An anonymous reader shares a report: The FCC adopted a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to rescind and revise certain rules attached to consumer broadband labels. The measure passed on a two-to-one vote, with Commissioner Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on the FCC, voting no and calling the notice "one of the most anti-consumer items I have seen." The vote was held at the Commission's open meeting for the month of October. As per a draft notice circulated earlier this month, the FCC is looking to roll back several rules, including requirements that service providers read the label to consumers via phone, itemize state and local pass-through fees, and display labels in consumer account portals, among others. Advocates at Public Knowledge urged the Commission to reconsider, saying in a recent filing that "the Commission could create a permission structure for ISPs to continue to act without accountability." In her remarks during Tuesday's open meeting, Commissioner Gomez appeared to concur, depicting the move as "anti-consumer" and counter to the goals of Congress. The FCC was mandated via the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) to create rules for implementing consumer broadband labels. After a lengthy rulemaking process and discussions with industry and consumer groups, ISPs were required to start displaying labels in 2024. "I typically vote in favor of notices of proposed rulemaking because I believe in asking balanced questions, even on proposals that I dislike, so that we can encourage fruitful and helpful public comment. Answers to tough questions help us strike the right balance so that our rules can both encourage competition and serve consumers. However, the questions posed in this NPRM are so anti-consumer that I could not bring myself to even agree to them," said Gomez. Gomez stressed that the notice will harm consumers by enabling ISPs to hide add-on fees and stripping people of their ability to access information in their own language. Moreover, added Gomez, it's unclear why the FCC is doing this. "What adds insult to injury is that the FCC does not even explain why this proposal is necessary. Make it make sense," she added.

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Microsoft shipped its first Xbox handheld nearly two weeks ago. The $600 white Xbox Ally cannot reliably sleep, wake, or hold a charge while asleep. Neither Microsoft nor Asus would admit there's a problem or offer a timeline to fix it after repeated requests by The Verge. Asus said it needs more time to test. Installing Bazzite, a Linux-based operating system, solves the problems, the publication reports. The same hardware runs games up to 30% faster than Windows and beats the Steam Deck in all but one benchmark. Steam runs more responsively without Windows bloat. The device can be used like a Nintendo Switch, pausing games with the power button and resuming hours or days later. Bazzite initially had sleep issues but fixed them two days after programmer Antheas Kapenekakis obtained the hardware and consulted with two AMD contacts. The black Xbox Ally X, which doesn't have as many sleep issues, gets a similar speed boost with Bazzite. Two Xbox Ally units tested on Windows repeatedly woke themselves at random intervals. One lost 10% battery after 12 hours of supposed sleep, the other 23%. After another 12 hours, both had only 30% battery remaining. One tried to apply a Windows Update while asleep. Both units refused to wake from sleep at times and required hard resets. Many users have reported similar issues on Reddit with both Xbox Ally versions. Further reading: Microsoft's Next Xbox Will Run Full Windows and Eliminate Multiplayer Paywall, Report Says.

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Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said that maintaining the US edge in AI will require a steady approach that ensures China remains hooked on American technology. From a report: The chipmaker is in an "awkward place" as President Donald Trump prepares to meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping later this week, Huang told reporters Tuesday at a company conference in Washington. The Nvidia chief praised Trump's commitment to winning but urged careful engagement with China because of the country's massive software developer base and its growing technology capabilities. During the meeting, Trump and Xi are expected to finalize an agreement to ease trade tensions between the world's two largest economies. When it comes to those negotiations, Huang said he has "no idea" if GPUs -- the chips central to artificial intelligence capabilities -- will be a topic between Trump and Xi. Huang was careful to leave the negotiating to Trump but encouraged US leadership to think longer term on its overall AI strategy. "A policy that causes America to lose half of the world's developers is not beneficial long-term," Huang said, warning that it was still possible for the US to cede the AI race to China. Keeping US technology in front requires finesse," he said. "It requires balance. It requires long-term thinking."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The transition to the more-secure HTTPS web protocol has plateaued, according to Google. As of 2020, 95 to 99 percent of navigations in Chrome use HTTPS. To help make it safer for users to click on links, Chrome will enable a setting called Always Use Secure Connections for public sites for all users by default. This will happen in October 2026 with the release of Chrome 154. The change will happen earlier for those who have switched on Enhanced Safe Browsing protections in Chrome. Google will enable Always Use Secure Connections by default in April when Chrome 147 drops. When this setting is on, Chrome will ask for your permission before it first accesses a public website that doesn't use HTTPS.

