An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A viral app called Neon, which offers to record your phone calls and pay you for the audio so it can sell that data to AI companies, has rapidly risen to the ranks of the top-five free iPhone apps since its launch last week. The app already has thousands of users and was downloaded 75,000 times yesterday alone, according to app intelligence provider Appfigures. Neon pitches itself as a way for users to make by providing call recordings that help train, improve, and test AI models. But now Neon has gone offline, at least for now, after a security flaw allowed anyone to access the phone numbers, call recordings, and transcripts of any other user, TechCrunch can now report. TechCrunch discovered the security flaw during a short test of the app on Thursday. We alerted the app's founder, Alex Kiam (who previously did not respond to a request for comment about the app), to the flaw soon after our discovery. Kiam told TechCrunch later Thursday that he took down the app's servers and began notifying users about pausing the app, but fell short of informing his users about the security lapse. The Neon app stopped functioning soon after we contacted Kiam. TechCrunch found that the app's backend services didn't properly restrict access, allowing any logged-in user to request and receive data belong to other users. This included call transcripts, raw call recordings, and sensitive metadata, including phone numbers, the date/time of calls, and their durations.

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The nation’s top federal health official said the United States could not support W.H.O. policies that he claimed promoted abortion and “radical gender ideology.”

The United Nations announced a new “global dialogue on artificial intelligence governance,” and a new global A.I. panel on the technology’s risks and rewards.

Google has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to pause a judge's order requiring major changes to its Play Store after losing an antitrust case to Epic Games. The injunction would force Google to allow rival app stores, external billing links, and broader competition -- changes Google says could harm users and developers. Epic argues they're necessary to break Google's monopoly. Reuters reports: Google said it has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to halt key parts of a judge's order that would force major changes to its app store Play, as it prepares to appeal a decision in a lawsuit brought by "Fortnite" maker Epic Games. Google called the judge's order unprecedented, and said it would cause reputational harm, safety and security risks and put the company at a competitive disadvantage if allowed to take effect, according to a filing, opens new tab provided late on Wednesday by Google, which said it had submitted it to the court. [...] Google in its Supreme Court filing said that the changes will have enormous consequences for more than 100 million U.S. Android users and 500,000 developers. It asked the court to decide by October 17 whether to put the order on hold. Google said it plans to file its appeal to the Supreme Court by October 27, which could allow the justices to take up the case during their nine-month term that begins on October 6. Epic in a statement said Google is relying on what it called "flawed security claims" to justify its control over Android devices. "The court's injunction should go into effect as ordered so consumers and developers can benefit from competition, choices and lower prices," Epic said. The jury, siding with Epic in the trial, found that Google illegally stifled competition. Donato subsequently issued the order directing Google to make changes to its app store.

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After more countries recognized a Palestinian state this week, President Trump said on Thursday that he would not permit Israel to take over the territory.

OpenAI introduced Pulse, a new ChatGPT feature that generates five to ten personalized daily reports overnight for Pro users on its $200/month plan. The goal is to eventually expand beyond summaries to agent-like tasks. TechCrunch reports: Pulse offers users five to 10 briefs that can get them up to speed on their day and is aimed at encouraging users to check ChatGPT first thing in the morning -- much like they would check social media or a news app. "We're building AI that lets us take the level of support that only the wealthiest have been able to afford and make it available to everyone over time," said OpenAI's new CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, in a blog post. "And ChatGPT Pulse is the first step in that direction -- starting with Pro users today, but with the goal of rolling out this intelligence to all." Starting Thursday, OpenAI will roll out Pulse for subscribers to its $200-a-month Pro plan, for whom it will appear as a new tab in the ChatGPT app. The company says it would like to launch Pulse to all ChatGPT users in the future, with Plus subscribers to get access soon, but it first needs to make the product more efficient. Pulse's reports can be roundups of news articles on a specific topic -- like updates on a specific sports team -- as well as more personalized briefs based on a user's context.

