IBM and Cisco plan to link quantum computers over long distances by the early 2030s, "with the goal of demonstrating the concept is workable by the end of 2030," reports Reuters. "The move could pave the way for a quantum internet, though executives at the two companies cautioned that the networks would require technologies that do not currently exist and will have to be developed with the help of universities and federal laboratories." From the report: The challenge begins with a problem: Quantum computers like IBM's sit in massive cryogenic tanks that get so cold that atoms barely move. To get information out of them, IBM has to figure out how to transform information in stationary "qubits" -- the fundamental unit of information in a quantum computer -- into what Jay Gambetta, director of IBM Research and an IBM fellow, told Reuters are "flying" qubits that travel as microwaves. But those flying microwave qubits will have to be turned into optical signals that can travel between Cisco switches on fiber-optic cables. The technology for that transformation -- called a microwave-optical transducer -- will have to be developed with the help of groups like the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center, led by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago, among others. Along the way, Cisco and IBM will also publish open-source software to weave all the parts together.

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Mozilla is officially ending its partnership with Onerep after more than a year of controversy over the company's founder secretly running people-search and data-broker sites. Monitor Plus will be discontinued by December 2025, existing subscribers will receive prorated refunds, and Mozilla says it will focus on privacy tools it fully controls. KrebsOnSecurity reports: In a statement published Tuesday, Mozilla said it will soon discontinue Monitor Plus, which offered data broker site scans and automated personal data removal from Onerep. "We will continue to offer our free Monitor data breach service, which is integrated into Firefox's credential manager, and we are focused on integrating more of our privacy and security experiences in Firefox, including our VPN, for free," the advisory reads. Mozilla said current Monitor Plus subscribers will retain full access through the wind-down period, which ends on Dec. 17, 2025. After that, those subscribers will automatically receive a prorated refund for the unused portion of their subscription. "We explored several options to keep Monitor Plus going, but our high standards for vendors, and the realities of the data broker ecosystem made it challenging to consistently deliver the level of value and reliability we expect for our users," Mozilla statement reads.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The world's largest music companies have licensed their works to a music startup called Klay, which is building a streaming service that will allow users to remake songs using artificial intelligence tools. Klay is the first music AI service to reach a deal with all three major record labels, Universal Music Group NV, Sony Music and Warner Music Group Corp., according to people familiar with the deals. Klay plans to announce its agreements in the coming days, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential plans. Klay is building a product that will offer the features of a streaming service like Spotify, amplified by AI technology that will let users remake songs in different styles. Klay has licensed the rights to thousands of hit songs so that it can train its large language model. The company has positioned itself as a friend of the industry, offering assurances that the artists and labels will have some control over how their work is used. Klay is led by music producer Ary Attie and also employs former executives from Sony Music and Google's DeepMind, an AI laboratory.

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Roblox is rolling out mandatory facial age-verification for chat features to prevent children from communicating with adult strangers. The platform will restrict chat to verified age groups, expand parental controls, and become the first major gaming platform to require facial age checks for messaging. The BBC reports: Mandatory age checks will be introduced for accounts using chat features, starting in December for Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, then the rest of the globe from January. [...] Rani Govender, policy manager for child safety online at the NSPCC, said action had been needed because young people had been exposed to "unacceptable risks" on Roblox, "leaving many vulnerable to harm and online abuse." The charity welcomed the platform's latest announcement but called on Roblox to "ensure they deliver change for children in practice and prevent adult perpetrators from targeting and manipulating young users." The platform averaged more than 80 million daily players in 2024, about 40% of them under the age of 13. [...] Matt Kaufman, chief safety officer for Roblox, told a press briefing the age estimation technology is "pretty accurate." He claimed the system can make close estimates of "within one to two years" bracket for users aged between five and 25. Currently it can be used voluntarily by anyone in the world.

