Nature's editorial board urged governments on Tuesday to reverse decades of rail disinvestment as railways mark their 200th anniversary September 27, citing transport sector emissions that grew 1.7% annually from 1990-2022 and now generate one-quarter of global CO2. Rail produces one-fifth the emissions of cars per passenger kilometer yet carries just 8.4% of EU passenger traffic versus 73% for automobiles. The journal called for broader investment criteria beyond narrow profitability metrics and noted only one-third of countries have incorporated transport into their Paris Agreement commitments. Global rail freight fell from 38% to 24% between 1980-2017 while US networks shrank from 400,000 to 200,000 kilometers since 1914. Africa operates 87,000 rail kilometers continent-wide compared to India's 65,000 kilometers in one-tenth the area. Transport emissions must decline 3% yearly to meet net-zero targets.

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Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has responded to Borderlands 4 performance complaints by calling the game "a premium game made for premium gamers." Pitchford claimed customer service reports for performance issues represent "less than one percent of one percent" of players and told critics to "code your own engine and show us how it's done, please." The game holds a Mixed rating on Steam despite reaching 300,000 concurrent players Sunday, a franchise record. Gearbox recommends DLSS and frame generation for 60+ fps at 1440p even on powerful hardware. Pitchford compared running the game on older hardware to driving "a monster truck with a leaf blower's motor."

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Gallup: Americans have been placing less importance on the value of a college education over the past 15 years, to the point that about a third (35%) now rate it as "very important." Forty percent think it is "fairly important," while 24% say it is "not too important." When last asked to rate the importance of college in 2019, just over half of U.S. adults, 53%, said it was very important, but that was already lower than the 70% found in 2013 and 75% in 2010. Meanwhile, the percentage viewing college as not too important has more than doubled since 2019 and compares with just 4% in 2010. The views of parents of children under age 18 in the Aug. 1-20 poll are similar to the national average, with 38% rating college as very important, 40% somewhat important and 21% not too important.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Apollo is exploring a sale of early internet darling AOL after receiving inbound interest in the business, according to people familiar with the matter. Any deal could value AOL at around $1.5 billion, the people said. It is also possible the talks won't result in any deal, they cautioned. Apollo bought AOL in 2021 as part of a $5 billion deal to acquire that business and Yahoo from Verizon. AOL generates around $400 million in annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, the people familiar with the matter said. Its main business lines include software for internet privacy and protection, and the AOL.com website and email domain.

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AI will enable three to four-day workweeks, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan told The New York Times, joining Microsoft's Bill Gates, Nvidia's Jensen Huang and JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon in predicting shorter schedules. Yuan also acknowledged AI will eliminate some positions, particularly entry-level engineering roles where AI can write code, but argued new opportunities will emerge managing AI agents. Gates previously suggested two to three-day weeks within 10 years during a February appearance on The Tonight Show.

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Getting an MBA in the US has gotten a little more expensive and a little less profitable, according to a Bloomberg analysis of salary and tuition data. From the report: This year's update of Bloomberg's Business School ROI Calculator, based on surveys of more than 9,500 students and alumni, projects a typical return on investment of 12.3% a year for the decade after graduation. That's down from 13.3% last year. The S&P 500 index, by comparison, returned 14.6% over the decade ending Aug. 31. The main reason for the decline: This year's respondents reported 6.2% better pre-MBA salaries than last year's, while projected postdegree earnings increased only 1.7%. In other words, the MBA pay edge -- the compensation boost graduates get for the degree -- shrank. In the broader US workforce, the average high-skilled worker's earnings rose 4.7% in the year ended July 31, Federal Reserve data show. Other factors didn't help: The increase in pre-MBA salaries meant students were forgoing more income during their studies. Tuition and other expenses increased 2.4%, some of that financed with bigger loans at higher rates. In all, the typical total investment to get an MBA in the US rose 6.8%, to almost $300,000.

