An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Contrary to popular belief, using cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools slowed down experienced software developers when they were working in codebases familiar to them, rather than supercharging their work, a new study found. AI research nonprofit METR conducted the in-depth study on a group of seasoned developers earlier this year while they used Cursor, a popular AI coding assistant, to help them complete tasks in open-source projects they were familiar with. Before the study, the open-source developers believed using AI would speed them up, estimating it would decrease task completion time by 24%. Even after completing the tasks with AI, the developers believed that they had decreased task times by 20%. But the study found that using AI did the opposite: it increased task completion time by 19%. The study's lead authors, Joel Becker and Nate Rush, said they were shocked by the results: prior to the study, Rush had written down that he expected "a 2x speed up, somewhat obviously." [...] The slowdown stemmed from developers needing to spend time going over and correcting what the AI models suggested. "When we watched the videos, we found that the AIs made some suggestions about their work, and the suggestions were often directionally correct, but not exactly what's needed," Becker said. The authors cautioned that they do not expect the slowdown to apply in other scenarios, such as for junior engineers or engineers working in codebases they aren't familiar with. Still, the majority of the study's participants, as well as the study's authors, continue to use Cursor today. The authors believe it is because AI makes the development experience easier, and in turn, more pleasant, akin to editing an essay instead of staring at a blank page. "Developers have goals other than completing the task as soon as possible," Becker said. "So they're going with this less effortful route."

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Major space industry players -- including SpaceX, Boeing, and Blue Origin -- are urging Congress to maintain funding for the TraCSS space traffic coordination program, warning that eliminating it would endanger satellite safety and potentially drive companies abroad. Under the proposed FY 2026 budget, the Office of Space Commerce's funding would be cut from $65 million to just $10 million. "That $55M cut is accomplished by eliminating the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) program," reports The Register. From the report: "One of OSC's most important functions is to provide space traffic coordination support to US satellite operators, similar to the Federal Aviation Administration's role in air traffic control," stated letters from space companies including SpaceX, Boeing, Blue Origin, and others. The letters argue that safe space operations "in an increasingly congested space domain" are critical for modern services like broadband satellite internet and weather forecasting, but that's not all. "Likewise, a safe space operating environment is vital for continuity of national security space missions such as early warning of missile attacks on deployed US military forces," the letters added. Industry trade groups sent the letters to the Democratic and Republican leadership of the House and Senate budget subcommittees for Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, claiming to represent more than 450 US companies in the space, satellite, and defense sectors. The letters argue for the retention of the OSC's FY 2025 budget of $65 million, as well as keeping control of space traffic coordination within the purview of the Department of Commerce, under which the OSC is nested, and not the Department of Defense, where it was previously managed. "Successive administrations have recognized on a bipartisan basis that space traffic coordination is a global, commercial-facing function best managed by a civilian agency," the companies explained. "Keeping space traffic coordination within the Department of Commerce preserves military resources for core defense missions and prevents the conflation of space safety with military control." In the budget request document, the government explained the Commerce Department was unable to complete "a government owned and operated public-facing database and traffic coordination system" in a timely manner. The private sector, meanwhile, "has proven they have the capability and the business model to provide civil operators" with the necessary space tracking data. But according to the OSC, TraCSS would have been ready for operations by January 2026, raising the question of why the government would kill the program so late in the game.