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alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: New research from the Human Capital Development Lab at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School analyzes the state of the American workforce in 2024 and shows an overall decline in employee well-being compared to years prior. [...] The latest research confirms a decline in general employee well-being since 2020. In 2024, employees reported the lowest well-being scores on record, as opposed to 2020, when employees reported the highest well-being scores. "In some cases, the lower scores represent a reduction in employee flexibility for either flexible hours or remote work," the latest research states. "In other cases, these scores could be related to challenges associated with greater economic shifts related to inflation or productivity needs." In prior years, well-being scores for managers and employees were comparable to one another, and during the pandemic, managers and top leaders often reported lower scores due to the extra burden of that time period. However, one of the most noteworthy shifts the current data shows is a rise in well-being scores for managers and senior leaders, while well-being for employees and individual contributors decreased in 2024. Rick Smith, director of the Human Capital Development Lab and author of the study, says that the increase in well-being scores for managers could reflect the return to regular operating conditions since the pandemic, which may be indicative of the distance between leadership and workers. "What we're seeing is a growing gap between how leaders and their teams experience the workplace," said Smith. "Managers may feel a return to normalcy, but that doesn't mean their employees do. Leaders must be cautious not to assume their own well-being reflects the broader workforce at their organization. The data shows a potential disconnect, and that's a signal for action."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google's meme-friendly Nano Banana image-generation model is getting an upgrade. The new Nano Banana Pro is rolling out with improved reasoning and instruction following, giving users the ability to create more accurate images with legible text and make precise edits to existing images. It's available to everyone in the Gemini app, but free users will find themselves up against the usage limits pretty quickly. Nano Banana Pro is part of the newly launched Gemini 3 Pro -- it's actually called Gemini 3 Pro Image in the same way the original is Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, but Google is sticking with the meme-y name. You can access it by selecting Gemini 3 Pro and then turning on the "Create images" option. Google says the new model can follow complex prompts to create more accurate images. The model is apparently so capable that it can generate an entire usable infographic in a single shot with no weird AI squiggles in place of words. Nano Banana Pro is also better at maintaining consistency in images. You can blend up to 14 images with this tool, and it can maintain the appearance of up to five people in outputs. Google also promises better editing. You can refine your AI images or provide Nano Banana Pro with a photo and make localized edits without as many AI glitches. It can even change core elements of the image like camera angles, color grading, and lighting without altering other elements. Google is pushing the professional use angle with its new model, which has much-improved resolution options. Your creations in Nano Banana Pro can be rendered at up to 4K.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Epishine, a company that makes solar cells optimized for indoor lighting, has announced its technology is being used in a new remote control for Google TV devices, as spotted by 9to5Google. The remote will rely on rechargeable batteries instead of disposable ones, and thanks to the use of solar cells on both sides it may only run out of power when it gets buried and forgotten in the dark abyss of your couch cushions.

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Microsoft has released the source code for Zork I, II, and III under the MIT License through a collaboration with Team Xbox and Activision that involved submitting pull requests to historical source repositories maintained by digital archivist Jason Scott. Each repository now includes the original source code and accompanying documentation. The games arrived on early home computers in the 1980s as text-based adventures built on the Z-Machine, a virtual machine that allowed the same story files to run across different platforms. Infocom created the Z-Machine after discovering the original mainframe version was too large for home computers. The team split the game into three titles that all ran on the same underlying system. The code release covers only the source files and does not include commercial packaging or trademark rights. The games remain available commercially through The Zork Anthology on Good Old Games and can be compiled locally using ZILF, a modern Z-Machine interpreter.

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Nvidia and Google announced today a new cloud gaming plan called GeForce Now Fast Pass that is exclusive to Chromebooks. Anyone who purchases a new Chromebook will receive a year of the service included with their device at no additional charge. Fast Pass allows Chromebook owners to stream more than 2,000 games from their existing Steam, Epic or Xbox libraries. The service removes ads and lets users skip the queue that typically adds two minutes or more of wait time on GeForce Now's free tier. Users get 10 hours of cloud gaming each month. Up to five unused hours can roll over to the following month. Nvidia offers other paid plans starting at $9.99 per month that support higher resolutions, faster frame rates, RTX ray-tracing, and access to a larger game library that includes thousands of additional titles. The companies did not announce pricing for Fast Pass after the first year ends.

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A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage that previously made the case that vaccines don't cause autism now says they might. WSJ: The contents of the webpage came up during Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Senate confirmation process. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.) in February said Kennedy had assured him that, if he was confirmed, the CDC would "not remove statements on their website pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism." The revised webpage says: "The claim 'vaccines do not cause autism' is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism. Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities." The new text posted Wednesday also notes that the Department of Health and Human Services has launched "a comprehensive assessment" to probe the causes of autism.

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Microsoft's push to transform Windows into an "agentic OS" that allows AI agents to control PCs is drawing user backlash similar to the Windows 8 controversy, as the company marks the operating system's 40th anniversary this week, writes Tom Warren, a reporter at The Verge who has been covering Microsoft for nearly two decades. Windows chief Pavan Davuluri announced the agentic OS plans in a post on X last week and faced immediate criticism in hundreds of replies before they were locked days later. "It's evolving into a product that's driving people to Mac and Linux," one person wrote, while another asked for a return to Windows 7's "clean UI, clean icon, a unified control panel, no bloat apps, no ads, just a pure performant OS." Davuluri later responded to software engineer Gergely Orosz, saying "we care deeply about developers" and acknowledging Microsoft has "work to do on the experience, both on the everyday usability, from inconsistent dialogs to power user experiences." Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the Dwarkesh Podcast that the company's business "which today is an end user tools business, will become, essentially an infrastructure business in support of agents doing work." The Recall feature already spooked users when it was initially turned on by default before Microsoft reworked it to be opt-in. Navjot Virk, corporate vice president of Windows experiences, told The Verge that "every user can use [AI agents] when they're ready. It's their choice, they decide."

