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/

In a bid to slash red tape, the European Commission wants to [1]eliminate one of its peskiest laws : a 2009 tech rule that plastered the online world with pop-ups requesting consent to cookies. From a report:

> It's the kind of simplification ordinary Europeans can get behind. European rulemakers in 2009 revised a law called the e-Privacy Directive to require websites to get consent from users before loading cookies on their devices, unless the cookies are "strictly necessary" to provide a service. Fast forward to 2025 and the internet is full of consent banners that users have long learned to click away without thinking twice.

>

> "Too much consent basically kills consent. People are used to giving consent for everything, so they might stop reading things in as much detail, and if consent is the default for everything, it's no longer perceived in the same way by users," said Peter Craddock, data lawyer with Keller and Heckman. Cookie technology is now a focal point of the EU executive's plans to simplify technology regulation. Officials want to present an "omnibus" text in December, scrapping burdensome requirements on digital companies. On Monday, it held a meeting with the tech industry to discuss the handling of cookies and consent banners.



[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-cookie-law-messed-up-the-internet-brussels-sets-out-to-fix-it/

Cloudflare blocked the largest-ever DDoS attack against a European network infrastructure company, which [1]peaked at 22.2 Tbps and 10.6 Bpps . The hyper-volumetric attack has been linked to the Aisuru botnet and lasted just 40 seconds, but was double the size of the [2]previous record . SecurityWeek reports:

> Cloudflare told SecurityWeek that the attack was aimed at a single IP address of an unnamed European network infrastructure company. Cloudflare has yet to determine who was behind the attack, but believes it may have been powered by the Aisuru botnet, which was also linked earlier this year to a massive 6.3 Tbps attack on the website of cybersecurity blogger Brian Krebs. Aisuru has been around for more than a year. The botnet is powered by hacked IoT devices such as routers and DVRs that have been compromised through the exploitation of known and zero-day vulnerabilities.

>

> According to Cloudflare, the 22 Tbps attack was traced to over 404,000 unique source IPs across over 14 ASNs worldwide. "Based on internal analysis using a proprietary system, the source IPs were not spoofed," the company explained. The security firm described it as a UDP carpet bomb attack targeting an average of 31,000 destination ports per second, with a peak of 47k ports, all of a single IP address. Cloudflare revealed in July that the number of DDoS attacks it blocked in the first half of 2025 had already exceeded all the attacks mitigated in 2024.



[1] https://www.securityweek.com/record-breaking-ddos-attack-peaks-at-22-tbps-and-10-bpps/

[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/09/03/1958250/cloudflare-stops-new-worlds-largest-ddos-attack-over-labor-day-weekend

The pressure is mounting on business leaders to harness AI to make work faster, cheaper, and more efficient. That may thrill investors, but for employees, [1]it could mean fewer jobs around the world . From a report:

> At the $320 billion software giant SAP, there will likely be a need for fewer engineers to deliver the same -- or even greater -- output, according to the company's CFO Dominik Asam.

>

> "There's more automation, simply," Asam told Business Insider. "There are certain tasks which are automated and for the same volume of output we can afford to have less people." As a C-suite exec at Europe's most valuable software company, Asam cautioned that this reality will only come true if the corporate world implements the technology properly. After all, a recent MIT study found that 95% of generative AI pilots have not met the mark. "I will be brutal. And I also say this internally. For SAP and any other software company, AI is a great catalyst. It can be either great or catastrophe," Asam warned. "It will be great if you do it well, if you are able to implement it and do it faster than others. If you are left behind, you will have a problem for sure. We work day and night to not fall behind."



[1] https://fortune.com/2025/09/24/sap-cfo-dominik-asam-320-billion-software-firm-ai-allow-workforce-reduction-but-if-done-wrong-could-be-business-catastrophe/

Fossil fuel burning is not just damaging the world's climate; it is also threatening the [1]health of at least 1.6 billion people through the toxic pollutants it produces, data shows. From a report:

> Carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from fossil fuel burning, does not directly damage health, but leads to global heating. However, coal and oil burning for power generation, and the burning of fossil fuels in industrial facilities, pollute the air with particulate matter called PM2.5, which has serious health impacts when breathed in.

>

> A new interactive map from Climate Trace, a coalition of academics and analysts that tracks pollution and greenhouse gases, shows that PM2.5 and other toxins are being poured into the air near the homes of about 1.6 billion people. Of these, about 900 million are in the path of "super-emitting" industrial facilities -- including power plants, refineries, ports and mines -- that deliver outsize doses of toxic air.