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Ruby Central, a non-profit organization committed to "driving innovation and building community within the Ruby programming ecosystem since 2001," removed all RubyGems maintainers from the project's GitHub repository on September 18, granting administrative access exclusively to its employees and contractors following alleged pressure from Shopify, one of its biggest backers, according to Ruby developer Joel Drapper. The nonprofit organization, which operates RubyConf and RailsConf, cited fiduciary responsibility and supply chain security concerns following a recent audit. The controversy began September 9 when HSBT (Hiroshi Shibata), a Ruby infrastructure maintainer, renamed the RubyGems GitHub enterprise to "Ruby Central" and added Director of Open Source Marty Haught as owner while demoting other maintainers. The action allegedly followed Shopify's threat to cut funding unless Ruby Central assumed full ownership of RubyGems and Bundler. Ruby Central had reportedly become financially dependent on Shopify after Sidekiq withdrew $250,000 annual sponsorship over the organization platforming Rails creator DHH at RailsConf 2025. Andre Arko, a veteran contributor on-call for RubyGems.org at the time, was among those removed. Maintainer Ellen Dash has characterized the action as a "hostile takeover" and also resigned. Executive Director Shan Cureton acknowledged poor communication in a YouTube video Monday, stating removals were temporary while finalizing operator agreements. Arko and others are launching Spinel, an alternative Ruby tooling project, though Shopify's Rafael Franca commented that Spinel admins shouldn't be trusted to avoid "sabotaging rubygems or bundler."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: With AI chatbots growing in popular usage, it was only a matter of time before large numbers of people began applying them to the stock market. In fact, at least 1 in 10 retail investors now consult ChatGPT or other AI chatbots for stock-picking advice, according to a Reuters report published Thursday. Data from a survey by trading platform eToro of 11,000 retail investors worldwide suggests that 13 percent of individual investors already use AI tools like ChatGPT or Google's Gemini for stock selection, while about half say they would consider using these tools for portfolio decisions. Unlike algorithmic trading, where computers automatically execute thousands of trades per second, investors are using ChatGPT as an advisory tool in place of human experts. They type questions, read the AI model's analysis, and then manually decide whether to place trades through their brokers. Reuters spoke with Jeremy Leung, who analyzed companies for investment bank UBS for almost two decades. Leung now relies on ChatGPT for his multi-asset portfolio. "I no longer have the luxury of a Bloomberg terminal, or those kinds of market-data services which are very, very expensive," Leung told Reuters. "Even the simple ChatGPT tool can do a lot and replicate a lot of the workflows that I used to do." Reuters reports that financial products comparison website Finder asked ChatGPT in March 2023 to select stocks from high-quality businesses based on criteria like debt levels and sustained growth. Since then, the resulting 38-stock portfolio has reportedly grown in value nearly 55 percent. That performance beat the average of the UK's 10 most popular funds by almost 19 percentage points. But there's a huge caveat to that kind of AI success story: US stocks sit near record highs, Reuters notes, with the S&P 500 index up 13 percent this year after surging 23 percent last year. Those are conditions that can make almost any stock-picking strategy look smart. Reuters frames the AI trading advice trend as a case of new technology tools "democratizing," or opening up, investment analysis once reserved for institutional investors with expensive data terminals. But experts warn that AI models can confabulate financial data and lack access to real-time market information, making them risky substitutes for professional advice. "AI models can be brilliant," Dan Moczulski, UK managing director at eToro, told Reuters. "The risk comes when people treat generic models like ChatGPT or Gemini as crystal balls." He noted that general AI models "can misquote figures and dates, lean too hard on a pre-established narrative, and overly rely on past price action to attempt to predict the future."

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The settlement is one of the largest in the history of the Federal Trade Commission, which sued Amazon two years ago.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Senators are demanding answers from Big Tech companies accused of "filing thousands of H-1B skilled labor visa petitions after conducting mass layoffs of American employees." In letters sent to Amazon, Meta, Apple, Google, and Microsoft -- among some of the largest sponsors of H-1B visas -- Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) requested "information and data from each company regarding their recruitment and hiring practices, as well as any variation in salary and benefits between H-1B visa holders and American employees." The letters came shortly after Grassley sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem requesting that DHS stop "issuing work authorizations to student visa holders." According to Grassley, "foreign student work authorizations put America at risk of technological and corporate espionage," in addition to allegedly "contributing to rising unemployment rates among college-educated Americans." [...] In the letters to tech firms, senators emphasized that the unemployment rate in America's tech sector is "well above" the overall jobless rate. Amazon perhaps faces the most scrutiny. US Citizenship and Immigration Services data showed that Amazon sponsored the most H-1B visas in 2024 at 14,000, compared to other criticized firms like Microsoft and Meta, which each sponsored 5,000, The Wall Street Journal reported. Senators alleged that Amazon blamed layoffs of "tens of thousands" on the "adoption of generative AI tools," then hired more than 10,000 foreign H-1B employees in 2025.

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China stopped buying soybeans from America in May, placing a retaliatory tariff on the bumper crop after President Trump increased levies on goods from China.

Microsoft has disabled the Israeli Defense Ministry's access to certain services and subscriptions, after finding evidence that the ministry used the tech company's cloud services to surveil Gaza citizens. WSJ adds: The software company made the move after an internal investigation indicated Israel's Defense Ministry used Microsoft's Azure cloud services for surveillance, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company probe is ongoing. "As employees, we all have a shared interest in privacy protection, given the business value it creates by ensuring our customers can rely on our services with rock solid trust," Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a blog post Thursday on Microsoft's company website. Smith said Microsoft's investigation was guided by the company's "longstanding protection of privacy as a fundamental right." Microsoft opened the probe after the Guardian, the British news organization, reported in August that Israel used Azure to store data on Gaza civilians and surveil them. The issue has been the source of protests at the company.

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The president said some revenue from tariffs would go to crop farmers, but the agriculture secretary said a plan wasn’t yet ready.