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In June 2025, solar power became the leading source of electricity in the EU for the first time, surpassing nuclear and wind, while coal hit a record low. CBC reports: Solar generated 22.1 percent of the EU's electricity last month, up from 18.9 percent a year earlier, as record sunshine and continued solar installations pushed output to 45.4 terawatt hours. Nuclear followed closely at 21.8 percent and wind contributed 15.8 percent of the mix. At least 13 EU countries, including Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, recorded highest-ever monthly solar generation, [data from energy think tank Ember showed on Thursday.] Coal's share of the EU electricity mix fell to a record low of 6.1 percent in June, compared to 8.8 percent last year, with 28 percent less electricity generated than a year earlier. Germany and Poland, which together generated nearly 80 percent of the 27-country bloc's coal-fired electricity in June, also saw record monthly lows. Coal accounted for 12.4 per cent of Germany's electricity mix and 42.9 percent of Poland's. Spain, nearing a full phase-out of coal, generated just 0.6 per cent of its electricity from coal in the same period. Wind power also set new records in May and June, rebounding after poor wind conditions resulted in a weak start to the year. But despite record solar and wind output in June, fossil fuel usage in the first half of 2025 grew 13 percent from last year, driven by a 19 percent increase in gas generation to offset weak hydro and wind output earlier in the year. Electricity demand in the EU rose 2.2 percent in the first half of the year, with five of the first six months showing year-on-year increases. The next challenge for Europe's power system is to expand battery storage and grid flexibility to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels during non-solar hours, Ember said in the report.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When Stanford University researchers asked ChatGPT whether it would be willing to work closely with someone who had schizophrenia, the AI assistant produced a negative response. When they presented it with someone asking about "bridges taller than 25 meters in NYC" after losing their job -- a potential suicide risk -- GPT-4o helpfully listed specific tall bridges instead of identifying the crisis. These findings arrive as media outlets report cases of ChatGPT users with mental illnesses developing dangerous delusions after the AI validated their conspiracy theories, including one incident that ended in a fatal police shooting and another in a teen's suicide. The research, presented at the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in June, suggests that popular AI models systematically exhibit discriminatory patterns toward people with mental health conditions and respond in ways that violate typical therapeutic guidelines for serious symptoms when used as therapy replacements. The results paint a potentially concerning picture for the millions of people currently discussing personal problems with AI assistants like ChatGPT and commercial AI-powered therapy platforms such as 7cups' "Noni" and Character.ai's "Therapist." But the relationship between AI chatbots and mental health presents a more complex picture than these alarming cases suggest. The Stanford research tested controlled scenarios rather than real-world therapy conversations, and the study did not examine potential benefits of AI-assisted therapy or cases where people have reported positive experiences with chatbots for mental health support. In an earlier study, researchers from King's College and Harvard Medical School interviewed 19 participants who used generative AI chatbots for mental health and found reports of high engagement and positive impacts, including improved relationships and healing from trauma. Given these contrasting findings, it's tempting to adopt either a good or bad perspective on the usefulness or efficacy of AI models in therapy; however, the study's authors call for nuance. Co-author Nick Haber, an assistant professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Education, emphasized caution about making blanket assumptions. "This isn't simply 'LLMs for therapy is bad,' but it's asking us to think critically about the role of LLMs in therapy," Haber told the Stanford Report, which publicizes the university's research. "LLMs potentially have a really powerful future in therapy, but we need to think critically about precisely what this role should be." The Stanford study, titled "Expressing stigma and inappropriate responses prevents LLMs from safely replacing mental health providers," involved researchers from Stanford, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Texas at Austin.

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Stanford researchers have developed a blood-based AI tool that calculates the biological age of individual organs to reveal early signs of aging-related disease. The Mercury News reports: The tool, unveiled in Nature Medicine Wednesday, was developed by a research team spearheaded by Tony Wyss-Coray. Wyss-Coray, a Stanford Medicine professor who has spent almost 15 years fixated on the study of aging, said that the tool could "change our approach to health care." Scouring a single draw of blood for thousands of proteins, the tool works by first comparing the levels of these proteins with their average levels at a given age. An artificial intelligence algorithm then uses these gaps to derive a "biological age" for each organ. To test the accuracy of these "biological ages," the researchers processed data for 45,000 people from the UK Biobank, a database that has kept detailed health information from over half a million British citizens for the last 17 years. When they analyzed the data, the researchers found a clear trend for all 11 organs they studied; biologically older organs were significantly more likely to develop aging-related diseases than younger ones. For instance, those with older hearts were at much higher risk for atrial fibrillation or heart failure, while those with older lungs were much more likely to develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. But the brain's biological age, Wyss-Coray said, was "particularly important in determining or predicting how long you're going to live." "If you have a very young brain, those people live the longest," he said. "If you have a very old brain, those people are going to die the soonest out of all the organs we looked at." Indeed, for a given chronological age, those with "extremely aged brains" -- the 7% whose brains scored the highest on biological age -- were over 12 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease over the next decade than those with "extremely youthful brains" -- the 7% whose brains inhabited the other end of the spectrum. Wyss-Coray's team also found several factors -- smoking, alcohol, poverty, insomnia and processed meat consumption -- were directly correlated with biologically aged organs. Poultry consumption, vigorous exercise, and oily fish consumption were among the factors correlated with biologically youthful organs. Supplements like glucosamine and estrogen replacements also seemed to have "protective effects," Wyss-Coray said. [...] The test ... would cost $200 once it could be operated at scale.