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Blogger and technologist Anil Dash, writing about OpenAI's recently launched browser, Atlas: When I first got Atlas up and running, I tried giving it the easiest and most obvious tasks I could possibly give it. I looked up "Taylor Swift showgirl" to see if it would give me links to videos or playlists to watch or listen to the most popular music on the charts right now; this has to be just about the easiest possible prompt. The results that came back looked like a web page, but they weren't. Instead, what I got was something closer to a last-minute book report written by a kid who had mostly plagiarized Wikipedia. The response mentioned some basic biographical information and had a few photos. Now we know that AI tools are prone to this kind of confabulation, but this is new, because it felt like I was in a web browser, typing into a search box on the Internet. And here's what was most notable: there was no link to her website. I had typed "Taylor Swift" in a browser, and the response had literally zero links to Taylor Swift's actual website. If you stayed within what Atlas generated, you would have no way of knowing that Taylor Swift has a website at all. Unless you were an expert, you would almost certainly think I had typed in a search box and gotten back a web page with search results. But in reality, I had typed in a prompt box and gotten back a synthesized response that superficially resembles a web page, and it uses some web technologies to display its output. Instead of a list of links to websites that had information about the topic, it had bullet points describing things it thought I should know. There were a few footnotes buried within some of those response, but the clear intent was that I was meant to stay within the AI-generated results, trapped in that walled garden. During its first run, there's a brief warning buried amidst all the other messages that says, "ChatGPT may give you inaccurate information", but nobody is going to think that means "sometimes this tool completely fabricates content, gives me a box that looks like a search box, and shows me the fabricated content in a display that looks like a web page when I type in the fake search box." And it's not like the generated response is even that satisfying.

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YouTube says it will automatically upscale videos uploaded below 1080p (full-HD to higher resolution using AI. The Google-owned platform, however, assured that it will give creators and viewers the option to opt out of the enhancement. The feature will apply only to videos uploaded in resolutions from 240p to 720p and will not affect videos that creators have already remastered to 1080p. Creators will retain control over their original files, and viewers will be able to watch videos in their uploaded resolution through a settings option. YouTube said it plans to support upscaling to 4K in the near future. The company also said it is expanding the video thumbnail size limit from 2MB to 50MB to support 4K images. On videos with tagged products, viewers will soon be able to scan a QR code on TV screens to purchase items directly.

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The best way to innovate in gaming is to have good margins, that's according to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella. He made the comments during an interview days after Bloomberg reported that Microsoft has expected unrealistic profit margins from its gaming division, which the report suggested was a likely reason for studio closures, game cancelations and thousands of layoffs at Xbox. Nadella used the word "innovation" at least five times during the interview but never offered specifics about what he meant by it. He said Microsoft needs to "invent, maybe, some new interactive media" because gaming's competition is short-form video rather than other games. The CEO described Microsoft's new gaming strategy as being "everywhere, on every platform" after comparing the company's game publishing business to Microsoft Office. He said "the biggest gaming business is the Windows business" and added that he is looking forward to "the next console, the next PC gaming."

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Hedge fund Apollo has reached a deal to sell AOL to Italian tech holding group Bending Spoons in a deal valued at roughly $1.5 billion, Axios reported Wednesday From the report: AOL still drives hundreds of millions of dollars of free cash flow. Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari said AOL has around 30 million monthly active users across its email and web content properties. That "incredibly loyal user base," as he called it, could be better served with greater investments in AOL's product and user experience, he noted. [...] Bending Spoons is a privately held Italian holding company that acquires assets with large user bases and invests in their turnaround with technology improvements. The company tends to sit on their investments long term after acquiring them. Some of the other companies Bending Spoons has acquired include Vimeo, Evernote, WeTransfer, Brightcove.

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schwit1 writes: China has enacted a new law regulating social media influencers, requiring them to hold verified professional qualifications before posting content on sensitive topics such as medicine, law, education, and finance, IOL reported. The new law went into effect on Saturday. The regulation was introduced by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) as part of its broader effort to curb misinformation online. Under the new rules, influencers must prove their expertise through recognized degrees, certifications, or licenses before discussing regulated subjects. Major platforms such as Douyin (China's TikTok), Bilibili, and Weibo are now responsible for verifying influencer credentials and ensuring that content includes clear citations, disclaimers, and transparency about sources. Audiences expect influencers to be both creative and credible. Yet when they blur the line between opinion and expertise, the impact can be severe. A single misleading financial tip could wipe out someone's savings. A viral health trend could cause real harm. That's why many believe it's time for creators to acknowledge the weight of their influence. However, China's new law raises deeper questions: Who defines "expertise"? What happens to independent creators who challenge official narratives but lack formal credentials? And how far can regulation go before it suppresses free thought?

