An anonymous reader shares a report: CISA has warned that state-backed snoops and cyber-mercenaries are actively abusing commercial spyware to break into Signal and WhatsApp accounts, hijack devices, and quietly rummage through the phones of what the agency calls "high-value" users. In an alert published Monday, the US government's cyber agency said it's tracking multiple miscreants that are using a mix of phishing, bogus QR codes, malicious app impersonation, and, in some cases, full-blown zero-click exploits to compromise messaging apps which most people assume are safe. The agency says the activity it's seeing suggests an increasing focus on "high-value" individuals -- everyone from current and former senior government, military, and political officials to civil society groups across the US, the Middle East, and Europe. In many of the campaigns, attackers delivered spyware first and asked questions later, using the foothold to deploy more payloads and deepen their access.

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Two coal plants in Mumbai (in India) that were scheduled to close last year continue operating after the state government of Maharashtra reversed shutdown decisions in late 2023 and extended the life of at least one facility by five years. The largest single factor the Indian conglomerate Tata cited in its petition for an extension was increased energy demand from data centers. The Guardian reports that Amazon operated 16 data centers in Mumbai last year. The company's official website lists three "availability zones" for the city. Amazon's Mumbai colocation data centers consumed 624,518 megawatt hours of electricity in 2023. That amount could power over 400,000 Indian households for a year. Residents of Mahul live a few hundred metres from one coal plant. Earlier this year doctors found three tumours in the brain of a resident's 54-year-old mother. Studies show people who live near coal plants are much more likely to develop cancer. By 2030 data centers will consume a third of Mumbai's energy, according to Ankit Saraiya, chief executive of Techno & Electric Engineering. Amazon's colocation data centers in Mumbai bought 41 diesel generators as backup. A report in August by the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy identified diesel generators as a major source of air pollution in the region.

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Nvidia pushed back against investor concerns about Google's competitive positioning in AI on Tuesday after the chipmaker's shares tumbled 4.4% and erased nearly $200 billion in market cap on fears that Alphabet's tensor processing units were gaining ground against its dominance in AI computing. The company said it was "delighted by Google's success" but asserted that it continues to supply chips to Google. Nvidia said it remains "a generation ahead of the industry" as the only platform that runs every AI model and operates everywhere computing is done. The statement came after investors reacted to the release of Google's Gemini 3 large language model last week. The model was trained using TPUs rather than Nvidia chips. A report in The Information on Monday said Google was pitching potential clients including Meta on using TPUs in their data centers rather than Nvidia's chips. Nvidia said its platform offers "greater performance, versatility, and fungibility than ASICs," referring to application-specific integrated circuits like Google's TPUs that are designed for specific AI frameworks or functions. Google's TPUs have until now only been available for customers to rent through its cloud computing service. Nvidia has lost more than $800 billion in market value since it peaked above $5 trillion less than a month ago.

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The abstract of a paper on NBER: This paper examines a large-scale randomized evaluation of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program in 531 Peruvian rural primary schools. We use administrative data on academic performance and grade progression over 10 years to estimate the long-run effects of increased computer access on (i) school performance over time and (ii) students' educational trajectories. Following schools over time, we find no significant effects on academic performance but some evidence of negative effects on grade progression. Following students over time, we find no significant effects on primary and secondary completion, academic performance in secondary school, or university enrollment. Survey data indicate that computer access significantly improved students' computer skills but not their cognitive skills; treated teachers received some training but did not improve their digital skills and showed limited use of technology in classrooms, suggesting the need for additional pedagogical support.