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joshuark writes: A Russian basketball player, Daniil Kasatkin, was arrested on June 21 in France at the request of the United States as he allegedly is part of a network of hackers. Daniil Kasatkin, aged 26, is accused by the United States of negotiating the payment of ransoms to this hacker network, which he denies. He has been studied in the United States, and is the subject of a U.S. arrest warrant for "conspiracy to commit computer fraud" and "computer fraud conspiracy." His lawyer alleges that Kasatkin is not guilty of these crimes and that they are instead linked to a second-hand computer that he purchased. "He bought a second-hand computer. He did absolutely nothing. He's stunned," his lawyer, Freric Belot, told the media. "He's useless with computers and can't even install an application. He didn't touch anything on the computer: it was either hacked, or the hacker sold it to him to act under the cover of another person." The report notes that Kasatkin briefly played NCAA basketball at Penn State before returning to Russia in 2019. He also appeared in 172 games with MBA-MAI before he left the team.

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iFixit has harsh words for Nintendo's $85 Switch 2 Pro controller, calling it a "piss-poor excuse for a controller" due to its difficult repairability, use of outdated drift-prone joysticks, and poor internal accessibility. The Verge reports: Opening the controller requires you to first forcefully remove a faceplate held in place by adhesive tape before a single screw is visible. But you'll need to extract several other parts and components, including the controller's mainboard, before its battery is even accessible. As previously revealed, the Pro 2 is still using older potentiometer-based joysticks that are prone to developing drift over time. They do feature a modular design that will potentially make them easier to swap with third-party Hall effect or TMR replacements, but reassembling the controller after that DIY upgrade will require you to replace all the adhesive tape you destroyed during disassembly. You can watch the full teardown on YouTube.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: JPMorgan Chase has told financial-technology companies that it will start charging fees amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars for access to their customers' bank account information -- a move that threatens to upend the industry's business models. The largest US bank has sent pricing sheets to data aggregators -- which connect banks and fintechs -- outlining the new charges, according to people familiar with the matter. The fees vary depending on how companies use the information, with higher levies tied to payments-focused companies, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. A representative for JPMorgan said the bank has invested significant resources to create a secure system that protects consumer data. "We've had productive conversations and are working with the entire ecosystem to ensure we're all making the necessary investments in the infrastructure that keeps our customers safe," the spokesperson said in a statement. The fees -- expected to take effect later this year depending on the fate of a Biden-era regulation -- aren't final and could be negotiated. [The open-banking measure, finalized in October, enables consumers to demand, download and transfer their highly-coveted data to another lender or financial services provider for free.] The charges would drastically reshape the business for fintech firms, which fundamentally rely on their access to customers' bank accounts. Payment platforms like PayPal's Venmo, cryptocurrency wallets such as Coinbase and retail-trading brokerages like Robinhood all use this data so customers can send, receive and trade money. Typically, the firms have been able to get it for free. Many fintechs access data using aggregators such as Plaid and MX, which provide the plumbing between fintechs and banks. The new fees -- which vary from firm to firm -- could be passed from the aggregators to the fintechs and, ultimately, consumers. The aggregator firms have been in discussions with JPMorgan about the charges, and those talks are constructive and ongoing, another person familiar with the matter said.