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A search for "AI chat" in the Mac App Store returns dozens of applications sporting black-and-white icons nearly identical to ChatGPT's official logo. OpenAI's ChatGPT desktop application isn't available through the Mac App Store and can only be downloaded from the company's website. The copycat applications use various combinations of "AI," "Chat," and "Bot" in their names, including "AI Chat Bot : Ask Assistant," "AI Chatbot: Chat Ask Assistant," and dozens of similar variations. One application named itself "Al Chatbot" using a lowercase L instead of a capital I in "AI." Additional lookalike icons mimicking Claude, Grok, and Gemini applications also appear in search results.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Anyone who surveys the public, from marketers to pollsters, struggles nowadays to get people to answer their questions. That phenomenon afflicts crucial government data, making it harder for policymakers and investors to know the true state of the economy. Falling survey participation is an important reason the flagship jobs report released every month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the Labor Department, has undergone such big revisions recently. This has rippled into the political sphere. On Aug. 1, President Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after a particularly large downward revision to jobs for May and June that owed partly to late responses from survey participants. The White House and top administration officials increased their attacks on the BLS last week after the agency published an annual revision suggesting the U.S. added 911,000 fewer jobs over the 12 months through March. The BLS blamed the initial overestimate partly on response rates. [...] One hypothesis is known as survey fatigue: People are being asked to answer too many questionnaires. Jonathan Eggleston, a senior economist at the U.S. Census Bureau, found in a 2024 study that recent participants in that agency's monthly and annual surveys, which are voluntary, were less likely to answer the 2020 census by mail, phone or online, without a knock on the door. Another is the rise of cellphones with caller ID. In the days of landlines, people had to pick up the phone to know who was calling. These days, many decline to answer callers they don't recognize.

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404 Media: A data broker owned by the country's major airlines, including American Airlines, United and Delta, is selling access to five billion plane ticketing records to the government for warrantless searching and monitoring of peoples' movements, including by the FBI, Secret Service, ICE, and many other agencies, according to a new contract and other records reviewed by 404 Media. The contract provides new insight into the scale of the sale of passengers' data by the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), the airlines-owned data broker. The contract shows ARC's data includes information related to more than 270 carriers and is sourced through more than 12,800 travel agencies. ARC has previously told the government to not reveal to the public where this passenger data came from, which includes peoples' names, full flight itineraries, and financial details. "Americans' privacy rights shouldn't depend on whether they bought their tickets directly from the airline or via a travel agency. ARC's sale of data to U.S. government agencies is yet another example of why Congress needs to close the data broker loophole by passing my bipartisan bill, the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act," Senator Ron Wyden told 404 Media in a statement.

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Microsoft is adding the free Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and agents to Office apps for all Microsoft 365 business users today. From a report: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote are all being updated with a Copilot Chat sidebar that will help draft documents, analyze spreadsheets, and more without needing an additional Microsoft 365 Copilot license. "Copilot Chat is secure AI chat grounded in the web -- and now, it's available in the Microsoft 365 apps," explains Seth Patton, general Manager of Microsoft 365 Copilot product marketing. "It's content aware, meaning it quickly understands what you're working on, tailoring answers to the file you have open. And it's included at no additional cost for Microsoft 365 users." While this free version of Copilot will rewrite documents, provide summaries, and help create slides in PowerPoint, the $30 per month, per user Microsoft 365 Copilot license will still have the best integration in Office apps. The Microsoft 365 Copilot license is also not limited to a single document, and can reason over entire work data.

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Lead times for high-capacity hard drives have exceeded 52 weeks as AI workloads drive unprecedented demand for warm storage that sits between fast SSDs and offline tape archives, according to TrendForce. Western Digital notified customers of price increases across its entire hard drive portfolio citing demand for "every capacity" in its product line. The shortage stems from AI infrastructure requirements including training datasets, model checkpoints and inference logs that consume petabytes of storage space. These files are too large for primary SSD storage but must remain accessible for quick retrieval. Hard drive manufacturers have not significantly expanded production capacity in approximately a decade. Cloud service providers are evaluating QLC SSDs for cold data storage despite costs remaining four to five times higher per gigabyte than mechanical drives. Memory suppliers are developing SSD products specifically for this intermediate storage tier.

