U.S. workers are becoming more stressed about their rising personal debts and financial health, a Bank of America survey showed. From a report: Of the respondents polled by BofA, 47% of employed people said they had a sense of financial well-being, dropping from 52% at the start of the year. Nearly 85% of consumers carried some type of personal debt, while 26% of the workforce was seeking help in areas such as emergency savings, paying down debt, and overall financial wellness, compared with 13% in 2023, according to the May survey of more than 1,000 people working full-time.

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Dolby Vision 2 addresses two widespread TV viewing problems in ways that will likely divide viewers and creators. The format's Content Intelligence feature uses AI and ambient light sensors to brighten notoriously dark content like Game of Thrones' Battle of Winterfell and Apple TV+'s Silo based on room brightness. Authentic Motion grants filmmakers scene-by-scene control over motion smoothing, a feature most cinephiles despise for creating artifacts and making films look like 60fps home videos. Many filmmakers have criticized motion smoothing for undermining artistic intent. Dolby positions the feature as eliminating unwanted judder while maintaining cinematic feel. The format launches in standard and Max tiers for high-end displays.

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The latest status report from the FreeBSD Project says no thanks to code generated by LLM-based assistants. From a report: The FreeBSD Project's Status Report for the second quarter of 2025 contains updates from various sub-teams that are working on improving the FreeBSD OS, including separate sub-projects such as enabling FreeBSD apps to run on Linux, Chinese translation efforts, support for Solaris-style Extended Attributes, and for Apple's legacy HFS+ file system. The thing that stood out to us, though, was that the core team is working on what it terms a "Policy on generative AI created code and documentation." The relevant paragraph says: "Core is investigating setting up a policy for LLM/AI usage (including but not limited to generating code). The result will be added to the Contributors Guide in the doc repository. AI can be useful for translations (which seems faster than doing the work manually), explaining long/obscure documents, tracking down bugs, or helping to understand large code bases. We currently tend to not use it to generate code because of license concerns. The discussion continues at the core session at BSDCan 2025 developer summit, and core is still collecting feedback and working on the policy."

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The SAT is billed as "a great way to find out how prepared students are for college." If that's true, recent changes to its format offer an unflattering assessment of the country's aspiring scholars, Bloomberg's editorial board wrote Wednesday. From the piece: [...] Then the pandemic hit. As in-person exams became impractical, hundreds of schools dropped their testing requirements. The SAT and its main competitor, the ACT, lost millions of dollars in revenue. Although both recently started offering digital options, schools have been slow to reinstate their requirements. Today, more than 80% of schools remain test-optional. "If students are deciding to take a test," as one College Board executive put it, "how do we make the SAT the one they want to take?" To anyone familiar with American teenagers, the company's answer should come as no surprise: Make the test easier. The newly digitized format allows a calculator for the entire math section and drastically cuts reading comprehension. Gone are the 500- to 750-word passages about which students would answer a series of questions. Instead, test takers read 25- to 150-word excerpts -- about the length of a social media post -- and answer a single question about each. [...] An effort by the College Board to reemphasize the benefits of deep reading -- for critical thinking, for self-reflection, for learning of all kinds -- might go a long way toward restoring some balance. It should build on efforts to incorporate college prep into school curricula, work with districts to develop coursework that builds reading stamina for all test takers, and consider reducing the cost of its subject-specific Advanced Placement exams that continue to test these skills (now $99), in line with the SAT ($68). Schools, for their part, should recommit to teaching books in their entirety.

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For the first time in more than four years, there are fewer open jobs in the U.S. than there are job seekers. CNN: "This is a turning point for the labor market," Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote Wednesday. "It's yet another crack." The number of job openings fell to an estimated 7.18 million at the end of July, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Wednesday. Job openings not only are at their lowest level in 10 months, but they're also below the number of unemployed workers (at 7.2 million) for the first time since April 2021.

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Streameast -- the world's largest illegal sports streaming platform -- has been shut down after a year long investigation, according to a leading United States-based anti-piracy organisation. From a report: The network of 80 unauthorised domains generated 1.6billion combined visits over the past year, providing free access to global sports fixtures, including Europe's top football leagues and competitions, such as the Premier League and Champions League, as well as the NFL, NBA and MLB. The Athletic has been informed by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) -- a coalition of 50 media and entertainment organisations including Amazon, Apple TV+, Netflix and Paramount -- that an operation alongside Egyptian law enforcement officials took place on Sunday August 24 to disrupt Streameast's dominant position in the illegal streaming market. Traffic to the site reached 136million average monthly visits, with domains primarily originating from the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, the Philippines and Germany.

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Critics are denouncing Tuesday's antitrust remedies ruling against Google, calling them inadequate to restore search market competition. DuckDuckGo said the court's decision allows Google to continue using its monopoly to hold back competitors in AI search. The Open Markets Institute called it "pure judicial cowardice" that leaves Google's power "almost fully intact." Senator Amy Klobuchar said the limited remedies demonstrate why Congress needs to pass legislation stopping dominant platforms from preferencing their own products. The News/Media Alliance criticized Judge Amit Mehta for failing to address Google forcing publishers to provide content for AI offerings to remain in search results.