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OpenAI's planned acquisition of Windsurf has fallen apart. Instead, Google is hiring Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, cofounder Douglas Chen, and parts of its R&D team to join DeepMind and focus on agentic coding for Gemini. Google will not acquire Windsurf but will receive a non-exclusive license to some of its technology, while Windsurf continues independently under new leadership. The Verge reports: Effective immediately, Jeff Wang, Windsurf's head of business, has become interim CEO, and Graham Moreno, its VP of global sales, will be Windsurf's new president. "Gemini is one of the best models available and we've been investing in its advanced capabilities for developers," Chris Pappas, a spokesperson for Google, told The Verge in a statement. "We're excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf's team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding." "We are excited to be joining Google DeepMind along with some of the Windsurf team," Mohan and Chen said in a statement. "We are proud of what Windsurf has built over the last four years and are excited to see it move forward with their world class team and kick-start the next phase." Google didn't share how much it was paying to bring on the team. OpenAI was previously reported to be buying Windsurf for $3 billion.

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BYD has unveiled fully autonomous Level 4 self-parking across its vehicle lineup, powered by its advanced multi-sensor "God's Eye" system that's used by more than 1 million cars across China. "The company is so confident in the technology that it announced that it will cover any damages to your car or any other vehicle if things go wrong," adds Fast Company. "This means if anything happens, the owner won't have to file a claim and have their premiums go up." From the report: BYD's confidence stems from a sophisticated sensor architecture. The God's Eye system deploys multiple sensing technologies working in concert, unlike Tesla's problematic camera-only approach. Even the entry-level God's Eye C variant -- one of three autonomous driving levels included in most affordable models -- includes 12 cameras, 5 millimeter-wave radars, and 12 ultrasonic sensors with 1-centimeter accuracy. The mid-tier God's Eye B adds a lidar sensor, while the premium God's Eye A variant features three lidar sensors for maximum precision. The system's parking accuracy allows the car to get within 0.8 inches of other objects, enabled by multiple redundant sensors that create a three-dimensional map. This allows the vehicle a deep understanding of its environment. This multi-sensor approach allows the system to detect obstacles. It can even recognize hanging objects over the roof line of the car. The company reports that more than 1 million vehicles now carry the God's Eye system, an impressive deployment scale that starts with the most inexpensive models, like the $9,550 BYD Seagull, and go all the way to the $236,000 BYD Yangwang U9, a hypercar that can detect potholes on the road and jump over them. Yes. If the God's Eye detects an obstacle on the road, it will literally jump over it.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For the second time in a year, Google has announced that it will render some of its past phones almost unusable with a software update, and users don't have any choice in the matter. After nerfing the Pixel 4a's battery capacity earlier this year, Google has now confirmed a similar update is rolling out to the Pixel 6a. The new July Android update adds "battery management features" that will make the phone unusable. Given the risks involved, Google had no choice but to act, but it could choose to take better care of its customers and use better components in the first place. Unfortunately, a lot more phones are about to end up in the trash. [...] Pixel 4a units contained one of two different batteries, and only the one manufactured by a company called Lishen was downgraded. For the Pixel 6a, Google has decreed that the battery limits will be imposed when the cells hit 400 charge cycles. Beyond that, the risk of fire becomes too great -- there have been reports of Pixel 6a phones bursting into flames. Clearly, Google had to do something, but the remedies it settled on feel unnecessarily hostile to customers. It had a chance to do better the second time, but the solution for the Pixel 6a is more of the same. [...] When Google killed the Pixel 4a's battery life, it offered a few options. You could have the battery replaced for free, get $50 cash, or accept a $100 credit in the Google Store. However, claiming the money or free battery was a frustrating experience that was rife with fees and caveats. The store credit is also only good on phones and can't be used with other promotions or discounts. And the battery swap? You'd better hope there's nothing else wrong with the device. If it has any damage, like cracked glass, it may not qualify for a free battery replacement. Now we have the Pixel 6a Battery Performance Program with all the same problems. Pixel 6a owners can get $100 in cash or $150 in store credit. Alternatively, Google offers a free battery replacement with the same limits on phone condition. This is all particularly galling because the Pixel 6a is still an officially supported phone, with its final guaranteed update coming in 2027. Google also pulled previous software packages for this phone to prevent rollbacks. [...] If you have a Pixel 6a, the battery-killing update is rolling out now. You'll have no choice but to install it if you want to remain on the official software. Google has a support site where you can try to get a free battery swap or some cash.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Dexerto: It's been ten years since YouTube first introduced its trending page in 2015, and the platform is finally sunsetting the program in favor of a new system. [...] As announced by YouTube in a support thread on July 10, 2025, the site is now set on introducing Charts, a new system for ranking popular content on its platform. "Back when we first launched the Trending page in 2015, the answer to 'What's trending?' was a lot simpler to capture with a singular list of viral videos that everyone was talking about," the post reads. "But today, trends consist of many videos created by many fandoms, and there are more micro-trends enjoyed by diverse communities than ever before." As a result, YouTube says that its Trending page has seen "significantly" less traffic in the last five years, prompting them to make a change. Now, YouTube Charts will break up trends from one, all-encompassing page into separate, category-specific lists. The current Trending page will be moved to a Trending Now section, where the site's most popular content overall will be shown. However, viewers can now look for specific trends in certain categories on YouTube Charts for things like music videos, top podcasts, movie trailers and more. In the meantime, YouTube says that its Gaming Explore page will be home to trending gaming videos, and it will continue to serve personalized content to users via recommendations on their home feeds.