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President Donald Trump called Monday for companies to report earnings every six months instead of quarterly. Trump posted on social media that semi-annual reporting would save money and let managers focus on running companies. The SEC mandated quarterly reports in 1970. Trump made similar comments in 2018 that prompted SEC public comment but no regulatory changes. Critics argue quarterly reporting increases costs and encourages short-term thinking. Supporters say frequent disclosures maintain investor trust and reduce market manipulation risks. Further reading: The Renewed Bid To End Quarterly Earnings Reports.

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Toxic fumes from jet engines are leaking into aircraft cabins at an accelerating rate, reaching 108 incidents per million departures in 2024 compared to 12 in 2014, a Wall Street Journal investigation found. The fumes contain neurotoxins and carbon monoxide that have caused brain injuries in crew members. JetBlue flight attendant Florence Chesson suffered permanent neurological damage after inhaling engine oil vapors in 2018, diagnosed by neurologists as equivalent to an NFL linebacker's concussion. The surge is driven by Airbus A320 aircraft, particularly the A320neo model introduced in 2016. WSJ reports Airbus loosened maintenance requirements under airline pressure despite knowing the changes would increase incidents. The FAA received over 700 fume event reports from major U.S. airlines in 2024. Most commercial jets except Boeing's 787 use a "bleed air" system that pulls cabin air through engines.

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A third of UK employers are using "bossware" technology to track workers' activity with the most common methods including monitoring emails and web browsing. From a report: Private companies are most likely to deploy in-work surveillance and one in seven employers are recording or reviewing screen activity, according to a UK-wide survey that estimates the extent of office snooping. The findings, shared with the Guardian by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), are based on responses from hundreds of UK managers and suggest there has been a recent growth in computerised work surveillance. In 2023, less than a fifth of people thought they were being monitored by an employer, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) found. The finding that about a third of managers report their organisations are monitoring workers' online activities on employer-owned devices is probably an underestimate, as roughly the same proportion said they don't know what tracking their organisations do. Many monitoring systems are aimed at preventing insider threats and safeguarding sensitive information as well as detecting productivity dips. But the trend appears to be causing unease. A large minority of managers are opposed to the practice, saying it undermines trust with staff and invades their personal privacy, the CMI found.

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Apple released iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe 26 today, introducing Liquid Glass, a translucent design language that represents the biggest visual redesign since iOS 7 in 2013. The new interface elements dynamically refract and reflect background content across all three platforms. iOS 26 requires iPhone 11 or later and second-generation iPhone SE or newer. iPadOS 26 runs on the same hardware as iPadOS 18 except the 7th-generation iPad. macOS Tahoe 26 supports all Apple silicon Macs, the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro, 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro, 2020 and later iMac, and 2019 and later Mac Pro. The transparent menu bar on macOS increases perceived display size. iOS 26's adaptive Lock Screen time display resizes around notifications and Live Activities. Desktop icons, folders, app icons and widgets support light, dark, tinted, and clear appearances across all systems. iOS 26 adds Visual Intelligence for on-screen content analysis through screenshot button combinations. Live Translation operates across Messages, FaceTime and Phone on all platforms, translating text and audio in real-time on-device. The Camera app received streamlined navigation and lens cleaning hints for iPhone 15 and later models. iPadOS 26 brings Mac-style windowing and multitasking. Apps support free-form placement and menu bars. The Phone app and new Apple Games app arrived on iPad. macOS gained the Phone app through Continuity, including Call Screening and Hold Assist features. Spotlight executes hundreds of actions without opening applications and automatically assigns quick keys to frequent actions. Apple Intelligence expands across all systems. The Shortcuts app gained intelligent actions for text summarization and image generation. The Wallet app tracks orders across platforms, while Apple Music introduced AutoMix for song transitions.