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Autonomous electric tractor startup Monarch Tractor -- which we covered in 2022 -- warned staff Thursday it may need to lay off more than 100 employees, or possibly even "shut down," according to a company-wide memo obtained by TechCrunch. The report adds: The memo comes after Monarch Tractor was already cutting some positions over the last few weeks at its California corporate facilities and remote teams in India and Singapore, according to multiple former employees who spoke with TechCrunch on the condition of anonymity. Monarch Tractor was founded in 2018 by a team that included a former top executive at Tesla's first gigafactory and Carlo Mondavi, a scion of the famous winemaking family. The company raised at least $220 million, including $133 million in 2024, as it pursued a goal of making "driver optional" autonomous tractors that could perform tasks at places like wineries and other fruit farms.

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Android's Quick Share file transfer service can now work with Apple's AirDrop, allowing users to send files between iPhones and Android devices. Google has started rolling out the feature to its Pixel 10 family of smartphones. The cross-platform compatibility includes security protections that the company says independent security experts tested. Google said it built the feature in response to user requests for simpler file sharing between devices regardless of manufacturer. The company plans to expand availability to additional Android devices.

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A federal judge in New York denied Disney's request to block Sling TV's short-term passes, which give viewers the ability to stream live content for as little as one day. From a report: In a ruling on Tuesday, US District Judge Arun Subramanian ruled that Disney didn't prove that Sling TV's passes caused "irreparable harm" to the entertainment giant, as reported earlier by Cord Cutters. Disney sued Sling shortly after the live TV streaming service started allowing viewers to purchase temporary access to its library of channels, starting at a single payment of $4.99 for a one-day pass. Several channels included in the package are owned by Disney, including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, and Disney Channel. In its lawsuit, Disney argued that the passes violate an agreement with Sling TV that says the service must give subscribers access to its content through monthly subscriptions. However, Judge Subramanian argues that this claim isn't likely to succeed, as the contract doesn't stipulate a "minimum subscription length," adding that the agreement's "broad definition" of a subscriber "clearly covers users of the Passes."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: For the past several years, America has been using its young people as lab rats in a sweeping, if not exactly thought-out, education experiment. Schools across the country have been lowering standards and removing penalties for failure. The results are coming into focus. Five years ago, about 30 incoming freshmen at UC San Diego arrived with math skills below high-school level. Now, according to a recent report from UC San Diego faculty and administrators, that number is more than 900 -- and most of those students don't fully meet middle-school math standards. Many students struggle with fractions and simple algebra problems. Last year, the university, which admits fewer than 30 percent of undergraduate applicants, launched a remedial-math course that focuses entirely on concepts taught in elementary and middle school. (According to the report, more than 60 percent of students who took the previous version of the course couldn't divide a fraction by two.) One of the course's tutors noted that students faced more issues with "logical thinking" than with math facts per se. They didn't know how to begin solving word problems. The university's problems are extreme, but they are not unique. Over the past five years, all of the other University of California campuses, including UC Berkeley and UCLA, have seen the number of first-years who are unprepared for precalculus double or triple. George Mason University, in Virginia, revamped its remedial-math summer program in 2023 after students began arriving at their calculus course unable to do algebra, the math-department chair, Maria Emelianenko, told me. "We call it quantitative literacy, just knowing which fraction is larger or smaller, that the slope is positive when it is going up," Janine Wilson, the chair of the undergraduate economics program at UC Davis, told me. "Things like that are just kind of in our bones when we are college ready. We are just seeing many folks without that capability." Part of what's happening here is that as more students choose STEM majors, more of them are being funneled into introductory math courses during their freshman year. But the national trend is very clear: America's students are getting much worse at math. The decline started about a decade ago and sharply accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. The average eighth grader's math skills, which rose steadily from 1990 to 2013, are now a full school year behind where they were in 2013, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gold standard for tracking academic achievement. Students in the bottom tenth percentile have fallen even further behind. Only the top 10 percent have recovered to 2013 levels.

