

[3] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/09/broadcoms-prohibitive-vmware-prices-create-a-learning-barrier-it-pro-says/