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A group of more than 85 scientists have issued a joint rebuttal to a recent U.S. Department of Energy report about climate change, finding it full of errors and misrepresenting climate science. NPR: The group of climate scientists found several examples where the DOE authors cherry-picked or misrepresented climate science in the agency's report. For instance, in the DOE report the authors claim that rising carbon dioxide can be a "net benefit" to U.S. agriculture, neglecting to mention the negative impacts of more heat and climate-change fueled extreme weather events on crops. The DOE report also states that there is no evidence of more intense "meteorological" drought in the U.S. or globally, referring to droughts that involve low rainfall. But the dozens of climate scientists point out that this is misleading, because higher temperatures and more evaporation -- not just low rainfall -- can lead to and exacerbate droughts. They say that there are, in fact, many studies showing how climate change has exacerbated droughts.

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An old school ransomware attack has a new twist: threatening to feed data to AI companies so it'll be added to LLM datasets. 404 Media reports: Artists&Clients is a website that connects independent artists with interested clients. Around August 30, a message appeared on Artists&Clients attributed to the ransomware group LunaLock. "We have breached the website Artists&Clients to steal and encrypt all its data," the message on the site said, according to screenshots taken before the site went down on Tuesday. "If you are a user of this website, you are urged to contact the owners and insist that they pay our ransom. If this ransom is not paid, we will release all data publicly on this Tor site, including source code and personal data of users. Additionally, we will submit all artwork to AI companies to be added to training datasets." LunaLock promised to delete the stolen data and allow users to decrypt their files if the site's owner paid a $50,000 ransom. "Payment is accepted in either Bitcoin or Monero," the notice put on the site by the hackers said. The ransom note included a countdown timer that gave the site's owners several days to cough up the cash. "If you do not pay, all files will be leaked, including personal user data. This may cause you to be subject to fines and penalties under the GDPR and other laws."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: It's broadly understood that electric vehicles are more environmentally friendly than their counterparts that burn only gasoline. And yes -- that includes the impact of manufacturing batteries and generating power to charge them. But even then, such generalizations gloss over specifics, like which EVs are especially eco-friendly, not to mention where. The efficiency of an electric car varies greatly depending on ambient temperature, which is less compromising for gas-burning vehicles. We now have the data and math to answer these questions, courtesy of the University of Michigan. Last week, researchers there released a study along with a calculator that allows users to compare the lifetime difference in greenhouse gas emissions of various vehicle types and powertrains from "cradle to grave," as they say. That includes vehicle production and disposal, as well as use-phase emissions from "driving and upstream fuel production and/or electricity generation," per the university itself. What's more, these calculations can be skewed by where you live. So, if I punch in my location of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, I can see that my generic, pure-ICE "compact sedan" emits 309 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent (gCO2e) per mile. A compact hybrid would emit 20% less; a plug-in hybrid, 44% less; and an EV with a 200-mile range, a whopping 63% less. And, if I moved to Phoenix, the gains would be even larger by switching to pure electric, to the tune of a 79% reduced carbon impact.

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UK weather agency Met Office, in a blog post: Provisional Met Office statistics confirm that summer 2025 is officially the warmest summer on record for the UK. Analysis by Met Office climate scientists has also shown that a summer as hot or hotter than 2025 is now 70 times more likely than it would be in a 'natural' climate with no human caused greenhouse gas emissions. The UK's mean temperature from 1 June to 31 August stands at 16.10C, which is 1.51C above the long-term meteorological average. This surpasses the previous record of 15.76C, set in 2018, and pushes the summer of 1976 out of the top five warmest summers in a series dating back to 1884.

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Taylor Otwell, inventor and maintainer of popular PHP framework Laravel, is warning against overly complex code and the risks of bypassing the framework. From a report: Developers are sometimes drawn to building "cathedrals of complexity that aren't so easy to change," he said, speaking in a podcast for maintainable.fm, a series produced by Ruby on Rails consultancy Planet Argon. Software, he said, should be "simple and disposable and easy to change." Some problems are genuinely complex, but in general, if a developer finds a "clever solution" which goes beyond the standard documented way in a framework such as Laravel or Ruby on Rails, "that would be like a smell." A code smell -- for the uninitiated in the The Reg readership -- is a term developers use for code that works but may cause problems at a later date. Otwell described himself as a "pretty average programmer" but reckons many others are the same, solving basic problems as quickly and efficiently as they can.