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Computer scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have proved that pricing algorithms can drive up prices even when they lack the capacity to collude. Aaron Roth and four colleagues studied so-called no-swap-regret algorithms, which are designed to minimize losses and were previously thought to guarantee competitive pricing. The researchers found that when such an algorithm faces an opponent using a nonresponsive strategy -- one that randomly selects from predetermined price probabilities without reacting to competitor moves -- both players can end up in equilibrium at high prices. Neither has an incentive to switch strategies because their profits are nearly equal and as high as possible under the circumstances. The nonresponsive strategy cannot express threats because it does not respond to opponent behavior, yet it effectively coaxes the learning algorithm into raising prices. Mallesh Pai, an economist at Rice University not involved in the research, said the finding matters because regulators have no clear grounds to intervene without evidence of threats or agreements. Roth conceded however that he lacks a solution to the regulatory challenge his team identified.

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Nvidia became the world's first $5 trillion company on Wednesday after its stock climbed 5% in early Wall Street trading to push its market capitalization to $5.13 trillion. The Silicon Valley chipmaker reached the milestone three months after hitting $4 trillion and three years after it was valued at roughly $400 billion before the debut of ChatGPT. Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said Tuesday that Nvidia had secured half a trillion dollars in orders for its AI chips over the next five quarters. The stock had already gained 5% on Tuesday and added more than $200 billion to its market value. President Donald Trump said Wednesday he planned to discuss Nvidia's Blackwell chip with China's President Xi Jinping when the two leaders meet later this week. Nvidia's latest generation of graphics processing units is not currently available in China because of US export controls. The company's shares have risen more than 85% in the past six months.

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Bill Gates is retreating from his earlier warnings about climate change. The Microsoft co-founder now argues that what he called the "doomsday view of climate change" has caused the climate community to focus too heavily on near-term emissions goals and divert resources from addressing poverty and disease in the world's poorest countries. In a blog post, Gates wrote that climate change will have serious consequences but will not lead to humanity's demise. He acknowledges that some climate advocates will call him a hypocrite given his own carbon footprint and his 2021 book warning that climate change could be as deadly as COVID-19 by mid-century and five times as deadly by 2100. The poorest countries receive less than 1% of rich countries' budgets at their highest level and that this share is shrinking as wealthy nations cut aid and low-income countries struggle with debt, he wrote. Rising temperatures are now inevitable and that the current consensus suggests Earth's average temperature will be between two and three degrees Celsius higher than 1850 levels by 2100.

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A cyclist who received severe third-degree burns to his head after being struck by a drunk driver has been fitted with a printed 3D face. The Guardian: Dave Richards, 75, was given a 3D prosthetic by the NHS that fits the space on his face and mimics his hair colour, eye colour and skin. [...] While recovering, he was referred to reconstructive prosthetics, which has opened the Bristol 3D medical centre, the first of its kind in the UK to have 3D scanning, design and printing in a single NHS location. Richards, from Devon, said surgeons tried to save his eye but "they were worried any infection could spread from my eye down the optic nerve to the brain so the eye was removed." [...] He called the process of getting a 3D-printed face "not the most pleasant." He added: "In the early days of my recovery, I felt very vulnerable, and would not expose myself to social situations. It took me a long time to feel comfortable about my image, how I thought people looked at me and what they thought of me -- but I have come a long way in that respect."

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Nearly nine in ten Windows games can now run on Linux systems, according to data from ProtonDB compiled by Boiling Steam. The gains came through work by developers of WINE and Proton translation layers and through interest in hardware like the Steam Deck. ProtonDB tracks games across five categories. Platinum-rated games run perfectly without adjustment. Gold titles need minor tweaks. Silver games are playable but imperfect. Bronze exists between silver and borked. Borked games refuse to launch. The proportion of new releases earning platinum ratings has grown. The red and dark red zones have thinned. Some popular titles remain incompatible, however. Boiling Steam noted that other developers appear averse to non-Windows gamers.