[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/24/fossil-fuel-burning-threat-health-16bn-people-data-shows

[1]BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz:

> Cloudflare has [2]unveiled the [3]Content Signals Policy , a free addition to its managed robots.txt service that aims to give website owners and publishers more control over how their content is accessed and reused by AI companies. The idea is pretty simple: robots.txt already lets site operators specify which crawlers can enter and where. Cloudflare's new policy [4]adds a layer that signals how the data may be used once accessed , with plain-language terms for search, AI input, and AI training. "Yes" means allowed, "no" means not allowed, and no signal means no preference.

>

> Matthew Prince, Cloudflare's co-founder and CEO, said: "The Internet cannot wait for a solution, while in the meantime, creators' original content is used for profit by other companies. To ensure the web remains open and thriving, we're giving website owners a better way to express how companies are allowed to use their content." Cloudflare says more than 3.8 million domains already use its robots.txt tools to signal they don't want their content used for AI training. Now, the Content Signals Policy makes those preferences clearer and potentially enforceable.

Further reading: [5]Cloudflare Flips AI Scraping Model With Pay-Per-Crawl System For Publishers



[1] https://slashdot.org/~BrianFagioli

[2] https://blog.cloudflare.com/content-signals-policy/

[3] https://contentsignals.org/

[4] https://nerds.xyz/2025/09/cloudflare-content-signals-policy-ai-crawlers/

[5] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/01/1745245/cloudflare-flips-ai-scraping-model-with-pay-per-crawl-system-for-publishers

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian:

> After deflecting the US Department of Justice's attack on its illegal monopoly in online search, Google is [1]facing another attempt to dismantle its internet empire in a trial focused on abusive tactics in digital advertising. The trial that opened Monday in an Alexandria, Virginia, federal court revolves around the harmful conduct that resulted in US district Judge Leonie Brinkema declaring parts of Google's digital advertising technology to be an illegal monopoly [2]in April . The judge found that Google has been engaging in behavior that stifles competition to the detriment of online publishers that depend on the system for revenue.

>

> Google and the justice department will spend the next two weeks in court presenting evidence in a "remedy" trial that will culminate in Brinkema issuing a ruling on how to restore fair market conditions. If the justice department gets its way, Brinkema will order Google to sell parts of its ad technology -- a proposal that the company's lawyers warned would "invite disruption and damage" to consumers and the internet's ecosystem. The justice department contends a breakup would be the most effective and quickest way to undercut a monopoly that has been stifling competition and innovation for years. [...]

>

> The case, filed in 2023 under Joe Biden's administration, threatens the complex network that Google has spent the past 17 years building to power its dominant digital advertising business. Digital advertising sales account for most of the $305 billion in revenue that Google's services division generates for its corporate parent Alphabet. The company's sprawling network of display ads provide the lifeblood that keeps thousands of websites alive. Google believes it has already made enough changes to its "ad manager" system, including providing more options and pricing options, to resolve the problems Brinkema flagged in her monopoly ruling.



[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/22/google-second-monopoly-trial-digital-ads

[2] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/04/17/1950221/federal-judge-declares-googles-digital-ad-network-is-an-illegal-monopoly

Microsoft on Sept 24 announced new options for US and European customers to safely extend the life of the Windows 10 operating system free of charge just days before a key deadline to upgrade to Windows 11. From a report:

> The US tech giant plans to end support for Windows 10 on Oct 14, a move that has drawn criticism from consumer advocacy groups and sparked concerns among users who fear they will need to purchase new computers to stay protected from cyber threats.

>

> Users who are unable to upgrade or choose to forgo the extended security updates will face increased vulnerability to cyberattacks. In response to these concerns, Microsoft informed European users that essential security updates [1]will be extended for one year at no additional cost , provided they log in with a Microsoft account. Previously, the company had offered a one-year extension of Windows 10 security updates [2]for $30 to users whose hardware is incompatible with Windows 11. In the US, a similar free option will allow users to upload their Windows 10 profiles to Microsoft's backup service and receive security updates for up to one year.



[1] https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/microsoft-offers-no-cost-windows-10-lifeline

[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/31/2011223/want-to-keep-getting-windows-10-updates-itll-cost-you-30