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AI is transforming corporate America, yet the boom remains understated in government growth statistics, according to Goldman Sachs. From a report: Analysts at Goldman pointed to the scale of the boom in a Saturday note: "Revenue at US companies providing AI infrastructure has risen by $400 billion since 2022, which at first glance seems to suggest that AI has been a meaningful driver of economic growth recently." But official numbers tell a different story. AI technology has lifted real US economic activity by about $160 billion since 2022, or 0.7% of GDP, the analysts calculated. Yet only around $45 billion, or 0.2% of GDP, of AI-spurred growth has been recorded in official statistics. That leaves roughly $115 billion uncounted, according to the analysts. That gap highlights the difference between what companies report and what the government measures due to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis method for calculating growth.

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Businesses are overwhelmingly relying on Anthropic's AI software to automate rather than collaborate on work, according to a new report from the OpenAI rival, adding to the risk that AI will upend livelihoods. From a report: More than three quarters (77%) of companies' usage of Anthropic's Claude AI software involved automation patterns, often including "full task delegation," according to a research report the startup released on Monday. The finding was based on an analysis of traffic from Anthropic's application programming interface, which is used by developers and businesses. [...] On the whole, Anthropic found businesses primarily use Claude for administrative tasks and coding, the latter of which has been a key focus for the company and much of the AI industry. Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI developers have released more sophisticated AI tools that can write and debug code on a user's behalf.

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An anonymous reader shares a column: After nearly 30 years of USB-A connectivity, the market is now transitioning to the convenient USB-C standard, which makes sense given that it supports higher speeds, display data, and power delivery. The symmetrical connection is also smaller and more user-friendly, as it's reversible and works with smartphones and tablets. I get that USB-C is inevitable, but tech brands should realize that the ubiquitous USB-A isn't going anywhere soon and stop removing the ports we need to run our devices. [...] It's premature for brands to phase out USB-A when peripheral brands are still making compatible products in 2025. For example, Logitech's current wireless pro gaming mice connect using a USB-A Lightspeed dongle, and most Seagate external drives still use USB-A as their connection method. The same can be said for other memory sticks, keyboards, wireless headsets, and other new devices that are still manufactured with a USB-A connection. I have a gaming laptop with two USB-A and USB-C ports, and it's a constant struggle to connect all my devices simultaneously without needing a hub. I use the two USB-A ports for my mouse and wireless headset dongles, while a phone charging cable and portable monitor take up the USB-Cs. This setup stresses me out because there's no extra space to connect anything else without losing functionality.

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Google has restructured Android's decade-old monthly security update process into a "Risk-Based Update System" that separates high-priority patches from routine fixes. Monthly bulletins now contain only vulnerabilities under active exploitation or in known exploit chains -- explaining July 2025's unprecedented zero-CVE bulletin -- while most patches accumulate for quarterly releases. The September 2025 bulletin contained 119 vulnerabilities compared to zero in July and six in August. The change reduces OEM workload for monthly updates but extends the private bulletin lead time from 30 days to several months for quarterly releases. The company no longer releases monthly security update source code, limiting custom ROM development to quarterly cycles.

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India's IT services industry saw entry-level hiring collapse by 70% between fiscal years 2023 and 2024, as the country's four largest IT exporters reduced fresh graduate recruitment from 225,000 to 60,000. Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys shed a combined 38,000 employees in fiscal 2024, marking the sector's first workforce contraction in decades. Studies indicate generative AI could automate 30-40% of junior developer and tester tasks. The proportion of employees under 30 at Infosys declined from 81% in 2010 to a projected 53% by fiscal 2025. India adds 8-9 million people to its workforce annually while the IT sector projects just 50,000 net new jobs per year from fiscal 2026-28. The graduate unemployment rate exceeds 13%, nearly triple the national average.

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