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For decades, the dry season in the Amazon rainforest has been getting drier. A new study, published on Tuesday, found that about 75% of the decrease in rainfall is directly linked to deforestation. From a report: The study, in Nature Communications, also found that tree loss was partly responsible for increased heat across the Amazon. Since 1985, the hottest days in the Amazon have warmed by about 2 degrees Celsius. About 16% of that increase, the researchers found, was because of deforestation. Marco Franco, an assistant professor at the University of Sao Paulo who led the study, said he was surprised by the findings. "We were expecting to see deforestation as a driver, but not this much," he said. "It tells us a lot about what's going on in the biome." The Amazon rainforest is often called the lungs of the planet because its trees help to regulate the global climate by absorbing planet-warming carbon dioxide. But decades of large-scale logging and burning in the forest have recently flipped that script, and parts of the region have become net producers of greenhouse gases.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: If you're sharing an ad-free YouTube Premium or YouTube Music account with friends or family who live outside of your home, you could lose your premium privileges. Customers who lose these can still watch YouTube or listen to music with ads -- but let's be real, it's not the same. Multiple reports have shown people who have the service have been receiving notices that their premium service will be paused for 15 days due to violating a policy that's been in place since 2023. On its support page, YouTube says that an account manager can add up to five family members in a household to their Premium membership. But, the post says, "Family members sharing a YouTube family plan must live in the same household as the family manager."

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Steam's August 2025 hardware survey shows 32GB RAM configurations reached 35.42% of users while 16GB systems fell to 41.67%, continuing a six-month trend that positions 32GB to become the dominant memory configuration among PC gamers before year's end. Windows 11 crossed 60% adoption among Steam users. The RTX 4060 continues gaining market share despite newer RTX 5060 availability. Display resolutions at 2560x1600 pixels saw the largest growth, primarily from gaming laptops.

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America is becoming a nation of economic pessimists. WSJ reports: A new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll [PDF] finds that the share of people who say they have a good chance of improving their standard of living fell to 25%, a record low in surveys dating to 1987. More than three-quarters said they lack confidence that life for the next generation will be better than their own, the poll found. Nearly 70% of people said they believe the American dream -- that if you work hard, you will get ahead -- no longer holds true or never did, the highest level in nearly 15 years of surveys. Republicans in the survey were less pessimistic than Democrats, reflecting the longstanding trend that the party holding the White House has a rosier view of the economy. An index that combined six poll questions found that 55% of Republicans, as well as 90% of Democrats, held a negative view of prospects for themselves and their children. The discontent reaches across demographic lines. By large majorities, both women and men held a pessimistic view in the combined questions. So did both younger and older adults, those with and without a college degree and respondents with more than $100,000 in household income, as well as those with less.

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Speaking of Amazon Prime, Amazon is axing the program that lets Prime members share their free shipping perk with people outside their household. The Verge: In an update to its support page, Amazon says it will cut off Prime benefit sharing on October 1st, 2025, prompting invitees who don't live with the account holder to sign up for their own subscription at a discounted $14.99 rate for an entire year (and then $14.99 per month after that). Instead, Amazon is replacing this program with Amazon Family, which lets account holders share Prime benefits -- but only with people they live with. Amazon says everyone in a "Family" must live at the same primary residential address, defined as "the address you consider to be your home and where you spend the majority of your time."

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Developer Hugo Tunius, writing in a blog post: Sideloading has been a hot topic for the last decade. Most recently, Google has announced further restrictions on the practice in Android. Many hundreds of comment threads have discussed these changes over the years. One point in particular is always made: "I should be able to run whatever code I want on hardware I own." I agree entirely with this point, but within the context of this discussion it's moot. When Google restricts your ability to install certain applications they aren't constraining what you can do with the hardware you own, they are constraining what you can do using the software they provide with said hardware. It's through this control of the operating system that Google is exerting control, not at the hardware layer. You often don't have full access to the hardware either and building new operating systems to run on mobile hardware is impossible, or at least much harder than it should be. This is a separate, and I think more fruitful, point to make. Apple is a better case study than Google here. Apple's success with iOS partially derives from the tight integration of hardware and software. An iPhone without iOS is a very different product to what we understand an iPhone to be. Forcing Apple to change core tenets of iOS by legislative means would undermine what made the iPhone successful.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The United States is on the precipice of a historic, if dubious, achievement. If current trends hold, 2025 could be the first year on record in which the US population actually shrinks. The math is straightforward. Population growth has two sources: natural increase (births minus deaths) and net immigration (arrivals minus departures). Last year, births outnumbered deaths by 519,000 people. That means any decline in net immigration in excess of half a million could push the U.S. into population decline. A recent analysis of Census data by the Pew Research Center found that between January and June, the US foreign-born population fell for the first time in decades by more than one million. While some economists have questioned the report, a separate analysis by the American Enterprise Institute predicted that net migration in 2025 could be as low as negative 525,000. In either case, annual population growth this year could easily turn negative.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon doubled its Prime Day discount sales to four days this year and touted blowout numbers days after the event. But by one critical metric, it missed the mark. Sign-ups in the U.S. failed to meet last year's total and even the company's own target, according to internal company data reviewed by Reuters. The world's largest online retailer registered 5.4 million U.S. sign-ups over the 21-day run-up to Prime Day and its four-day sales event from July 8 to July 11. That was around 116,000 fewer than for the same period a year earlier and 106,000 below the company's own goal, a roughly 2% decline in both metrics.

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