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The brain goes through five distinct phases in life, with key turning points at ages nine, 32, 66 and 83, scientists have revealed. From a report: Around 4,000 people up to the age of 90 had scans to reveal the connections between their brain cells. Researchers at the University of Cambridge showed that the brain stays in the adolescent phase until our early thirties when we "peak." They say the results could help us understand why the risk of mental health disorders and dementia varies through life. The brain is constantly changing in response to new knowledge and experience -- but the research shows this is not one smooth pattern from birth to death. Some people will reach these landmarks earlier or later than others -- but the researchers said it was striking how clearly these ages stood out in the data. These patterns have only now been revealed due to the quantity of brain scans available in the study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Solid-state drives sitting unpowered in drawers or storage can lose data over time because voltage gradually leaks from their NAND flash cells, and consumer-grade drives using QLC NAND retain data for about a year while TLC NAND lasts up to three years without power. More expensive MLC and SLC NAND can hold data for five and ten years respectively. The voltage loss can result in missing data or completely unusable drives. Hard drives remain more resistant to power loss despite their susceptibility to bit rot. Most users relying on SSDs for primary storage in regularly powered computers face little risk since drives typically stay unpowered for only a few months at most. The concern mainly affects creative professionals and researchers who need long-term archival storage.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Singapore's police have ordered Apple and Google to prevent the spoofing of government agencies on their messaging platforms, the home affairs ministry said on Tuesday. The order under the nation's Online Criminal Harms Act came after the police observed scams on Apple's iMessage and Google Messages purporting to be from companies such as the local postal service SingPost. While government agencies have registered with a local SMS registry so only they can send messages with the "gov.sg" name, this does not currently apply to the iMessage and Google Messages platforms.

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In the latest Windows Insider beta update, Microsoft has announced that it is exploring preloading File Explorer in the background to improve launch performance. The feature will load File Explorer silently before users click on it and can be toggled off for those who prefer not to use it. Microsoft introduced a similar capability earlier this year for Office called Startup Boost that loads parts of Word in the background so the application launches more quickly. The company is also removing elements from the File Explorer context menu in the same update.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The average American now holds onto their smartphone for 29 months, according to a recent survey by Reviews.org, and that cycle is getting longer. The average was around 22 months in 2016. [...] Research released by the Federal Reserve last month concludes that each additional year companies delay upgrading equipment results in a productivity decline of about one-third of a percent, with investment patterns accounting for approximately 55% of productivity gaps between advanced economies. The good news: businesses in the U.S. are generally quicker to reinvest in replacing aging equipment. The Federal Reserve report shows that if European productivity had matched U.S. investment patterns starting in 2000, the productivity gap between the U.S and European economic heavyweights would have been reduced by 29 percent for the U.K., 35 percent for France, and 101% for Germany.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: As part of the settlement with Universal, Udio has amended its terms of service, and users can no longer download their outputs. This has AI music makers furious, and with good reason. Unfortunately, they have little recourse, as the contract they sign when creating a Udio account includes a waiver of the right to bring a class action.

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Drug maker Novo Nordisk says semaglutide, the active ingredient for the weight loss jab Wegovy, does not slow Alzheimer's -- despite initial hopes that it might help against dementia. From a report: Researchers began two large trials involving more than 3,800 people after reports the medicine was having an impact in the real world. But the studies showed the GLP-1 drug, which is already used to manage type 2 diabetes and obesity, made no difference compared to a dummy drug. The disappointing results are due to be presented at an Alzheimer's disease conference next month and are yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

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Google's long-rumored plan to merge ChromeOS and Android into a single desktop operating system now has a name: Aluminium OS, AndroidAuthority reports, citing a job listing. The job listing explicitly tasks applicants with "working on a new Aluminium, Android-based, operating system." The job listing confirms Google intends to eventually replace ChromeOS entirely, though the two platforms will coexist during a transition period. Aluminium OS won't be limited to budget hardware -- the listing references "AL Entry," "AL Mass Premium," and "AL Premium" tiers across laptops, detachables, tablets, and mini-PCs.

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Curiosity Stream, the decade-old science documentary streaming service founded by Discovery Channel's John Hendricks, expects its AI licensing business to generate more revenue than its 23 million subscribers by 2027 -- possibly earlier. The company's Q3 2025 earnings revealed a 41% year-over-year revenue increase, driven largely by deals licensing its content to train large language models. Year-to-date AI licensing brought in $23.4 million through September, already exceeding half of what the subscription business generated for all of 2024. The streaming service's library contains 2 million hours of content, but the "overwhelming majority" is earmarked for AI licensing rather than subscriber viewing, CEO Clint Stinchcomb said during the earnings call. Curiosity Stream is licensing 300,000 hours of its own programming and 1.7 million hours of third-party content to hyperscalers and AI developers. The company has completed 18 AI-related deals across video, audio, and code assets.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Google is pushing back on viral social media posts and articles like this one by Malwarebytes, claiming Google has changed its policy to use your Gmail messages and attachments to train AI models, and the only way to opt out is by disabling "smart features" like spell checking. But Google spokesperson Jenny Thomson tells The Verge that "these reports are misleading -- we have not changed anyone's settings, Gmail Smart Features have existed for many years, and we do not use your Gmail content for training our Gemini AI model."