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A new study found that psilocybin treatment significantly delayed cellular aging, extending human cell lifespan by over 50% and increasing survival in aged mice by 30%. The compound appeared to achieve these effects by reducing oxidative stress, preserving telomeres, and improving DNA repair. Neuroscience News reports: A newly published study in Nature Partner Journals' Aging demonstrates that psilocin, a byproduct of consuming psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms, extended the cellular lifespan of human skin and lung cells by more than 50%. In parallel, researchers also conducted the first long-term in vivo study evaluating the systemic effects of psilocybin in aged mice of 19 months, or the equivalent of 60-65 human years. Results indicated that the mice that received an initial low dose of psilocybin of 5 mg, followed by a monthly high dose of 15 mg for 10 months, had a 30% increase in survival compared to mice that did not receive any. These mice also displayed healthier physical features, such as improved fur quality, fewer white hairs and hair regrowth. While traditionally researched for its mental health benefits, this study suggests that psilocybin impacts multiple hallmarks of aging by reducing oxidative stress, improving DNA repair responses, and preserving telomere length. Telomeres are the structured ends of a chromosome, protecting it from damage that could lead to the formation of age-related diseases, such as cancer, neurodegeneration, or cardiovascular disease. These foundational processes influence human aging and the onset of these chronic diseases. The study concludes that psilocybin may have the potential to revolutionize anti-aging therapies and could be an impactful intervention in an aging population.