Cloudflare announced plans Thursday to launch NET Dollar, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin designed to enable autonomous AI agents to conduct instant financial transactions. The company says the stablecoin will support microtransactions and pay-per-use models as AI agents take over tasks like booking flights and ordering groceries. BrianFagioli comments: A U.S. dollar-backed cryptocurrency from Cloudflare feels unusual to me, and I'm still surprised by it. The decision shows just how much the Internet is shifting in response to artificial intelligence. CEO Matthew Prince said, "For decades, the business model of the Internet ran on ad platforms and bank transfers. The Internet's next business model will be powered by pay-per-use, fractional payments, and microtransactions -- "tools that shift incentives toward original, creative content that actually adds value." He added that by using its global network, Cloudflare aims to "help modernize the financial rails needed to move money at the speed of the Internet."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI released a new benchmark on Thursday that tests how its AI models perform compared to human professionals across a wide range of industries and jobs. The test, GDPval, is an early attempt at understanding how close OpenAI's systems are to outperforming humans at economically valuable work -- a key part of the company's founding mission to develop artificial general intelligence or AGI. OpenAI says its found that its GPT-5 model and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.1 "are already approaching the quality of work produced by industry experts." That's not to say that OpenAI's models are going to start replacing humans in their jobs immediately. Despite some CEOs' predictions that AI will take the jobs of humans in just a few years, OpenAI admits that GDPval today covers a very limited number of tasks people do in their real jobs. However, it is one of the latest ways the company is measuring AI's progress towards this milestone. GDPval is based on nine industries that contribute the most to America's gross domestic product, including domains such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and government. The benchmark tests an AI model's performance in 44 occupations among those industries, ranging from software engineers to nurses to journalists.

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Despite AI models outperforming radiologists on benchmark tests since 2017, demand for human radiologists has reached record highs. American diagnostic radiology residency programs offered 1,208 positions this year, up 4% from 2024, while average salaries hit $520,000 -- 48% higher than 2015. Over 700 FDA-cleared radiology AI models exist, yet only 48% of radiologists use AI at all. Models trained on standardized datasets lose up to 20% points accuracy when deployed in different hospitals. Radiologists spend just 36% of their time interpreting images, with the majority devoted to patient communication, teaching, and administrative tasks that current AI cannot perform.

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Circle, the world's second-biggest issuer of stablecoins, is examining ways to make it possible to reverse transactions involving its tokens [non-paywalled source], in a rare admission by a major crypto firm that it needs to take lessons from the traditional financial sector. Financial Times: Circle president Heath Tarbert said a mechanism that allowed money to be refunded in cases of fraud or disputes would help the stablecoin industry's push to become part of the financial mainstream. "We are thinking through...whether or not there's the possibility of reversibility of transactions, right, but at the same time, we want settlement finality," Tarbert told the Financial Times. "So there's an inherent tension there between being able to transfer something immediately, but having it be irrevocable," he added. Such measures could be seen as a major departure from the crypto industry's previous emphasis on the "immutability" of the blockchain, a digital ledger that is public and records transactions that cannot be unwound.

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The director, at the height of his powers, delivers a startling, present-day American epic, with Leonardo DiCaprio as a washed-up radical and doting dad.

Ending the “culture of victimhood” on campus.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world's oceans have failed a key planetary health check for the first time, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels, a report has shown. In its latest annual assessment, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said ocean acidity had crossed a critical threshold for marine life. This makes it the seventh of nine planetary boundaries to be transgressed, prompting scientists to call for a renewed global effort to curb fossil fuels, deforestation and other human-driven pressures that are tilting the Earth out of a habitable equilibrium. The report, which follows earlier warnings about ocean acidity, comes at a time of recordbreaking ocean heat and mass coral bleaching. Oceans cover 71% of the Earth's surface and play an essential role as a climate stabilizer. The new report calls them an "unsung guardian of planetary health", but says their vital functions are threatened. The 2025 Planetary Health Check noted that since the start of the industrial era, oceans' surface pH has fallen by about 0.1 units, a 30-40% increase in acidity, pushing marine ecosystems beyond safe limits. Cold-water corals, tropical coral reefs and Arctic marine life are especially at risk. This is primarily due to the human-caused climate crisis. When carbon dioxide from oil, coal and gas burning enters the sea, it forms carbonic acid. This reduces the availability of calcium carbonate, which many marine organisms depend upon to grow coral, shells or skeletons. Near the bottom of the food chain, this directly affects species like oysters, molluscs and clams. Indirectly, it harms salmon, whales and other sea life that eat smaller organisms. Ultimately, this is a risk for human food security and coastal economies. Scientists are concerned that it could also weaken the ocean's role as the planet's most important heat absorber and its capacity to draw down 25-30% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Marine life plays an important role in this process, acting as a "biotic bump" to sequester carbon in the depths. In the report, all of the other six breached boundaries -- climate change, biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, and novel entities -- showed a worsening trend. But the authors said the addition of the only solely ocean-centerd category was a alarming development because of its scale and importance.

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