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Humanity has failed to limit global heating to 1.5C and must change course immediately, the secretary general of the UN has warned. From a report: In his only interview before next month's Cop30 climate summit, Antonio Guterres acknowledged it is now "inevitable" that humanity will overshoot the target in the Paris climate agreement, with "devastating consequences" for the world. He urged the leaders who will gather in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belem to realise that the longer they delay cutting emissions, the greater the danger of passing catastrophic "tipping points" in the Amazon, the Arctic and the oceans. "Let's recognise our failure," he told the Guardian and Amazon-based news organisation Sumauma. "The truth is that we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5C in the next few years. And that going above 1.5C has devastating consequences. Some of these devastating consequences are tipping points, be it in the Amazon, be it in Greenland, or western Antarctica or the coral reefs. He said the priority at Cop30 was to shift direction: "It is absolutely indispensable to change course in order to make sure that the overshoot is as short as possible and as low in intensity as possible to avoid tipping points like the Amazon. We don't want to see the Amazon as a savannah. But that is a real risk if we don't change course and if we don't make a dramatic decrease of emissions as soon as possible."

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Nearly three out of every four restaurant orders are no longer eaten in a restaurant, according to the National Restaurant Association. The share of customers using delivery more than doubled from 2019 to 2024, and 41% of respondents in a recent poll said delivery was an essential part of their lifestyle. The transformation has fundamentally altered restaurant economics. Delivery companies charge restaurants commissions between 5 and 30%, along with fees for payment processing, advertising, and search placement. Shannon Orr runs an eight-restaurant group on the West Coast. One of her restaurants generated $1.7 million in delivery sales last year. Of that, $400,000 went to delivery companies. The restaurant, previously among her most profitable, made no money in 2024, she told the Atlantic. About a third of full-service restaurants have modified their physical spaces to accommodate the delivery boom, installing dedicated entrances, bike parking, and banks of lockers.

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OpenAI has committed to spend about $1.4 trillion on infrastructure so far, equating to roughly 30 gigawatts of data center capacity, CEO Sam Altman said on Tuesday. From a report: The statement helps clarify the many announcements the company has made with its chip, data center and financing partners. That total includes the already announced deals with AMD, Broadcom, Nvidia, Oracle and other partners. That's just the starting point, Altman said. Over time, the company would like to have in place a technical and financial apparatus that would allow it to build a gigawatt of new capacity per week at a cost of around $20 billion per gigawatt.

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Jensen Huang unveiled NVQLink at Nvidia's Washington conference on Tuesday. The interconnect links quantum processors to the AI supercomputers they require to function effectively. Nvidia is not building its own quantum computers but is positioning itself as critical infrastructure for the technology's future. Quantum processors harness principles of quantum physics to solve problems classical computers cannot address, but they need classical supercomputers to perform calculations beyond their capability and to correct the errors that naturally occur in their outputs. Tim Costa, Nvidia's general manager of industrial engineering and quantum, said AI will be necessary for full-scale error correction. Earlier attempts to integrate quantum processors with AI supercomputers failed to deliver the speed and scale needed for fast error correction at scale. Nvidia developed NVQLink with more than a dozen quantum companies including IonQ, Quantinuum and Infleqtion and worked with national labs including Sandia, Oak Ridge and Fermi. The interconnect operates on open architecture and works across different quantum modalities including trapped ion, superconducting and photonic systems. Costa declined to predict when quantum computing will produce meaningful commercial value, though some quantum companies estimate two to four years.

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China has completed the first phase of what it claims is the world's first underwater data center in Shanghai's Lingang Special Area. The facility cost roughly 1.6 billion yuan ($226 million) and operates on twenty-four megawatts of power drawn entirely from wind energy. Seawater acts as a natural cooling system for the submerged servers. Traditional land-based data centers devote up to 50% of their energy consumption to air conditioning. The underwater design reduces cooling energy demand to less than 10%. The first phase is designed to achieve a power usage effectiveness rating of no more than 1.15. More than 95% of the facility's electricity comes from offshore wind turbines in the East China Sea. The project reduces land usage by more than 90% and eliminates the need for fresh water. The main contractors signed an agreement to launch another offshore wind-powered underwater data center with a capacity of 500 megawatts.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: After last week's major AWS outage took Signal along with it, Elon Musk was quick to criticize the encrypted messaging app's reliance on big tech. But Signal president Meredith Whittaker argues that the company didn't have any other choice but to use AWS or another major cloud provider. "The problem here is not that Signal 'chose' to run on AWS," Whittaker writes in a series of posts on Bluesky. "The problem is the concentration of power in the infrastructure space that means there isn't really another choice: the entire stack, practically speaking, is owned by 3-4 players." In the thread, Whittaker says the number of people who didn't realize Signal uses AWS is "concerning," as it indicates they aren't aware of just how concentrated the cloud infrastructure industry is. "The question isn't 'why does Signal use AWS?'" Whittaker writes. "It's to look at the infrastructural requirements of any global, real-time, mass comms platform and ask how it is that we got to a place where there's no realistic alternative to AWS and the other hyperscalers."

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