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Senator Dick Durbin questioned a Texas-led effort to move Space Shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian to Space Center Houston, describing it as an expensive "heist" costing an estimated $305 million, not the $85 million initially budgeted. "This is not a transfer. It's a heist," said Durbin during a budget markup hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee. "A heist by Texas because they lost a competition 12 years ago." In April, Texas Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz introduced legislation to move the Space Shuttle Discovery from Virginia to Houston, which ultimately passed into law on July 4 as part of the "One Big Beautiful Bill." Ars Technica reports: "In the reconciliation bill, Texas entered $85 million to move the space shuttle from the National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Virginia, to Texas. Eighty-five million dollars sounds like a lot of money, but it is not nearly what's necessary for this to be accomplished," Durbin said. Citing research by NASA and the Smithsonian, Durbin said that the total was closer to $305 million and that did not include the estimated $178 million needed to build a facility to house and display Discovery once in Houston. Furthermore, it was unclear if Congress even has the right to remove an artifact, let alone a space shuttle, from the Smithsonian's collection. The Washington, DC, institution, which serves as a trust instrumentality of the US, maintains that it owns Discovery. The paperwork signed by NASA in 2012 transferred "all rights, interest, title, and ownership" for the spacecraft to the Smithsonian. "This will be the first time ever in the history of the Smithsonian someone has taken one of their displays and forcibly taken possession of it. What are we doing here? They don't have the right in Texas to claim this," said Durbin. [...] To be able to bring up his points at Thursday's hearing, Durbin introduced the "Houston, We Have a Problem" amendment to "prohibit the use of funds to transfer a decommissioned space shuttle from one location to another location." He then withdrew the amendment after having voiced his objections. "I think we're dealing with something called waste. Eighty-five million dollars worth of waste. I know that this is a controversial issue, and I know that there are other agencies, Smithsonian, NASA, and others that are interested in this issue; I'm going to withdraw this amendment, but I'm going to ask my colleagues be honest about it," said Durbin. "I hope that we think about this long and hard." "I am glad to see this pass as part of the Senate's One Big Beautiful Bill and look forward to welcoming Discovery to Houston and righting this egregious wrong," Cornyn said in a statement. "Houston has long been the cornerstone of our nation's human space exploration program, and it's long overdue for Space City to receive the recognition it deserves by bringing Space Shuttle Discovery home."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Automated surgery could be trialled on humans within a decade, say researchers, after an AI-trained robot armed with tools to cut, clip and grab soft tissue successfully removed pig gall bladders without human help. The robot surgeons were schooled on video footage of human medics conducting operations using organs taken from dead pigs. In an apparent research breakthrough, eight operations were conducted on pig organs with a 100% success rate by a team led by experts at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in the US. [...] The technology allowing robots to handle complex soft tissues such as gallbladders, which release bile to aid digestion, is rooted in the same type of computerized neural networks that underpin widely used artificial intelligence tools such as Chat GPT or Google Gemini. The surgical robots were slightly slower than human doctors but they were less jerky and plotted shorter trajectories between tasks. The robots were also able to repeatedly correct mistakes as they went along, asked for different tools and adapted to anatomical variation, according to a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Science Robotics. The authors from Johns Hopkins, Stanford and Columbia universities called it "a milestone toward clinical deployment of autonomous surgical systems." [...] In the Johns Hopkins trial, the robots took just over five minutes to carry out the operation, which required 17 steps including cutting the gallbladder away from its connection to the liver, applying six clips in a specific order and removing the organ. The robots on average corrected course without any human help six times in each operation. "We were able to perform a surgical procedure with a really high level of autonomy," said Axel Krieger, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins. "In prior work, we were able to do some surgical tasks like suturing. What we've done here is really a full procedure. We have done this on eight gallbladders, where the robot was able to perform precisely the clipping and cutting step of gallbladder removal without any human intervention. "So I think it's a really big landmark study that such a difficult soft tissue surgery is possible to do autonomously." Currently, nearly all of the NHS's 70,000 annual robotic surgeries are human-controlled, but the UK plans to expand robot-assisted procedures to 90% within the next decade.

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The city of Centerville, Ohio has deployed AI-enabled garbage trucks that scan residents' trash and send personalized postcards scolding them for improper recycling. Dayton Daily News reports: "Reducing contamination in our recycling system lowers processing costs and improves the overall efficiency of our collection," City Manager Wayne Davis said in a statement regarding the AI pilot program. "This technology allows us to target problem areas, educate residents and make better use of city resources." Residents whose items don't meet the guidelines will be notified via a personalized postcard, one that tells them which items are not accepted and provides tips on proper recycling. The total contract amount for the project is $74,945, which is entirely funded through a Montgomery County Solid Waste District grant, Centerville spokeswoman Kate Bostdorff told this news outlet. The project launched Monday, Bostdorff said. "A couple of the trucks have been collecting baseline recycling data, and we have been working through software training for a few weeks now," she said. [...] Centerville said it will continually evaluate how well the AI system works and use what it learns during the pilot project to "guide future program enhancements."

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BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Android is changing how it gives developers access to early features. The company is replacing its old Developer Preview model with a new Canary channel that provides rolling updates all year long. This new approach is meant to give developers earlier and more consistent access to experimental tools and APIs. Previously, Developer Previews had to be manually flashed onto devices. They only ran during the earliest stages of each release cycle and stopped once Android entered the beta phase. That meant promising features that were not quite ready for beta had nowhere to go and no way to collect feedback. The Canary channel solves that by running in parallel with the existing beta program and delivering over the air updates automatically.