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An anonymous reader writes: U.S. wireless carrier Verizon said Thursday it will cut more than 13,000 jobs in its largest single layoff as it works to shrink costs and restructure operations. Verizon also said it plans to convert 179 corporate-owned retail stores into franchised operations and close one store. Verizon's new CEO, Dan Schulman, said in a note to employees the company would reduce its workforce by more than 13,000 employees across the organization, and significantly reduce outsourced and other outside labor expenses. Related: Delayed September report shows U.S. added 119,000 jobs, more than expected; unemployment rate at 4.4%

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An anonymous reader shares a report: A Microsoft executive is questioning why more people aren't impressed with AI, a week after the company touted the evolution of Windows into an "agentic OS," which immediately triggered backlash. "Jeez there so many cynics! It cracks me up when I hear people call AI underwhelming," tweeted Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO for Microsoft's AI group. Suleyman added that he grew up playing the old-school 2D Snake game on a Nokia phone. "The fact that people are unimpressed that we can have a fluent conversation with a super smart AI that can generate any image/video is mindblowing to me," he wrote.

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OpenAI won't say who audits its books. The company, which projects to hit an ARR of $20 billion this year and is valued at $500 billion, has committed to spending about $1.4 trillion on data centers over the next decade. It accounts for roughly two-thirds of unfulfilled contracts at Oracle and two-fifths at CoreWeave. Microsoft alone holds around $375 billion in unfulfilled contracts with OpenAI. Reuters reported the company may target a $1 trillion valuation for a potential IPO in coming years. Most companies at this scale use one of the Big Four accounting firms: Deloitte, EY, KPMG or PwC. OpenAI declined to comment to Financial Times. A person close to the organization told the publication the company has "an industry standard audit with one of the Big Four firms." The company's latest Form 990 filing lists Fontanello, Duffield, & Otake -- a small San Francisco accountancy firm -- as the paid preparer. The form does say an independent accountant audited the statements. Michael Burry, last night: "Can anyone name [OpenAI's] auditor?"

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The White House is preparing to issue an executive order as soon as Friday that tells the Department of Justice and other federal agencies to prevent states from regulating artificial intelligence, according to four people familiar with the matter and a leaked draft of the order obtained by POLITICO. The draft document, confirmed as authentic by three people familiar with the matter, would create an "AI Litigation Task Force" at the DOJ whose "sole responsibility" would be to challenge state AI laws. Government lawyers would be directed to challenge state laws on the grounds that they unconstitutionally regulate interstate commerce, are preempted by existing federal regulations or otherwise at the attorney general's discretion. The task force would consult with administration officials, including the special adviser for AI and crypto -- a role currently occupied by tech investor David Sacks. The executive order, in the draft obtained by POLITICO, would also empower Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to publish a review of "onerous" state AI laws within 90 days and restrict federal broadband funds to states whose AI laws are found to be objectionable. It would direct the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether state AI laws that "require alterations to the truthful outputs of AI models" are blocked by the FTC Act. And it would order the Federal Communications Commission to begin work on a reporting and disclosure standard for AI models that would preempt conflicting state laws.

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Canadian librarian Ian Linkletter has ended a five-year legal battle with ed-tech firm Proctorio after being sued for sharing public YouTube help videos that exposed how the company's remote-proctoring AI works. Ars Technica reports: ... Together, the videos, the help center screenshot, and another screenshot showing course material describing how Proctorio works were enough for Proctorio to take Linkletter to court. The ed tech company promptly filed a lawsuit and obtained a temporary injunction by spuriously claiming that Linkletter shared private YouTube videos containing confidential information. Because the YouTube videos -- which were public but "unlisted" when Linkletter shared them -- had been removed, Linkletter did not have to delete the seven tweets that initially caught Proctorio's attention, but the injunction required that he remove two tweets, including the screenshots. In the five years since, the legal fight dragged on, with no end in sight until last week, as Canadian courts tangled with copyright allegations that tested a recently passed law intended to shield Canadian rights to free expression, the Protection of Public Participation Act. To fund his defense, Linkletter said in a blog announcing the settlement that he invested his life savings "ten times over." Additionally, about 900 GoFundMe supporters and thousands of members of the Association of Administrative and Professional Staff at UBC contributed tens of thousands more. For the last year of the battle, a law firm, Norton Rose Fulbright, agreed to represent him on a pro bono basis, which Linkletter said âoewas a huge relief to me, as it meant I could defend myself all the way if Proctorio chose to proceed with the litigation." The terms of the settlement remain confidential, but both Linkletter and Proctorio confirmed that no money was exchanged. For Proctorio, the settlement made permanent the injunction that restricted Linkletter from posting the company's help center or instructional materials. But it doesn't stop Linkletter from remaining the company's biggest critic, as "there are no other restrictions on my freedom of expression," Linkletter's blog noted. "I've won my life back!" Linkletter wrote, while reassuring his supporters that he's "fine" with how things ended. "It doesn't take much imagination to understand why Proctorio is a nightmare for students," Linkletter wrote. "I can say everything that matters about Proctorio using public information."

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