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NATO has hired Google to provide "air-gapped" sovereign cloud services and AI in "completely disconnected, highly secure environments." From a report: The Chocolate Factory will support the military alliance's Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Centre (JATEC) in a move designed to improve its digital infrastructure and strengthen its data governance. NATO was formed in 1949 after Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed the North Atlantic Treaty. Since then, 20 more European countries have joined, most recently Finland and Sweden. US President Donald Trump has criticized fellow members' financial contribution to the alliance and at times cast doubt over how likely the US is to defend its NATO allies. In an announcement this week, Google Cloud said the "significant, multimillion-dollar contract" with the NATO Communication and Information Agency (NCIA) would offer highly secure, sovereign cloud capabilities. The agreement promises NATO "uncompromised data residency and operational controls, providing the highest degree of security and autonomy, regardless of scale or complexity," the statement said.

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Microsoft is rolling out yet another update to Notepad for Windows 11 Insiders that adds table support and faster AI-generated responses, continuing a transformation of the once-minimal text editor that has drawn sustained criticism from users who preferred its original simplicity. The update, version 11.2510.6.0, lets users insert tables via a formatting toolbar or Markdown syntax and enables streaming responses for the app's Write, Rewrite, and Summarize AI features.

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Lenovo is stockpiling memory and other critical components to navigate a supply crunch brought on by the boom in AI. From a report: The world's biggest PC maker is holding on to component inventories that are roughly 50% higher than usual, [non-paywalled source] Chief Financial Officer Winston Cheng told Bloomberg TV on Monday. The frenzy to build and fill AI data centers with advanced hardware is raising prices for producers of consumer electronics, but Lenovo also sees opportunity in this to capitalize on its stockpile.

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Apple's next major iPhone software update will prioritize stability and performance over flashy new features, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who reports that iOS 27 is being developed as a "Snow Leopard-style" release [non-paywalled source] focused on fixing bugs, removing bloat and improving underlying code after this year's sweeping Liquid Glass design overhaul in iOS 26. Engineering teams are currently combing through Apple's operating systems to eliminate unnecessary code and address quality issues that users have reported since iOS 26's September release. Those complaints include device overheating, unexplained battery drain, user interface glitches, keyboard failures, cellular connectivity problems, app crashes, and sluggish animations. iOS 27 won't be feature-free. Apple plans several AI additions: a health-focused AI agent tied to a Health+ subscription, expanded AI-powered web search meant to compete with ChatGPT and Perplexity, and deeper AI integration across apps. The company has also been internally testing a chatbot app called Veritas as a proving ground for its re-architected Siri, though a standalone chatbot product isn't currently planned.

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Ubisoft has revealed Teammates, a first-person shooter built around AI-powered squadmates that the company is calling its "first playable generative AI research project" -- not long after the publisher went all-in on NFTs and the metaverse only to largely move on from both. Built in the Snowdrop Engine that powers The Division 2 and Star Wars Outlaws, the game features an AI assistant named Jaspar and two AI squadmates called Pablo and Sofia. Players can issue natural voice commands to direct the squadmates in combat or puzzle-solving, while Jaspar handles mission tracking and guidance. The project comes from the same team behind Ubisoft's Neo NPCs, demonstrated at GDC 2024.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: With the release of its third version last week, Google's Gemini large language model surged past ChatGPT and other competitors to become the most capable AI chatbot, as determined by consensus industry-benchmark tests. [...] Aaron Levie, chief executive of the cloud content management company Box, got early access to Gemini 3 several days ahead of the launch. The company ran its own evaluations of the model over the weekend to see how well it could analyze large sets of complex documents. "At first we kind of had to squint and be like, 'OK, did we do something wrong in our eval?' because the jump was so big," he said. "But every time we tested it, it came out double-digit points ahead." [...] Google has been scrambling to get an edge in the AI race since the launch of ChatGPT three years ago, which stoked fears among investors that the company's iconic search engine would lose significant traffic to chatbots. The company struggled for months to get traction. Chief Executive Sundar Pichai and other executives have since worked to overhaul the company's AI development strategy by breaking down internal silos, streamlining leadership and consolidating work on its models, employees say. Sergey Brin, one of Google's co-founders, resumed a day-to-day role at the company helping to oversee its AI-development efforts.

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