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Longtime Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a report from Gizmodo: YouTube is inundated with AI-generated slop, and that's not going to change anytime soon. Instead of cutting down on the total number of slop channels, the platform is planning to update its policies to cut out some of the worst offenders making money off "spam." At the same time, it's still full steam ahead adding tools to make sure your feeds are full of mass-produced brainrot. In an update to its support page posted last week, YouTube said it will modify guidelines for its Partner Program, which lets some creators with enough views make money off their videos. The video platform said it requires YouTubers to create "original" and "authentic" content, but now it will "better identify mass-produced and repetitious content." The changes will take place on July 15. The company didn't advertise whether this change is related to AI, but the timing can't be overlooked considering how more people are noticing the rampant proliferation of slop content flowing onto the platform every day. The AI "revolution" has resulted in a landslide of trash content that has mired most creative platforms. Alphabet-owned YouTube has been especially bad recently, with multiple channels dedicated exclusively to pumping out legions of fake and often misleading videos into the sludge-filled sewer that has become users' YouTube feeds. AI slop has become so prolific it has infected most social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Last month, John Oliver on "Last Week Tonight" specifically highlighted several YouTube channels that crafted obviously fake stories made to show White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in a good light. These channels and similar accounts across social media pump out these quick AI-generated videos to make a quick buck off YouTube's Partner Program.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Straight Arrow News: Hollywood video game performers ended their nearly year-long strike Wednesday with new protections against the use of digital replicas of their voices or appearances. If those replicas are used, actors must be paid at rates comparable to in-person work. The SAG-AFTRA union demanded stronger pay and better working conditions. Among their top concerns was the potential for artificial intelligence to replace human actors without compensation or consent. Under a deal announced in a media release, studios such as Activision and Electronic Arts are now required to obtain written consent from performers before creating digital replicas of their work. Actors have the right to suspend their consent for AI-generated material if another strike occurs. "This deal delivers historic wage increases, industry-leading AI protections and enhanced health and safety measures for performers," Audrey Cooling, a spokesperson for the video game producers, said in the release. The full list of studios includes Activision Productions, Blindlight, Disney Character Voices, Electronic Arts Productions, Formosa Interactive, Insomniac Games, Llama Productions, Take 2 Productions and WB Games. SAG-AFTRA members approved the contract by a vote of 95.04% to 4.96%, according to the announcement. The agreement includes a wage increase of more than 15%, with additional 3% raises in November 2025, 2026 and 2027. The contract expires in October 2028. [...] The video game strike, which started in July 2024, did not shut down production like the SAG-AFTRA actors' strike in 2023. Hollywood actors went on strike for 118 days, from July 14 to November 9, 2023, halting nearly all scripted television and film work. That strike, which centered on streaming residuals and AI concerns, prevented actors from engaging in promotional work, such as attending premieres and posting on social media. In contrast, video game performers were allowed to work during their strike, but only with companies that had signed interim agreements addressing concerns related to AI. More than 160 companies signed on, according to The Associated Press. Still, the year took a toll.

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Qantas has confirmed that 5.7 million customers have been impacted by a recent data breach through a third-party platform used by its contact center. The breach, attributed to the Scattered Spider threat group, exposed various personal details but did not include passwords, financial, or passport data. BleepingComputer reports: In a new update today, Qantas has confirmed that the threat actors stole data for approximately 5.7 million customers, with varying types of data exposed in the breach: 4 million customer records are limited to name, email address and Qantas Frequent Flyer details. Of this: - 1.2 million customer records contained name and email address. - 2.8 million customer records contained name, email address and Qantas Frequent Flyer number. The majority of these also had tier included. A smaller subset of these had points balance and status credits included. Of the remaining 1.7 million customers, their records included a combination of some of the data fields above and one or more of the following: - Address - 1.3 million. This is a combination of residential addresses and business addresses including hotels for misplaced baggage delivery. - Date of birth - 1.1 million - Phone number (mobile, landline and/or business) - 900,000 - Gender - 400,000. This is separate to other gender identifiers like name and salutation. - Meal preferences - 10,000

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